THE
BOOK OF PSALMS
A NEW TRANSLATION
WITH
INTRODUCTIONS AND
NOTES
EXPLANATORY AND
CRITICAL
By
J.
J. STEWART PEROWNE,
Canon
Residentiary of Llandaff
Hulsean Professor of
Divinity at
Hon. Chaplain
to the Queen
Late Praelector in Theology and
Fellow of
VOL. I
PSALMS 1-72
George Bell and Sons in 1878, 4th
edition.
Digitized by Ted
Hildebrandt: Gordon College 2006
with the help of Kim Spaulding, Apurva
Thanju, and Brianne Records
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
ALTHOUGH the Fourth Edition of this
work does not differ
very materially from those that
have preceded it, either in
the translation or in the
notes, yet in one respect it will
I hope, be found much more
complete and accurate. In
preparing it, I have had the
advantage of consulting
many original authorities in
Talmudical and Rabbinical
literature which before were
not within my reach, and I
have consequently been able to
correct several errors of
quotation from these sources,
some of which have found
their way into many commentaries,
one writer having often
merely copied and repeated the
blunders of another. And,
further, I have had throughout
the valuable assistance of
Dr. Schiller-Szinessy, the
learned Reader in Talmudical and
Rabbinical Literature in this
University, who is a master
of Jewish lore, and who has
most kindly spared no labour
in verifying and correcting my
references. Their greater
accuracy is, in a large
measure, due to the conscientious
care which he has bestowed upon
them, and of which
I am the more sensible, because
I know that it has been
viii PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
bestowed notwithstanding the
pressure of other numerous
and heavy engagements. It is a
pleasure to me to take
this opportunity of expressing
my obligations to him, and
my sense of the ready kindness
with which his learning is
always placed at the disposal
of others.
March
7, 1878.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
IN preparing a Third Edition of this work for the press,
I have availed myself of the
following critical aids and
authorities:--
I. Baer's critical text of the Psalter. His preface on
the
Metrical Accentuation of the
Poetical Books deserves notice.
2. Field's admirable Edition of Origen's Hexapla. I have
corrected by reference to it
many quotations which were
given in my former editions on
the authority of Montfaucon.
3. Moll's Commentary in Lange's Bibelwerk.
4. The 2nd Edition of Delitzsch's Psalter.
5. The 3rd Edition of Ewald's work on the Psalms.
6. The 2nd Edition of Hitzig's Commentary.
7. Dr. Kay's Psalms with Notes.
8. Professor Conant's Translation.
9. The 2nd Edition of Dr. Phillip's Commentary.
My special thanks are due to R.
L. Bensly, Esq., Fellow of
Gonville and
revise the sheets of the work
as it passed through the press;
to his knowledge and accuracy I
am greatly indebted.
April 22, 1873.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
THE
Second Edition of this work will not be found to differ
very
materially from the First. I have made a few additions,
more
particularly to the Critical Notes in some of the earlier
Psalms;
and I have corrected errors wherever I have dis-
covered
them, or where they have been pointed out to me
by
friends. All the references have been carefully revised.
Many
of the apparent mistakes in the references of the First
Edition
were due to my having used the Hebrew Bible,
without
taking due care to mark where the Hebrew divisions
of
chapters or verses varied from the English. Where these
differ,
it will now be found, I hope, that both references are
given,
those to the Hebrew text being enclosed in square
brackets.
If, however, the double reference has still been
omitted
in some cases, it may be borne in mind that in all
Psalms
which have an inscription, the inscription is reckoned
as
a verse (occasionally as two verses) in the Hebrew text,
whereas
this is not the case in the English. Consequently
the
first verse in the English may be the second or even the
third
in the Hebrew, and so on all through. In the Critical
Notes
the references are always to the Hebrew text.
xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In revising my translation I have
approached in several
instances
more nearly to the Authorized Version, and I have
more
frequently than before left the literal rendering of a
clause
for the note, giving the freer and more idiomatic in the
text.
In doing this, I have listened to the suggestions of my
critics,
some of whom, not agreeing in other respects, have
agreed
in censuring my trnaslation. And now as there is at
last
some reasonable hope that a revision of our Authorized
Version
will be undertaken by competent scholars, this ques-
tion
of translation possesses far more than a merely personal
or
temporary interest. Even a translator who has failed, if
he
has done his work honestly and conscientiously, may be a
beacon,
if he cannot be a guide, to those who come after him.
I
shal therefore be pardoned perhaps, if I discuss more fully
than
I should otherwise have done, some of the points that
have
been raised.
The objections that have been
brought against me are of
this
kind. One of my reviewers observes that, after having
said
that I had not “needlessly departed” from our Authorized
Version,
I have “judged if needful often enough to give an
entirely
new air to my translation.” Another
writes: “The
gain
which is acquired by the greater accurarcy of the version
by
no means compensates for the loss of harmony and
rhythm
and sweetness, both of sound and of association.
An
English reader could undrestand the Psalms no
better,
and
he could not enjoy them half so well.”
I have been
charged
with going directly against “existing standards of
public
tastes and feeling,” in following the Hebrew order of
the
words, where such order is not the most natural in
English.
This is “to undo the work of such men as
Wordsworth
and Tennyson.” Again, “In the original, the
paronomasia
or alliteration” [to preserve which the structure
of
the sentence in English has been made to accomodate
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xiii
itself
to the structure in Hebrew] “amounts only to a delicate
hint,
which may pass unnoticed except to an observant eye;
in
the translation it obtrudes itself as a prominent feature of
the
style.” And both critics concur in thinking that I have
myself
fallen into the very errors in point of taste which
I
have condemned in other translations.
Now I may at once say that to some
extent, if not to the
whole
extent alleged by the reviewers, I plead guilty to the
indictment.
I have carried minute and punctilious accuracy
too
far. I have sometimes adhered too closely, without any
adequate
and compensating result, to the order of the words
in
the Hebrew. It will be an evidence of the sincerity of my
reprentance
on this head, that in the present edition I have in
many
instnaces corrected both the one fault and the other.
But
I cannot concede all that the critics demand of me.
I. In the first place, I did not
say, in the preface to my
first
edition, that I had not “needlessly departed from our
Authorized
Version,” but that I had “not needlessly departed
from
the sound English of our Authorized
Version;” and
my
meaning was evident, because I immediately gave as
instances
of departure the use of the verb “to seize” and
of
the noun “sympathy.”*
2. In the next place, I feel quite
sure that those who lay
so
much stress upon “harmony and rhythm and sweetness,”
are
thinking more of the Prayer-Book Version of the Psalms,
than
of that of King James’s translators. The former is far
more
musical, more balanced, and also more paraphrastic
than
the latter; and from constantly hearing it read in the
Church
Services, we have become so thoroughly habituated
to
it that almost any departure from its well-known cadences
* So it ought to have stood: the
verb “to sypmpathize” was put by
mistake
for the noun “sympathy.” I have only used it once in Ps. lxix.,
and
there to express a Hebrew noun which occurs nowhere else.
xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
offends
the ear. Indeed our familiarity with this version is
such,
that not only would most English Churchmen having
occasion
to quote a verse of a Psalm quote it as it stands in
the
Prayer-Book, but they would often be very much sur-
prised
if they were told that the very sense of the Bible
Version
was different. Of the multitude of persons who are
familiar
with the phrase, "The iron entered into his soul," how
many
are aware that the rendering in our Bible is, “He was
laid
in iron” There can be no question as to which is
the
more rhythmical and the more expressive; but there can
also
be no question that the Authorized Version faithfully
represents
the Hebrew, which the other does not. It would
be
no difficult task to quote a number of passages from the
Bible
Version of the Psalms which fail essentially in rhythm
just
because they are faithful to the original.
