a lyre: a small handheld stringed instrument, plucked to accompany singing, celebration, and worship
This is the stringed instrument named more often than any other in the Hebrew Bible. It was a lyre, a small wooden frame strung with several strings and light enough to be carried and played while walking. The Bible traces it back to the very beginning of music: Jubal is called the father of all who play it. Later it is the instrument the young David takes up to soothe King Saul, and the instrument carried in procession when the ark of the covenant is brought to Jerusalem.
Its natural home is joy. The lyre sounds at feasts and farewells, in the celebrations of ordinary life, and above all in the praise of God, where the Psalms repeatedly call worshipers to give thanks and sing to God with it. Prophets and temple singers played it as part of organized worship.
Because the instrument means gladness, its silence means the opposite. When the exiles sit down by the rivers of Babylon they hang their lyres on the willows, unable to sing; Job says his lyre has been turned to mourning; and Isaiah warns that in a ruined city the happy sound of the lyre falls quiet. The word keeps one steady meaning throughout, the physical instrument, whether it is being played in celebration or laid aside in grief.