Psalms 150:4

4. Dance A translation of doubtful propriety. The word in the text and in Psalms 149:3, stands classified as a musical instrument, and is translated “pipe” in the margin of our English Bible. In Psalms 30:11, it seems evidently used in a figurative sense for joy, and the same in Lamentations 5:15. Jeremiah 31:4; Jeremiah 31:13, might also be taken in the same sense. The same noun in the feminine ( מחולה ) is more commonly taken in the literal sense of dancing, or, as the etymology suggests, “dancing in a circle,” probably because, in the literal sense, females only or chiefly practised it. These “dances,” though embracing a religious sentiment, were not connected with the regular worship, but belonged to occasions of rare national joy and triumph. In the text, and in Psalms 149:3, the word stands connected with earnest, spiritual, and universal praise and worship; and though it is more in harmony with the connexion and scope to take it as an instrument of music, still, if understood of dancing, it can give no countenance to that movement as a common mode of worship, much less to modern social dancing, which is not only practiced without a religious object, but in antagonism to all true religious sensibility. See note on Psalms 30:11