Long-winded former prophet - 1 Samuel 21

Whatever other meanderings are in this post, be sure to read the music here. This is a very amusing chapter containing David's hobnob with the priest Ahimelek over bread, girls, and Goliath's sword. Et qui rit des curés d'Oc.  Let no one laugh (too much) at the priests of Oc (Languedoc - no it's not in the hill country of Israel - but the wine is good).

1 Samuel 21:10 has a recitation of 39 beats in length concerning the sword of Goliath. I am glad to say that my programming passed the test and counted them correctly over the maximum bar length of 24 that I allow. You might need more than one breath to sing it.

This chapter also provides inscriptions for a couple of Psalms: Psalm 52 concerning Doeg and Ahimelech, and Psalm 34 concerning David and his feigned madness before the king of Gath (Akish or Abimelech). This incident also concerns David getting bread from the priest. See also Mark 2:25 and parallels - only Mark raises the question as to what the name of the priest was, Ahimelech or Abiathar. But given the subterfuge of David - saying he has secret orders from 'the king' and his lads are stashed away wherever, we might want to read the Jesus story with a little more humour as well.

The psalms are far apart in the Psalter. Psalm 34 is one of the four acrostics in Book 1. Psalm 52 is the second of the Davidic collection in Book 2, and not one that is very famous - in contrast to Psalm 51. Who bothers to remember Doeg, the snitch? Yet here he is remembered in a psalm as that 'champion of villainy'. The phrase is from the Jerusalem Bible following the Greek. I took a different route and tried to make sense of the Hebrew. Doeg is for me 'a reproof of God all the day long'. I.e. he is deaf to the Anointed, and continuous reproof makes no headway in him - yet David rebukes him hoping for a miracle, that enemies might be transformed into allies. Doeg is an Edomite. It was tribal warfare in those days as it is today. I am sure that assigning roles, whether of loyalty or betrayal, to friend and foe is as complex then as it is now.

As it happens, I wasn't even going to consider the opening verses of this chapter, confused as they are with differing numbering systems even in Hebrew versions. The Leningrad codex begins with verse 1 as the last statement of the prior section: וַיָּ֖קָם וַיֵּלַ֑ךְ וִיהוֹנָתָ֖ן בָּ֥א הָעִֽיר  And he (David) rose up and left, while Jonathan went to the city. Current Hebrew Bibles begin verse 1 as וַיָּבֹ֤א דָוִד֙ נֹ֔בֶה אֶל־אֲחִימֶ֖לֶךְ הַכֹּהֵ֑ן And David went towards Nob to Ahimelech the priest ...

The story is unexpectedly full of deceit, fear, weakness, and subtlety on the part of David, running for his life into the arms of his enemies, completely alone - in the solitude of solitude, without his lads, his army, his infrastructure (the city), even if it was limited to playing the harp for a mentally disturbed king, and so he too feigns madness and escapes.

There is a new musical pattern in the text. It is the presence of two consecutive ornaments: qadma followed immediately by zaqef qatan. It is too subtle at the moment for me to work out a reliable search to see if this is a rare combination or not. I.e. my data is not quite in the right shape to search for musical patterns... In this case the patterns form a frame for the whole chapter - almost as if the king of Gath was mimicking the melody of king David heading towards Nob. I suspect no one would interpret such a little thing. But maybe both of them are somewhat at sea in these episodes. Also there is a strange bar where David is making up his story for the priest - and the chant is a boring single note - 10 syllables with no ornamentation.  This is quite rare - and fits the sense that David is making up his answer to the priest's question on the fly.

There are a couple of subtleties in both transcription and musical phrasing that I don't want to look at in detail in the program I have written. It has been weeks and I wonder why the output is exactly what it is - but it may be sequence of the coding of the data - and in any case the final result is under the control of the musician. The program can only produce a draft. If the original manuscripts are consulted (e.g. at the Aleppo codex online) there will be a lot of possible manual adjustment of the music.