Take for instance the following (Ps.
lviii. 7):—"Let them
melt
away as waters which run continually:
when he bendeth
his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be
as cut in pieces."
Now contrast with this the freer but
inaccurate rendering
of
the Prayer-Book Version:--"Let them fall away like water
that
runneth apace; and when they shoot their arrows, let
them
be rooted out."
Again, the Bible version of lix. 19
is:---"God shall hear
and
afflict them, even He that abideth of old. Because they
have
no changes, therefore they fear not God."
Whereas the Prayer-Book Version
(again very inaccurate,
but
much smoother) is:—"Yea, even God, that endureth for
ever,
shall hear me, and bring them down: for they will not
turn
nor fear God."
In the Bible, Ps. lxviii. 19
stands:—"Thou, 0 God, didst
send
a plentiful rain, whereby Thou didst confirm Thine
inheritance,
when it was weary."
In the Prayer-Book Version it
is: “Thou, 0 God, sentest
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xv
a
gracious rain upon Thine inheritance, and refreshedst it
when
it was weary."
Or compare the two versions in xlix.
7-9, or in cxxx.
1-4,
and the same phenomenon presents itself, as it does in
many
other instances; the Bible is the more accurate, the
Prayer-Book
the more rhythmical version. But if this is the
case,
then in estimating a new translation, the object of which
is
avowedly to give as exactly as possible the sense of the
original,
justice requires that it should be compared with the
language
of the Authorized Version, not with that of the
Prayer-Book.
3. Thirdly, I have been censured for
adhering too closely to
the
form of the Hebrew, both in its idiom and in the structure
of
the clauses. Perhaps I have gone too far in this direction.
But
before a question of this kind can be decided, it is im-
portant
to lay down as clearly as possible to the mind what
it
is we aim at in a translation. "There are two maxims of
translation,"
says Goethe: "the one requires that the author
of
a foreign nation be brought to us in such a manner that we
may
regard him as our own; the other, on the contrary, de-
mands
of us that we transport ourselves over to him, and,
adopt
his situation, his mode of speaking, his peculiarities.
The
advantages of both are sufficiently known to all in-
structed
persons, from masterly examples." Each of these
methods
"is good," says Mrs. Austin, the accomplished trans-
lator
of Ranke's History of the Popes,
"with relation to its ends
—the
one when matter alone is to be transferred, the other
when
matter and form." And she adds very truly: "The
praise
that a translated work might be taken for an original,
is
acceptable to the translator only when the original is a work
in
which form is unimportant." She
instances Pope's Homer
as
essentially a failure, because we want to know not only
what Homer said, but how he said it. "A light
narrative," she
xvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
continues,
“a scientific exposition, or a plain statement of
facts,
which pretends to nothing as a work of art, cannot be
too
thoroughly naturalized. Whatever may be thought of the
difficulties
in the way of this kind of translation, they are
slight
compared with those attending the other kind, as any-
body
who carefully studies the masterpieces in this way must
perceive.
In the former kind the requisites are two—the
meaning
of the author, and a good vernacular style; in the
latter,
the translator has, as far as possible, to combine with
these
the idiomatic tone of the author—to place him before
the
reader with his national and individual
peculiarities of
thought
and of speech. The more rich, new, and striking these
peculiarities
are, the more arduous will the task become; for
there
is manifestly a boundary-line, difficult if not impossible
to
define, beyond which the most courageously faithful trans-
lator
dares not venture, under pain of becoming unreadable.
This
must be mainly determined by the plasticity of his lan-
guage,
and by the taste of his fellow-countrymen. A German
translator
can effect, and may venture, more than an Egnlish;
an
English than a French;--and this, not only because his
language
is more fulll and pliant, but because Germans have
less
nationality, and can endure unusual forms of speech for
the
sake of gaining accurate insight into the characteristics of
the
literature of other countries.”
It is on these grounds that Mrs.
Austin defends her own
“Germanisms”
in her translation of Goethe into English.
It
is on similar grounds that I would defend “Hebraisms”
in
the rendering of the Psalms and the poetical portion
of
the Hebrew Scriptures into English. In the poetry of a
people,
more than in any other species of literature, form is
of
importance. Hence we find Mrs. Austin, whose skill as
a
translator has been universally admitted, not shunning
*Characteristics of Goethe, vol. i.
pp. xxxv-xxxxvii.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xvii
inversions
of language in her translations from Goethe, where
“fidelity”
and “literalness” are her object. Thus, for in-
stance,
the lines in the Metamorphose der Pflanzen:
“Dich verwirret, Geliebte, die
tausendfaltige Mischung,
Dieses Blumengewuhls uber dem Garten umber;”
are
rendered by her—
“Thee perplexes, beloved, the
thousandfold intermixture
Of this flowery throng, around in the garden.”
And
again,
“Blattlos aber und schnell erhebt
sich der zartere Stengel,
Und ein Wundergebild zieht den Betrachtenden an,”
is
translated—
“Leafless, however, and rapid, up
darts the slenderer flower-stalk,
And a wonderful picture attracts the observer’s eye.”
I have in the same way deliberately
preferred, where the
English
idiom did not absolutely forbid it, to retain the order
of
the words in the Hebrew, because I felt that in sacrificing
the
form, I should be inflicting a loss upon the reader. How-
ever,
as I said, in revising my work I have somewhat
modified
my practice in this respect, and have contented
myself
on several occasions with putting the more literal
rendering
in a note.
4. Besides being guilty of too great
“punctiliousness” and
“inelegance,”
where idiom and harmony are concerned, I
have
sinned, according to one of my reviewers,* in the intro-
duction
of the word “Jehovah” instead of “the Lord,” which
has
for centuries been its customary equivalent. The change,
he
says, would be perfectly legitimate, if I were professing to
make
everything give way to verbal exactness. But as I
allow
other considerations to come in, he thinks that the
perpetual
recurrence of the Hebrew form of the word is in
the
highest degree strange and unpleasant. “As the name
*Saturday Review, July 2, 1864.
xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
had
fallen out of use in the Jewish Church, and never became
current
in the Christian, our old translators did well to prefer
the
idea to the name; and the attempt to bring back the
name
seems now to force into prominence its local and
national
character, where everything calls for a word which
has
nothing local or national about it." In reply to these
objections,
it might be almost sufficient to observe that in
retaining
the Hebrew name I have only followed the example
of
every modern translator of eminence. But of course it is
still
a question for consideration, whether there are sufficient
grounds
for the change. I think there are very
cogent
grounds,
which the reviewer in his dislike of novelty, or his
dislike
of Puritanism, has entirely overlooked, (I) In the
first
place, our translators in their use of the word "Lord"
make
no distinction between two names, "Jehovah and
"Adonai,"
perfectly distinct in Hebrew, and conveying
different
conceptions of God. (2) In the next place, it is
well
known that whole Psalms are characterized, just as
sections
of the Pentateuch are characterized, by peculiar
names
of God, and it is surely of some importance to retain as
far
as possible these characteristic features, especially when
critical
discussions have made them prominent, and questions
of
age and authorship have turned upon them. (3) What the
reviewer
regards as a disagreeable innovation, has been held
by
very good authorities to be a desirable emendation in our
Authorized
Version. "Why continue the translation of the
Hebrew
into English," says Coleridge, "at
second hand,
through
the medium of the Septuagint? Have we not
adopted
the Hebrew word Jehovah? Is not the Ku<rioj, or Lord,
of
the Septuagint, a Greek substitute in countless instances
for
the Hebrew, Jehovah? Why not, then,
restore the
original
word; and in the Old Testament religiously render
Jehovah,
by Jehovah; and every text in the New Testament,
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xix
referring
to the Old, by the Hebrew word in the text referred
to?"*
No one could be a better judge on such a point than one
who,
like Coleridge, was both poet and critic; and it is observ-
able
that he would have carried the change even farther than
to
confine it to the Old Testament. And the late Professor
Blunt,
quoting this passage, remarks that "though we may
not
agree with him to the full extent of his conclusion that
‘had
this been done, Socinianism would have been scarcely
possible
in
translation
of the divine name has had its effect in fostering it."†
(4)
If owing to merely superstitious scruples the name fell
out
of use in the Jewish Church, and if owing to a too slavish
copying
of the Greek and Latin Versions our own Version
lost
the word, these are reasons of no force whatever against
a
return to the original use. It is no doubt a question how
the
word should be written when transferred to another lan-
guage.
