Harp

The nevel (or nebel), named about 27 times, usually appears beside the kinnor, and it is the harder of the two to identify. The word also means “skin” or “skin bottle”, perhaps for the bulging shape of its sound box. By one view it was a true harp, with the strings running down to a sound box at the bottom, larger and louder than the lyre and played with the fingers; by another it was a large lyre with a deeper voice. Older English Bibles call it a “psaltery” or “viol”; most modern ones say “harp”.

Solomon had lyres and harps made for the singers from rare almug wood (1 Kings 10:12), and harps sounded with lyres and cymbals at the dedication of Jerusalem’s rebuilt wall. Three psalms speak of making music “with ten strings” (Psalm 33:2) — the asor, perhaps a ten-stringed zither; its form is not clear. Daniel 3 lists the instruments of Nebuchadnezzar’s court — horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and pipes — and three of their Aramaic names come from Greek words: kitharis, psaltērion and symphōnia.