Hebrew word · H5748

עוּגָב

'ugav

pipe

A wind instrument, generally taken as a pipe or flute. It appears in Genesis 4:21 (Jubal, 'father of all who play the lyre and the ʿugav'), Job 21:12 ('they rejoice to the sound of the ʿugav'), Job 30:31 ('my ʿugav to the voice of weepers'), and here. Its exact form is unknown.

Appears 4 times in 4 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) a musical instrument

1a) perhaps a flute, reed-pipe, or panpipes

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Psalm 150:4

Range of meaning

A wind instrument, generally taken as a pipe or flute. It appears in Genesis 4:21 (Jubal, 'father of all who play the lyre and the ʿugav'), Job 21:12 ('they rejoice to the sound of the ʿugav'), Job 30:31 ('my ʿugav to the voice of weepers'), and here. Its exact form is unknown. Many musicologists think of a simple flute, as distinct from the ḥalil, a reed pipe, probably double.

Against the English

KJV 'organs' and YLT 'organ' make modern readers think of a church pipe organ, which is wrong. BSB, WEB and NLT have 'flute'; ESV, NIV and NASB have 'pipe'. Both are reasonable guesses.

How it drifted

The Septuagint used the general Greek word ὄργανον (organon, 'instrument, tool'), and the Vulgate followed with organum. In 1611 English 'organ' could still mean any musical instrument, especially a wind instrument. Since then the word has narrowed to mean the keyboard pipe organ.

Used elsewhere in the period

Genesis 4:21 places the ʿugav at the very start of human music. In Job it is the instrument of ordinary people's parties and, when turned upside down, of mourning.

Where it appears

Genesis · 1

  1. Genesis 4:21 וְעוּגָֽב׃ and flute

    And his brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play the harp and flute.

Job · 2

  1. Job 21:12 עוּגָֽב׃ a flute

    singing to the tambourine and lyre and making merry at the sound of the flute.

  2. Job 30:31 וְ֝עֻגָבִ֗י and flute my

    My harp is tuned to mourning and my flute to the sound of weeping.

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 150:4 וְעוּגָֽב׃ and flute

    Praise Him with tambourine and dancing; praise Him with strings and flute.

    Here: A wind instrument, most likely a simple flute or pipe. It is one of the two instruments credited to Jubal at the very beginning of music (Genesis 4:21). So the list in Psalm 150 reaches back to the first instruments ever named.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.