Properly, to touch the strings or parts of a musical instrument, i.e. play upon it; to make music , accompanied by the voice; hence to celebrate in song and music
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The Hebrew verb zamar commonly means to make music, sing praise, or celebrate in song, often with instrumental accompaniment. It appears especially in Psalms, where worshipers sing about the Lord's name, steadfast love, justice, saving acts, kingship, and care for creation.
Reader summary
Full entry for זָמַר (H2167) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew verb zamar commonly means to make music, sing praise, or celebrate in song, often with instrumental accompaniment. It appears especially in Psalms, where worshipers sing about the Lord's name, steadfast love, justice, saving acts, kingship, and care for creation.
The BSB source-word alignment has 45 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include sing praises (11), I will sing praise (5), and make music (4), I will sing praises (4), Sing (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Judges 5:3. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (41), 1 Chronicles (1), 2 Samuel (1), Isaiah (1).
The Hebrew verb zamar commonly means to make music, sing praise, or celebrate in song, often with instrumental accompaniment. It appears especially in Psalms, where worshipers sing about the Lord's name, steadfast love, justice, saving acts, kingship, and care for creation. Judges places the verb in Deborah's victory song, while Samuel, Chronicles, and Isaiah use it in public confession and praise.
The verb describes an embodied musical action, but it does not guarantee that every performance is sincere, spiritually superior, artistically excellent, or pleasing to God apart from the truth being confessed and the life surrounding it. Zamar also does not require one instrument, volume, genre, emotional response, or worship style. Lament, silence, disability, grief, and limited musical ability do not mark deficient faith.
Responsible teaching lets each song's content name the reason for praise, honors musicians and congregational participation, and refuses emotional manipulation, celebrity culture, or the claim that repeated sound produces divine presence or power.
Zamar describes making music and singing praise to the Lord across personal testimony, gathered worship, victory song, creation praise, and public proclamation, with the song's content governing its meaning.
Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; tell of all His wonders.
Israel is called to sing, make music, and tell of the Lord's wondrous works in public thanksgiving.
Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to Him with ten strings.
The psalm joins thanksgiving, lyre, harp, a new song, skillful playing, and joyful sound before the Lord.
My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make music.
The singer answers danger with a steadfast heart prepared to sing and make music to God.
I will sing of Your loving devotion and justice; to You, O Lord, I will sing praises.
The king sings of loving devotion and justice, linking musical praise with accountable public rule.
Sing to the Lord, for He has done glorious things. Let this be known in all the earth.
The restored community is summoned to sing because the Lord has done glorious things known throughout the earth.
Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make music on the harp to our God,
Thanksgiving and harp accompany praise for the God who provides rain, vegetation, and food for creatures.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Make music and song as the characteristic mode of praising God; joyful vocal celebration with instrumental accompaniment
Make music and song as the characteristic mode of praising God; joyful vocal celebration with instrumental accompaniment
properly, to touch the strings or parts of a musical instrument, i.e. play upon it; to make music, accompanied by the voice; hence to celebrate in song and music BDB: make music Usage: give praise, sing forth praises, psalms.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
זָמַר is built from this root:
Zamar joins sound with testimony. In Chronicles, music tells the Lord's wondrous works to a gathered people. Psalm 33 includes instruments, a new song, and skill, but the surrounding praise is directed to God's upright word, faithfulness, justice, creation, and sovereign care. Psalm 57 places music inside danger: the singer's steadfast heart does not deny the threat but responds to God within it.
Psalm 101 is especially searching because the king sings of loving devotion and justice, words that hold public conduct accountable. Isaiah 12 summons praise because the Lord has acted, and Psalm 147 joins music to rain, growth, and provision for creatures. These passages support musical beauty and disciplined craft while refusing the notion that sound itself manipulates God.
Worship leaders should tell the truth, protect congregational participation, credit and care for workers, and make space for varied cultures, bodies, abilities, grief, and silence. A person may praise faithfully without visible excitement, and an impressive performance may still require moral discernment. The verb invites music that serves God's truth rather than music used to manufacture spiritual status.
Ps.101.1
Zamar is a Hebrew verb associated with making music, often by touching strings, and with singing or celebrating in praise. Direct objects, parallel verbs, named instruments, and the content of the song clarify the action in each passage.
The New Testament continues commands to sing, teach, give thanks, and confess truth in gathered life, while using Greek musical vocabulary. Canonical continuity supports faithful worship without making zamar the hidden term behind every New Testament song or instrument.