"Jehovah" certainly is not a proper equivalent for
the
Hebrew form; for it is well known that the Jews, having
lost
the true pronunciation of the name, transferred to it the
vowels
of the other name "Adonai," which in reading they
have
for centuries substituted for it. Some of the Germans
write
"Jahveh," others "Jahaveh;" and Hupfeld, despairing of
any
certainty as to the vowels, retains merely the consonants
and
writes "Jhvh." Probably the most correct equivalent in
English
would be "Yahveh" or "Yahaveh," but this would
look
pedantic, and would doubtless shock sensitive eyes and
ears
far more than the comparatively familiar form, Jehovah.
Nor
must it be forgotten that this Hebrew form is sometimes,
though
rarely, admitted by our translators, as is also the still
less
euphonious form, Jah. (5) Lastly, I cannot feel that it is
any
objection that the use of the Hebrew name "forces into
* Coleridge's Remains, iv. p. 226.
† Blunt, Duties of the Parish Priest, Lect. II. p. 41.
xx PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
prominence
its local and national character." On the contrary,
if
we are to read the Old Testament with anything like discern-
ing
appreciation, if we are not to confound the New Testament
with
the Old, as the majority of ancient Commentators and
a
large number of modern Commentators do, thus effacing
altogether,
as far as in them lies, the progressive character of
Revelation,
we shall be anxious to retain all that is distinctive
and
characteristic in the earlier Scriptures, that we may give
to
each portion its proper value. We shall not wish to efface
a
single character by which God helps us the better to trace
His
footsteps, but shall thankfully remember that He who
"in
many portions and in many manners spake to the fathers
by
the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us in
a
Son."
Having said so much on this subject
of translation, I will
venture
to add a few words on the proposed revision of our
Authorized
Version.
It appears to me a matter of real
congratulation to the
Church
that such a revision has at length been seriously
entertained
by Convocation. I do not share the feelings of
those
who look upon any attempt to correct manifest errors
with
dislike and apprehension. Indeed the objectors have in
this
instance suffered their fears very grossly to exaggerate
the
evil against which they protest. Nothing surely can be
more
moderate, or more cautiously framed, than the language
of
the resolution adopted by the Southern Province in Con-
vocation.
They only advise that those passages in the
Authorized
Version should be amended "where plain and
clear
errors . . . . shall on due investigation be found to
exist."
Yet it has been assumed, by nearly every writer
and
speaker who is opposed to revision, that revision is
equivalent
to reconstruction. It has been assumed that a
Commission
would not leave of the existing structure one
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxi
stone
upon another—would scarcely even make use of the
stones
of the old building for the construction of the new. The
whole
strength of the objectors' case rests on this assumption.
Yet,
even setting aside the distinct avowal of the resolution
to
the contrary, scholars and men of taste and judgement are
not
likely to agree together to be guilty of any such ruthless
demolition.
The probability is that among those to whom
the
task of revision would be entrusted, there would be found
many
men whose veneration for our Authorized Version is
quite
as great, and quite as intelligent, as that of those who
object
to any alteration. Men of this kind would not be for
rash
and hasty corrections, or for trivial emendations. They
would
not suffer wanton injury to be done. They would
religiously
preserve the fine old diction, the mother idiom, the
grace
and the strength of the existing Version. These are
too
precious a heritage, they would feel, to be lightly sacri-
ficed.
Keeping close to the terms of the Resolution, they
would
only give a true rendering to passages which have
undoubtedly been wrongly
translated.
With the overthrow of this
assumption, all the other argu-
ments
against revision lose their force. It has been said, for
instance,
that the specimens of new translations which have
lately
appeared are not such as to hold out any prospect of
improvement
in the new Version. They may be more literal,
but
they are less idiomatic than the Authorized Translation.
But
it is one thing for an individual to put forth a translation
which
he believes gives the nearest and most literal rendering
of
a book; it is another thing to revise an existing transla-
tion.
In the former case, the utmost liberty may be claimed
in
the latter, the work has its own obvious limitations. The
difference
is the difference between the architect who builds
a
new church as a rival to the old, or with the view of
securing
some particular advantages, acoustic properties for
xxii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
instance,
which the old did not possess, and the architect who
restores
an ancient and glorious cathedral, removing only
defects
and scrupulously preserving all its characteristic
features.
So, again, with regard to the
objection that the new Version
would
not gain universal acceptance, as that of 1611 has done;
this
surely depends upon the manner of its execution. No
doubt
even those comparatively few and moderate corrections
which
alone are designed would at first be regarded with
some
suspicion, especially because, as the Bishop of St. David's
pointed
out, clergymen and Dissenting ministers would
thereby
be robbed of some of their favourite texts, No doubt
there
would be some sharp criticism of the work. But if
learned
men of all parties, Nonconformists as well as Church-
men,
are associated in the revision, and if the revision is wisely
and
carefully made within the assigned limits, there seems no
very
obvious reason why the new book should not find accept-
ance
gradually, and eventually supersede the old. If it did
not,
it would fall by its own demerits, and no amount of
"authority"
would ensure its success.
The limitation of the revision to
"plain and clear errors,"
does
away also with the objection, of which so much
has
been made, that the faith of the ignorant would be
unsettled
if they were led to suppose that what they had
been
accustomed to receive as the word of God, was not the
word
of God. This is precisely the kind of argument which
would
have stopped the Reformation. And the objectors
seem
to forget that the mischief they apprehend is already
done,
when ministers of religion give, as they often do, cor-
rections
of the existing Version in their pulpits, and when
designing
men lay hold of manifest mistranslation as an
instrument
whereby to shake the faith of the multitude in
the
Bible.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxiii
One
more objection only I shall notice. It has been
argued
that no essential doctrine would be affected by the
change,
and that therefore the change is not worth the risk
which
it entails. Those who rely most on this argument
are
the very last who ought to make it. For though it may
be
quite true that no doctrine of importance would be
touched,
yet holding, as they do, that "all Scripture is
given
by inspiration of God," they ought to hold that its
exact
sense is everywhere of importance. But I am not
prepared
to admit the allegation in all its breadth. There
are
passages in our Bible where great truths are at least
grievously
obscured by a wrong translation. Take, for in-
stance,
that very striking prophecy* in the latter part of the
eighth
and the beginning of the ninth chapter of the Prophet
Isaiah.
Perhaps there is no more, remarkable prophecy in
the
Bible; yet it is worse than obscure as it stands in our
Authorized
Version. The sense given in the Authorized
Version
is even the exact opposite of the true sense. The
prophecy
ceases to be a prophecy at all. The prophet had
been
speaking of a thick darkness which should settle upon
the
land. Men in their perplexity, instead of seeking
counsel
of God and His Word (viii. 19, 20), were seeking to
necromancers
and to "wizards that chirp"
(E. V. peep, i.e.
pipe
like birds, the Latin pipiare), and
that mutter. The
inevitable
result was a yet more terrible hopelessness.