And another thing I noticed, the repetition of a phrase I thought was more rare - ki im, as in Psalm 1. (כִּי אִם)

If you are interested - read the story - and imagine this outlaw, the famous king David before his fame. Laugh? Not sure about that.

Here's an experiment - embedding the pdf in the web page. Or use the link above to my shared documents.

2 Samuel 6 - David whirling before the ark

My reading partner has suggested this as a passage that demands a close reading. So there's nothing like translating and finding an underlay for the implied music to force a close reading. It is a strange passage. David is burned up just as Yahweh is burned up at the negligence of Uzzah. The passage is framed by laughter, translated 'play' in the KJV, but it is the same laughter as the derision of Psalm 2. A rollicking good time seems to be David's command as the king of all Yahweh's people. Yet he feared also. But the critical Michal is to have no children to the day of her death. The fear of making a scene where honour is compromised doesn't cut it as an excuse for David. Humble / base (Psalm 138:6) David will be and the maidservants will still honour him.

The music in pdf form with my inimitable awkward translation is here.

I am still thinking too, especially in the light of the face saving and dissembling that is going on in the world, about the third petal - how to approach completeness. I will get there, I hope.

Can you start hearing in the middle of a song?

Music and Scripture - is it really possible to hear that art-song that was finally imposed on the collected and edited words of the ancient writings in Hebrew? I cannot imagine that the song preceded the writing or even the collection. Like plainsong or Anglican chant, the writing must have preceded the musical genre, a pattern of melodies and modes created to adorn and package the text. The collected writings are so diverse and from so many times and places, it is not possible that the same musical motif would have existed without change over that 800 year period. So the music is late, imposed when it was realized that this tradition that forms the people must be preserved - not just with memory but with the technical assistance of music.

Like stones cast on the water, we have been skipping through Genesis for a few weeks. Now I will make a sudden switch to Isaiah. I am picking an alternative passage to the Bethel incident. Henry and Jody Neufeld are beginning a Google+ hangout session every week on selected lectionary readings. So I have gone with their choice in the lectionary. The reading and commenting on this strategy for reading is a complex business. It requires a two to three week planning cycle - such a discipline! No more random reads. And now I am a whole week ahead again. Liturgy has some interesting comments on the process here. It turns out that reading the Bible is, after all, rocket science.

Back to the question: The Isaiah lesson is only a few verses. Isaiah 44:6-8. A snippet, one of those where YHWH seems to 'predict' - yet the prediction is not specific and is not even in these verses. The prophesy has much more to do with the care of Yahweh for his people, both the chosen and indeed all the people of the world. Here it is.

So what does it mean? It is not that often that we have heard the low C. First, it occurs only in the prose books, not in the Psalms. In the examples I have so far, in roughly 1400 verses outside the Psalms, there are about 100 instances compared to 1400 for the tonic E or 300 for the D below the tonic. The dominant B occurs roughly 1300 times, the high C about 550 times.  We are not counting notes here - just occurrences of the sign itself. Extended recitation on the high C is frequent as can be seen immediately above. Such recitation on the low C is rare.

Here's a translation: 

6. Thus says Yahweh, 

with a little emphasis on says.

And the last syllable of the name is alone on the low C.

This may indicate that it was stressed on the last syllable.

the king of Israel and his redeemer, Yahweh of hosts.

The music comes to a rest at the mid point of the verse

 - a common occurrence

I am the first and I am the last 

First and last each get an ornament,

the pitch rises - it is an announcement

and apart from me there is no God

7 And who, as I do,  will call, will make it plain, will arrange it for me

to set in place the people of the age, and the things that are and that are coming,

let them make it clear to them

Who is to care for the people as Yahweh does

this is not a prediction of the future but a care for the present

but it is a challenge to anyone who would care for the world as Yahweh cares.

8 Do not be in dread and do not be afraid

Have I not from then made you hear 

and made it clear to you

that you are my witnesses

Is there any God apart from me, or any rock?

not to my knowledge.

