8. David and the Divine Lyre

The importance of the kinnōr in early Jewish tradition, and royal ideology specifically, is most fully embodied by David. The Bible and Josephus offer detailed descriptions of musical organization under David (ca. 1005–965) and Solomon (ca. 965–930). [1] Some consider these to be retrojections of the Second Temple’s sophisticated musical arrangements back into an imagined Golden Age of the First Temple. [2] Certainly 1 Kings, Chronicles, and Josephus incorporate legendary details, and the Chronicler does rely on the musical organization of his own time to understand the past. Yet the comparative material so far considered strongly suggests that traditions about organized ‘guildic’ music under David and in the First Temple are built upon an historical core. [3] This would accord with much other material in the books of Samuel and 1 Kings, deriving from sources and traditions—often propagandistic—going back to the times of David and Solomon themselves. [4]

In this chapter I shall argue that the First Temple’s sacred musical groups should be understood as imitating and perpetuating royally supported musical guilds of the kind known at Ugarit. The Ugaritic word n‘m, which we saw applied several times to royal and/or cultic singers, reappears of David himself—an appropriate designation both for Saul’s lyre-playing favorite, and David’s later role, when king, of praise-singer for Yahweh himself. The Bible preserves extremely rich evidence for understanding the early theology of the lyre, and for the reworking, within the evolving cult of Yahweh, of older Syro-Levantine ideas about the instrument’s powers. I shall argue, indeed, that David and Solomon inherited concepts that in Ugarit would have been associated precisely with the Divine Kinnaru. David in particular is our most vivid analogy for Kinyras and his involvement with Cypriot monarchy in the LBA.

The Ugaritian material has already prompted enough Biblical parallels to justify the view that the United Monarchy’s musical apparatus grew organically out of a larger cultural matrix, anchored in the palace-temple complexes of the LBA. [5] It is at just this time that Jewish society—at least the higher tier conspicuous in the Biblical narrative—most closely resembles that of other ANE states. The matter is put expressly thus when the Israelites are portrayed as importuning Samuel for a king, “that we also may be like other nations.” [6] A king who aspired to be a respected player on the international scene required a royal apparatus equal to his rivals, complete with palace, temple, and all the specialized artisans and functionaries needed to build and staff them. Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Jerusalem in 586 meant dismantling these same institutions. [7] The cosmopolitan standards of royal ideology and cultural attainment that David, Solomon, and their successors strove to emulate can be traced back in part ultimately to the last centuries of the third millennium, when the dynasties of Akkad and Ur III established perennial models of kingship and empire. It is symptomatic that the Hebrew words for palace/temple, throne, and scribe are all ultimately Sumerian in origin. [8]

Solomon especially appears as a Great King in the LBA mold. The wide array of precious gifts he gave and received evokes the erstwhile Club of Powers as known from the Amarna letters. [9] It was largely through such exchanges that he built the First Temple in Jerusalem. [10] Hiram of Tyre gave both materials and labor for the time-consuming project, which lasted seven years—a conventional ‘cosmic’ number. [11] In return, Solomon sent annual consignments of grain and oil, payment for the workers, and “twenty cities in the land of Galilee.” [12] The use of Lebanese cedar must have been de rigueur, its acquisition by conquest or exchange almost a royal rite-of-passage. [13] Clearly the temple was a cosmopolitan construction to rival other states’ cult centers—“a royal vehicle to communicate to the widest possible audience the authoritative presence of the ruler who had built it.” [14]

Solomon’s splendid qualities are effectively a completed checklist in the application for Great Kingship. [15] A roster of subordinate kings and princes, with their lavish diplomatic gifts, demonstrates his status as a Great King, [16] while his occupation of a new imperial center is established by the claim that all the world’s kings—and the Queen of Sheba—came to hear his wisdom, which excelled that of “all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt”: [17] It is clear from the pairing of “the east country” with “Egypt” that this Solomonic portrait asserts a new cultural eminence in the Levant, formerly caught between empires. Yet the range of learning sketched here “echoes mainstream Babylonian texts studied by scribes in Mesopotamia and beyond.” [19] Solomon’s combined achievements, while conceivable perhaps for a single man of leisure, become incredible given the demands of kingship. This portrait is therefore best taken to symbolize the cultural efflorescence claimed for Solomon’s reign.

This is remarkably close to Shulgi’s self-presentation in his royal praise-hymns. [20] Solomon and Shulgi will be important parallels for the comparably broad portfolio credited to Kinyras. Note especially that Solomon’s dossier, like Shulgi’s, contains an important musical component. With more than a thousand songs to his credit, Solomon here rivals David himself. This aspect of his wisdom is reflected in the traditional attribution of some Psalms to him, along with David (see below), as well the Song of Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms of Solomon, and the Odes of Solomon. [21] The kinnōr is close to hand in some of these attributions. Moreover, all four wisemen bested by Solomon in the passage above have primarily musical associations. Ethan and Heman appear elsewhere as leaders of two Davidic musical guilds (see below), so that here Solomon, like Shulgi, outshines his own court’s leading lights. Heman, Calcol, and Darda are called “Sons of Mahol”; yet maḥôl, as W. F. Albright argued, can equally be taken as a common noun relating to choral activity, making these figures archetypal “members of a guild of dancers or singers—probably combining both.” [22] The description of Ethan as an “Ezrahite” is applied elsewhere to Heman, Calcol, and Darda; the designation evidently means ‘native/autochthonous’, leading Albright to see the four sages as representing an older background of Canaanite music and wisdom traditions. [23]

The artistic and intellectual activity credited to Solomon is predicated on an abundance of peace and prosperity, so that the underlying message is an assertion of power. We have seen similar uses of music in Shulgi’s cosmopolitan virtuosity, Hammurabi’s dedication of a (presumably divine) BALAĜ following his defeat of Mari, and the divine singer who praises Baal after (probably) his defeat of Yamm, the Sea. Just such a sequence of events is connected by Josephus with David and his kinnōr: That this vision is no mere deduction by Josephus, but a traditional Syro-Levantine image, is shown by several monuments from the Aramaean sphere. First are two ninth-century orthostat reliefs from Guzana (Tell Halaf), capital of Bit Bachiani during the reign of Kapara, before it came under Assyrian control (by the eighth century). [25] Each shows a slightly different group of animals dancing and playing instruments before a lion, who sits upon a rock—evidently enthroned—and plays a tall rectangular lyre (Figure 12 = Figure 5.1v). [26] This is an image of political stability and lyric control. The same idea is found, in negative form, in the eighth-century Sefire steles, to be examined in Chapter 12. [27]