"And they shall pass along
hardly bestead and hungry; and it shall
come
to pass that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves,
and
they shall curse their king and their God; and they shall look
upward,
and they shall look to the earth, and behold trouble and anguish,
and
distressful gloom. But the darkness is driven away. For there shall
no
more be gloom where there was vexation. As in the former time He
lightly
esteemed the
* This is the passage to which the
Bishop of Llandaff referred in his
speech
in Convocation.
xxiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
latter
time He hath made her glorious by the way of the sea, beyond
have
seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of
death,
upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation,
Thou
hast increased their joy: they joy before Thee according to the
joy
in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For Thou
hast
broken the yoke of his burden and the staff (laid upon) his shoulder,
the
rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every greave of
the
greaved warrior in the battle-tumult, and the garment* rolled in
blood,
shall be for burning, for fuel of fire. For a child is born unto us,
a
Son is given unto us; and the government shall be upon His shoulder,
and
His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father
of
Eternity,† Prince of Peace."
I have purposely abstained from any
needless departure
here
from the Authorized Version. I have only corrected
“plain
and clear errors.”
The alterations which I have made in
the above passage
are
such as I believe, with one exception (that at the end
of
viii. 22, "but the darkness is driven away"), would be
accepted
by all Hebrew scholars. And I would ask any
one
who recollects that this important passage is read every
Christmas-day
in the ears of the people, and who has felt
how
impossible it is to extract any intelligible sense from it,
whether
the mere correction of acknowledged errors would
not
be an immense boon, whether it would not make at least
one
great prophecy concerning Christ shine with tenfold
brightness?
Are such corrections valueless? Would any
injury
or any loss follow from them? If not, is it not at
least
worth while to make the trial, to see whether we can
improve
without injuring our Authorized Version?
Since
the first edition of this volume was published,
several
works have appeared in
* Properly, the soldier's cloak.
† Or perhaps, "Father of the
age to come," or "Author of a new
dispensation."
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxv
less
directly on the interpretation of the Psalms. Bishop
Wordsworth's
Commentary is well known. It keeps to
the
beaten
track of ancient exposition. The Psalms
by Four
Friends is a fresh and
suggestive contribution to the litera-
ture
of the subject. But it is impossible not to feel some re-
gret
that men who have done their work in other respects
so
well should have followed so arbitrary an authority as
Ewald
in his chronological arrangement. The Rev. Charles
learning
and ability many of the questions connected with
the
interpretation of the Messianic Psalms and the Psalms
of
Imprecation. Still more recently, Dr. Binnie of
has
published a work on the Psalms, in which he discusses
their
history and poetical structure, their theology, and their
use
in the Church. In his chapters on the theology of the
Psalms,
he maintains the most commonly received views
respecting
the Messiah, a future life, the imprecations, &c.,
but
he handles these subjects with learning and moderation.
I
must not omit to add to these works, Professor Plumptre's
volume
of Biblical Studies, in which he has
republished
a
very interesting paper on "the Psalms of the Sons of
Korah."
I have had so little leisure for the
revision of my own
volume
that I have not been able to make all the use of
these
different works which I could have desired. But I
am
indebted to them as well as to many correspondents,
known
and unknown, for valuable suggestions, which per-
haps
at some future time I may be able to turn to better
account.
ST.
DAVID'S COLLEGE, LAMPETER,
March 14, 1870.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
THIS work is designed to be a
contribution to the study
of
the Old Testament. In preparing it for the press, I have
kept
before me the wants of two classes of readers: those
who
have, and those who have not, an acquaintance with the
original
text; and I am led to hope that thus the Commentary
will
be more widely useful than if it had been merely popular
on
the one hand, or exclusively critical on the other.
It will be seen, that I have
endeavoured to accomplish
three
things.
I. In the first place, I have given
a new translation of the
Psalms,
which it has been my object to make as faithful
and
as accurate as possible, at the same time that I have
sought
to avoid rather than to imitate that punctiliousness
of
rendering which, especially among our Commentators on
the
New Testament, has been so much in fashion of late.
In
many instances, this too scrupulous accuracy is so far
from
helping to the better understanding of an author, that
it
has exactly the reverse effect. The idiom of the English
language
is sacrificed to the idiom of the Greek; and nothing
whatever
is gained by the sacrifice. What is supposed to be
xxviii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
extreme
accuracy is, in fact, nothing but extreme inelegance.
The
consequence is, that the hybrid English, which is designed
to
represent the Greek so exactly, stands bald and ragged,
in
the garb of a beggar as well as a foreigner, and fails to
convey
any intelligible idea at all, unless it be to a reader
who
already is acquainted with the Greek. The Old Testa-
ment
has not as yet been subjected, to the same extent, to
this
starving, denaturalizing process, though it has not alto-
gether
escaped. Indeed, it would be no difficult matter to
cite
passages from recent English translations, rendered
evidently
with the greatest care and apparent fidelity to the
original,
which are wanting in all the essentials of a good
translation,
having neither rhythm, nor force, nor elegance.
I
am not so presumptuous as to assert that where others have
failed,
I have succeeded. I can only say I have striven to
the
utmost to produce a faithful but not a servile translation.
Perhaps
it is hardly necessary to add, that a new translation
implies
no disparagement to our Authorized Version. To
the
many excellences of that Version, no one can be more
alive
than I am: the more it is studied, the more these
will
be appreciated; the more its noble simplicity, its unap-
proachable
grandeur, its rhythmic force of expression will be
felt.
But it is obvious that, since the time when it was made,
our
knowledge of the grammar of the Hebrew language, of
the
structure of Hebrew poetry, and of many other subjects
tending
to the elucidation of the sacred text, has been largely
increased.
A modern interpreter is bound to avail himself
of
these new stores of knowledge, and may reasonably hope
to
produce, at least in some passages, a more accurate ren-
dering
of the Hebrew than that which our translators have
adopted.
But, as a rule, I have not needlessly departed from
the
sound English of our Authorized Version. Two or three
words
not used by our translators, such as the verb "to
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xxix
seize,"
and the noun "sympathy,"* I
have ventured to employ
where
they seemed to me, in the particular passage, most
exactly
to convey the meaning of the original words. I have
also
adhered more closely than is usual in the English
Version,
to the order of the words in the Hebrew, because
in
many instances, as might be expected in a language so
antithetical
in its structure, the special force of certain words
is
thus maintained, or some delicate shade of meaning more
clearly
brought out, which would otherwise be lost. How far
the
attempt thus made has been successful, it is for others
to
judge.
II. In the next place, I have
endeavoured by means of
Introductions
to the several Psalms, and by Explanatory
Notes,
to convey to the English reader a true idea of the
scope
and meaning of each. Here I have availed myself of
the
best Commentaries, ancient and modern. I have used
them
freely, but have laid it down as a rule to express my
obligations,
and to give the name of the writer from whom
I
have borrowed. If in some few instances I may have
neglected
to observe this rule, it has not been done inten-
tionally.
From the Fathers I have gleaned but little, their
style
of exposition being such as to lead them to disregard
the
literal sense, and to seek for mystical and allegorical
interpretations.
