Daniel 3:5

That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet,.... So called of the horn of which it was made; a sort of trumpet; so the Jews had trumpets of rams' horns: flute; or pipe, or whistle, so called

That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set

All kinds of music, i.e. wind and stringed instruments of various sorts and fashions, for we have here Syrian and Greek ones, as appears by the words, though in Chaldee letters, for this mighty monarch was lord over them all. Ye fall down and worship: mark, all that is required of them is only a gesture of worship, without oral profession. The pomp and equipage, the solemn sound of the music, and the strict command, was enough to induce them to stoop and fall down to it. This is one of Satan’ s great engines to draw the world from God’ s pure worship, and the simplicity that is in Christ, dazzling men’ s eyes, and bewitching them with a gaudy, whorish dress of idolatrous service, as ye see in this example, and ,5; all which ariseth merely from hence, because men do not or will not see that God’ s worship is wholly spiritual, and most beautiful and glorious as such, to the end; by this it excels all pagan, Jewish, and antichristian worship, all which is human, bodily, uncommanded of God, therefore displeasing and provoking, unprofitable, insnaring, and destructive. Now idolatrous gestures are sinful, because forbidden of God, , because this satisfies and hardens idolater’ s in their way, also because by this snare and critical mark their proselytes are known and distinguished, as here, they that stood up, when others fell down; thus antichrist and new Babylon hath her mark in the forehead and hands of her followers, . Primitive Christians would not offer a grain of frankincense to a pagan idol for fear or favour, nor true protestants kneel to the host, which the popish priest holds up to insnare them.

Daniel 3:5 [That] at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up:Ver. 5. That at what time ye hear.] See on Daniel 3:1. The allurements of pleasure are shrewd enticements to idolatry. Sir Walter Raleigh said, Were I to choose a religion to gratify the flesh, I would choose Popery. The Catholics, in their supplication to King James for a toleration, plead that their religion is, inter caetera, among others, so conformable to natural sense and reason, that it ought to be embraced! A proper argument. I have read of a lady in Paris who, when she saw the bravery of a procession to a saint, she cried out, Oh how fine is our religion beyond that of the Huguenots! That at what time ye hear the sound.] So in the Papacy, when the Ave Mary bell rings, which is at sunrising, at noon, and at sunsetting, all men, in what place soever, house, field, street, or market, do presently kneel down and send up their united devotions by an Ave Maria. Ye fall down and worship.] This is all that is required; de certa confessionis forma imperata, ne gry. [Sic.] Spec. Europ.

(5) The cornet.—On the musical instruments, see Exc. B.

Verse 5. The sound of the CORNET] There is not less difficulty in ascertaining the precise meaning of these musical instruments than there is in the offices in Daniel 3:2. קרנא karna, here translated cornet, is the common blowing horn, which makes a deep and hollow sound, as well as one shrill and piercing. FLUTE] משרוקיתא mashrokitha, from שרק sharak, to whistle, shriek. A wind instrument which made a strong and shrill noise, such as the hautbois or clarionet. HARP] קיתרס kithros, cytharus; κιθαρα. Some kind of stringed instrument. It seems to be formed from the Greek word. SACKBUT] סבכא sabbecha. The Greek has it σαμβυκη, from which our word sackbut, from סבך sabach, to interweave; probably on account of the number of chords, for it seems to have been a species of harp. PSALTERY] פסנתרין pesanterin; Greek, ψαλτηριον. A stringed instrument, struck with a plectrum; that called santeer in Egypt is probably the same. Dr. Russel says: "It is a large triangle, and has two bottoms two inches from each other, with about twenty catguts of different sizes." It was the ancient psalterium, and most probably the same as David's harp. DULCIMER] סומפניה sumponeyah; Greek, συμφωνεια. Probably a kind of tamboor, tambourine, or tomtom drum. It does not mean the same as the Greek symphonia, which signifies a concert or harmony of many instruments, for here one kind of instrument only is intended. All kinds of music] כל זני זמרא col zeney zemara, the whole stock, or band, of music; the preceding being the chief, the most common, and the most sonorous. My old MS. Bible has, Trumpe, and Pipe, and Harpe: Sambuke, Santrie, and Synfonye, and al kynde of musykes.