That David and Solomon alike maintained both male and female singers and musicians in the royal household is asserted and implied by the Bible. [28] There is no reason to doubt this. The evidence from Mari, Nuzi, Amarna, and elsewhere confirms that such ‘collections’ were actively developed. [29] We also have independent documentary evidence from Assyrian sources for the palace musicians, both male and female, maintained by Hezekiah (715–687), who delivered them up as tribute to Sennacherib after the campaign of 701. [30] Presumably, many of Solomon’s female musicians were ranked among the three hundred concubines who, with seven hundred wives, made up the royal harem. [31] Although these figures are probably swollen, their reported origins—Egypt, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and Hatti—are a realistic reflection of Solomon’s political reach: extensive, but not unlimited.

The Mari texts and Amarna reliefs showed that the harem was an important locus of cosmopolitan musicality. The cultural influence of royal women also extended to the religious sphere when they imported native deities to a new home through interdynastic marriage. [32] One may compare the Hittite kings’ wholesale adoption of Hurrian and other gods, both from foreign wives and conquered peoples. [33] Solomon is said to have built cult-places for all (!) his wives’ gods, famously including the Astarte (Ashtoreth) of Sidon. [34] This phenomenon too is musically relevant, since such transferred deities, we have seen, could be accompanied by the appropriate cult personnel and ritual repertoire. [35] It is quite remarkable, therefore, to find the following legend in the Talmud: According to Rabbinic tradition, Solomon’s marriage transpired on the very day the temple was consecrated, which was thereby overshadowed: the delights of Pharaoh’s daughter caused Solomon to oversleep, so that the morning sacrifice could not be carried out. From that day forward, it was said, God determined to overthrow Jerusalem. The tale must be related to the Rabbinic rejection of instrumental music following the city’s destruction in 70 CE, with an ‘original musical sin’ traced back to the very founding of the First Temple. [37] Nevertheless, given the evidence from Mari, the legend is doubtless encrusted upon some genuine reminiscence of purposeful musical diversity in the monarchic period, very probably going back to Solomon himself.

A major state needed a system for the training and management of musicians. Traditionally the sacred musical groups were inaugurated by David to accompany the Ark’s removal to Jerusalem, and were perpetuated in service before the Tabernacle at its new home. [38] The ‘singers’ were divided into ‘families’ by specific instruments: the major groups were strings (kinnōr, nēbel), cymbals (m^eṣiltayīm), and trumpets (shofar). [39] Recall the designation of Ugaritian guilds, including perhaps the singers, as bn (‘sons of’), and the Bible’s representation of Jubal as an ultimate musical ancestor of lyre- and pipes-players. [40] The Bible’s implication of existing musical resources on which David could draw is corroborated by the extensive parallelism of the earliest specimens of Hebrew poetry, clearly akin to Ugaritian practice. [41] Such songs are evidently relics of an ancient epic cycle, cultivated at various league sanctuaries. [42] Some form of ‘family’ musical groups may already have served such sacred sites, and were simply repurposed by David. At such an early date, however, there is no reliable means of distinguishing ‘Israelite’ music from a Canaanite ‘background’. And with Solomon’s monumental new temple, it is not improbable that the music of Yahweh’s cult would have been ‘renovated’ in conformity with standards and practices of major Canaanite sanctuaries. [43] We have already seen that two of the musical leaders traditionally appointed by David—Heman and Ethan—probably represent Canaanite traditions of music, wisdom, and dance. [44] They are provided with complete Levitical genealogies by the Chronicler, but these will be later constructions. [45] Even if these figures are entirely legendary, and their founding position in the Chronicler represents an anachronistic insertion—comparable to the traditional attribution of psalms to David and Solomon—they do indicate “that Hebrew temple-music as such” might be recognized “as going back to early, pre-Israelite, sources.” [46]

A deeper pre-Davidic musical background is also assumed in Saul’s performance with the musical prophets. Samuel foretells that the young king-elect will have a remarkable encounter at Gibeath-elohim (‘Hill of God’): The phenomenon of musical prophecy will be discussed below. [49] Here I would emphasize that the ensemble’s make-up is not dissimilar to what David’s musical ‘families’ will offer, and which one must posit for Ugarit. [50] This array has been called a ‘Canaanite (temple) orchestra’, [51] although the Ugaritian texts and north Syrian ivories show that ‘Syro-Levantine’ would be the better term. [52] The famous cult-stand with musicians from Ashdod is a happy parallel here, given the Bible’s statement that there was a Philistine garrison at Gibeath-elohim. [53] The stand’s players match 1 Samuel closely: lyre, double-pipes, frame-drum, and perhaps cymbals. (But note that the lyre is round-based, probably reflecting the Philistines’ Aegean background. [54] ) Similar ensembles are often represented, with minor variations, in the corpus of Cypro-Phoenician bowls (phiálai), ranging from the tenth century to the sixth (see further Chapter 11).

David’s full musical establishment is said to have been under the management of a certain Chenaniah who “was to direct the music, for he understood it.” [55] The exact interpretation of his position vis-à-vis the Levitical guilds remains controversial; but some definite musical function is likely given the Septuagint’s “Leader of the Singers.” [56] While it is elsewhere stated that he and his sons were “officials and judges” outside the Temple, [57] this actually resembles the Chief Singer of such OB states as Mari, whose duties were not exclusively musical, but comprised important civic functions. David himself, in the court of Saul (ca. 1025–1005), had occupied a comparable position. There was not yet an elaborate musical bureaucracy for him to preside over, but he was evidently a royal singer and confidant of the king—at least initially. His catharses of Saul’s “evil spirit” suggest something not unlike the purification-priests of Mesopotamian tradition. [58]

David was also remembered as building instruments and instructing the Levites in their use. [59] One recalls the royal order for instruments, including the kinnāru, at Mari. [60] Solomon too is called an instrument-builder. Josephus preserves an extra-Biblical tradition in his vivid portrait of forty thousand lyres (knr and nbl) made of precious woods, stones, and electrum, commissioned for the Levites to sing the Lord’s praises. [61]

Summing up, although David is treated in the Biblical narratives as a musical pioneer, his actions make best sense against an older Canaanite tradition of temple music. There is plenty of comparative material to show that the musical organization credited to the First Temple by tradition is inherently plausible, even if the precise numbers and divisions are open to question. Given the royal ambitions of David and Solomon, it is hard to believe that Yahweh would have lacked the sophisticated honors paid to Baal and other gods in the temples of their peers. [62]

Against this backdrop we may consider the Biblical kinnōr and its divine overtones. The Divine Lyre cannot be seen directly. Already in the Davidic period Jewish culture had begun to distinguish itself sharply from its neighbors, despite a shared religious heritage. And the narratives relating to the United Monarchy were shaped by the concerns of later theologians who reworked traditional materials into the forms we now possess. Most familiar perhaps is the anti-monarchic bias of the post-exile period, when the earlier defeat of Israel and Judah, and the destruction of the First Temple, had to be explained; this had a major impact on the recension and canonization of traditional materials. [63] Even so, there are many cases where an older Levantine theological environment is more or less evident. [64] It is perfectly conceivable therefore that beliefs and practices that in the LBA would have been connected to the cult of a Divine Lyre should have found their way into the Bible, albeit in altered form and contexts.

Soon after Kinnaru was discovered at Ugarit, A. Jirku hypothesized that the various magical effects attributed to the kinnōr—for example David’s purification of Saul’s “evil spirit”—would once have been seen as the “Einwirkung des Gottes Kinaru” (sic). [65] A. Cooper cautioned that “the case for relating the use of the lyre to any purported function of [Kinnaru] is tenuous.” [66] More recently, however, N. Wyatt has given some credence to the idea that the prophetic and exorcistic uses of the Biblical kinnōr “may faintly echo the old theology, albeit long reinterpreted.” [67]

Since the Biblical portrait of Solomon’s wisdom and musicality was evidently formulated in dialogue with Canaanite ideals, we may begin with a remarkable piece of iconographic evidence that is earlier than David himself (as conventionally dated). This is the so-called ‘Orpheus Jug’, an eleventh-century vase-painting from Megiddo, which brilliantly illustrates the older musical background, giving it a specifically ‘lyrical’ slant and containing a magical element that accords very well with the idea of a Divine Lyre (Figure 13). [68] This late Philistine production, combining thematic elements deriving from both sub-Mycenaean (IIIC:1b) and local Levantine tradition, shows a lyrist with animals in three registers—lion, gazelle, horse, fish, dog, bird, crab, and scorpion—all apparently proceeding towards a schematized palm tree, very probably of cultic significance (see below). The iconography of lyrist and animals has been predictably explained by appeal to Orpheus—that is, as an Aegean intrusion due to Philistine settlement in the region during the twelfth century. [69] Yet such an interpretation could at best tell only half of the story.

In a careful reassessment, A. Yasur-Landau has noted that while strainer-jugs do belong to the repertoire of Aegean symposium vessels, and traces of Philistine and Cypriot stylistic elements can be detected in the present example, its narrative imagery and composition find better parallels in LBA Canaan, for instance the motif of palm-tree and ibex. [70] And while the lyrist is preeminent within the animal procession, the composition as a whole is focused on what is generally taken as a Sacred Tree or Tree of Life—itself a Near Eastern motif of deep antiquity and associations with a goddess figure, whence it functions as a symbol of fertility. [71]

What has not been sufficiently stressed in past discussions is the Levantine morphology of the instrument itself. [72] And we have seen that the motif of lyrist with animals goes back to the third millennium in North Syria (it is further attested by two southern Anatolian seals of the early second). [73] In later Jewish and Arabic folklore, too, David and Solomon were often credited with power over, and the ability to communicate with, the animal kingdom—persistent traditions that can hardly be fully explained by Philistine or later Hellenistic influence. [74] Given these data, the comparison with Orpheus is superficial at best. The Bible’s wise and musical Solomon provides a more immediate parallel, [75] and of course the lyre-playing David.

Without denying the possibility of Aegean musical influence at this time, [76] the great contribution of the Orpheus jug, being somewhat older than the United Monarchy, is to establish the deep antiquity and indigenous nature of ideas in the Biblical narratives. Like David and Solomon themselves, it is an idealized portrait—of the lyrist as Master of Wisdom, whose knowledge and powers included, but were not limited to, ‘the music itself’.

A further power shared by the kinnōr and the Divine Kinnaru may be inferred by way of the Mesopotamian comparanda: “the ability to enable communication between the spiritual and natural worlds.” [77] The Biblical prophets were regarded as couriers relaying the decrees of Yahweh and the divine assembly. Comparison with the Ugaritian texts shows that this role was formerly executed by lesser, ‘messenger’ deities. [78] Kinnaru himself is not directly attested in that role. Yet music and prophecy are frequently linked in the Bible, especially in connection with the kinnōr. The Psalms, many of which were traditionally regarded as the prophetic productions of David, offer several striking expressions of this relationship.

The opening verses of Psalm 49 preserve a crucial first-person, professional perspective: The psalmist goes on to deliver a universalizing meditation on the fragility of life and inevitability of death. But the prelude is readily detached: it is an introductory formula, like the many exhortations to song in other psalms, or the psalmists’ repeated invocations of Yahweh to “incline” to their song and so lend them his voice. [80] Psalm 49, however, strikes an unusual note as a singer’s glancing self-portrait. He trumpets his public role and ability to command universal attention, before turning inwards to describe his prophetic process through the lyre. What exactly is involved is clarified by a cognate passage in Psalm 78, which, after an almost identical beginning, carries on: Even if Psalm 49 is relatively late, perhaps post-monarchic, [82] the parallel formulae in Psalm 78 indicate that the lyre-singer is assuming a traditional stance as custodian of an ancient lyric art of prophecy. He both reproduces the often obscure lore of his predecessors, and recasts it in his own terms. While he presents interpretations of the “dark sayings,” he equally re-riddles what he has received to “disclose” admonitory puzzles of his own.

