Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs

[Part 2]

Having looked generally at the three words used by Paul to describe our praise to God, we must now consider them individually. For reasons given in the first article, I am unable to agree with the teaching that Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs are one and the same.

Psalms
The Greek psalmos derives from a verbal form meaning, 'a touching' and so 'a touching of the harp or other stringed instruments with the finger or with the plectrum' (Trench Synonyms of the New Testament 1865) suggests a song associated with the plucking of a stringed instrument and hence an accompanied song. In view of the emphasis that Paul places on knowing the Scriptures (e.g. 2 Timothy 3:15,16), by which we must surely understand the Old Testament Scriptures at his time of writing, there is every reason to believe that in the two passages under consideration he is referring to the Psalms in the Hebrew Canon, sung to the accompaniment of a harp or lyre.

Without insisting that those psalms must be sung to an accompaniment, Paul evidently believes that members of the Body of Christ should be able to express their praise in the words of the Old Testament Psalms. And why not? Do not many of them have practical implications for every age? "The heavens" still "declare the glory of God" (19:1). We can still affirm with David of old, "The Lord is my light and my salvation" (27:1) and take comfort from the words, "Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away" (37:1,2).

There are of course certain Psalms that apply exclusively to Israel and speak of Zion etc. (Psalm 50 for instance), but if we rightly divide the word of truth, comparing spiritual with spiritual, these present no problem as they can be omitted. We need not follow slavishly The Book of Common Prayer or the modern Common Worship , which include such Psalms, but there are many with which we can identify and rejoice in. Our biggest problem today is likely to be finding an assembly where the psalms are sung, with or without 'right division'! Of course, as we shall see in a further study, the singing of psalms is not necessarily the only outcome of being filled by the Spirit; the outward only expresses what should be happening 'in the heart'.

Hymns
Trench (op.cit.) draws attention to hymns as expressing "direct addresses of praise to God" and quotes Augustine (AD 354-430) who identified three essentials of a hymn as:

• It must be sung
• It must be praise
• It must be to God

With this agrees the etymology of the word as seen by the Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott, who examine the word in its wider usage in the Graeco-Roman world and define it as "a festive song or ode, commonly in honour of gods or heroes".

This connection with heathenism may be the reason why " hymnos nowhere occurs in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, nor in those of Justin Martyr (1st and 2nd centuries)..and only once in Tertullian (the 3rd century Theologian)".

The best-known occasions of the singing of hymns, mentioned in the New Testament, are:

• at the 'last supper', before the Lord and His disciples went out to the Mount of Olives prior to His arrest and subsequent crucifixion (Matthew 26:3)
  
  
• when Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Philippi and "towards midnight" they "were praying and singing praises (lit. 'hymning' – humneo ) to God " (Acts 16:25).

In Hebrews 2:12 the writer quotes from the Old Testament Psalm 22:22 when he says, "I will declare thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly ( ekklesia – church) I will sing praise ( humneo ) to thee".

The only other reference to "hymn" in the New Testament is in the English rendering of The New International Version of 1 Corinthians 14:26, where the word is properly "psalm" (Greek psalmos ). It occurs among the gifts of the church of the Acts period and has dispensational overtones, much as "tongue" does in the same verse. Being among the gifts distributed by God to the Corinthian church during this period, "for the strengthening of the church", it is unlikely to refer to the Old Testament Psalms and, like the other gifts in 1 Corinthians, belongs to a particular time and dispensation.

Hymns in the Old Testament
In the Old Testament, the English word "hymn" was not used by the translators of the King James Version , but was employed once in The New International Version rendering of Psalm 40:3, "He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God" (probably following the Greek version of the Old Testament).

The Greek translation of the Psalms (part of what is loosely referred to as the Septuagint – LXX) provides a link between the Old and New Testaments. Greek words used by the translators to attempt to render/interpret the original Hebrew, show that 'hymn' cannot be considered simply a New Testament Christian song. For example, in the LXX version of Nehemiah 12:46 we read of " hymns and praise to God", where the Hebrew has been rendered into English as, "songs of praise and thanksgiving to God" ( NIV ). The title to Psalm 6 is rendered (LXX) "a psalm of David among the hymns for the eighth", (taken by some to indicate accompaniment on an eight-stringed instrument). So while the word "hymn" may be largely absent from our English translations of the Hebrew canon, the Greek translators evidently thought it a suitable word to use in some contexts.

[For a proper appreciation of the meaning and position of the Psalm 'titles', the reader is referred to The Companion Bible , or for a detailed study to Dr. E.W. Bullinger's work, The Chief Musician.]