Harp (kinnor and nevel)

Two stringed instruments dominate the music of the Hebrew Bible. The kinnor (rendered 'harp' in older English Bibles, more accurately a lyre) was small enough to be carried and played one-handed — a wooden soundbox with two arms and a yoke, strung with sheep-gut. It was the instrument David held in Saul's court to soothe the troubled king (1 Samuel 16:23) and the one the exiles hung up on Babylonian poplars when their captors demanded songs of Zion (Psalm 137:2). The nevel — typically translated 'psaltery' or 'harp' — was a larger ten-stringed lyre with a swelling, jar-shaped soundbox (nevel means 'jar'), used together with the kinnor in the Levitical Temple orchestras (1 Chronicles 15:16, 25:1; 2 Chronicles 5:12). Both instruments are pictured on the silver shekel coinage of the Second Jewish Revolt (Bar Kokhba, AD 132–135), where the lyre is one of the symbols of the rebuilt Temple. In Revelation 14:2 and 15:2 the redeemed before the throne hold golden harps and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb.