A gittith () is a musical term of uncertain meaning found in the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

, most likely referring to a type of musical instrument.

Mention in the Bible

The term "gittith" is used only three times in the Bible: at the beginnings of

Psalm 8 Psalm 8 is the eighth psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning and ending in English in the King James Version (KJV): "O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!". In Latin, it is known as "Domine Dominus noster". Its authorship ...

Psalm 81 Psalm 81 is the 81st psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "Sing aloud unto God our strength". In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translations of the B ...

, and

Psalm 84 Psalm 84 is the 84th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in the English of the King James Version: "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!". The Book of Psalms forms part of the ''Ketuvim'' section of the Hebrew Bible and part of ...

. These psalms open with "" (“for the Leader, upon the gittith”), a direction to the chief musician. Further elaboration or explanation of the meaning of the word is not given.

Later exegesis

Rashi Shlomo Yitzchaki (; ; ; 13 July 1105) was a French rabbi who authored comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Hebrew Bible. He is commonly known by the List of rabbis known by acronyms, Rabbinic acronym Rashi (). Born in Troyes, Rashi stud ...

cites

Menahem ben Saruq Menahem ben Saruq (also known as Menahem ben Jacob ibn Saruq, ) was a Spanish-Jewish philologist of the tenth century CE. He was a skilled poet and polyglot. He was born in Tortosa around 920 and died around 970 in Cordoba. Menahem produced an ear ...

in his claim that a gittith is a type of musical instrument. He then connects the term gittith to the city of

Gath Gath can refer to: * Gath (surname) * Gath (city), the biblical city and home of Goliath. Main site is Gath of the Philistines, but there are also other locations Gath Gittaim and Gath Carmel *Gath-hepher, a border town in ancient Israel * ''Gath'' ...

, meaning that a gittith would have been made by a Gittite, or a person from Gath. In 1 Samuel 21,

David David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Dam ...

stays with

Achish Achish ( ''ʾāḵīš'', Philistine: 𐤀𐤊𐤉𐤔 *''ʾākayūš'', Akkadian: 𒄿𒅗𒌑𒋢 ''i-ka-ú-su'') is a name used in the Hebrew Bible for two Philistine rulers of Gath. It is perhaps only a general title of royalty, applicable ...

, king of Gath, and could be understood to have taken back with him a musical instrument from Gath. Ibn Ezra makes a similar connection, explaining a gittith to be an instrument made for the

Levite Levites ( ; ) or Levi are Jewish males who claim patrilineal descent from the Tribe of Levi. The Tribe of Levi descended from Levi, the third son of Jacob and Leah. The surname ''Halevi'', which consists of the Hebrew definite article "" ''Ha-' ...

descendents of

Obed-Edom Obed-Edom or Oved Edom ( hebr.: עֹבֵד אֱדֹם) is a biblical name which in Hebrew means "servant of Edom," and which appears in the books of 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles. The relationship between these passages has been the subject of ...

, who was a Gittite. However, he also explains that the Psalms opening with (“for the Leader, upon the gittith”) are meant to be sung to a tune of a then-popular song opening with the words "the Gittite boasts" ().

Strong's Concordance ''The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible'', generally known as Strong's Concordance, is a Bible concordance, an index of every word in the King James Version (KJV), constructed under the direction of American theologian James Strong. Strong fi ...

lists 'gittith' as its 1665th entry, defining it as a Gittite harp.

Brown–Driver–Briggs ''A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament'', more commonly known as ''Brown–Driver–Briggs'' or ''BDB'' (from the name of its three authors) is a standard reference for Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic, first published in 1906. ...

translates 'gittith' directly to mean a type of

lyre The lyre () (from Greek λύρα and Latin ''lyra)'' is a string instrument, stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the History of lute-family instruments, lute family of instruments. In organology, a ...

Link to winepresses in Christian and Jewish sources

The

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

translates (“upon the gittith”) as ''hyper ton lenon'', or “for/on the winepresses”, based on the Hebrew גת (‘winepress’). It is possible that this translation comes from the replacement of גתית with גתות, which would indeed be the normative plural of גת. Ibn Ezra rejects this notion explicitly, referring to it as (emptiness, vapidity). Most likely independent of the Septuagint, much rabbinical commentary in

Midrash Tehillim Midrash Tehillim (Hebrew: מדרש תהלים), also known as Midrash Psalms or Midrash Shocher Tov, is an aggadic midrash to the Psalms. Midrash Tehillim can be divided into two parts: the first covering Psalms 1–118, the second covering 119� ...

also interprets gittith to refer to winepresses. The 19th-century German rabbi

Samson Raphael Hirsch Samson Raphael Hirsch (; June 20, 1808 – December 31, 1888) was a German Orthodox rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the '' Torah im Derech Eretz'' school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed ''neo-Orthodoxy'', hi ...

also held this interpretation, and viewed the act of treading grapes to reflect the idea of divine afflictions as an aid to moral development, as similar pressure and destruction is needed to extract the juice from the grapes. He goes on to link this to the content of the three psalms using the introduction , maintaining that all three of the psalms with this introduction are related to the concept of ennoblement in response to catastrophe.

Modern interpretations

It has been suggested in several Bible translations that psalms starting with the same designations (here, ) were intended to have similar tunes. However, this has been claimed to be made less probable by the lack of similarity in the meters of the psalms starting with , as Psalms 8 and 81 differ markedly in their meters. Artist and academic Moshe Frumin created reconstructions of several Biblical instruments, including a gittith, which were displayed at the

Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art (SMMJA) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was founded in 1966 as the Gershon & Rebecca Fenster Museum of Jewish Art. From its inception until 1998, Tulsa's Congregation B'nai Emunah Synagogue housed the museum.Tulsa Tulsa ( ) is the second-most-populous city in the state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tul ...

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

Other usage

The

moshav A moshav (, plural ', "settlement, village") is a type of Israeli village or town or Jewish settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 and 1 ...

Gitit Gitit may refer to: * Gitit, Bik'at HaYarden, Israeli settlement on the West Bank * Gittith, a Biblical musical designation {{disambiguation ...

, established in 1972, was named after the gittith due to the shape of the area, which was considered to resemble that of the musical instrument. The word Gittit has also gained some usage as an Israeli girls’ name.

References