A key component of the psalmodists’ enigmatic pronouncements was the inherited technique of parallelism, which permitted both singer and audience to construct multi-directional and semantically productive correspondences between verse cola. Psalm 49:3–4 itself appropriately exemplifies the technique, schematizing, as A. N. Palmer nicely puts it, In support of Palmer’s view that as the invocation progresses the psalmodist’s voice becomes that of Yahweh, note that it is normally the latter to whom the expression “incline the ears” is applied in the Psalms. [84] If this is right, it places the phrase “in the lyre” in a rather more startling light. The emphasis would be less on the psalmodist using the lyre and its music to communicate with Yahweh, than on Yahweh placing his message into the lyre, from which the singer must attempt to extract it. In doing so, however, Yahweh himself becomes a kind of lyrist, so that the human lyre-prophet is attempting to replicate the song and message that God has devised for him. We are reminded of the balang-god of Ningirsu, visualized as a singer, with his communication to the human realm enabled precisely by the instrument of which he is the spirit.

While parallelistic composition is well known from Ugaritian poetry and early songs embedded in the Bible itself, the aforementioned Psalm verses are uniquely precious for vouchsafing a connection with professional lyric, and explicitly acknowledging the deep antiquity of the tradition. Again we must thank the Orpheus jug for linking the Biblical psalmists with this older cultural milieu. Given this ancient background, one must be struck by the direct invocation of the lyre in Psalm 108 (1–3):

Wyatt is surely right to suggest that these lyre-invocations (the formula is repeated in Psalm 57:8–9) echo “an older usage when minor gods of the pantheon were called upon to glorify their overlord.” [85] He quickly concedes that they might also be explained as simple poetic apostrophes. But even if the latter view is correct from a sixth-century or later Jewish perspective, the traditional nature of the verses salvages some heuristic value with respect to the ancient lyric art from which the Psalms descend. And given that a Divine Lyre is known to have existed, within an institutional framework that predicts many features of the First Temple, how can one really distinguish between ‘simply poetic’—if such an idea is even valid for the earlier period—and a more potent ‘ritual-poetic’, of which the Psalms present so much other clear evidence? Insofar as the lyrist serves as the mouthpiece of Yahweh, we have a form of divine communication very similar to what we saw of divine instruments in Mesopotamia.

Some of the Davidic musical groups are said to have been appointed expressly to “prophesy” to the music of kinnōr, nēbel, cymbals, and trumpets—an instrumental range closely comparable to Saul’s band of prophets. [86] Yet other passages show that it was the kinnōr that was the prophetic instrument par excellence. I Chronicles (25:3) attributes to David the appointment of the sons of Jeduthun, who “prophesied with the kinnōr in thanksgiving and praise to the Lord.” Here “prophesy” seems to cover a broader musical range than the English word might imply, including praise poetry and perhaps the interpretation of sacred songs. These functions are not sharply separated in the Old Testament, where it is precisely praise songs, properly executed, which bring about miraculous results. Two notable illustrations will suffice.

Jehoshaphat, the fourth King of Judah in the ninth century, having received the Lord’s word via the prophet Jahaziel that he would be victorious against the Moabites and Ammonites, “appointed those who were to sing to the Lord … As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the Ammonites, Moab, and Mount Seir.” [87] Here apparently praise-singing was needed to cause a prophesied event to come to fruition.

From the next generation comes a striking example of prophecy-in-performance during the campaign of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, against the Moabites, when the united army of Israel, Judah, and Edom was stranded in the wilderness without water. [88] This was seen as a divine ordinance, and the prophet Elisha was summoned to enquire the Lord’s purpose. “‘But get me a musician,’” Elisha ordered. “And then, while the musician was playing”—the kinnōr is clearly implied [89] —“the power of the Lord came on him; and he said, ‘Thus says the Lord, I will make this wadi full of pools.’” Here music returns order to a disordered natural world. A sort of sympathetic magic proceeding from harmonic and rhythmic structure is probably implied. But the result was apparently accomplished through channeling divine will.

These passages are remarkable for their relatively precise practical descriptions of the arts of musical prophecy and catharsis. Music is transformative, purifying, but only by evoking through performance the “spirit of the Lord”—on behalf of whom the kinnōr-singer not only speaks (the literal sense of ‘prophet’), but acts.

While the Psalms provide evidence of lyric communication with the divine, their collection into a psalter, as we have it, tends to obscure their original connections with actual ritual practice. [90] Readers may thus be inclined to regard their lyre imagery as conventional, governed by internal poetics of genre with no ‘real’ connection to the outside world. The narrative snapshots just considered are a crucial corrective, broadening our conception of the traditional lyrist ‘in action’. They provide a further link to the Orpheus jug; its animal-charming scene, though not unparalleled in the Psalms by images of nature echoing the praise of God, [91] clearly emphasizes the practical, efficacious nature of the musician’s art. With this we come one step closer to what must have been the purview of Kinnaru in the rich ritual life of Ugarit.

We have prepared the ground for understanding the kinnōr-playing David, not only as a potent symbolic figure in later tradition, but as a royal performer in his own historical drama. I shall now argue that his priestly role and ritual actions, and the legends that developed therefrom, provided a refuge in which ancient ideas about divinized lyres were able to shelter, and so partially weather the ongoing expulsion of Canaanite cultic elements from Jewish life and the Biblical sources. [92] Besides David’s traditional association with the Psalms, to be discussed below, the most important evidence is the use of the kinnōr as a structuring device in the Samuel narratives about David’s rise to kingship and his takeover of Yahweh’s cult.

