Wednesday Bible Study: Change of command

In Deuteronomy 31, the passing of leadership from Moses to Joshua begins. There ' s a lot of repetition of the prophecy of the conquest of the promised land, followed by apostasy and Yahweh temporarily abandoning the people. Then there ' s a lot of business about writing down the law -- again, not clear if it ' s the whole of the law as given in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, or some excerpt. Finally, God has Moses write a song, but we don ' t get to read the lyrics until the next chapter. Unfortunately, the music is not supplied, and we don ' t know much about the music of that culture.According to Wikipedia:The earliest synagogal music of which we have any account was based on the system used in theTemple in Jerusalem. TheMishnah gives several accounts of Temple music.[2] According to the Mishnah, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and a choir of twelve male singers.[3] The instruments included thekinnor (lyre),nevel (harp),shofar (ram ' s horn),ḥatzotzᵊrot (trumpet) and three varieties of pipe, thechalil,alamoth and theuggav.[4] The Temple orchestra also included acymbal (tziltzal) made ofcopper.[5] TheTalmud also mentions use in the Temple of apipe organ (magrepha), and states that thewater organ was not used in the Temple as its sounds were too distracting.[6] No provable examples of the music played at the Temple have survived.[7] However, there is an oral tradition that the tune used forKol Nidrei was sung in the temple.[8] Anywa...
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