Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre! For Yahweh takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation. Let the godly exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples, to bind their kings with chain and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written! This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise Yahweh! (Ps 149:3–9).1
The question before us is how to regard the swords and the herem (חרמ) holy war implied in Psalm 149:6–9 alongside the tambourines, lyres, and dancing of Psalm 149:3. This is a problem with which advocates of the use of musical instruments in Christian worship must wrestle. In my personal experience, they do not. It was perhaps in 1990, when I was visiting my alma mater, Westminster Seminary California, when I bumped into Bob Godfrey in the faculty hallway. Our conversation must have turned to the Psalms and, at one point, I said to him something like this: “You want us to sing the Psalms but you won’t let us use the instruments command.” To which he replied with a smile and something to the effect, “Go ahead and get ready for holy war while you’re at it.” That stopped me in my tracks. I realized instantly that my appeal to Psalms 149 and 150 were incoherent if I could not explain how it is possible to retain the musical instruments for use in public worship (which is the context of Psalms 148–50) but exclude the implement of war (the two-edged sword) and the holy war against the gentile nations mentioned in Psalm 149.
The answer for most of the ancient post-apostolic church, for most of the Medieval church, and for the Reformed churches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was to acknowledge the logical impossibility of keeping the instruments but excluding the implements of holy war.2 By and large, the Modern church, since the eighteenth century, has ignored the question; but the question will not be ignored.
Instruments In the Psalter
In each of the five books of the Psalter, there are, including the superscriptions, approximately thirty-four references to musical instruments and musicians. This number includes twinned or compound references (e.g., “harp and lyre”). One might challenge the inclusion of the superscriptions, but if nothing else, they serve as witnesses to how the Psalms were understood very early. For example, Psalms 4, 6, 54, 55, 61, 67, and 76 all contain the instruction in the superscription: “To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.” If we look only at the body of the psalms, we see an impressive number of references to the use of musical instruments in the worship of God. Psalm 68:25 says, “Your procession is seen, O God, the procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary—the singers in front, the musicians last, between them virgins playing tambourines.” Indeed, Psalm 68 is an equally appropriate place to consider the problem since it is, by all accounts, an imprecatory Psalm, that is, it calls down divine judgement upon God’s enemies.3 Psalm-singing Reformed congregations have always sung Psalm 68. French and Dutch Reformed Christians sang it on their way to their martyrdom under the Roman Catholic authorities. It celebrates God’s defeat of his enemies in this life and in the next. In the mouth of David, a “man of blood” (2 Sam 16:7), striking the feet of God’s people “in their blood” and the enemies of God’s people being eaten by dogs (Ps 68:23) were not metaphorical, and neither were the singers and musicians of Psalm 68:25. The two were inextricably linked.
The use of instruments in Psalm 33:2–3 is typical of the way the use of instruments is characterized in the Psalter: “Give thanks to Yahweh with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings! Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.”4 Psalm 33:13–14 may give us a clue to the context of the use of instruments: “Yahweh looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.”5 The invocation of Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, as he is on his royal throne suggests perhaps that the context envisioned is corporate worship. The psalmist in 43:4 (David?) will praise God with the lyre when he is able to “go to the altar of God” (v. 4), again a clue that the use of instruments was part of the public religious practice of the Israelites. We see the same thing from David in Psalm 57:8, as he fled from Saul in the cave (according to the superscription). Where will he play the lyre? “Among the peoples” and “among the nations” (v. 9; see also Ps 108:2–3). The formal religious (rather than informal and private) use of musical instruments in public worship is evident in Psalm 81:1–3 and most likely in Psalm 98 (all).
Through the cultic (i.e., the formal, religious) use of instruments in worship envisioned in Psalm 149 we are seeing the culmination of a long-established pattern. Yahweh is to be praised with a new song of salvation (vv. 1, 4), with dancing (v. 3), and by the use of tambourines and lyres (v. 3). This is how the typological, national church was to “exult in glory” and to “let the praises of God be in their throats” (vv. 5, 6a).