The Saul episode, we saw, attests the practice of musical prophecy by (soon-to-be) royalty. This ability, apparently in an ecstatic state, is taken as a sign of divine favor, a power given to a rightful king, who is possessed by the “spirit of the Lord.” Importantly, however, this is carried out in conjunction with a musical ensemble, apparently necessary for establishing the appropriate mental conditions. One may compare the situation at Hattusha and Ugarit, where ritual performances were executed by kings (and queens) together with cult officials. [93]

As Saul falls from grace, his increasing affliction by an “evil spirit” is balanced by the passage of “the spirit of the Lord” to David, whose ascent to kingship becomes inevitable. [94] This transfer of divine favor is mediated precisely by the kinnōr. Because Saul suffers from the “evil spirit”—having lost God’s favor—he summons a kinnōr-player. Because David plays the kinnōr so well, he is summoned. [95] Note that the advice to Saul is generic: On one narratological level, David has already been chosen by God. But from Saul’s perspective it is merely a professional type that is needed. Evidently, the desired cathartic power was made possible by the kinnōr itself, a kind of potential energy that would be released by a “skillful player.” [97] David is so qualified, because, as Saul is advised, “the Lord is with him.” [98] To us, the phrase clearly implies the transfer of Yahweh’s favor to David; to Saul, however, it means only that here was an inspired kinnōr-healer. This brilliant ambiguity may go beyond its narratological appeal. For the two planes of meaning neatly intersect, if being an ‘inspired kinyrist’ was considered a royal virtue—an idea well paralleled by Shulgi, and vital for the question of Kinyras. [99]

The episode of David’s selection clearly presents the idea that a ritual lyrist is only effective when divinely empowered. The Bible of course recognizes a single legitimate god. But one may reverse the terms of the relationship: a lyrist is effective only when empowered by his god, which in the old theology would have been the patron deity of his own professional duties. [100] One should note here a remarkable Ethiopian legend relayed by a traditional musician, Melaku Gelaw, to A. Kebede:

Mutatis mutandis, the conception of an inspired performer activating the powers of the kinnōr in service to Yahweh strongly recalls the Sumerian material, discussed above, notably the divinized balang, servant to the master-god Ningirsu, whose epiphany is effected through performances conducted symbolically, and perhaps literally, by the king. In the Biblical narrative, playing the kinnōr is a kingly virtue. But whereas Saul merely prophesies among the musicians, David himself wields the lyre, as though this puts him ‘in closer touch’ with God. And of course David himself was traditionally prophetic, his medium being precisely the kinnōr-accompanied psalm (see further below).

We are now in a better position to appreciate the most magnificent knr-­performance on record. David astutely expressed his establishment of a new capital, and his centralization of political and religious control, through the transfer of the Ark to Jerusalem—“a brilliant maneuver that effectively galvanized the loose confederation of Israelite tribes into a monarchical state.” [102] To be epoch-making, this needed to be a stunning public event, a massive display of solidarity unifying the divided tribes behind a new king. The main accounts are 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, and Josephus. [103] While the LXX version of 2 Samuel contains material not to be found in the MT, this is not all secondary expansion; for 2 Samuel, especially, the MT is “a poor text, marked by extensive haplography and corruption,” with fragments from Qumran showing that the LXX preserves many details omitted by the MT. [104] It is on this older tradition that Josephus also draws. [105] And as it happens, the LXX and Josephus preserve several crucial details about David and his kinnōr.

The shared narrative structure for all three is as follows. After David consulted with the country’s leading men, [106] and drew up the new musical groups of string-players, cymbalists, frame-drummers, and trumpeters, “the whole people”—some seventy thousand in the LXX—“came together as they had planned.” [107] The expression suggests a staged crowd as much as a spontaneous popular movement. The Ark was borne out on a river of sound. Yet not all was clockwork: there was a three-month delay en route after a driver tried to stabilize the Ark but was struck dead for his vigilance. After the Lord’s anger seemed to abate, David offered appropriate sacrifices, and the whole troupe, now reassembled, set out again with the same pomp. There follows the curious incident of Saul’s daughter Michal, David’ wife, who saw the king “leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.” [108] The ritual closed with sacrifices once the Ark was positioned in the Tabernacle, where David’s musical groups would continue to observe the cult. [109] When Michal confronted David for his nudity before his maidservants, and the general indignity of his musical performance, she was afflicted with barrenness—conveniently enough.

The narrative of David’s divine favor, which structures our accounts, was probably already being formulated on the ground. [110] It has been well argued, for instance, that the Bible’s discontiguous Ark episodes, including its loss to and recovery from the Philistines, once formed a unified narrative produced within the Davidic court to provide theological justification for the new cult-center at Jerusalem. [111] The massive musical procession, with its jubilant atmosphere, is clearly a sort of victory march. S. Mowinckel and others have seen it as modeled on a Canaanite New Year ritual. [112] Similarly, C. L. Seow reads it as a ritual drama with David enacting Yahweh as the triumphant divine warrior; the basic structure reflects (he argues) the influence of Baal mythology on that of Yahweh. [113] Propaganda aside, David’s elaborate ritual display seems equally an apotropaic gesture to forestall divine wrath at this intervention in the cultic status quo. David and his advisors probably felt a very real sense of apprehension. [114]

The traditions about the musical nature of the ritual are of considerable interest. The three accounts basically agree on its guildic nature, with massed players of kinnōr, nēbel, frame-drummers, and other instruments. [115] Apparently the song and dance is executed by these same performers (at least those whose mouths were free). The Chronicler asserts the involvement of Chenaniah, the ‘Chief Singer’. [116] Of David’s own participation Josephus paints a most vivid picture: More interesting still is his account of the parade’s resumption: These details are not purely Josephus’ own invention. He is clearly interpreting the Septuagint version, on which he mainly relied, and which here certainly preserves an old form of the tradition. [119] The LXX also has seven choruses, carrying the Ark. [120] The statement that “David struck up (anekroúeto) the music” was rightly interpreted by Josephus to mean that he led the procession with his ‘kinýra,’ for the verb clearly implies a stringed-instrument. [121] The idea is further supported by the king’s position “among harmonized/tuned-up instruments” (en orgánois hērmosménois), an expression that foregrounds the ensemble’s chordophones. [122] Eusebios espouses the same interpretation, and draws attention to David’s position as musical leader of his own musical leaders. [123]