5. cornet] lit. horn: so Daniel 3:7; Daniel 3:10; Daniel 3:15; elsewhere in this sense only in the ‘ram’s horn,’ Joshua 6:5. The usual Hebrew name for this (or some similar) instrument is shτphβr. The word used here (karnβ) is, however, common in the same sense in Syriac. flute] pipe, Aram. mashroḳ ?ξtha (from the root sheraḳ ?, to hiss, Heb. ωׁ ?ψχ, Isaiah 5:26), not the word usually rendered ‘flute,’ and found besides (in the O. T.) only in Daniel 3:7; Daniel 3:10; Daniel 3:15. It occurs, though very rarely (P.S[219] Col. 4339), in Syriac in the same sense. [219] .S. R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus.harp] or lyre, Aram. kitharos, i.e. the Greek κίθαρις: so Daniel 3:7; Daniel 3:10; Daniel 3:15. sackbut] trigon (Daniel 3:7; Daniel 3:10; Daniel 3:15), Aram. sabbeka, whence no doubt the Gk. σαμβύκη was derived, which was a small triangular instrument, of the nature of a harp, but possessing only four strings (see Athen. iv. P. 175, d, e, where it is said to be a Syrian invention; xiv. p. 633 f.; and the other passages cited by Gesenius in his Thesaurus, p. 935). Sambucistriae and psaltriae (see the next word) are mentioned by Livy (xxxix. 6) as a luxurious accompaniment at banquets, introduced into Rome from the East in 187 b.c. (The mediaeval ‘sackbut,’—Span. sacabuche, a sackbut, and also a tube used as a pump: from sacar, to draw out, and bucha, a box,—meaning properly a tube that can be drawn out at will, was something quite different, viz. “a bass trumpet with a slide like the modern trombone,” Chappell, Music of the most Ancient Nations, i. 35, as quoted in Wright’s Bible Word-Book, s.v.) psaltery] Aram. psanṭ ?ηrξn, i.e. ψαλτήριον: so Daniel 3:7; Daniel 3:10; Daniel 3:15. The Greek ψαλτήριον. and the Latin psalterium, was a stringed instrument, of triangular shape, like an inverted Δ: it differed from the cithara (as Augustine repeatedly states) in having the sounding-board above the strings, which were played with a plectrum and struck downwards[220]. The number of strings in the ancient psaltery appears to have varied. The ‘psaltery’ is often mentioned in old English writers: in Chaucer it appears in the form ‘sawtrie,’ or ‘sauterie,’ as Manciple’s Tale, 17,200, “Bothe harp and lute, gitern and sauterie”; and Shakespeare, for instance, speaks of “the trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes” (Coriol. v. 4. 53). The name, in the form sanṭ ?ξr, passed also into Arabic; and the instrument, under this name, is mentioned in the Arabian Nights, and is in use also in modern Egypt[221]. [220] Isid. Etym. iii. 22. 7; Cassiod. Praef. in Psalm, c. iv; Augustine on Psalms 56 (iv. 539a–b, ed. Bened.), and elsewhere (see the Index); also Vergil, Ciris 177 ‘Non arguta sonant tenui psalteria chorda.’ [221] Dozy, Supplιment aux Dict. Arabes, i. 694; Lane, Modern Egyptians, ii. 70. The LXX used ψαλτήριον (sometimes) for the Heb. nηbel and kinnτr. Elsewhere in A.V. or R.V. where ‘psaltery’ occurs (as Psalms 33:2), it always represents nηbel.dulcimer] bagpipe: Aram. sϋmpτnyβh, i.e. the Greek συμφωνία.

That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet - It would not be practicable to determine with precision what kind of instruments of music are denoted by the words used in this verse.

5. Prince gives the names of these musical instruments as “the horn, syrinx, lyre, triangular harp, upright harp, bagpipe (?).” (See also Hebraica, Daniel 4:7.) There can be little doubt that he is