Music in Ancient Israel

[jaybreak]

This is more of a history lesson that anything else, but it serves the Radix Fidem mission to have some knowledge of these things.

While poking around as light research for a book idea, I came across this essay: "Women in Ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible" (I attached the pdf of the essay to this post, for safekeeping). Below is an excerpt regarding the role of women in terms of musicianship.

I thought the remark about the singers being specially trained was interesting. To me, it means they took the task seriously, and at the time we can assume singing--along with other "available" arts like sculpting or dancing--were some of the highest forms of expression of devotion. Besides making and eating food, which was a monumental task in itself given their technology and environment, there was precious else to distract themselves with. It makes some sense that whatever they chose to do with their free time would have huge impact. But, this is coming from a Western brain (my own): note that I use "chose" and "free time," which may not have the meaning it does given how different Ancient Near East and 21st century cultures are.

For the entire essay, as a broad rule, take it with a grain of salt. Undoubtedly, the author is writing from a Western, feminist academic tradition, and it shows in some of the sly editorials made throughout. There's some good tidbits there, if you can ignore the arrogant presumption that Ancient Hebrew women wanted or needed the same things, or held the same values, as the author does.

Women Religious Functionaries: Musicians

One final note should be made about Miriam: that in Exodus 15:20–21, where she is identified as a prophet, she is also described as taking up a frame drum and leading the women of Israel in drumming, dancing, and singing as they celebrate the Israelites’ miraculous deliverance from the forces of the Egyptians at the Reed [more traditionally, “Red”] Sea. Nor is Miriam the only woman to perform this role of celebrating Yahweh’s and the Israelites’ triumph in a holy war. Other instances of this “victory song” performance can be found in Judges 5:1–31 (Deborah’s song celebrating the Israelite victory over Sisera and his Canaanite army); Judges 11:34 (where the daughter of Jephthah goes forth to greet her father playing frame drums and dancing after he returns home victorious from battle against the Ammonites); 1 Samuel 18:6–7 (where the women of the towns of Israel serenade King Saul as he marches back from battle by playing frame drums, dancing, and singing of his triumph); and Psalms 68:11–12 (Heb. 68:11–12), where female heralds are commissioned to sing out the news of Yahweh’s victory in holy war. This tradition of women’s “victory song” performance is also evoked metaphorically in Jeremiah 31:4.

Other occasions when Israelite women assume responsibilities as ritual musicians may include women’s music-making during the autumn harvest festival of Ingathering, or Sukkot. This tradition is intimated in Judges 21:19–21, where, during the celebration of a festival commentators almost unanimously identify as Sukkot, the young women of Shiloh—the site of this particular Sukkot celebration—are said to come out “to dance in the dances.” The same tradition of women’s music-making at Sukkot, at the same site (Shiloh), may be alluded to in 1 Samuel 2:1–10, where Hannah is said to sing a hymn of praise and thanksgiving on the occasion of the Sukkot festival associated with the dedication of her newly weaned son Samuel to Yahweh’s cultic service. Another text that speaks to the special role for women as singers and dancers in conjunction with the celebration of Sukkot is found in Jeremiah 31:10–14, where young women are described as dancing at the time of the harvest of the grapes and olives—that is, the harvest preeminently associated with the Sukkot festival. The special place of women as musicians in conjunction with the grape harvest celebration is also suggested by Isaiah 5:1–7, a text that draws on an actual song of the Sukkot festival that originally must have been sung by a woman (as indicated by the reference to a male beloved in v. 1).

A third and final arena in which Israelite women assumed responsibilities as ritual musicians is in making music in conjunction with various life-cycle rituals. Particularly well attested is women’s role as singers of lamentation in conjunction with funerary rites and on the occasion of funeral-like events. A oft-quoted passage in Jeremiah 31:15, for example, speaks of how, at the time of the Babylonian invasions of the late 7th and early 6th centuries bce, the voice of the long-dead Rachel is heard performing a dirge over her devastated descendants. Second Samuel 1:24; Jeremiah 7:29; 9:17–21 (Hebrew 9:16–20); Ezekiel 8:14; and possibly Amos 5:16 also speak to the Israelite tradition of women as singers of lamentations. Indeed, in Jeremiah 9:17–21 (Hebrew 9:16–20), the dictum that the lamenting women should be summoned suggests a group of women specializing in lamentation, and this is also implied in the text’s reference to these women as being “expert” or “learned” in their craft (meaning, probably, specially trained). In v. 20 (Hebrew v. 19), moreover, these female lament singers are commanded to teach their daughters a dirge, possibly suggesting that the profession of the lament singer was handed down by women from one generation to the next.45

Coming-of-age rituals and weddings, too, may have been life-cycle events during which the women of ancient Israel were called upon to make music, although our evidence is sparse.