Holy War In the Psalter
In the second half of Psalm 149:6, God’s people are to have more than musical instruments in their hands. Just as they are to praise God in the covenant assembly, they are also to execute his vengeance upon the unbelieving gentile nations round about them. It is to this issue that we now turn.
One reason that people appeal glibly to the use of instruments in the Psalter, as I once did, to support the use of instruments in New Covenant worship is because they tend to read the Psalter outside of its redemptive-historical context. This is a mistake, however, that orthodox Christians do not regularly make regarding the Mosaic food regulations (e.g., Deut 14). We know from Acts 10:9–33) that the food laws had been fulfilled and had expired just as the judicial laws were no longer in force.
In the history of salvation, from the installation of Moses as the prophet and typological deliverer of Israel, until the death of Christ, Israel, the temporary national people of God, the church, were commissioned to execute holy war (herem) against the surrounding nations. This was not a figure of speech. Deuteronomy 7 is explicit about the religious duty of the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites around them:
When Yahweh your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when Yahweh your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of Yahweh would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. (Deut 7:1–5)6
One of Israel’s great failings was his failure to execute this mission, which was a picture of the final judgment and a picture of God’s holy hatred for sin. Holy war was a prominent aspect of the Israelite theocracy, and that aspect features prominently, as we have already seen, in the Psalter. Psalm 2 warns, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Ps 2:7–9).
One of the most colorful examples of the holy war rhetoric of the imprecatory psalms is found in Psalm 137:
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!” O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!
Think of such psalms, if you will, as the Scripture choruses of the typological, theocratic national Israelite church. As we have seen, these curses cannot be easily or obviously separated from the use of musical instruments, and this is clearly the case in Psalm 149. The “tambourine and lyre” of verse 3 becomes the “two-edged sword” of verse 6b. Both are divinely ordained, and both are part and parcel of the typological, national, Israelite epoch of redemptive history.
Notes
- Revised from the ESV.
- The note in the 1559 Geneva Bible, on Psalm 150:3 reads: “‘Praise ye him in the sound of the 1trumpet: praise ye him upon the viol and the harp.’
Psalm 150:3 Exhorting the people only to rejoice in praising God, he maketh mention of those instruments which by God’s commandment were appointed in the old Law, but under Christ the use thereof is abolished.” - For more on singing the Psalms, including imprecatory psalms, see A Useful Resource for Psalm Singing
- Revised from the ESV.
- Revised from the ESV.
- Revised from the ESV.
©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.
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I (selfishly) vote for a charitable ‘two views’ book on musical instruments with Drs. Clark and Duguid—or, on the lighter side, a podcast discussion with a sane host (Presbycast?). Now that I’ve unveiled my wonderful plan for your lives, you can return to your regularly scheduled programming, 🙂.
I thought I saw someone write recently that Old Testament scholars shouldn’t do Historical Theology and Historical theologians shouldn’t write on the Old Testament?
You wrote:
The “tambourine and lyre” of verse 3 becomes the “two-edged sword” of verse 6b. Both are divinely ordained, and both are part and parcel of the typological, national, Israelite epoch of redemptive history.
I’m fairly clear about the typological significance of the sword and of herem warfare. I can’t see, however, what instruments could be typological of?
Touché.
Did you read part one?
Yes I read it. The fathers were not doing typology but allegory, in my judgment (free association). It’s a similar level of argument as the old Scottish objection to organs that flutes are barroom instruments, so an organ (which is nothing but a box of flutes) is therefore utterly unsuitable for worship.
George Gillespie at least recognized that a type needs an antitype, but the best he could come up with was to identify the antitype of instruments as “joy”. You can’t just declare something to be a type; you have to show the Biblical theological connection. So it is clear how sacrifices map onto the death of Christ, and how swords map onto spiritual warfare, but not at all clear how instruments map onto “joy”. There is plenty of joy there in the psalms, right alongside the instruments – and of course instruments can express lament as easily as joy.
