Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
Praise him with the timbrel - toph , drum, tabret, or tomtom, or tympanum of the ancients; a skin stretched over a broad hoop; perhaps something like the tambarine. Anglo-Saxon; the glad pipe. Taburne; Old Psalter.
And dance - machol , the pipe. The croude or crowthe: Old Psalter; a species of violin. It never means dance; see the note on Psalms 149:3. Crwth signifies a fiddle in Welsh.
Stringed instruments - minnim . This literally signifies strings put in order; perhaps a triangular kind of hollow instrument on which the strings were regularly placed, growing shorter and shorter till they came to a point. This would give a variety of sounds, from a deep bass to a high treble. In an ancient MS. Psalter before me, David is represented in two places, playing on such an instrument. It may be the sambuck, or psaltery, or some such instrument.
Organs - ugab . Very likely the syrinx or mouth organ; Pan' s pope; both of the ancients and moderns. The fistula, septem, disparibus nodis conjuncta, made of seven pieces of cane or thick straw, of unequal lengths, applied to the lips, each blown into, according to the note intended to be expressed. This instrument is often met with in the ancient bucolic or pastoral writers.
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