Photo by Scott Pickering

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Searching for Sounding Metal in the Scriptures

According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, cymbals are mentioned sixteen times in the King James Version.  Fifteen of those are found in the Old Testament while the singular form (cymbal) occurs just once in the New Testament.
Check out this passage:
And he appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord, and to record, and to thank and praise the Lord God of Israel:
Asaph the chief, and next to him Zechariah, Jeiel, and Shemiramoth, and Jehiel, and Mattithiah, and Eliab, and Benaiah, and Obededom: and Jeiel with psaltries and with harps; but Asaph made a sound with cymbals; 
Benaiah also and Jahaziel the priests with trumpets continually before the ark of the covenant of God.
1 Chronicles 16: 4-6 KJV

I get a kick out of reading that Asaph was both the bandleader and percussionist of this large combo.

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