Nowack is of a similar opinion; he says that the word here can hardly mean more than “to celebrate a feast”; but he adds: “perhaps the word is originally used of the sacred dance[40].” But apart from the question of the relationship between ḥāgag and ḥūg, if the Arabic Ḥagg, “the going round in a circle,” is the word from which the Hebrew ḥag is derived, and presumably there is little doubt about that, then the root-meaning of ḥāgag will be “to go round in a circle,” and this was the essence of the sacred dance—or of one type of the sacred dance—among the Semites. Wellhausen points out that the central and most important part of the cultus of the ancient Arabs was the circuit round the sanctuary, or, when this was offered, round the sacrifice. It is from this fact, he says, that the Ḥagg, which means really “the sacred dance,” is so called. He points out, further, that this original meaning of the word has not even yet been entirely lost in Arabic, for the verb still often has as its transitive object the stone or the “house.” The holy stone is itself called Davar “the object of the encirclement” because of the custom of performing the sacred dance round it. Evidence is forthcoming that this was done not only round the sacred stone, the Kaaba, but also in all sanctuaries generally[41]. König gives as the primary meaning of ḥāgag “to make dancing movements,” “to turn,” and regards the sense of “celebrating a feast” as secondary[42]. This is borne out by the use of the word in Ps. cvii. 27, where it means “to go round in a circle,” like a drunken man.
The chief original Hebrew term for a religious dance was doubtless ḥag. The rendering “feast” or “festival” will indeed suffice in most cases, but only because religious festivals necessarily included the sacred dance, at least as long as the sacred stones remained in the sanctuaries[43].
There is thus sufficient justification for reckoning this root among those which are used for “to dance” in the Old Testament.
Then as to the root pāsaḥ (in its intensive form pisseaḥ). According to Exod. xii. 13, 23 the root-meaning of this word would appear to be “to spare,” for we read there: “... and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and there shall be no plague upon you”; and again: “... and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, Jahwe will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses to destroy you.” Both Zimmern[44] and Schrader[45] hold that the word is derived from the Assyrian pasâḥu, “to pacify,” which would support the Exodus interpretation. Robertson Smith, on the other hand, thinks it by no means clear that this was the original meaning;
“there is,” he says, “no certain occurrence of the name before Deuteronomy (in Exod. xxxiv. 25 it looks like a gloss), and the corresponding verb denotes some kind of religious performance, apparently a dance, in 1 Kings xviii. 26. A nocturnal ceremony at the consecration of a feast is already alluded to in Isa. xxx. 29, who also perhaps alludes to the received derivation of pāsaḥ in xxxi. 5[46]. But the Deuteronomic passover was a new thing in the days of Josiah (2 Kings xxiii. 21 f.). It underwent further modification in the exile...[47].”
So that the opinion is worth hazarding as to whether Pesaḥ, the Passover, did not originally get its name from the particular form of limping dance peculiar to it, just as the ordinary feast got its name from the sacred dance, the Ḥagg, which was characteristic of it. See further p. 92.
A ritual dance of a somewhat similar character is mentioned in Gen. xxxii. 31, 32, where Jacob, as he passed over Penuel, “limped upon his thigh.” Here the root used is tzālaʿ, which in this sense occurs here only[48]; but there is the place-name tzēlaʿ, Saul’s ancestral home (2 Sam. xxi. 14), which was possibly an ancient sanctuary where this special kind of limping dance was performed.
These, then, are the words used in the Old Testament for “dancing” in its various forms; they will come before us again and their meanings will be more fully illustrated when we deal in the following chapters with the nature of the sacred dance.
II
It will be appropriate if we add here a word or two about the musical accompaniment (if this can in all cases be called “musical”) to dancing so far as can be gathered from the Old Testament.