This little section, Isaiah 44:6-8, makes little sense without reading the prior verses, Isaiah 44:1-5. [There is a pdf of the whole section in the usual place - where I store the hundreds of transcriptions I have done using the software that I have written to convert the text automatically to music.] The music does not stand alone in this case. So look at how the command to not be afraid wraps the whole chapter so far and how this chapter is to comfort the chosen people who have had such a burden to bear - that of being witnesses to Yahweh on behalf of the whole world. This is a consistent message with the Psalms. It also directly links to the NT lesson, the parable of the wheat and the tares, through the reference in Matthew 13:35 to Psalm 78:2, Israel as his parable. This phrase is also in Psalm 114 verse 2 - but no one translates it as Israel his parables except me.

Again the NT lesson has omitted the surrounding verses. It is like eating the bread of a sandwich without its content.

Generation and expiration, birth and death, musical patterns

Not only birth and children in Genesis of course, but also expiration and death. Abraham's death illustrates common patterns in the music of Torah. Here is the page where Abraham dies.

Notice the differing ways in which the diminished triad is used to approach a cadence either on the tonic or the subdominant.

We have six examples on the page:
1. D-E-F-G#-A
2. D-F-G#-F-E
3. D-F-G#-B-A
and he was gathered to his people - and then his sons buried him - in the purchased burial ground...
4. same as 3
5. same as 2
6. a new variation.

Can you see a circular pattern emerging? I wonder to what extent this is frequent in the music...

Modernity as the background to the story of Rebekah and the servant

Why does Abraham not want Isaac to marry a Canaanite? Is it, as Lawrence Schiffman suggests that they were too modern? Is G-d a conservative? Is modernity always problematic?  I think you can't have it both ways. Abraham was called out from his clan and he cannot go back, nor can Isaac go back, yet there is no suitable wife in the new place. Perhaps there is an allegory brewing. It's not as simple as a good-clan bad-clan theme.

This week in the lectionary we finish chapter 24 of Genesis, the story of getting Isaac a wife. But we read only bits of it: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67. So what is it that is left out?

The servant is already in Aram and has already met Rebekah at the spring / well. We miss all that and the bit where he refuses to eat till he has told his story. We skip his repetition in his story of the possibility that the woman might not want to come with him. We skip the bit where the mother requests that the lass remain a few days, at least 10. One question I am wondering about is what sort of decision-making protocol was there in the household of Rebekah?

In the first part of the story, Rebekah has a considerable interaction with the stranger at the spring - and it is a full autonomy that she seems to exercise. She has considerable generosity and strength also. This speaks to a certain security as well as independence.

I am about to do the translation and will make notes on this question...

The first thing I notice is that the music begins as a reprise when the servant comes to tell the story of the promise he had to swear. But continues with some variation on the music and the words. The servant makes a strong case for the authority of Abraham. Perhaps this is part of the decision protocol. Here you are giving up a young woman to a stranger on the basis of words (but also on the basis of visible gold and all those camels). The servant wants to become free from his oath but this requires the decision of the family to allow the authority of the oath, as measured in the conversation and the sequence of secret prayer and Rebekah's response, to be obeyed. (The 'faith' of Rebekah is not mentioned in Hebrews 11.)

Bruggemann's Genesis points out some obvious characteristics of this story through the use of repeating words: 1 the wrapping of the sections in blessing. 2 the emergence of the prosperity theme. [Did Spock have a hand in this passage?] 3 the emphasis on loving-kindness and truth (he uses steadfast loyalty and fidelity). 4 The leadership of God in the way. While lead is a rare word, it occurs twice in the passage, way is a common word but finds an appropriate recurrence here also. (www.stepbible.org has a nice way of highlighting single repeated words in a passage.)

