Stringed instruments are more important in corporate worship than are wind instruments or percussion instruments

According to my method, mention CAN indicate popularity. I never said it would always indicate popularity. I looked at the sum total of the harp mentions to assess that popularity COULD be the reason for the mentions and I pointed out that the first mention was way back in the book of Genesis. I don't know why you think that a mention would signify equal popularity with other things that are mentioned at the same time. That's not logical so I have no idea why you think claiming otherwise is illegitimate. That doesn't make sense.

I already mentioned that organs are NOT mentioned as much as harps so your claim that a mention would signify equal popularity is disproven. Equal numbers of mentions could signify equal popularity, but even that is not assured, and that's not the case at all with harps and organs.

And you have not provided any evidence that harps were popular and common among the people, so God commanded their use repeatedly in worship, but organs were not common and popular among the people so that was the reason He did not repeatedly command their use. You have merely asserted that was true.

I think you are failing to take into account a very important factor in regards to the mention of the trumpets and that is WHO owned and used the trumpets. Look at Numbers 10:1-2 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps.

The next 8 verses speak of the blowing of these TWO trumpets for various situations, such as moving the camp and gathering at the tabernacle and going to war and in verse 10, they blow "in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months."

So the priests were blowing these two trumpets. Trumpets are NOT shown to be a common instrument of the general population. Some of the mentions of trumpets in the Bible are of angels blowing the trumpets, so again, this would not be describing ownership by the general population of people.

I do think that the frequency of priestly USE of the trumpets is an indication of how important the trumpet was to the life of the Israelites. This importance is not based on general ownership of trumpets but upon how the trumpets regulated the lives of the Israelites.

No, you are conflating the use of different types of trumpets mentioned in the Bible and claiming that all of that evidence is relevant to prove the same point.

The silver trumpets spoken of in Numbers 10 were never used by common people and account for only 29 of the 104 mentions of trumpets.

Your reasoning does not accord with the fact that the other 75 occurrences of trumpets would show (which is still far more than the 54 total of harps), according to your reasoning, that they were a common and popular instrument, and therefore, God would have commanded repeatedly their use in the Psalms. He, however, did not do so.

Furthermore, even though God is the One who commanded the making and use of those silver trumpets in Numbers 10, there is only one mention/command of/for their use in the Psalms.

Most importantly, my original point that stringed instruments were far more important than wind or percussion instruments in corporate worship stands regardless of all the other things that you are claiming without biblical evidence were true. You have not provided any evidence to disprove that biblical fact.

It's striking and highly instructive that the Spirit only speaks of one musical instrument as being pleasant. That instrument is not drums or some other percussion instrument. That instrument is not trumpets or some other wind instrument.

The harp is the only instrument that inspired revelation teaches us is divinely regarded as being pleasant (Ps. 81:2)! More than any other consideration, this biblical fact explains the biblical primacy of God's commanding the use of harps in corporate worship--He commanded that corporate worship prominently feature harp music because the harp is uniquely the instrument that God speaks of in His Word as being pleasant.

It also explains why harps are the only instruments that the Spirit explicitly mentions as being used in the corporate worship in heaven.

You keep trying to argue against a claim that I never made. My claim was that a frequent mention of something COULD be due to the fact that the something being mentioned is common. Honey actually supports that claim rather than disproves it. Honey is frequently mentioned and the reason it is frequently mentioned COULD be because honey was common.

Why do you keep lying about my claim by saying that my claim is "whatever was common and popular is what God would command in worship?" That is your faulty assessment of my claim that you keep trying to present as my claim and even though I have repeated to you that that is not my claim, you keep insisting that it is.

I have never lied in anything or about anything that I have ever said on SI. I will address these comments further when I have more time to do so.

I think you are making far too much out of one instance of the harp being described as pleasant. After all, isn't this telling us something that we would already assume to be true about every other instrument that we are commanded to play? Pleasant means pleasing. If God commands us to use the timbrel, as He does in Ps. 81:2, then he must also consider the timbrel to be pleasing to Him. He wouldn't command us to use the timbrel if the timbrel wasn't pleasing/pleasant to him. Would He?

The inspired description of the harps as pleasant does NOT require us to think of every other commanded instrument as less pleasant than the harp. That could be true, but it's also true that other instruments could be just as pleasant as the harp. Why, it's even true that some other instrument could be even more pleasant than the harp, but God decided not to reveal that to us.

It seems to me you are reading some importance into the one-time use of this adjective because you already hold an opinion that you are trying to justify. If the occurrence of "pleasant" is what you are using to prove your point "more than any other consideration," then your case is much weaker than I originally thought it to be.

No, you are denying what Scripture says and what the Spirit explicitly inspired:

Psalm 81:2 Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery.

The fact that in the very same command in which God commanded the use of the timbrel, the harp, and the psaltery, God explicitly designated the harp as pleasant but did not do so for either timbrels or psalteries shows that God does not regard timbrels or psalteries as pleasant to Him in the way that He does harps.

