Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Psalm 150:4
Praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Ugav, an ancient reed or wind instrument, not the keyboard instrument organ now names.
Psalm 150:4, in every translation this tool compares.
When the King James translators wrote organ, English organ could still refer more loosely to a wind instrument generally; it had not yet narrowed almost entirely to the large keyboard-and-pipes instrument found in churches and concert halls today. Ugav, the Hebrew word being translated, is some kind of ancient reed pipe or simple wind instrument, sharing essentially nothing with a modern pipe organ beyond both moving air to make sound.
Because organs, in the King James's praise him with stringed instruments and organs, translates ugav, an ancient reed or wind instrument with no keyboard, no pipes in the modern sense, and no resemblance to the large keyboard instrument organ names today, a case of the English word's own meaning drifting far past the Hebrew it once fairly translated.
The King James reads organs, a translation that was defensible in its own era's broader sense of the English word. Modern versions typically read pipe, pipes, or flute, moving away from organ precisely because the English word has since drifted toward a specific large keyboard instrument the Hebrew ugav could never have meant.
עוּגָב ugav (reed pipe, simple wind instrument) · H5748
Ugav appears only a handful of times in the Hebrew Bible, always paired with kinnor, harp or lyre, as a summary pair for stringed and wind instruments generally, and comparative and etymological evidence points to some kind of simple reed pipe or flute rather than any complex mechanism. The English word organ has undergone its own centuries-long semantic narrowing, from a general term for a tool or instrument, still visible in phrases like organ of speech, toward its now-dominant sense, a large keyboard wind instrument, leaving the King James's organs increasingly misleading to modern ears even though it was a reasonable translation choice in the 1600s.
English organ today calls to mind a specific large keyboard instrument with pipes, an image with no connection to ugav's simple reed-pipe or flute-like character, so a modern reader hears something closer to a cathedral organ than to the humble wind instrument the Hebrew actually names.
When an old English translation's word has since narrowed or shifted in its everyday meaning, check whether the translation was accurate for its own time even though it now misleads. Organ for ugav is a textbook case of translation drift caused entirely by the target language changing, not by any error in the original choice.
Organs, the King James's reading, reflects a now-outdated broader sense of the English word and was a fair choice in its own time. Pipe, pipes, or flute, the modern rendering, better conveys ugav's simple reed-instrument character to a reader for whom organ now means something else entirely.
- Ugav's other occurrences, always paired with kinnor: Genesis 4:21; Job 21:12; 30:31
- English organ's semantic narrowing from general instrument/tool to keyboard instrument: historical dictionaries of English
- Modern versions rendering ugav as pipe or flute rather than organ