It is perhaps worth noting also that Abraham uses a different word for kin as opposed to the repeated word in the second half of the story rendered clan. The scope of kin and family is perhaps to be noted. I wonder how all this might fit a looming metaphorical treatment - such as marrying into the household of faith. The grand metaphor is this: Abraham is like the Father, Isaac, received back from the dead, is like the Anointed son, the chosen beloved who inherits everything, and the aged unnamed servant is like the Spirit bringing the chosen bride to the one to be comforted for the loss of his mother (see how Paul treats Sarah in Galatians). Yes, Virginia, we do apply texts strangely sometimes - but not as if the original writer intended it so, only that the interpreter of Scripture (e.g. a reader of John 3:35 or Paul himself, the writer of Galatians 4:24-25) sometimes takes some radical liberties. (Notice how much 'at one' Abraham and the servant are - he has given all things into his hand, and how the servant explains that Abraham will give Isaac everything that he has. In the first part of the story, it is Abraham who is the servant's lord. In the last verse, it is Isaac.)

Back to the story - and the freedom of the clan to decide. It is more than that the woman might not want to come, the servant makes it clear that if the clan refuses to give, then he also is released (lit. innocent) from his oath. Notice how this extends the original question that the servant asked of Abraham. Notice also that this is omitted from the lectionary selection. How would this bear up in the allegory? If the church refused her bridal aspect to the Son who died and was raised from the dead, then the servant, the Spirit, is free from the promise to the Father. Give that some thought. Do we refuse the journey? Is this the sin against the Spirit? It is not good that the lectionary leaves this out.

When the servant relates his prayer to the assembled clan he does not use the term virgin, whom no man had known, (how would he know this?) but the term for a young woman. I can't say I like the ESV or KJV here (Genesis 24:43). They appear to me to be theological translations such that one would identify Mary as the bride, symbolizing the church being brought to her Lord. How, in my analogy, does the Spirit relate the nature of the mandate to individuals or to the church? Just a question - give it consideration.

Now the servant and Laban bargain. Like the bargaining for the burial plot for Sarah, it doesn't look like bargaining. These verses are not in the lesson either. More's the pity, for in the allegory, the bargaining is for the bride. Who is the stronger, Laban and Bethuel or the servant, the world or the Spirit? The world says - what can we do! This is from God - take her and go. But it is a feint. The world really wants to benefit from the transaction. So the servant lays out treasure for everyone and they stay the night. Even in the morning there is still a departure protocol. The servant must ask to be sent on his way. The mother then asks for a delay in the daughter's leaving. Ultimately, the decision is left to Rebekah. Is 24 hours sufficient notice for such a journey - just one day? Notice the ornamentation when the lasses finally ride the camels - you've got to look at the pdf's of the music.

But it is such a day - like the literary 24 uses of the word hour in John's Gospel. Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day, say Jesus. And here in this story we have another day - short yet long as the groom (whom we have been told about) awaits his bride.

Ultimately we must fade back into the real story of a distant man and his son in a foreign land finding a wife from his clan and her being blessed to great fruitfulness. She gives birth to twins - Esau and Jacob. These brothers are still at odds today.  And Rebekah's children do possess the gate even of those who hate them - what responsibility (See this post from Larry Behrendt at Jewish-Christian intersections).

[Aside: some years ago when I was working in Jamaica, I asked my African son what he would like me to bring him home. He replied - bring me home a wife. Unfortunately, I did not have rings and bracelets and sufficient gold and garments, not to mention the camels, to fulfill his request.]

On that note I conclude that this post is long enough. What do you think of this story? The music will get to the usual place (it is partly there now - I have a dozen verses to go). Translation is a slow process. 67 verses of Genesis is the longest bit of Torah that I have tried yet.

Thanks to Tim Bulkeley of the five minute bible and sansblogue for the pointers to the step bible and the online commentaries - useful resources both.

Do you have to be a philosopher to live?

Just for fun I decided to finish Ecclesiastes 12 in the music. It's online in the usual place. It supported my laziness from my youth. There were several questions I did not want to address - so that many books could be written and much learning be a weariness of the flesh suited me just fine. Eventually though I did do some homework.

But being a programmer - you know that laziness is my first name. I would rather work for days to find a repeatable solution than actually solve a problem by brute force. I think it takes real faith to read the Bible closely - because your lifetime is not long enough to finish it. And it's only a small library - somewhere around 66 books depending on how many you include and how you count them.

