Bring Me a Guitar Player

     Jehoshaphat said, “The word of the Lord is with him.” So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him.
     Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Why do you want to involve me? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother.”
     "No,” the king of Israel answered, “because it was the Lord who called us three kings together to deliver us into the hands of Moab.”
     Elisha said, “As surely as the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, if I did not have respect for the presence of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, I would not pay any attention to you. But now bring me a harpist.”
     While the harpist was playing, the hand of the Lord came on Elisha... (2 Kings 3:12–15)

As I was soaking in the hot tub this morning (an enjoyable morning ritual), I was thinking about this passage, and in particular the part I underlined above. Interesting, isn't it.

We don't read elsewhere about Elisha, or Elijah using music as some sort of aid to hearing God's message. There are a few other times that prophesying and music seem to be joined. In 1Samuel 10:5, when Samuel tells Saul he will meet a procession of prophets "...with lyres, timbrels, pipes and harps being played before them, and they will be prophesying." In  1Chronicles 25:1 David and his commanders set some men apart "...for the ministry of prophesying, accompanied by harps, lyres and cymblals..." A little later in the same passage (in verse 3) the sons of Jeduthun "...prophesied, using the harp in thanking and praising the Lord." Interesting isn't it.

It makes me wonder whether musical accompaniment to prophesying was considered so normal, that the those who wrote these things down for us simply didn't see the need, most of the time, to note such an obvious thing. The passage from 2Kings seems especially casual in mentioning the need for "a harpist."

"Bring Me a Guitar Player"

I know. I know. It doesn't say guitar in the Bible, it says "harpist." Actually, it doesn't say that in Hebrew. It says someone who plays a stringed instrument. We are assuming it was a harp because it was a common stringed instrument of the time. It may have been another stringed instrument, like the lyre (although some Hebrew scholar may point out my error here). My point is that Elijah is asking for someone to play a stringed instrument, not a flute, a tambourine, or a trumpet, or even a shofar.

Why "Bring Me a Guitar"? You might say, they didn't even have guitars back then, and you'd be right. At the same time, what we call a harp, wasn't what was played back then either. Whatever the instrument was, whether, harp, lyre or some other instrument it was portable, and likely to be found among ordinary soldiers. Kind of like a guitar in our day. ;-)

Anyway, I'm a guitar player, so I'm going with my re-contextualization of the principle.

The playing of a stringed instrument is also interesting to me, though maybe it's because I play one. It's interesting how stringed instruments work to create sound. They actually create a multi-layered sound that most people can't distinguish. When you pluck a string it is making several tones at the same time, these can heard using what guitar-players (and others) call harmonics. Harmonics are interesting in acoustics, but I bring them up here as an example to remind us that in music there is more going on than we are often aware of - and yet it still affects us.

Music and Prophesying

So, what's the connection between music and prophesying? Why didn't Elisha just go off by himself for a while and pray, and let God talk to him that way? Why would he need to even do that; if God wanted to say something to this great prophet, why wouldn't he be able to hear it immediately? Sometimes the prophets did these sorts of things. I suppose we shouldn't imagine there was only one way that a prophet sought to hear something from the Lord. But it is one way. As a guitar player, I find that interesting.

Obviously, we don't know the definitive answer to any of those questions. (I love questions like that; they're great for meditating on the Word!) What we do know, is that Elisha felt the need for some music, so that he could prophesy. Maybe it was a psychological reason (as some commentators suggest): he was upset and needed to calm down because of the way he was asked to do this. That's really reading into the text what isn't there, isn't it. Yes he may have been unsettled, but there's no hint that this is why he asked for the harpist (or a guitar player ;-) if he lived in our day).

Looking at this, alongside the other passages I noted above, there is a connection between prophesying and music being played. How the connection is made is not explained to us. My philosophy of music (explained below), leads me to believe that music helped Elisha not merely to calm his emotions, but to actually connect with God Himself. The music became the means by which Elisha's spirit connected with God's Spirit. That's what it looks like to me. That's what I read in how this part of the story is told.

As the music was playing "...the hand of the Lord came on Elisha." Doing a quick study of the phrase "hand of the Lord" in the Bible, what we find is that the hand of the Lord most often comes as a blessing, or in judgment. Most often when God speaks to a prophet, what we read is that the word of the Lord came to the prophet. In Ezekiel the hand of the Lord takes the prophet places and more often seems to simply indicate God's powerful and overcoming presence. If you've every had someone put their hand on your shoulder when you needed it, maybe you've had an experience similar to what Elisha had here with God's hand on him.

