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

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

, 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 i ...

, Psalm 81, and

Psalm 84 Psalm 84 is the 84th psalm of the Book of Psalms. The Book of Psalms forms part of the ''Ketuvim'' section of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Christian Old Testament. In the slightly different numbering system of the Greek Septuagint version o ...

. 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 ( he, רבי שלמה יצחקי; la, Salomon Isaacides; french: Salomon de Troyes, 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105), today generally known by the acronym Rashi (see below), was a medieval French rabbi and author of a compre ...

cites

Menahem ben Saruq Menahem ben Saruq (also known as Menahem ben Jacob ibn Saruq, he, מנחם בן סרוק) 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 Cordob ...

in his claim that a gittith is a type of musical instrument. He then connects the term gittith to the city of Gath, meaning that a gittith would have been made by a Gittite, or a person from Gath. In

1 Samuel 21 1 Samuel 21 is the twenty-first Chapters and verses of the Bible, chapter of the First Book of Samuel in the Old Testament of the Christianity, Christian Bible or the first part of the Books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradit ...

David David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...

stays with

Achish Achish ( he, אָכִישׁ ''ʾāḵīš'', Philistine: 𐤀𐤊𐤉𐤔 *''ʾāḵayūš'', 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 r ...

, 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) (, he, ''Lǝvīyyīm'') 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 defi ...

descendents of

Obed-Edom Obed-Edom 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 scholarly discussions which express uncertaint ...

, 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 James Strong. Strong first published h ...

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 () is a stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the lute-family of instruments. In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke ...

Link to winepresses in Christian and Jewish sources

The

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...

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 Shocher Tov or the Midrash to Psalms, is an aggadic midrash to the Psalms. It has been known since the 11th century, when it was quoted by Nathan of Rome, by R. Isaac ben Jud ...

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'', his ...

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-largest city in the U.S. state, state of Oklahoma and List of United States cities by population, 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. ...

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

Other usage

The

moshav A moshav ( he, מוֹשָׁב, plural ', lit. ''settlement, village'') is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 an ...

of Gitit, 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