to sing praise to God, making music in his honor
In the New Testament this verb means to sing praise to God. Every time it appears it names worship offered in song: the joyful believer who sings in James, the congregation that sings with mind and spirit in Corinth and Ephesians, and the nations who join Israel in praising the Lord in Romans.
The word carries a long history behind that meaning. In older Greek it meant to pluck or twang something with the fingers: a bowstring, a hair, and above all the strings of a harp or lyre. Over the centuries, as it was used again and again in the Greek Old Testament for songs of praise, its center of gravity shifted from the plucking of the strings to the singing itself. By the first century, in Jewish and Christian worship, it commonly meant simply to sing praise, and when an instrument was actually in view it was named separately.
That older instrumental background is the source of a long-running debate (see the dispute and the cautions below). But the plain sense in these four verses is vocal praise directed to God, and the surrounding words confirm it: in Corinth the singing is done with the mind and with the spirit, set alongside prayer, and in Ephesians it is sung in the heart to the Lord.
Disputed
Whether the New Testament use of the verb still carries its older sense of playing a stringed instrument, or has narrowed to purely vocal praise. The question became the center of a long dispute over whether musical instruments belong in Christian worship.
- majorityBy the first century the word had contextually narrowed, in synagogue-shaped Jewish and Christian usage, to vocal praise; where an instrument is in view it is named separately, and the accompanying phrases in the Pauline verses (the datives of faculty in 1 Cor 14:15, the Colossians parallel to Eph 5:19) point away from an instrument.; H. Balz and G. Schneider, EDNT 3:495; G. Delling, 'ψάλλω, ψαλμός,' in TDNT 8:489-503; Everett Ferguson, A Cappella Music in the Public Worship of the Church, 4th ed.
- minorityThe word's instrumental range remained available in first-century Greek, so the New Testament neither requires nor excludes accompaniment; the lexical evidence leaves the question open rather than settling it.; F. W. Danker, BDAG, 3rd ed., s.v. ψάλλω ('with or without instrumental accompaniment'); J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, section 33.36; Markus Barth, Ephesians 4-6, AB 34A