For the first true exposition of Scripture, of
the
Old Testament more especially, we must come to the
time
of the Reformation. Here, Luther and Calvin hold the
foremost
place, each having his peculiar excellence. Luther,
in
his own grand fearless way, always goes straight to the
heart
of the matter. He is always on the look-out for some
great
principle, some food for the spiritual life, some truth
* Both of these words are good old
English words, and used by our
best
writers. The first is as old as R. of Gloucester, the second as early
at
least as Spenser. Shakespeare's is "condolement."
xxx PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
which
can be turned to practical account. He is pre-
eminently
what in modern phrase would be called subjective,
as
a commentator. Every word of Scripture seems to him
instinct
with life and meaning for himself and his own imme-
diate
circumstances. But on that very account he not unfre-
quently
misses the proper and original force of a passage,
because
he is so intent on a personal application; not to
mention
that he cannot always shake himself free of the
allegorical
cobwebs of patristic interpretation. They still
cling
to the mane of the lion, who in his strength has trodden
down
the thicket.
Calvin, on the other hand, may
justly be styled the great
master
of exegesis. He is always careful to ascertain as
exactly
as possible the whole meaning and
scope of the
writer
on whom he comments. In this respect his critical
sagacity
is marvellous, and quite unrivalled. He keeps close,
moreover,
to the sure ground of historical interpretation, and,
even
in the Messianic Psalms, always sees a first reference to
the
actual circumstances of the writer. Indeed, the view
which
he constantly takes of such Psalms would undoubtedly
expose
him to the charge of Rationalism, were he now alive.
In
many parts of the Forty-fifth Psalm he boldly denies any
Messianic
meaning at all. In expounding the Seventy-
second,
he warns us against a sophistical application of words
to
Christ, which do not properly belong to Him. In writing
on
the Fortieth Psalm, he ventures to suggest, that the quo-
tation
from it in the Epistle to the Hebrews is not made
in
accordance with the genuine sense of the passage as it
stands
in the Psalm. I quote these things simply to show
what
has been said by a man who, though of course a
damnable
heretic in the eyes of the Church of Rome, is by
a
considerable section of our own Church regarded as a high
and
weighty authority. Even Luther is not guilty of those
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xxxi
forced
and unreal expositions which, it is to be feared, are now
becoming
common. In writing on the Twentieth Psalm, he
says: "This Psalm almost all expounds of
Christ. But such
an
exposition appears to me to be too far-fetched to be called
literal."
Calvin's method of interpretation, in this and similar
instances,
will be abundantly evident to any one who will
read
the following Commentary, where I have constantly
and
largely quoted from him. In some cases, as in the
Seventeenth
Psalm, where he denies all reference to a future
life,
I have felt constrained to differ from him: in others, as
in
the Imprecatory Psalms, I have thought that he hardly
carries
out his own principles consistently. But of the
general
soundness of his principles of exegesis, where he is
not
under the influence of doctrinal prejudices—as, indeed,
he
rarely is in his Commentary on the Psalms—I am
thoroughly
convinced. He is the prince of commentators.
He
stands foremost among those who, with that true courage
which
fears God rather than man, have dared to leave the
narrow
grooves and worn ruts of a conventional theology
and
to seek truth only for itself. It is well to study the
writings
of this great man, if only that we may learn how
possible
it is to combine soundness in the faith with a
method
of interpretation varying even in important par-
ticulars
from that commonly received. Nothing, I be-
lieve,
is so likely to beget in us a spirit of enlightened
liberality,
of Christian forbearance, of large-hearted mode-
ration,
as the careful study of the history of doctrine
and
the history of interpretation. We shall then learn
how
widely good men have differed in all ages, how much
of
what we are apt to think essential truth is not essential,
and,
without holding loosely what we ourselves believe to
be
true, we shall not be hasty to condemn those who differ
from
us.
xxxii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Amongst more modern Commentators, I
am indebted
chiefly
to the Germans. The valuable works of De Wette,
Tholuck,
Stier, Delitzsch, Ewald, Hupfeld, and Bunsen, I
have
always consulted with advantage.* Ewald
is very often
arbitrary,
no doubt, and with many of his conclusions I am
quite
unable to agree but his intuitive faculty is admirable,
and
much may be learnt from him, even where I, with others,
may
deem him most at fault. He holds deservedly a high
position,
but he would hold a higher, were he less severe and
unjust
in his condemnation of those who differ from him.
Hupfeld's
Commentary is the most exhaustive that has yet
appeared,
and, in point of grammatical analysis, by far the
most
masterly. Indeed, I know of none, on any part of the
Old
Testament, at all to be compared to it in these respects.
Delitzsch
represents a different school both of grammatical
interpretation
and of theology. He has a very extensive
acquaintance
with Talmudical and Rabbinical lore, and leans
to
the Jewish expositors. In depth and spiritual insight, as
well
as in the full recognition of the Messianic element in the
Psalms,
he is far before dither of the others. The laborious
dulness
of Hengstenberg renders it a tedious task to read his
Commentary;
and the English translation makes matters ten
times
worse.† The notes in Bunsen's Bibelwerk are, as a
rule,
excellent; in many instances where I have ventured to
dissent
from Hupfeld, I have had the pleasure of finding
* No candid reader of this volume
will, I hope, be left in doubt how
far
I agree, or disagree, with writers who differ so widely from one
another
as some of those just named. But to lay down exactly here the
theological
position of each of these writers would be a difficult and
delicate
task, and one to which I do not feel I am called.
† I give two specimens taken at
random. "By the lowly is to be
understood
such a person, as at the time feels his lowliness; as also under
the
proud, he who is such in his own eyes, are to be thought of."—Vol. iii.
p.
489. "The hero David, the deforcer
of the lion, and the conqueror of
Goliath."—Ibid. xix.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xxxiii
myself
supported by Bunsen in my rendering of a passage.
It
is a matter of deep regret that the illustrious author did
not
live to witness the completion of a work in which his
learning
and his piety both shine so brightly, and which he
had
so greatly at heart.*
English expositors who have preceded
me on the same
path,
have not, I hope, been overlooked. Bishop Horne's
Commentary,
the notes of Hammond and Horsley, the work
of
the Rev. G. Phillips (now President of Queen's College,
more
or less directly bearing on the interpretation of the
Psalms,
have been consulted.† Dean Alford, in
his Com-
mentary
on the Epistle to the Hebrews, has everywhere
recognised
and maintained, as it seems to me, the soundest
principles
of interpretation with reference to the Psalms,
more
especially the Messianic Psalms, and it is only to be
regretted
that this able expositor has not devoted some of
that
time and those energies to the elucidation of the Old
Testament,
which, in their devotion to the New, have already
borne
noble fruit. And here I cannot refrain from expressing
my
wish that our great English scholars had not been so
exclusively
occupied with the criticism and interpretation of
* In many things I differ materially
from Bunsen, nor do I appear as
the
advocate of all his theological views; but of this I am sure, that in
England
he has been greatly misunderstood and misrepresented: and I
cannot
refrain from expressing my admiration of one who, amidst the
anxious
demands of public duties, could find time for the prosecution of
studies
as manifold and various as they were important, and who to the
splendour
of vast attainments, and the dignity of a high position, added
the
better glory of a Christian life.
† The Notes which accompany the
Tract Society's Paragraph Bible
deserve
high commendation. They are brief, and to the point, and,
without
any affectation of learning, often give the correct sense of difficult
passages.
