HEBREW WORD STUDY – DANCING  –   CHAVAL   חול 

Psalms 149:3: “Let them praise His name in the dance,  let them sing praises unto Him with the timbre and the harp.  

Do you ever go through a period of time when you feel like old Job.  Just one messenger after another keeps coming to your door with some more bad news.  There is a line in Shakespeare Hamlet: Act 4, Scene 5 where Claudius receives a string of bad news and cries out: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”

The word dance in Psalms 149: 3 is bemacheval.  In comes from a Semitic root cheval which means to spin around in a circle or to twirl.  Today as I passed an elementary school I saw small children on the playground just spinning around in a circle out of pure joy.  There is something pleasurable in spinning around in a circle.  The Hebrew word cheval is spelled Chet, Vav and Lamed.  These letters indicate that this is a dance that connects you to the infinite nature of God.  One rabbi pointed out that the Chet equals eight and when put on its side it is the symbol of the infinite. More telling is that the word cheval, to spin around in a circle, has a numerical value of 26 which is the same numerical value of the name of God YHWH.  The word used for praise  is hallal which is where we get the word Hallelujah. The word Hallel does mean to praise, but in its Semitic root it means to act madly or foolishly.  Seriously, this comes straight from the likes of Fohere’s Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary.  

The next phrase in this verse:  Let them sing praises unto him with the timbre and the harp is to be taken literally The Talmud teaches that the Levitical harp players in the first and second temple were to sing a melody that no one else was permitted to learn.  The melodies were passed down from father to son until the end of the second temple.  The reason these melodies were hidden was to allow the Holy Spirit to manifest Himself in the cheval or dancing as a spontaneous act, no rehearsals, no choreography just dancing out of pure joy like a little child. 

It is tax time I find I owe a lot in taxes. I am struggling just to renew my subscription to an Archaeological journal let alone pay a tax bill. I couldn’t sleep and my faith was so shaken, I really began to question whether God was involved in my life, or even if there was a God at all.  Then I just got out of bed and went to the center of my apartment and I begin to spin around in a circle, a sixty seven year old man spinning around like a little child.  I began praising God and before long I was just spinning around praising God out of pure joy wearing myself out so that I just collapse into a sound sleep.