7. a new cart] A new cart was chosen as one which had not been profaned by common work. So (Judges xvi. 11, 12) new ropes “wherewith no work hath been done” were used in the attempt to bind the consecrated man, Samson. So also (Mark xi. 2, 7) our Lord rode into Jerusalem on a colt “whereon no man ever yet sat.”
the house of Abinadab] Compare 1 Samuel vii. 1, 2; also 2 Samuel vi. 3. Here the Ark had been since the Philistines restored it to Israelite territory.
⁸And David and all Israel played before God with all their might: even with songs, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.
8. played] The Hebrew word means to sport, to dance (compare xv. 29).
with all their might: even with songs] A better reading than that of 2 Samuel vi. 5, with all manner of instruments made of fir wood.
psalteries] The instrument here meant (Hebrew nēbhel) “is generally identified at the present day with an instrument called the santir still in use among the Arabs. This consists of a long box with a flat bottom covered with a somewhat convex sounding-board over which the strings are stretched.” (Nowack, Hebräische Archäologie, I. 275.) The “harp” (Hebrew kinnōr) was a simpler instrument (like the Greek Kithara), a lyre rather than a true harp.
For a full discussion of nēbhel and kinnōr see Driver, Amos, p. 234, or the articles Music in Encyclopedia Biblia or Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible.
⁹And when they came unto the threshing-floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled[¹].
[¹] Or, were restive Or, threw it down.
9. the threshing-floor of Chidon] LXX. (B) omits of Chidon. In 2 Samuel vi. 6, Nacon’s threshing-floor. Nacon is probably a textual blunder.