For the next exercise, look for purpose and authority in the passages about formal music. Recall that for over four hundred years the only official instruments for God’s house are golden bells and silver trumpets. Then, around 1000 B.C., God uses David to add new dimensions in song and instrumentation, along with new dimensions in purpose. David’s wider range of official instruments does more than call signals.
It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the LORD, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the LORD, “For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.” (2 Chronicles 5:13)
What the singers are doing, the trumpeters also are doing. They have an identical purpose. And what are they doing? In this passage, their sounds merge as one voice “in praise and thanksgiving to the LORD.” Both vocal and instrumental music rise to God as praise.
Off the written record, in informal settings, voices and instruments may already have this relationship. But, as far as the biblical record goes, this kind of worship appears to be new. Choral and symphonic music has never been heard in the national center for worship before the time of David. Now, under David and Solomon, the music of voices and instruments combine as an offering of praise to God. This is a new thing, at least in the formal setting (the official place of worship) with formal personnel (the officials of the temple).
This apparent newness raises intriguing questions. If music seems so intuitive and natural to us, why does God take so long to institute or formalize this type of worship? And what about those purposes that seem so strang —requiring bells for survival, trumpets to stimulate God’s memory, and harps for controlling spirit-beings? As we explore the role of music, do you sense a mystery here?