Anyway - Ecclesiastes is fun. My earlier posts on it get thousands of hits - why? I think it's all the funky transcriptions I included, confuses the search engines.

It's good to read an awkward translation, even a bad one - it makes you think.

How important is it to read the whole story

Next week we have a truncated Reader's Digest version of the second half of the story of getting a wife for Isaac. (Genesis 24) Now I'll tell you the truth - I have read this story before probably more than once, probably somewhat randomly, but never slowly, one word at a time. And quite apart from form, redaction, or historical criticism, it is a curious story.

I have only done the first half to this point. You will need to sing it yourself because my voice only does so much these days - I did try (the intervals are all quite singable for one with good tonal memory) - even transposed it down a tone (the software won't transpose it back - or at least I haven't figured out how to do it).

Nonetheless it is a long story -even the first half! I often criticize my wife for the dramatic pauses in her story telling - she makes me gasp with anticipation - too much. And she has often criticized my tendency as a cantor to sing too slowly. Mutual criticism for 46 years and counting :). Go figure!

So cant I won't. So there. But here is the music to the first half - a pdf of the full 7 pages is in the usual place. The next 7 pages will hopefully be ready for next week's lesson. Genesis 24 is a 14 page musical story designed and edited to be recited. We don't generally send servants to get our sons wives these days - but it is a love story and a story of bravery and faith nonetheless.

Notice the language, the repeated words - it's not always a well - sometimes it is called a spring. The first half of the story is wrapped by blessed. Notice the ornaments that the servant sings at the beginning and at the culmination of his journey (bars 81 and 215). And the character of the unnamed servant of Abraham - how important this character is - how cautious (what if she won't come back with me), how bold (he runs to her - desperate for water I am sure), how confident (he displays the gold ring and bracelets), how careful (he prays), how careless (impetuous)! Actually everyone runs impetuously - the man, Rebekah, and Laban. My translation is of course curious because of the severe constraints imposed by the music. But you will learn something if you sing or closely read through it. I am sure you will notice things I haven't mentioned.

Now - is this a #bgbg2 story? - sure. I think I can assure you that I have only one ax to grind at this point in my life. And it's not a fundamentalist or confessional ax. Yes - read - but keep the brain and body fully engaged. I would say - read as literature, read as music, read as testimony, read as drama, read and say 'what for!' And don't accept pat answers. Be wary of your power and of the powers that you perceive that others wish to exercise over you. If the story is awful, it probably is awful and was awful and is not there to be imitated. If there is a flaw or a contradiction, love it, turn it and turn it again. Especially don't accept the statement that this complex of documents whose boundaries are loosely defined by human institutions can be watertight with respect to some undefinable perfection. Though it is sufficient, it needs no trite packaging.

I have been reading about philosophy, and post modernism of the strong and the weak kind (I always thought that description of an age was odd). Remember Spinoza and his deconstruction of the divine right of kings what the essayists like Ronald Hendel in the latest SBL Journal, Vol 133 No 2, see as the beginning of critical reading of Scripture. (Well, critical of a different sort - not all who are pre-Spinoza are without comfort. And some comfort is cold.)

I only read about these things - I don't read the philosophers themselves - not enough time in the day. You can ask why I read the Bible - and particularly why the Old Testament. There is an invisible unnamed servant (with camels?) who seems to be with me in thick and thin and I have been called in my impetuous nature to go with him to a place I have not been to before.  Don't worry about the camels.

That means, in the overall scheme of things, that these stories are going to undermine my assumptions - especially my religious ones.

Perhaps my wife's dramatics are more important than I allow. Go on - find the pdf and read the whole thing!

The Binding of Isaac

Here's a little of the conversation of Abraham and his son, Isaac. Note how it is surrounded by the story - and they walked, the two of them, together. This lesson is yet another alternative lesson for today in the Revised Common Lectionary.  When there are three alternatives, there is not so much common anymore. You will note that I only translated a bit of this. Just the conversation that surrounds the traditional - God himself will provide a lamb for the burnt offering. You will note that I did not translate it quite so. The word for provide is actually see.  You might read it as God will see to the sacrifice for himself. But that would impose an English idiom onto the Hebrew - and who knows if that was how an ancient Hebrew might have thought?

