nagan

The verb נגן is used almost entirely in the piel and denotes playing a stringed instrument, above all the כִּנּוֹר (lyre); the qal participle at Psalm 68:25 substantivizes it as "the players" (נֹגְנִים). The standard lexica are unanimous: BDB glosses "touch, strike the strings, play a stringed instrument"; HALOT gives "play (a stringed instrument)"; DCH catalogs the same restricted range with the participle serving as the term for an instrumentalist. The verb is denominative in the reverse direction from the abstract noun נְגִינָה, which denotes stringed music and, by extension, a mocking or taunt-song (Lamentations 3:14; Job 30:9) and appears in the superscriptions of several psalms (e.g. Psalm 4; 6; 54; 55; 61; 67; 76). The Davidic court narratives supply the paradigm cases (1 Samuel 16:16-23; 18:10; 19:9), where playing the lyre carries an apotropaic, mood-altering function against the injurious spirit tormenting Saul; the same music-and-prophecy nexus recurs at 2 Kings 3:15, where Elisha calls for a player and the hand of the LORD comes upon him. Cultic use surfaces in the call to "play skillfully" (Psalm 33:3) and in the procession of Psalm 68:25. On the instruments and terminology see the treatments in TWOT and in the standard studies of Israelite music (e.g. Joachim Braun, Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine). The Septuagint most often renders the verb with ψάλλω, whose own history moves from plucking a string to making sung praise.