One of the things I have had to look at in our fire safety risk assessment is how we would raise the alarm in the event of a fire. Whistles, air horns, automatic fire detection devices are all mentioned in official literature. I don’t think this method is covered, but I’m pretty sure it would be effective!
In the Bible, the shofar was used to announce holidays (Ps 81:3) and the Jubilee year (Lev 25:9). It was also used to signal the start of a war (Joshua 6).
The signal of the trumpet is also mentioned in the New Testament. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul writes “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.”
That kind of trumpet is very different to sounding a fire alarm, but we all need to be equally ready!