God will see. That is interesting, isn't it. Who's looking? What are we to make of Isaac - and what are we to make of Job - the innocent suffering for the sin of the world - whether it be child sacrifice or random violence?  Do we take Abraham's obedience as a model or do we take the meaning behind the story as a model? Must we stop short of explanation? [The pdf, xml, and score are in the usual place - maybe someone else would like to complete the translation.]

We might notice also that this is a male thing. The woman is never heard from again. Sarah never speaks again in the story. The next thing we hear of her is that she has died and Abraham buys her grave for 400 shekels of silver - a 'little thing', i.e. a hard bargain with the Hittites.

Jeremiah's lament of chapter 20 in music

Now for something different. Jeremiah 20:7-13.

In this lectionary passage, Jeremiah alludes to two psalms. The laughter and derision reflect the two words of Psalm 2:4. Jeremiah is at the butt end of ridicule from his own people. This is a contrast to Psalm 2 in which the derision is from heaven to earth. Here it is from earth to the prophet appointed by and representing heaven. The beginning of Jeremiah 20:10 is identical to the beginning of Psalm 31:14.  Jeremiah makes this psalm his. One might wonder who was first, the psalmist or the prophet. But perhaps we all understand both 'defamation' and 'terror surrounding' in our own contexts even 2500 years later in time.

Jeremiah feels used, even abused, and is disappointed in Yahweh - so he tells him to his face. (That's the only way to manage. If you are going to complain, go to the top). Bruggeman, (1998 p. 181) also translates the verb as seduced as I have. The power of God who 'could' overpower Jeremiah is contrasted with the same word concerning his own inability to hold his tongue - that he 'could not' and again with those who taunt him - hoping he will be 'seduced' again so that they 'can' overpower him. As in the psalms, the repetition of the same word forms a rhetorical game that is missed in translation (unless you are as wooden as I am).

Bruggeman asserts without justification that 'the claim [of power] only asserts Yahweh's raw, primitive power'. I don't get his point. The power to seduce and overcome is more than raw or primitive and it is pervasive. With Yahweh, it is a power of love, with Jeremiah, a lack of power to resist the burning fire that he must express, and with those politicians ('peaceful mortals') who taunt him, it is the abuse of the same power to aggrandize themselves in their impotence over the one who speaks truth into their weakness. There is nothing 'primitive' here, particularly the motivation of Yahweh to save his people even if through fire. Equally, our mortal weakness pretends to be strong. And we too, failing in insight, share in the 'everlasting' confusion.

Jeremiah will ultimately be the prophet of the New Covenant (chapter 31) in which the Law of love (not the law of oil or money or influence or self-interest) is written on our hearts. So in verse 13 he does not lose heart even if in the remaining verses of the poem and song (Jeremiah 20:14-17) he identifies with the words of Job and calls down a curse on the day he was born.

Bereshit - in the beginning of...

This is a summary with a simple example of what the work of Suzanne Haik Vantoura means to me. If you were going to write a book on this, which passages of Scripture would you include? 

Let’s begin with music. In the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and of the earth.

Pitch any of the music where it is comfortable for you. The opening is a major triad followed by the subdominant, doh, mi, sol, la. Then descend a major third to re where your mode includes the awkward augmented second from re to mi. Then back to re and back to doh. We have even fewer notes than the doh-re-mi song in The Sound of Music.

That is the first verse of Genesis.

What class of music is this? How many differing phrases are there? What does it say about the text? Does singing the text change its meaning?

There are so many possible things to notice about the text and the music. Note that I have put a caesura in this short phrase. A caesura is a pause. It means take a rest and think about what you are in the middle of. In English, it reads: in the beginning of God’s creating.

Pause.