Nor does it work to claim with Calvin that instruments are part of the “puerile” instruction of the church since they are obviously missing in the youngest stages of the church – the epochs of the patriarchs and the Tabernacle. Instruments represent a phase of progress and development in (Old Testament) redemptive history.
There is also the common mistake of those that argue instruments are exclusively associated with sacrifices, which is also false (see Neh. 12:27 ff). Of course, this topic requires a much longer argument than can be pursued adequately in a combox, and I hope to develop that argument further at some point. It’s fair to say that in the past, most of the significant attempts at framing Biblical arguments have come from the non-instrument side, and they deserve a far better answer than the ones usually advanced.
Iain,
Your responses to the older (i.e., pre-modern) readings of the history of redemption are too dismissive and impatient. This is what I too often find in the Bible studies guild. I say this after spending a fair bit of time reading the history of exegesis (on Romans particularly). Lately, I’ve spent time working on the interpretation of Rom 3:28 and most commentaries are frankly appalling on the history of exegesis. Fitzmyer (Anchor) is a blessed exception. Most in the guild couldn’t seem to care less. E.g., Tom Wright says it openly.
I’ve been much affected by this essay by David Steinmetz and so I’ve tried to do some writing on the history exegesis—not as much as would have liked. I hope to more.
In my HT seminars we usually read at least one exegetical text, e.g., a biblical commentary. I’m not always happy with what I find but I have learned things. E.g., had the bib studies read the history of exegesis in Rom 3:28 maybe they would have been less susceptible to the NPP, since the Protestants answered their arguments about what the “works of the law” does and doesn’t mean.
So, I wish you would reconsider. I’ve been sitting with the fathers and the Reformers for a few years now and I don’t find them to be arbitrary. They make me look at the text in a way I might not have done had only only been reading modern writers.
We might be working with different definitions of typology. If you look at the epistle of Barnabas, you will see him doing both typology and allegory. The ladder is, I agree, arbitrary. The former, however, is not.
I think we ought to be very cautious about an approach to what was essentially the entire Christian tradition, which says that they were (implicitly) stupid.
They weren’t. They were very cautious, however, about resurrecting types in shadows or what they regarded as Judaizing and that’s a legitimate concern not to be lightly disregarded.
Sharing your view, thank you so much for articulating is so well. I appreciate your wisdom and expertise Dr. Duguid!
Thank you.
In defense of not sticking to history:
https://heidelblog.net/2020/10/why-not-stick-to-history-short-answer-the-twofold-kingdom-duplex-regimen/
Dr. Clark, you wrote this about a conversation with Dr. Godfrey: “Our conversation must have turned to the Psalms and, at one point, I said to him something like this: ‘You want us to sing the Psalms but you won’t let us use the instruments command.’ To which he replied with a smile and something to the effect, ‘Go ahead and get ready for holy war while you’re at it.'”
As I’m sure you’re aware, the Huguenots actually **DID** go to war singing the psalms. So did Cromwell’s army in England and the Waldensians in the Italian Alps. There’s a Waldensian elder serving a church about an hour and a half away from me who is a descendant of Capt. Henri Arnaud, the Waldensian pastor and guerilla war leader, who fought the far larger forces of the Dukes of Savoy to a draw using the same sort of mountain warfare tactics that the Afghans used to defeat the British, Soviet, and now the American armies.
Modern military tactics don’t require drums or bugles or other instruments, and the US Army is currently deactivating many of its military bands as an unnecessary expense, but even today “singing cadence” is still done for marching purposes, and instruments are sometimes used in “drill and ceremony” and in parades and other formal events. Psalm 2 in the old CRC Blue Psalter Hymnal is quite capable of being used for cadence and I’d be interested in knowing if the composer, who I think was a World War II veteran, used his military experience to compose a Psalm 2 versification that could easily be used as marching cadence.
I don’t see the problem with remembering that under certain circumstances, the Reformed churches **DID** believe that holy war was appropriate, usually as a defensive response to attempts to exterminate Calvinists, not only their pastors but also civilians with their women and children.