An unpretending, but useful little volume, has also been
published
by Mr. Ernest Hawkins, containing annotations on the Prayer-
Book
Version.
xxxiv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
the
New Testament, to the comparative neglect of the Old.*
The
contrast between ourselves and the leading German com-
mentators
is, in this respect, very remarkable. In
those
who have been most successful in their elucidation of
the
Greek text of the New Testament, have, in most cases,
come
to it well furnished and equipped with Hebrew lore,
De
Wette, Bleek, Tholuck, Umbreit, Stier, Delitzsch, and
others,
to whom we owe some of the most valuable com-
mentaries
on the Gospels and Epistles, are men who have
interpreted,
with no less ability and success, various portions
of
the Old Testament; and it is impossible not to feel how
materially
their familiarity with the latter has assisted them
in
their exposition of the former. To Bleek and Delitzsch
we
are indebted for the two most thorough and exhaustive
commentaries
which have yet been written on the Epistle to
the
Hebrews. A glance at Dean Alford's volume will show,
what
it is no disparagement to him to remark, how largely
he
has borrowed from their accumulated treasures. Of that
Epistle,
perhaps more than any other portion of the New
Testament,
it may be safely said that it cannot be understood
without
a profound and accurate knowledge of the Penta-
teuch,
the Psalms, and the Prophets. But the same remark
* This is a reproach which is not
likely to attach to us much longer.
Dr. Pusey has already led the way in his
elaborate Commentary on the
Minor
Prophets, a work full of erudition. We are also promised a
Commentary
on the whole Bible, under the editorship of the Rev. F. C.
Cook,
which is intended to convey to English readers the results of the
most
recent investigations into the criticism and interpretation of the
sacred
text. There is no lack of scholarship in England fully equal to
such
a task. Such accomplished scholars as the Deans of St. Paul's and
Westminster,
Mr. Grove, Mr. Plumptre, and many of the contributors to
Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible, have already
cast a flood of light on the
history,
geography, antiquities, &c. of the Old Testament. The Bishop
of
Ely, in his Lectures on the Pentateuch
and the Elohistic Psalms, and
Mr.
Pritchard, in his reply to Bishop Colenso, have given further and
abundant
proof that the criticism of the Old Testament is no unknown
field
to our English divines.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
xxxv
holds
good of the other Books. As both Testaments were
given
by inspiration of the same Spirit; as both speak one
truth,
though in divers manners and under different aspects,
it
is obvious that the more complete our understanding of
the
one, the more complete also will be our understanding
of
the other.
III. Lastly, I have appended a
series of notes, in which I
have
discussed the criticism of the text, the various readings,
the
grammatical difficulties, and other matters of interest
rather
to the scholar than to the general reader. These have
been
placed separately, for the most part, at the end of each
Psalm,
in order not to embarrass those who know nothing of
Hebrew.
Here, as indeed in the notes
generally, it will be seen that
I
have been fuller in the later Psalms than in the earlier.
The
reason for this is, that I had at one time hoped to finish
the
whole work in the compass of one volume, a design which
I
was afterwards compelled to abandon. But I trust that in
no
instance has any essential point been overlooked. For
the
ordinary grammatical rules and constructions, the lexicon
and
grammar must be consulted; I have only handled those
more
exceptional cases which present 'some real difficulty,
verbal,
textual, or grammatical.
The critical aids of which I have
availed myself are the
following:
I. The well-known collections of
Kennicott and De Rossi,
whence
the various readings of the principal MSS. have been
gathered.
These various readings are, unhappily, of com-
paratively
little value in ascertaining the true text of the
Hebrew
Bible, as none of the MSS. are of any high antiquity.
A
useful digest will be found in Dr. Davidson's Revision of
the Hebrew Text of the
Old Testament.
xxxvi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
2. The Versions. The text of the
LXX. which I have
followed
is that of Tischendorf's last edition. For the other
Greek
versions, Montfaucon's edition of Origen's Hexapla
has
been used.
The Chaldee, Arabic, and Syriac
versions have been con-
sulted
in Walton's Polyglot, and the last also in Dathe's
edition
of the Syriac Psalter. For Jerome's versions I have
used
Migne's edition, and for the Vulgate the small Paris
edition
of 1851. I have also made use of the Anglo-Saxon
version,
and the ancient Latin version which accompanies it,
which
were edited by Thorpe.
Besides these, I have constantly had
before me the versions
of
Luther, Diodati, Mendelssohn, Zunz, and others.
To these aids I must add Furst's Concordance, and the
Thesaurus of Gesenius, both of
them wonderful monuments
of
learning and industry. The grammars which I have used
are
those of Gesenius, the English edition by Davidson, based
on
the sixteenth German edition (Bagster, 1852); and Ewald's
Lehrbuch, 6te
Auflage, 1855. The commentaries already re-
ferred
to, especially those of Hupfeld and Delitzsch, have
assisted
me materially here, as well as Reinke's on the Mes-
sianic
Psalms. I have also found Maurer and De Wette of
service,
more so, indeed, critically than exegetically: Hitzig
and
Olshausen I only know at second-hand.
To three friends I am under great
personal obligation: to
the
Rev. J. G. Mould, formerly Fellow and Tutor of Corpus
formerly
Fellow of St. John's College [now Savilian Pro-
fessor
of Astronomy in the
valuable
suggestions; and to Mr. W. Aldis Wright, the
learned
librarian of
a
great part of the work. I am only sorry that the earlier
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, xxxvii
sheets
had been printed before he saw them, and contain
therefore
many more inaccuracies, I fear, than the later.
Thus I have explained what I have
done, or, rather, what
I
have attempted to do. Many faults there must be; but, to
quote
the words of Calvin, “Even if I have not succeeded
to
the full extent of my endeavours, still the attempt itself
merits
some indulgence; and all I ask is, that each, according
to
the advantage he shall himself derive therefrom, will be an
impartial
and candid judge of my labours.”
Among the students of Hebrew in
to
me to think that I may count many of my former and
present
pupils, many who have heard from me in the lecture-
room
of King's College,
Lampeter,
the explanations and the criticisms which I have
here
placed in a more permanent form. I cannot help in-
dulging
the hope that they will welcome the book as coming
from
one who can never cease to feel the liveliest interest in
all
that concerns them. It would be no common gratification
to
me to know that it had served in some instances, perhaps,
to
continue a work which I had begun, or had even revived a
study
which the pressure of a busy life had compelled some
of
them to lay aside.
And now I commit to the Great Head
of the Church this
attempt
to interpret some portion of His Holy Word, humbly
beseeching
Him to grant that it may bring forth fruit to His
glory
and the edification of His Church.
Truth has been my one object, I can
truly say, mindful, I
hope,
that truth can only be attained through "the heavenly
illumination
of the Holy Ghost." Yet I would not forget
what
Luther has so beautifully said, that none can hope to
understand
for himself or teach to others the full meaning of
every
part of the Psalms. It is enough for us if we under-
stand
it in part. "Many things doth the Spirit reserve to
xxxviii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Himself
that He may ever keep us as His scholars, many
things
He doth but show to allure us, many more He
teacheth
to affect us; and as Augustine hath admirably said,
No
one hath ever so spoken as to be understood by every one
in
every particular, much more doth the Holy Ghost Himself
alone
possess the full understanding of all His own words.
Wherefore
I must honestly confess, that I know not whether
I
possess the full and proper (ligitimam)
understanding of
the
Psalms or not, though I doubt not that that which I give
is
in itself true. For all that
Athanasius,
Hilary, Cassiodorus, and others, have written on
the
Psalter is very true, though sometimes as far as possible
from
the literal meaning. . . . One fails in one thing, another
in
another . . . others will see what I do not. What then
follows,
but that we should help one another, and make
allowances
for those who err, as knowing that we either have
erred,
or shall err, ourselves, . . . I know that he must be a
man
of most shameless hardihood who would venture to give
it
out that he understands a single book of Scripture in all
its
parts: nay, who would venture to assume that one Psalm
has
ever been perfectly understood by any one? Our life
is
a beginning and a setting out, not a finishing; he is best,
who
shall have approached nearest to the mind of the
Spirit."*
March 1, 1864.
*
Luther, Praef. in Operationes in Psalmos.
[Tom. xiv. p. 9. Ed.