The seven choruses are a striking example of seven-magic in a practical musical context. Indeed, the whole event is buttressed by sevens. A sacrifice of seven bulls and seven rams, mentioned by the Chronicler, corresponds to the oxen and fatlings, which, according to 2 Samuel, David offers before taking his seventh step after resuming the procession. [124] Such numbers may seem like so much storytelling color, but a detailed prescriptive ritual from LBA Emar in North Syria urges us to give them some credence. This text governs the ‘enthronement’ of the high priestess of Baal, and contains many heptadic gestures. [125] It is equally important for assigning specific ritual actions to a group of liturgical singers (zammārū), notably heading processions every time the scene of action had to change. [126] Musical procession must have been a regular function of temple-singers in many parts of the ANE. Several types of Emesal prayers/laments were used in various processions and circumambulation rites at different periods in Mesopotamia. [127] In Babylonia, a musical corps participated in processional rites during the Akitu-festival. [128] Many musical processions are found in N-A reliefs as well. [129] They are also attested in the Hittite world. [130]

As argued above for Mesopotamian material, seven numerology takes on a special interest in musical contexts, especially those involving stringed-instruments. [131] It is especially suggestive beyond the two rivers, where it furthers the likelihood that the heptatonic-diatonic tone-system was locally known—as indeed it was at Ugarit. Many marginal examples are best not pressed. [132] Tending in the right direction is Solomon’s transfer of the Ark into the Temple during Ethanim, the seventh month of the year—a replay of David’s Ark-procession, again with massed musical praise drawing Yahweh to a new home. [133] Much clearer are the pious measures taken by Hezekiah to restore the Temple from neglect in the reign of his father Ahaz (735–715). [134] Seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs, and seven male goats were sacrificed. Cult-musicians bore “cymbals, nēbel-lyres, and kinnōr-lyres,” and the music is carefully synchronized with the heptadic sacrifices: “When the burnt offering began, the song to the Lord began also, and the trumpets, accompanied by the instruments of King David … all this continued until the burnt offering was finished.” [135] The music evidently basted the offerings in waves of magical sevenness.

The parallels from Ebla, Emar, Hattusha, Ugarit, and elsewhere for musical parades and the ritual use of sevens make David’s Ark-procession perfectly plausible as an historical event, and suggest that the surviving accounts preserve actual details from the occasion, and/or its periodic reenactment in the royal cult. [136] They amount to, and/or derive from, a descriptive ritual. [137] One may compare the detailed ritual actions that are incorporated into a text like Aqhat. [138] (By contrast, the Emar ritual is strictly prescriptive. [139] ) Yet descriptive rituals need not be mere literary productions. They could also be functional, “quasi-canonical models, or manuals for the operation of the temple cults.” [140] That some such account of the Davidic ritual was composed at a near contemporary date would accord with the theory of a unified Ark-narrative, and explain the existence of the Bible’s more literary narratives, for which it could have been a source at however many removes. It would also provide an attractive practical explanation for why the ritual actions of Solomon and Hezekiah share three structuring elements with those of David. All three rituals include seven-magic alongside song-acts governing the establishment, building, or maintenance of the cult center. The continuity between these events is made explicit. Solomon’s completion of the Temple is seen as the fruition of David’s own vision; the Levites minister “with instruments for music … that King David had made for giving thanks to the Lord.” [141] Hezekiah’s musicians were stationed, says the Chronicler, “according to the commandment of David.” [142]

The parallels strongly suggest that David based his actions upon earlier Canaanite rituals, products of the same cultural environment that inspired or dictated his musical reorganization. [143] With this we may consider more closely the musical dimension of David’s own performance. The king sings, dances, and plays the kinnōr before Yahweh, at the head of all his subjects, in front even of his own priests, musicians, guild leaders, and the Chief Singer himself. As a victory procession for Yahweh, David plays the role of ‘royal’ praise-singer, not unlike the position he had actually held under Saul. But as a victorious king himself, this was equally his own triumph, so that David assumes a position analogous to that of Yahweh. The ritual is a remarkable practical application of what, in the Sumerian texts, can otherwise appear a rather poetic conceit: the king who excels his own singers, and executes state rituals single-handedly. It also fleshes out the Ugaritian ritual texts, where the king dominates the action, yet the cultic establishment was fully involved. [144] David’s performance, I suggest, is as close as we are likely to come to witnessing the Divine Lyre in action. Here more than anywhere the kinnōr is a powerful symbol of the king’s divine favor. But the practicality of the lyre tradition makes the kinnōr more than just a symbol. It was the actual instrument with which to cross the chasm separating human and divine. With it, a king could communicate queries, receive instruction, and channel divine power toward specific ends.

Why does Michal react so strongly against this performance? That she found it unacceptable is important: such a ritual was evidently unprecedented in some way. This should relate to the equal newness, from the Jewish perspective, of David’s musical arrangements for the same ceremony. If those were indeed modeled on earlier Canaanite temple-music traditions, David’s own performing role may well be of a piece. Clearly he is putting on a mantle of kingship, publically demonstrating divine favor while simultaneously seeking to secure it. His actions will accord with the people’s desire that “we also may be like other nations,” the request that led to the original appointment of Saul. The popular nature of David’s rite is clear: it is repeatedly stressed that “all the people” are present (with “every kind of local song”). In gratifying the crowd to this extent, David goes far beyond any royal display credited to Saul, and thereby shows himself to be ‘more kingly’. It is therefore appropriate and revealing that it is Michal, the last vital link between David and her deposed father, who objects to these novel royal antics. [145] David, in his rejoinder, takes up the implied contrast with Saul, and asserts that the performance is divinely-approved and his royal prerogative:

To conclude, David’s kinnōr is an integral part of the early narratives about the rise of the United Monarchy. David’s entrance in 1 Samuel is motivated by Saul’s need to find a kinnōr-player. He advances because “the Lord is with him,” and no longer with Saul. This power is expressed through the kinnōr in David’s catharses of Saul and his ‘victory procession’ for Yahweh. The lyre’s ability to serve as a pivotal narratological device derives from the instrument’s more ancient potency in the royal cults of the wider region. David is not merely a king who happens to play the kinnōr. He is king in large part because he plays it, incomparably well. This will be a crucial comparandum for understanding Kinyras of Cyprus.