In the beginning of God’s creating what? Take up the tune again: the heavens and the earth. This second half of the verse is the direct object of the first half of the verse. We know that it is the direct object from the little word ‘eit’. This word is spelt alef-taf. It is comprised of the first (א) and last (ת) letters of the Hebrew consonant alphabet. It signifies that the direct object of the verb follows. There are two direct objects in the phrase, hashamayim, the heavens, and ha’arets, the earth. To match the rhythm of the Hebrew, we might translate the phrase as; of both the heavens and also the earth. But generally speaking, the direct object marker את is not translated.

Why didn’t I translate as usual: in the beginning, God created? There are a lot of good reasons. In Hebrew, it is often the case that a word ending in ‘t’ indicates a special form of the noun that says ‘more to come’. In this case, the single word bereshit, is ‘in the beginning of’, not just ‘in the beginning’. There is a suggestion in the form of this gerund from the verb ‘to begin’ that creation continues and that time is different from the time-line that we imagine. It is not as if God ‘created’ and then just let the clockwork happen.

Music is more than a single note. Music gathers words into a single phrase that holds the beginning in the end and makes time in a sense, stand still. We will have a lot to say about the heavens and our earth, our land, even our own individual piece of the ground which we know as body, a body with ears that can hear the music it sings, a body with heart that can know the singer of the music, a body with eyes that can process the information in the music, the text, and its history.

So bereshit is more than a distant big bang, and more than a distant act of speech. It is also a continuing presence and a promising end.

The text

This section is a bit more technical.

In our typical Latin-based texts, we have 26 letters and punctuation. Our letters are either vowels or consonants, a single letter (like Y or W) occasionally acting as either. Our punctuation is indicated through fewer than a dozen marks, comma, period, semicolon, colon, dashes, quotations, and so on. In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are 22 consonants, a dozen or so vowels, and the te’amim, a set of 22 marks considered for the last 1000 years as punctuation. David Mitchell[1] dubs them “punctuation on steroids”. These accents make considerably more sense as music. Hebrew vowel sounds are indicated by dots and dashes under the consonantal letters. Both vowels and te’amim are under and over the letters of the text, like this letter bet with an ‘a’ under it, בָ pronounced ba or va.

	Letter	Rough pronunciation
א	Alef	guttural or nothing
ב	Bet	b or v
ג	Gimel	g (hard)
ד	Daleth	d or th
ה	Heh	h
ו	Vav	וָ va וּ oo וֵ vei וֹ vo וִ vi וְ vɘ  וֶveh  וv or nothing
ז	Zayin	z
ח	Chet	ch
ט	Tet	t
י	Yod	y
ך כ	Kaf	k

	Letter	Rough pronunciation
ל	Lamed	l
ם מ	Mem	m
ן נ	Nun	n
ס	Samech	s
ע	Ayin	guttural deeper than alef
ף פ	Peh	p or f
ץ צ	Tsade	ts
ק	Qof	q
ר	Resh	r
שׁ	Shin	sh
שׂ	Sin	s
ת	Taf	t

The te’amim, called marks of taste[2], like this mark, בֽ, can be considered as disjunctive or conjunctive signs like punctuation, but they are also of sufficient complexity taken together to be hand signals or chironomy, signs indicating the movements of a conductor of music.

The te’amim consist of two overlapping sets of signs, one for the books of truth[3], Psalms, Proverbs, and the speeches of Job, and one for all the rest of the Hebrew Bible. For convenience, I will distinguish these two sets by the names poetry for the three, and prose for the remainder.

The Deciphering Key

The first thing to note about the te’amim is that there are exactly eight signs below the letters for the prose and seven for the poetry. What a musician immediately notices is that these could be applied to a musical scale, the full octave for the prose, and a modal scale for the poetry. The remaining signs, with some duplication of those used below the text, all occur above the letters. There are eleven in use for the prose and eight for the poetry. The overlap between the sets is quite comprehensible to a musician. It is feasible to learn to sight-read the music, much as a musician can sight-read tonic sol-fa or a musical staff.

Here is the first set of marks, the scale for the prose books as deciphered by Suzanne Haik-Vantoura (SHV).

ב֧ ב֤ ב֣ ב֑ ב֖ ב֥ בֽ ב֛

These she sets to correspond (reading left to right) exactly to a tonic sol-fa scale with a raised fifth. C D E F, G# A B C. Notice how close the poetry scale is: D# E F# G A B C.

ב֤ ב֣ ב֑ ב֖ ב֥ בֽ ב֢

All these pitches are relative to the tonic, the third note of the prose scale and the second note of the poetry scale.[4] The tonic is signified by the silluq ֽ under the letter. Readers of Hebrew will recognize that this sign occurs at the end of every verse. Each set also comes to rest on the A subdominant. Readers of Hebrew will recognize the sign, ֑ the atnah, as the primary disjunctive mark in many verses.

SHV interpreted the set of signs that occur above the letters as ornaments relative to the current pitch. The current pitch is determined by default as the tonic until a sign is encountered that changes it. The current pitch remains current until a new sign is encountered below the letters. The ornaments return to the current pitch either on the current syllable or on the next syllable. The determination is made based on placement of the sign and whether the pitch changes on the next syllable.

Here are the ornaments for the poetry books as they would be interpreted on a musical staff when the current pitch is A. On the right is the full scale. The full set is available here.

In all the many examples developed by SHV, she says she has applied these notes without exception to decipher the music from the Hebrew text.[5] She recommends using the Max HaLevi Letteris edition (1896). Mitchell (2013)[6] points out that her bias is not justified in that she likely never saw the more reliable Aleppo Codex. All the music in my recent posts has been derived from the Hebrew text of the Westminster Leningrad codex (www.tanach.us/Tanach.xml) and edited where necessary and where available to agree with the Aleppo codex (www.aleppocodex.org) or (in a very few cases) the Letteris edition of 1946.

Back to the Beginning

Now that the technical part is dealt with, let’s put all the pieces together, the original Hebrew text, the syllables transcribed into Latin characters, and the musical signs for this first phrase of the Bible.

Music is more than notes. This opening snippet of music gathers 18 syllables into two phrases. The first word shows a change in reciting note on the third syllable. So we move from E to G#, from doh to mi. The second syllable of the second word shows a sign that moves us to sol (B). Then the first of this pair of phrases has a rest point in the middle (fa, A) marked by the atnah (^) on the third syllable of Elohim.

We rest on God’s creating. Even in the middle of a thought, we rest.

The fourth word, the single syllable direct object marker, shows that we move to F (re). Then the third syllable of hashamayim, the heavens, moves us back to G# (mi). The second syllable of the sixth word, the second direct object marker, moves us back to F (re), and then we reach the tonic doh, again on the silluq on the middle syllable of the seventh word.

So we have a musical movement from tonic to subdominant in the first phrase. Each stressed syllable follows the dashed bar line which always occurs at a change in reciting note. Then a musical movement from the rest point back to the tonic. Each phrase has three stresses and each leads to the end of the phrase as one would expect of music.

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[1] http://home.scarlet.be/~tsf07148/theo/Resinging.pdf published in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36/3, March 2012.

[2] The word טעם ta’am, taste, from which the name of the signs is derived, can also mean a slight madness. Both these meanings are evident in the alphabetic acrostic poem, Psalm 34, verses 1 and 9 in the Hebrew numbering. In verse 1, David feigns his madness so he can escape from Abimelech, and in the first word of verse 9 (tet being the ninth letter of the alef-bet) the poet uses the same word to mean taste.

[3] So called from the first letters of each book: alef-mem-taf, meaning truth.

[4] The choice of E is arbitrary and may be adjusted to a lower pitch if singers or instruments require it.

[5] She is quite subjective at some points especially in mode 4, rejecting the A# where it suits her taste. Nonetheless, her consistency is very high if not as rigid as a computer program must be.

[6] David Mitchell (2013). How can we sing the Lord’s Song? Deciphering the Masoretic Cantillation in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. Susan Gillingham, OUP.