Poetry is an extremely ancient form of language. Poetry may be chanted, sung, accompanied by musical instruments or spoken. It is as old as music itself. From very ancient times, people have found great satisfaction in expressing themselves in words which have a rhythmical pattern. In the Psalter, the collection of  Hebrew psalms in our Bible, we have a wonderful anthology of expressions of worship. The Hebrew title for this anthology is Tehillim, a word which means 'Praises'. When the Hebrew books of the Old Testament were translated into Greek, the Greek word psalmoi, meaning songs accompanied with stringed instruments, was used for the translation of tehillim. The Greek name for a popular stringed instrument, which probably looked like the stringed harp of some traditional African musicians, was psalterion, and it is from this word that 'psalter' comes.

From all the evidence available, it is clear that the Jewish people loved to praise their God in singing, music and dancing. We have noted one incident in which this is clearly shown. In 2 Samuel 6: S, the description given of how King David brought the Ark of the Covenant from Kiriath Jearim says this: 'David and all the Israelites were dancing and singing with all their might to honour the LORD. They were playing harps, lyres, drums, rattles and cymbals.' A very joyous and enthusiastic picture comes to us out of that verse. It is likely that many of the musical instruments referred to in the Bible were similar to the traditional musical instruments of Africa and were played in very much the same way.

There is evidence from the Psalter itself that psalms were sung with musical accompaniment. In their Hebrew form, brief instructions are attached to many psalms, to indicate something significant to the singers. It is no longer clear what some of these instructions meant; for example, the Hebrew word selah occurs seventy-one times in the Psalter and may refer to a change in the kind of musical accompaniment to the singing, but we cannot be sure about this. In the Revised Standard

Version of the Bible the word has been retained without trying to translate it. In the Jerusalem Bible it has been translated by the word 'pause', and in the Good News Bible it has been left out altogether. The phrase, 'to the choirmaster' or 'for the choirmaster', is attached to 55 psalms, but we do not now understand what this signified. The Good News Bible omits it, but the Revised Standard version and the Jerusalem Bible retain it in their translations into English. Psalm 150, the last in the Psalter and one of the most joyful and exuberant of all the psalms, says: 'Praise him with trumpets. Praise him with harps and lyres. Praise him with drums and dancing. Praise him with harps and flutes. Praise him with cymbals.... Praise the Lord!' We can be quite sure that this was actually done.

The study of the ancient Middle East cultures shows that poetry, singing and music were part of the worship of the other nations; Israel was not unusual in praising her God in this way. But the uniqueness of the Psalter is in its witness to the historical self-revelation of the one true God, who is Israel's God. As we would expect, in the ancient poetry of worship which has been recovered from other nations, such as Canaanite poetry from Ugarit, the thoughts expressed come from a polytheistic, mythological background, in contrast to what is in the Psalter.