It was later believed that both the canonical Psalms and other songs embedded in the Biblical narratives were produced during the United Monarchy. And this is true in many cases, if not of the whole corpus. Although specific attributions to David and Solomon, as well as to their traditional guild-leaders, can never be conclusively verified, some Psalms are clearly of high antiquity. [147] Certain songs may actually antedate their supposed author. [148]

Even the most careful scholars are prepared to support Davidic authorship and/or date in certain cases—like Psalm 132, relating to the Ark-procession. [149] There is also the elegy for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel, quoted from the Book of Jashar, a lost anthology of poetry including other purportedly royal productions. The song’s antiquity and even authenticity are suggested both by its topical content and the seemingly apologetic instruction that it be disseminated and taught throughout Judah. [150] Such a gesture of public lamentation may in itself be seen as an assertion of kingship, if it was the royal prerogative and duty for a new monarch to raise the lament for the passing of his predecessor—an idea that would fit well with the ritual texts from Ebla and Ugarit relating to royal funerary and/or mortuary cult. [151]

The same contexts could also provide a good home for the famous song, supposedly the dying words of David himself, at the end of 2 Samuel. It begins: Scholars have dated this song variously between David’s demise and the late Judaean monarchy, with a strong case for an early origin on the grounds of diction and content. [153] But an absolute date is less vital here than how David is represented. According to the traditional reading of the MT, zmrt is to be vocalized as zĕmīrôt, ‘songs’ (< P-S √zmr, ‘sing/play’ [154] ), while nĕʿîm comes from the root n‘m (‘sweet, pleasant, gracious’)—whence “Sweet Psalmist of Israel” in the King James Version and its adherents. Now a musical interpretation goes back at least to the Hellenistic period, being reflected in the Septuagint translation, the importance of which to the tradition we have seen. [155] But with modern appreciation of parallelism, it has become clear that the phrase should be equivalent to the description of David as “Anointed of the God of Jacob.” Hence, most scholars now abandon a musical reading to vocalize zmrt as zimrāt and connect it with Semitic cognates relating to ‘power’ and ‘protection’ (< P-S √d mr). [156] Similarly, nĕʿîm is interpreted in terms of the n‘m which we saw applied to gods and heroes in Ugaritian texts. [157] Therefore, nĕʿîm zimrat yiśrā’ēl can be well rendered as ‘Favorite of the Mighty One of Israel’, ‘Favorite of the Defense of Israel’, or the like. [158]

This reinterpretation certainly produces a satisfying parallelism with “Anointed of the God of Jacob.” Yet this probably does not exhaust its meaning. If the Ugaritic usage of n‘m is indeed relevant—as is generally agreed—it becomes possible to maintain a musical nuance here on the basis of the word’s specialized application to divine musicians, especially the praise-singer of Baal. [159] When this is seen against the casting of David as a kinnōr-player in the narratives discussed above, and his ongoing stance as praise-singer of Yahweh in the Psalms, it become hard to avoid taking nĕʿîm as akin to the Ugaritic usage, with all its cultic overtones. The Hebrew word may thus mean something very like ‘Gracious Minstrel’ in itself—that is, whether one relates zmrt to ‘songs’ or ‘power’. [160] The parallelism with ‘Anointed’ is not violated by this reading; indeed it accords well with the idea, argued above, that one of David’s qualifications for kingship is his power as an inspired lyrist. The reading has the further advantage of accounting for the early musical interpretation of the LXX.

Given all this, it remains worth considering whether Heb. zmr was once capable of some semantic ambivalence between ‘song’ and ‘power’—not by virtue of historical linguistics, but ritual-poetic convention. [161] We have seen this precise duality in the Ugaritian text RS 24.252 with its crucial wordplay on zmr/ḏmr, whereby the ‘song’ of Rāp’iu was simultaneously a source of the king’s ‘power’. [162] The phrase nĕʿîm zimrat yiśrā’ēl may therefore imply not only that David was the Gracious Minstrel of the Might of Israel, but that his own power as Yahweh’s terrestrial agent derived precisely from his praising of Yahweh in song.

Only on his deathbed is David characterized as nĕʿîm, contemplating his role as mouthpiece of Yahweh, god’s covenant with his royal house, and the legacy of his own reign. I suggest connecting this with the appearance of n‘m in RS 24.257, evidently a text relating to the royal mortuary cult of Ugarit, with its eternal, archetypal monarch presiding over a paradisiacal feast of kinnāru-led music—quite possibly, I have argued, as the kinnāru-player himself. [163] The Rabbinic tradition presents vivid images of David at the eternal banquet that was to follow judgment day—immune to fleshly decay, and with his kinnōr leading the angelic host and all his royal descendants and other Israelite kings in singing new hymns to Yahweh, across from whom David was to be enthroned. [164] This portrait, although a composite from several late sources, nonetheless exhibits striking sympathies with the Ugaritian Rāp’iu text.

The temporal disparity between the Ugaritian texts and 2 Samuel 23:1 on the one hand, and the late evidence for David as Yahweh’s praise-singer in paradise on the other, is of course enormous. Yet the intervening period is at least partially spanned by a living tradition of psalm-singing. Note for instance the bird-headed finials on the instruments of the captive Judaean musicians from the reign of Hezekiah, shown on a relief of Sennacherib (704–681)—a decorative feature going back to the LBA, with parallels from Egypt, Cyprus, and the Hittite world. [165] A fundamental justification for the later attribution of psalms to David must have been the continued importance of the kinnōr in the cult. A specific connection with David is seen in those psalms that, when not authentic, nevertheless adopt as a performative stance his persona as kinnōr-playing prophet-king, mouthpiece of Yahweh, and thus a kind of divine messenger. [166] This Davidic guise probably arose in the context of the royal rituals by which the House of David maintained its founder’s ideological legacy. Although ensemble playing is sometimes specified for various psalms, it is probable that they were equally performed in a Davidic manner—that is, by an individual kinnōr-player, or one who led an ensemble, as David was said to have done in the ark-­procession. A psalmist who performed such songs in these circumstances will have effectively reenacted the ancient king. This would further explain the traditions of the song-writing Solomon, just as Ishme-Dagan repeated the musical claims of Shulgi. [167] The Qumran texts—whose many psalms, entirely absent from the canonical Psalters (LXX/MT) yet sharing much of their diction, show the tradition flourishing post-exile—include songs attributed to Mannaseh, an otherwise unnamed “King of Judah” (Hezekiah?), and perhaps David himself (‘the Man of God’). [168]