It looks to me like the music opened a spiritual door that wasn't opened before it was played. It opened a door to the presence of God, or at a minimum to the awareness of God's hand.

When David played music a tormenting spirit left king Saul. No explanation is give as to why this worked, or how it worked - it just worked.

I draw from this the conclusion that music has a kind of spiritual power, or perhaps it's a way to access the spiritual world. I can't make up my mind. Maybe it's both. I'm just wondering here. I'm not totally sure, but it certainly looks that way to me.

I know many Christians who will put on Christian music, just to help them tune into God better. They do it as a part of their prayer life, or while doing there chores, or when facing difficulties. They all tell me it helps. I prefer to play music for the same reasons. Music acts like a catalyst to restructure our thoughts on God - or it can, if it's good music.

Of All the things God Created...

I sometimes wonder why God decided to create music. Of all the things He made, this one seems the least practical. By itself, it doesn't feed anyone, doesn't plant seeds, build homes, tend animals, stop bullets. It seems like a thoroughly and yet wonderfully impractical thing. 

I think it tells us that God isn't interested in mere practicality. He is the ultimate creative artist. He delights in the beauty of things simply because they are beautiful. Unless I'm reading my Bible wrong, He apparently enjoys being sung to and worshiped with voices and instruments. That's all I really need to know, but I still wonder about these things.

What Is It about Music That Stirs Our Hearts?

There's something about music, that stirs us, isn't there. As the harpist or lyre-player plucked the strings, something in the heart is plucked at the same time. I'm going to share my personal thoughts on music in the next few paragraphs. This isn't Scripture, so don't take it as "gospel truth." It's sort of my philosophy of music, as I've come to understand it. Since I play a stringed instrument (guitar), you can call this my "string theory" (apologies to theoretical physicists).

Christians from all over the world, from many diverse cultures sing, and many play instruments. This isn't true only of Christians, of course. (Many religions include music as an important part of what it means to be involved in their religion.) When something great happens, we often sing. We sing at weddings, often (not always) at funerals, at birthdays, anniversaries. We sing at Christmas time and Easter. For most of us, those things wouldn't be complete without music. Even folks who don't sing well, still enjoy music (at least most of them, most of the time).

We fight about musical styles -- contemporary vs traditional, classical vs popular, this musical artist vs that one, etc., etc. I think we fight because, when it comes to music, it's always personal. It's sad that we fight, and often evidence of shear selfishness, but people take sides because it's personal. (It would be better if we would instead learn to appreciate a broader range of musical styles). Certain kinds of music touch us especially deeply. When we hear certain songs, or other pieces of music, we are moved by them, and perhaps remember a time when we were very deeply moved by them.

Of course, there's cheap music, just like there's imitation sugar. It's superficial, predictable, and designed to be "here today and gone tomorrow" and while it's here today, to make some money. It plays with shallow emotions, and becomes an analgesic to deeper ones. It's like settling for a light donut (mostly air and sugar), when our hearts are hungry for steak and potatoes.

There's also music that's so esoteric that one wonders if it can properly be called music. It claims to be in the avant-garde (forefront), whether from the classical genre or in jazz (and perhaps some other genres I'm not familiar with). But much of the time (though not always!) these art forms appeal only to the elite few who "understand" what the artist is "really doing." Often what they are really doing amounts to snobbery. (And yes there are musical snobs in every musical genre that people are involved in.)

Good music communicates creatively and with excellence, and is still able to stir the hearts of ordinary people, and even stir them deeply. Good music evokes from us something more than bubble-gum smiles. A good song is both approachable, and at the same helps us sing what we didn't know we wanted to sing. Good music can bring to us an awareness of grandeur we hadn't imagined, or of the beauty found in the simple and humble. It can transport us to the pomp of golden throne rooms, or to plainness of fields of blowing grass.

Music is an art form that has the capacity to connect directly with our spirits, beyond mere intellect (though not by-passing it), beyond emotion (though involving it); it has the unique ability to drive down into the core of our being and wake up what was sleeping and give courage to what was hiding there. Music can make more than our mouths sing; it can make our spirits sing too.

Whatever it is, music has something in it our spirits resonate with. 

Sing or play something today.