by the Levite youths, who stood below the suggestus at the feet of the Levites (vid., on Psa 46:1-11). The daily שׁיר הקרבן (i.e., the week-day psalm which concluded the morning sacrifice) was sung in nine (or perhaps more correctly 3)[1] pauses, and the pauses were indicated by the trumpet-blasts of the priests (vid., on Ps 38; Psa 81:4). Beside the seven Psalms which were sung week by week, there were others appointed for the services of the festivals and intervening days (vid., on Ps 81), ), and in Biccurim 3, 4 we read that when a procession bearing the firstfruits accompanied by flute playing had reached the hill on which the Temple stood and the firstfruits had been brought up in baskets, at the entrance of the offerers into the Azara, Psa 30:1-12 was struck up by the Levites. This singing was distinct from the mode of delivering the Tefilla (vid., on Ps 44 ad fin.) and the benediction of the priests (vid., on Psa 67:1-7), both of which were unaccompanied by music. Distinct also, as it seems, from the mode of delivering the Hallel, which was more as a recitative, than sung (Pesachim 64a, קראוּ את ההלל). It was probably similar to the Arabic, which delights in shrieking, long-winded, trilling, and especially also nasal tones. For it is related of one of the chief singers that in order to multiply the tones, he placed his thumb in his mouth and his fore finger ביו הנימין (between the hairs, i.e., according to Rashi: on the furrow of the upper lip against the partition of the nostrils), and thus (by forming mouth and nose into a trumpet) produced sounds, before the volume of which the priests started back in astonishment.[2]
This mode of psalm-singing in the Temple of Herod was no longer the original mode, and if the present accentuation of the Psalms represents the fixed form of the Temple song, it nevertheless does not convey to us any impression
- ↑ This is the view of Maimonides, who distributes the 9 trumpet-blasts by which the morning sacrifice, according to Succa 53b, was accompanied, over the 3 pauses of the song. The hymn Haazînu, Deut 32, which is called הלוים שׁירת par excellence, was sung at the Sabbath Musaph-sacrifice - each Sabbath a division of the hymn, which was divided into six parts - so that it began anew on every seventh Sabbath, vid., J. Megilla, sect. iii, ad fin.
- ↑ Vid., B. Joma 38b and J. Shekalim v. 3, comp. Canticum Rabba on Canticles Psa 3:6.