That is direct biblical statement. It does not make any difference that God said this in this one verse, and did not repeat it elsewhere. Anything that God has said is so, and God does not have to repeat something in His Word for it to be true.

When His people obeyed His commands to use the harp in worshiping Him, God was both pleased with their obedience, and He was pleased aesthetically with the sounds that the harps produced. Those are two different senses of His being pleased.

You are equating doing things that are pleasing to God with a statement of God's aesthetic pleasure in the harp. That is not a right handling of the Bible.

In addition to what Ps. 81:2 teaches us about the unique excellence of the harp, Psalm 92 corroborates that importance and extends it to two other stringed instruments as well:

Psalm 92:1 <A Psalm or Song for the sabbath day.> It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High: 2 To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night, 3 Upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon the psaltery; upon the harp with a solemn sound.

This passage uniquely sets forth that singing praise to God on three different stringed instruments was what God says was a good thing to do on His special day, the Sabbath. To my knowledge, no other passage explicitly highlights in such a manner the use of any other instruments.

Certainly, obeying God's commands or heeding any other directive that He has given is always a good thing, but what this passage reveals is not reducible to merely goodness in that respect. Rather, this is an explicit declaration that taught God's people what was a good thing to do on the Sabbath.

Furthermore, unlike some of the other passages about the harp and other stringed instruments in the Psalms, this passage was not directed to the chief musician. Its scope of direct applicability, therefore, was greater than those passages.

Moreover, this passage shows the unique importance of the harp by specifying what kind of sound God wanted produced on the harp when people sang praises to Him on the Sabbath--a solemn sound. Because the Spirit does not do so for any other instrument that He directed was to be used in corporate worship, Ps. 92 is yet another passage that stresses to us the greater importance of stringed instruments in corporate worship versus that of wind instruments and percussion instruments.

While continuing to study all the passages in the Bible that mention musical instruments or terms pertaining to them, I have been thinking about what Scripture says about information that is known to us versus information that is not. Two passages have especially come to mind.

A. John 20:30 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: 31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

Here, the Spirit has revealed that the disciples knew much more information about the signs that Jesus did in their presence than what the Spirit has chosen to inspire to be included in Scripture. In addition, the Spirit has expressed that His purpose in doing so was that we might believe certain things based on the info that He has chosen to record in Scripture about the signs that Jesus did. By believing those things, we have life through the name of Jesus Christ.

B. Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

What God has not revealed is secret information that He has reserved for Himself. What He has revealed belongs to us and our descendants so that we would do all that He has instructed us to do in His Word.

Applying these two passages to the subject of this thread confirms for me that the focus of any discussion in this thread needs to be on what has been revealed and its relevance for our understanding of the comparative importance that the different kinds of musical instruments have in corporate worship.

God has chosen to reveal to us three times that harps are used in heavenly corporate worship, but He has not chosen to reveal to us the use of any other instruments in the worship in heaven. This exclusivity of revelation is unquestionably intentional and purposeful. We must profit fully from it.

The Spirit has provided only one verse about musical instruments used in worship by God's ordinary people (that is, the common people who were not religious, civil, or military leaders) prior to the time of Samuel and Saul:

Exod. 15:20 And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.

According to this verse, all the Israelite women used timbrels in an occasion of sacred, national celebration in worship that was led by Miriam the prophetess. Given that there were hundreds of thousands of women among God's people at this time, this verse reveals to us that the people undoubtedly had many thousands of timbrels in their possession after they came out of Egypt.

By striking contrast, we do not have any inspired information about God's people having any stringed instruments until several hundred years later in the time of Samuel (1 Sam. 10:5).

This evidence strongly points to timbrels and not harps or any other stringed instruments as being the commonly owned musical instrument of God's people from the time of the Exodus to the time of Samuel and Saul.

Even in the time of Samuel, Saul, and David, the Spirit revealed that timbrels were the instruments that were widely owned and used by the common people:

1 Samuel 18:6 And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets [same Heb. word as for "timbrels" in Ex. 15:20], with joy, and with instruments of musick.

In this verse, "instruments of musick" is a Heb. word with an uncertain meaning as to what kind of instrument it denotes.

What's clear in this verse, however, is that the Spirit has again attested to us that timbrels were the instruments that were very commonly owned by the people (by His saying that women from all the cities of Israel came out playing that instrument).

Based on the evidence of Ex. 15:20 and 1 Sam. 18:6, it seems that timbrels may have been the most commonly owned instruments of God's people in biblical times.

Previously, in this thread, I have pointed out how the Spirit has profoundly emphasized stringed instruments in the Psalms in His inspired direction to the chief musician. Scripture itself confirms the importance of that observation when we compare those passages with the ending of Habbakuk:

Habakkuk 3:17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19 The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.

The Spirit ended this inspired book of the Bible with explicit direction from a prophet to the chief singer that directs the chief singer only about the use of stringed instruments! No other kinds of instruments ever receive this kind of divine emphasis in Scripture through an exclusive mention of them in a book of the Bible!