Irmischer.]
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
DAVID
AND THE LYRIC POETRY OF THE HEBREWS 1
CHAPTER II.
THE
USE OF THE PSALTER IN THE CHURCH AND BY INDIVIDUALS 22
CHAPTER III.
THE
THEOLOGY OF THE PSALMS 41
CHAPTER IV.
THE
POSITION, NAMES, DIVISION, AND PROBABLE ORIGIN AND
FORMATION
OF THE PSALTER 70
CHAPTER V.
THE
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PSALMS 84
THE PSALMS.
BOOK I.
PSALMS
I.- XLI 107-344
BOOK II.
PSALMS
XLII.—LXXII 347—576
BOOK OF PSALMS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
DAVID
AND THE LYRIC POETRY OF THE HEBREWS.
THE
Poetry of the Hebrews is mainly of two kinds,
lyrical
and didactic. They have no epic, and no drama.
Dramatic
elements are to be found in many of their odes,
and
the Book of Job and the Song of Songs have some-
times
been called Divine dramas; but dramatic poetry, in
the
proper sense of that term, was altogether unknown to
the
Israelites. The remains of their lyric poetry which
have
been preserved--with one marked exception, the
Lament
of David over Saul and Jonathan—are almost
entirely
of a religious character, and were designed chiefly
to
be set to music, and to be sung in the public services of
the
sanctuary. The earliest specimen of purely, lyrical
poetry
which we possess is the Song of Moses on the
overthrow
of Pharaoh in the
expression
of a nation's joy at being delivered, by the
outstretched
arm of Jehovah, from the hand of their
oppressors.
It is the grandest ode to liberty which was
ever
sung. And it is this, because its homage is rendered,
not
to some ideal spirit of liberty, deified by a people in
the
moment of that passionate and frantic joy which
follows
the successful assertion of their independence, but
because
it is a thanksgiving to Him who is the one only
Giver
of Victory and of Freedom. Both in form and
spirit
it possesses the same characteristics which stamp
all
the later Hebrew poetry. Although without any
2 DAVID AND THE LYRIC
regular
strophical division, it has the chorus, "Sing ye to
Jehovah,
for He hath triumphed gloriously," &c.; it was
sung
evidently in antiphonal measure, chorus answering to
chorus
and voice to voice; it was sung accompanied by
dancing,
and to the music of the maidens playing upon
the
timbrels. Such is its form. In its spirit, it is like all
the
national songs of the people, a hymn sung to the glory
of
Jehovah. No word celebrates the prowess of the armies
of
is
become glorious in power; Thy right hand, O Jehovah,
hath
dashed in pieces the enemy." Thus it commemorates
that
wonderful victory, and thus it became the pattern
after
which all later odes of victory were written. The
people
from whom such poetry could spring, at so early
a
period of their history, could not have been the rude
ignorant
horde which some writers delight to represent
them;
they must have made large use of Egyptian culture,
and,
in these respects, in poetry and music, must have far
surpassed
their Egyptian masters.
Some fragments of poetry belong to
the narrative of the
wanderings
in the wilderness. One of these (Num. xxi.
14,
15), too obscure in its allusions to be quite intelligible
now,
is quoted from a book called "The Book of the Wars
of
Jehovah," which was probably a collection of ballads
and
songs, composed on different occasions by the watch-
fires
of the camp, and, for the most part, in commemoration
of
the victories of the Israelites over their enemies. Another
is
the little carol first sung at the digging of the well in the
plains
of
monly
used by those who came to draw water. Bright,
fresh,
and sparkling it is, as the waters of the well itself.
The
maidens of
another,
line by line, as they toiled at the bucket, and thus
beguiled
their labour. "Spring up, O well!" was the
burden
or refrain of the song, which would pass from one
mouth
to another, at each fresh coil of the rope, till the full
bucket
reached the well's mouth.*
* See the article on the Book of
NUMBERS, in Smith's Dictionary
of
the Bible,
vol. ii. p.583.
POETRY OF THE HEBREWS.
3
The
Blessing of the High Priest (Num. vi. 24-26), and
the
chants which were the signal for the
when
the people journeyed, and for it to rest when they
were
about to encamp, are also cast in the form of poetry.
But
these specimens, interesting as they are in themselves
and
from the circumstances which gave birth to them, are
brief
and fugitive. A far grander relic of that time has
survived.
The Ninetieth Psalm is "The Prayer of Moses
the
Man of God," written evidently towards the close of
the
forty years' wandering in the desert. It is touched
with
the profound melancholy of one who had seen his
dearest
hopes disappointed, who had endured trials of no
common
kind, who had buried his kindred in the desert,
who
had beheld the people that he led out of
smitten
down by the heavy wrath of God, who came to
the
borders of the Promised Land, looked upon it, but was
not
suffered to enter therein. It is the lofty expression of
a
faith purified by adversity, of a faith which, having seen
every
human hope destroyed, clings with the firmer grasp
to
Him of whom it can say, "From everlasting to ever-
lasting
Thou art God." This Psalm is like the pillar of
fire
and of a cloud which led the march of
is
both dark and bright. It is darkness as it looks, in
sorrowful
retrospect, upon man; it is light as it is turned,
in
hope and confidence, to God.
During the stormy period which
followed the first
occupation
of
cultivated.
Yet it would be a mistake, as Dean Milman
has
pointed out,* to conclude that the whole period from
Joshua
to Samuel was a period of
"alternate slavery and
bloody
struggles for independence," or that, during the
greater
part of it, the Israelites were subject to foreign
oppression.
Such seems by no means to have been the
case.
The wars of the time were wars, not of the whole
people,
but of the several tribes with their immediate
neighbours.
The conflicts were confined to a very limited
area;
and out of a period of about four hundred and sixty
* History
of the Jews, vol. i. p. 219 (2d edition). See also Mr.
Drew's
Scripture Studies, p. 143.
4
DAVID
AND THE LYRIC
years,
more than three hundred were, it may be inferred
from
the silence of the narrative, years of peace and
prosperity.
The struggles for independence, however,
which
did take place, were such as roused the national
spirit
in an extraordinary degree: it was the age of heroes;
and
the victory, in one instance at least, was commemorated
in
a poem worthy of the occasion. Of the song of Deborah
Dean
Milman says: "The solemn religious commencement,
the
picturesque description of the state of the country,
the
mustering of the troops from all quarters, the sudden
transition
to the most contemptuous sarcasm against the
tribes
that stood aloof, the life, fire, and energy of the
battle,
the bitter pathos of the close—lyric poetry has
nothing
in any language which can surpass the boldness
and
animation of this striking production."
But the great era of lyric poetry
begins with David.
Born
with the genius of a poet, and skilled in music, he
had
already practised his art whilst he kept his father's
sheep
on the hills of
proficient
on the harp is evident from his having been sent
for
to charm away the evil spirit from Saul, in those fits of
gloomy
despondency and temporary derangement to which
that
unhappy king was subject. It is probable that he had
added
careful study to his natural gifts, for we find him
closely
associated with Samuel and his schools of prophets
—men
who, like himself, were both poets and musicians.
The
art which he had thus acquired, and thus carefully
studied,
was his solace through life. His harp was the
companion
of his flight from Saul and of his flight from
Absalom.
It was heard in the caves of Engedi, on the
broad
uplands of Mahanaim, on the throne of
have
songs of his which date from all periods of his life;
from
the days of his shepherd youth to his old age, and
within
a short time of his death. Both his life and his
character
are reflected in his poetry. That life, so full of
singular
vicissitudes, might of itself have formed the
subject
of an epic, and in any other nation but that of the
Hebrews
would certainly have been made the groundwork
of
a poem. It is a life teeming with romantic incidents,
POETRY OF THE HEBREWS. 5
and
those sudden turns of fortune which poets love to
describe.
