Thought for the Day

Music and the Genesis Record—part 2
                 A review of Scripture (much of it later than the Genesis record) reveals that during Israel’s early period of nomadic life, instrumental music was well developed.  I will say again that music's beginning can be traced back to creation, but most of its mention in the OT was recorded after the Book of Genesis.  You may wonder what I am trying to establish philosophically by nailing down the facts of music's beginnings in God's creative acts and its early mention in Genesis. A simple answer is that there are ancient landmarks of musicing recorded in the Bible and their origin is found in God’s creative work i.e. “in the beginning God created…”

                There is another concept of God's creation recorded in the Book of Genesis that we should discus at this point.  As I said before, Genesis 1:31 records the fact that when God created music its condition was very (ma’od 3966) good (towb 2896).  In other words, His music creation was not merely good, but it was exceedingly good or beautiful.  The Hebrew word ma’od is a superlative term.  To God, music was not “just there”, but rather it was exceedingly good when used as He intended.  Towb connotes not only goodness but also beauty.  Although it is difficult to fully ascertain what is meant by beautiful, it is possible to understand that God created music for His glory and also created it to be exceedingly beautiful and wonderful. We can also justly conclude that this creation which was ma'od towb was exceedingly valuable to mankind.  It was very beautiful, valuable, meaningful, and had the ability to be very efficacious either for good or, if perverted, for evil.