The traditional reenactment of David seems one of the clearer legacies of the Divine Lyre. The instrument’s magical qualities certainly rang on in the corpus. In Psalm 98, one finds the same ancient conception represented by the Orpheus jug—the lyrist exercising control over the natural world: The universal glorification of Yahweh is itemized in greater detail in Psalm 148, where the kinnōr, though not explicitly mentioned, is implied by the parallel of Psalm 98 and the genre itself: These Psalms show that the praise-singing lyrist, while but one instantiation of a more cosmic exultation that also included every form of musical celebration, [171] nevertheless plays a privileged role, occupying an intermediate, focusing position between the natural world and the divine object of its praise. It is this power which eventually facilitated David’s absorption of Orphic qualities in the Byzantine period. [172]

David’s quasi-divine status gradually crystallized with the idea that Yahweh had established an eternal covenant with his line. [173] This eventually gave rise, with the fluctuating fortunes of Israel and Judah, and the interruption of the Davidic royal line, to the idea that the projected messiah would be a second David, even his reincarnation. [174] One musical outgrowth of this is the early Christian trope of Jesus as a lyre-player, which equally incorporated Apollo’s role as overseer of cosmic harmony; on the human plane, a devout Christian was a lyre—often kinýra—on which Jesus played his divine message. [175]

Another development is seen in the coins of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE)—the last Jewish insurrection against Rome, when cultural oppression after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE culminated in Hadrian’s new temple to Jupiter on the temple mount (ca. 130). The revolt was led by Shimon, son of Koseva, whose name was reinterpreted as Kokhba to imply fulfillment of the prophecy that “There shall step forth a star (kokhav) out of Jacob.” [176] The tradition that the prominent sage ‘Aqiba (ca. 50–135 CE) was among those who promoted Bar Kokhba as the messiah is probably accurate; and it may be no coincidence that ‘Aqiba is the earliest source for the vision of David’s eternal throne alongside Yahweh. [177]

One of the rebels’ primary gestures of independence was to usurp the imperial prerogative of coinage. Making a political virtue of economic necessity, they withdrew Roman issues from circulation and over-stamped the heads of hated gods and emperors. [178] The Romans themselves had shown that coins were a vital medium for propaganda. [179] Hence, one cannot doubt that the Bar Kokhba coins “bore a clear political message and every detail on them was intentional.” [180] The limited repertoire of motifs related to the temple and its tools, simultaneously expressing the nationalist ideal of rebuilding Yahweh’s cult center, and supporting the messianic image of Bar Kokhba himself. [181] Prominent among the coin-types are two kinds of lyre, in several variations due to multiple dies (Figure 14). These instruments probably represent kinnōr and nēbel, [182] albeit in contemporary forms showing the Hellenistic morphological influence one sees in many NE lyres of the Roman period. [183] The Bar Kokhba coins thus evoked the liturgical practices associated with David, while promoting a rebuilding campaign. [184] It is tempting to relate these lyre-coins to a Rabbinic tradition that Zedekiah, last king before the Babylonian Exile, and Baruch, the scribe of Jeremiah, had hidden the sacred instruments of the First Temple before its destruction, to be revealed at the coming of the messiah. [185]

The legendary musical powers of David and Solomon persisted through antiquity and beyond in the Jewish, Greek Christian, Syrian Christian, and Arabic traditions alike.

A Jewish legend intended to explain the invocation of the kinnōr in Psalm 57:8–9 and 108:1–3 (see above) is attributed to Simeon the Pious in the third century BCE. Here the kinnōr is seen as an Aeolian harp, stimulated by a midnight wind and calling David to his liturgical duties “of its own accord.” [186] Here it effectively has a life and a voice of its own, although, given its sympathetic vibration with the natural order, Yahweh is not far away. Similarly Greek Christian hymnographers described David’s ‘kinýra’ as “god-sounding,” “god-inspired,” and an “animated psaltery … a kinýra charming souls / Towards god-inspired love.” [187] Gregory of Nazianzus, archbishop of Constantinople in the later fourth-century CE, in listing David’s youthful virtues, refers to “the power of his kinýra”—the Gk. dýnamis has connotations of ‘capacity’ and ‘potential’—and describes the lyre itself as “even overcoming the Evil Spirit with its enchantment.” [188] Nikephoros Basilakes, rhetorician of the early twelfth-century, imagines David both “with the holy spirit, and the kinýra of the holy spirit.” [189] Despite the lateness of this source, the ‘lyre of the spirit’ is an early and well-attested motif, vividly developed in the Syriac theological poetry of St. Ephraim (ca. 307–373). [190]

In Arabic tradition, which incorporated oral lore from Jewish and Christian populations in fable-rich southern Arabia, David remained the paragon of musical ability, as seen from many passages in the Arabian Nights. [191] The Quran accepts David as a true prophet whose visions of God are relayed in the Book of Psalms. [192] Mohammed rightly saw that, while David’s prophetic songs induced the sympathetic vibration of nature, the source of his power was held to come from beyond the psalmist himself. It was God who:

In the Quran, Solomon speaks with beasts, birds, and insects, and is master of the elements through his command of the djinn. David was credited with similar superpowers by both the Rabbinic and Quranic exegetes. [195] In a tenth-century Arabic source, David can assemble the djinn by means of his ‘harp’ (mi‘zaf). [196] A particularly striking parallel to the Orpheus jug is a legend compiled by al-Thaʻlabī in the eleventh century from earlier authorities: A similar portrait of Solomon is found in the Targum Sheni of Esther, which reached its present form ca. 700 CE:

Despite the lateness of these texts, their details go well beyond what is obvious in the Bible itself. Nor can they be dismissed by appeal to later Hellenistic influence. The persistence of these traditions about magical music and David’s inspired lyre is best explained as having been reinforced by the widespread and deeply rooted indigenous lyre-cultures whose prestige and power is so vividly epitomized by the cult of Kinnaru at Ugarit—and the rich mythology of Kinyras, to whom we may finally turn.