From Reggie Kidd's WITH ONE VOICE.....The Bible: A Biography of Song in the Church
In the biblical history, ironically, music begins outside the
covenantal line as God’s gift to nonbelieving Jubal.
But song
eventually comes to mark the most significant of moments in
the relationship between Israel and Yahweh, Israel’s redeeming
Lord. In fact, over the course of Old Testament history, singing
emerges as a sure gauge of Israel’s relationship to the Lord and
the progress of her redemption.
Yahweh parts the Red Sea and the children of Israel sing, play
instruments, and dance. Just before Yahweh takes them across the
River Jordan, lest they forget what is going on, Moses teaches the
Israelites a song about who is waging the upcoming campaign of
conquest. Singing gets built into the covenant relationship both
as fortification for battle and as warning against faithlessness.

The warrior-poet David is dubbed “Sweet Singer of Israel.” He
becomes both musical soul-soother to his predecessor Saul and
designer of the sound system for a temple to be built by his own
son and successor Solomon. There is a grain of truth in novelist
James Michener’s notion that, before David, Israel’s faith is more
austere and less lyrical.
With David’s songs, a God who is invisible
shows the shape he can take in the human heart. The One
whose story of redemption from sin seems abstract compared to
the Baals’ earthy guarantees of procreation and harvest becomes
more accessible. It soon becomes apparent that Israel’s whole
faith venture will take on a new flavor in the way that David has
bared his soul before God through his psalms. His songs become
the impetus for a generations-long project: hymn writers and
collectors embody Israel’s story and emotional life in the book
of Psalms.
Once the Israelites build the temple, God’s glory cloud shows
up as though in answer to the people’s chorus and orchestra. In
war, Judah sends a choir before, or rather instead of, the army,
singing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for His lovingkindness is everlasting!”
Increasingly, the prophets of the Old Covenant point
to a future in which a new and final exodus will call forth “a new
song” of deliverance and victory. As a result, in the latter stages
of Old Testament revelation, God himself claims to be the prime
Singer, exulting in his joyful victory over his people’s enemies and
quieting them in his love.

Singing continues in the New Testament. Mary’s Magnificat
sounds the overture of the New Song Symphony to the God who
keeps covenant with his people and extends his mercy to the nations.
Jesus maintains that while John the Baptist came to teach
a dirge of judgment, by contrast he (Jesus) came to lead a dance
of joy. Accordingly, the Gospel writers lace their teachings about
who Jesus is with lines from Israel’s songbook. On his way to his
arrest, Jesus pauses to sing a hymn with his disciples.
In the first of many trips to prison for telling of Jesus’s death
and resurrection, the apostle Paul sings hymns. Paul tells Christians
to fill their time together with song. In fact, his letters are so
laced with poetry, scholars are still trying to figure out whether
he composed hymns himself or whether he was so filled with
his churches’ worship that their songs thrust their way into his
writing.
In the book of Revelation, the apostle John sees the worship
that is going on in heaven. Accordingly, he challenges churches
on the earth, struggling as they are with persecution from without
and faithlessness from within, to take their bearings from
heaven’s worship, and especially from songs that trumpet the
triumph of the Lion/Lamb (Revelation 5). In anticipation of the
sweet resolution of a new heaven and a new earth, John climaxes
his book with a fourfold “Hallelujah Chorus” in triple forte at the
wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev. 21:1–2; 19:1–10).