You and I both like Dr. Godfrey. My answer to him, if he had asked me that question back in 1990, would have been whether the Reformed military forces in the 1500s and 1600 used drums, bugles, and other instruments when singing psalms in wartime. I think the answer would be “yes,” though not in formal worship in their churches.
Darrell,
I’m with Kuyper and so is Bob. The state-church is indefensible from Scripture. Holy war belonged to Israel not to the French or the Genevans or to any other post-theocratic state. France wasn’t national Israel. God made no national covenant with Scotland.
Those wars were among the several significant reasons the American founders didn’t establish a federal church and why the state churches were disestablished by the early 1830s.
One of the great blessings of being an American is that I don’t have to go to war with the Papists in Maryland.
The argument stands. If you want the instruments you must also take up the sword but then you must prove that God has ordained his people to literal Herem, which case cannot be made from Scripture.
I’m not convinced that the concept of a state church is required to sing war psalms when marching off to actual war.
The Huguenots were correct, and I think you would agree, when they took up arms to defend themselves and their families and their fellow church members against violent mob attacks. Was there something wrong with them singing war psalms when they did do?
I cited that example deliberately because they were NOT taking up arms under the authority of their sovereign, which at least arguably was the case with Cromwell’s New Model Army in England since in the view of many of the Puritans, the Parliament was the final sovereign authority. To the contrary, the Huguenots were often taking up arms on their own to defend themselves against disorganized marauding mobs or against organized armed groups that sometimes were and sometimes were not acting under state authority.
I’m trying to limit my point to use of war psalms in warfare, not the broader issue of whether Christianity in general, or a specific Christian church, should be established or recognized (two different concepts) or in some other way formally approved and supported by the government.
As for Maryland, I agree that the Founding Fathers simply had to come to some sort of accommodation with Maryland Catholics for both geographical and political reasons. I’ve been citing that example for decades in response to the hardest right wing of the Reformed world who think that it’s somehow sinful to cooperate with Roman Catholics in American politics. I’d point out that the Hungarian Reformed made an alliance with the Roman Catholics in Hungary to throw out the Ottoman Turks and went to war against the Turks in a Catholic-Calvinist coalition army. That may have been a bad idea, and rule by the Austrian crown didn’t always work out very well for the Hungarian Reformed, but it wasn’t necessarily viewed as a violation of Reformed principles in the immediate post-Reformation era.
Hi Reverend Clark. I attend a church in France which is part of the “églises réformées évangéliques” network. We are kind of the church rhat kept close to the reformers. There is a variety of practice from one local church to the other and Worship is one of my main struggle being part of that denomination. The music part of worship isn’t exactly what one would call worldy but I would qualify it as “in between”. There are instruments in our worship.
I have discovered the doctrines of grace 4years ago and Im still growkng in my understanding of its various aspects.
I kinda struggle to grasp the implications of the biblical way to do worship or rather the implications of a church that does not really respect biblical worship. My church is really focused on the word of God and the Bible is central all along our liturgy. In my opinion the music is a bit lf a problem. What would you suggest would be the best course of action ? I feel it is an impossible task to go about and try to change rhe church’s view on this aspect.
I hope i make my point clear enough. Thanks for everything you do.
Greetings from France.
JB Torreilles
J. B.,
The Reformation of worship in our time is one of the most difficult challenges we face. Calvin recognized that people have never liked the Regulative Principle Of Worship.
I take my cue from the way Oecolampadius proceeded in the 1520s. He took eight years to abolish the Mass. Patience is key but so is persistence and prayer. Unless God opens the way it will not happen. It is also essential for people to grasp the rule of worship: We do in worship only what God has commanded. In the USA I can get Reformed pastors to recite the rule but almost as soon as they do it, they turn around and contradict it when I ask them to square the rule with their own practice. They almost inevitably give me the Lutheran rule: we may do what is not forbidden or they appeal to “circumstances” as if circumstances covers anything anyone wants to do in worship.
The churches in the West are in need of Reformation (semper Reformanda) but most do not know it.
It will take time.