“Speaking” as “singing” in the Bible

                                           “Speaking” as “singing” in the Bible

            Deuteronomy 32:44 states, “And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun.”  Moses was referring to verses1-43 of that chapter being intoned i.e. sung by Joshua and himself.  The word translated spake here in the AV is dabar (16960 which meant, among other shades of meaning, to utter, tell, and to rehearse.  Dabar appears over 1,000 times in the OT.  A.Z. Idelsohn explains, “The texts sung by the Levites were not Psalms alone, but also portions of the Pentateuch.”  Jewish Music in Its Historical Development by A.Z. Idelsohn, p.19.   He references the above song Deuteronomy 32:1-43 as one of the texts sung by the Levite musicians.

            Idelsohn’s work was first published in 1929 and since that time much information has been published about Levite singing of Scripture in ancient Israel.  For instance we now know the entire Old Testament was notated with te’amim below and above the text and therefore all of it was intended to be sung.  We now have knowledge that the notion that, “The vocal song of the Temple, like all religious song among the ancient nations, drew its sap from folk song…” Ibid, p.20 is not an accurate assumption.   The possibilities are that the te’amim were as ancient as the entire of the Holy Writ, that they were revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai or that Moses gained knowledge of accurate musical notation from the Egyptians.  Be that as it may, evidence does not exist at this time to make us believe that the melodies used in sacred music of the Bible were derived from secular music—a notion that many current church musicians would like to believe.