The latter portion of his history, that which
begins
with his great crimes, and which traces step by step
their
fearful but inevitable chastisement, is itself a tragedy
—a
tragedy, in terror and pathos, equal to any which the
great
poets of the Grecian drama have left us, and, in
point
of human interest as well as Divine instruction,
incomparably
beyond them.
But the Poets of Israel did not make
their national
heroes,
however great, the subjects of their verse, or, if
they
did, no works of this kind have come down to us.
Designed
to be the great teachers of a pure faith to men,
chosen
of God to speak His words, to utter the yearnings
and
the hopes of men's hearts towards Him, they were not
suffered
to forget this their higher vocation, or, when they
did
forget it, their words perished. Even the fame of Solo-
mon
could not secure for his thousand and five songs,
which
were probably merely of a secular kind, the meed of
immortality.
Hence it is that we have no Hebrew Poems
on
the life of David; and hence also it is that the perils
and
adventures through which he passed are not described
in
David's songs as they would have been by more modern
poets.
We are often at a loss to know to what particular
parts
of his history, to what turns and circumstances of
his
fortunes, this or that Psalm is to be referred. Still it
is
impossible to read them and not to see that they are
coloured
by the reminiscences of his life. A Psalm of this
kind,
for instance, is the Twenty-third.* He who speaks
there
so beautifully of the care of God, under the figure of
a
shepherd, had known himself what it was to tend his
sheep—"to
make them lie down in green pastures," to lead
them
to the side of the brook which had not been dried up
by
the summer's sun. Another image in that Psalm we
can
hardly be wrong in conjecturing is borrowed from
personal
experience. It was scarcely a figure for David
to
speak of God as spreading a table for him "in the
*
Even Ewald
almost inclines to allow that this may have been a
Psalm
of David's, though his final verdict is in favour of a later,
though
not much later, poet.
6
DAVID AND THE LYRIC
presence
of his enemies." It was "in the presence of his
enemies
" that Barzillai and others brought their plentiful
provision
of "wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn,
and
beans, and lentiles, and parched pulse, and honey, and
butter,
and cheese of kine, for David, and for the people
that
were with him, to eat, when they were hungry, and
weary,
and thirsty in the wilderness." (2 Sam. xvii. 28, 29.)
Or take, again, the Eighteenth Psalm,
which we know
from
the express testimony of the history, as well as from
its
inscription, to be David's, and which is on all hands
admitted
to be his. How thickly sown it is with meta-
phors,
which, in his mouth, have a peculiar force and
beauty.
Such are the names by which he addresses God.
Thrice
he speaks of God as a rock: "Jehovah is my rock,
my
fortress, my buckler, the horn of my salvation, my
high
tower." And again, "Who is a rock, save our
God?"
And yet again, "Jehovah liveth, and blessed be
my
rock." How suitable are such epithets as coming
from
one who when hunted by Saul had so often taken
refuge
among the rocks and fastnesses, the almost inacces-
sible
crags and cliffs, of
swiftness
of foot, so he tells how God had made his feet
like
the feet of the hinds or gazelles, which he had so often
seen
bounding from crag to crag before his eyes, and had
set
him "upon high places" beyond reach of the hunter's
arrow.
To the same class of metaphors belong also others
in
the same Psalm: "Thy right hand hath holden me up,"
"Thou
hast made room for my steps under me, that my
ankles
have not slipt;" whilst the martial character of
the
whole is thoroughly in keeping with the entire tenor
of
David's life, who first, as captain of a band of outlaws,
lived
by his sword, and who afterwards, when he became
king,
was engaged in perpetual struggles either with foreign
or
with domestic enemies.
It would be easy to multiply
observations of this kind.
One
other feature of his poetry, as bearing upon our pre-
sent
subject, must not be overlooked. It is full of allusions
*
Ps. xviii. 1, 2. See also verses 30, 31, 46. Compare lxii. 2,
6,
7, where, in like manner, God is thrice called a rock.
POETRY OF THE HEBREWS. 7
to
sufferings, to distresses, to persecutions; it abounds with
complaints
of the faithlessness of friends, of the malice of
enemies,
of snares laid for his life; it tells of constant
perils
and wonderful deliverances. Such expressions might
naturally
have come from David's lips again and again.
But
they are general, not special. Saul is not mentioned,
nor
Doeg, nor Ahithophel, nor Shimei. Very rarely is
there
an allusion of which we can say with certainty that
it
connects itself with one particular event rather than with
another.
We have enough to convince us that the words
are
David's words, but not enough to tell us under what
pressure
of calamity, or by what joy of deliverance, they
were
called forth. Shepherd, courtier, outlaw, king, poet,
musician,
warrior, saint--he was all these; he is all these
in
his Psalms, yet we can lay our finger but upon one or
two
that seem to exhibit him in one of these characters
rather
than in another. The inference is obvious: the
Psalms
were designed not to be the record of a particular
life,
but to be the consolation and the stay of all those who,
with
outward circumstances widely different, might find in
them,
whether in sorrow or in joy, the best expression of
feelings
which they longed to utter.
But if the Poems of David throw
comparatively little
light
on the external circumstances under which they were
written,
they throw much upon his inner life. And here
their
value cannot be over-estimated. The notices of the
history,
indeed, leave us in no doubt as to the reality of
his
faith, the depth and sincerity of his piety. But the
Psalms
carry us further. By the help of these we see him,
as
we see but few men, his heart laid open in communion
with
God. We see the true man, in the deep humiliation
of
his repentance, in the invincible strength of his faith, in
that
cleaving to God in which he surpassed all others.
How
imperfect, if we had nothing but the narrative in the
Books
of Samuel to guide us, would be our knowledge of
that
saddest page in David's history, when "the man after
God's
own heart" became stained with the double crime of
adultery
and murder. We might have pictured to our-
selves,
indeed, the workings of a terrible remorse. We
8
DAVID AND THE LYRIC
might
have imagined how often, as he sat alone, his uneasy
thoughts
must have wandered to that grave beneath the
walls
of Rabbah, where the brave soldier whom he had
murdered
lay in his blood. We might have tried to fill up
with
words of confession and penitence and thanksgiving,
those
few syllables, "I have sinned," which are all the
history
records. But what a light is cast upon that long
period
of remorseful struggle not yet turned into godly
sorrow,
by those words in the Thirty-second Psalm:
"While
I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my
roaring
all the day, for Thy hand was heavy upon me day
and
night, and my moisture was turned into the drought of
summer."
What a keen, irrepressible sense of his crime in
that
cry in the Fifty-first: "Deliver me from bloodguilti-
ness,
O God, thou God of my salvation." What a know-
ledge
of sin not only in act, but in its bitter and hidden
root---a
sinful nature, in the acknowledgement, "Behold, in
iniquity
I was brought forth, and in sin did my mother
conceive
me." What a yearning for purity, for renewal,
for
conformity to the will of God, in that humble earnest
pleading,
"Create for me a clean heart, O God, and a
steadfast
spirit renew within me." What a clinging, as of
a
child to a father, in the prayer, "Cast me not away from
Thy
presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me."
What
a sense of the joy of forgiveness and reconciliation,
when,
raised up again and restored, he says, "Blessed is he
whose
transgression is taken away, whose sin is covered.
Blessed
is the man to whom Jehovah reckoneth not iniquity,
and
in whose spirit there is no guile." It is confessions,
prayers,
vows, like those recorded in his Psalms, which
reveal
to us the true man, which help us better to
understand
him than many histories, many apologies.
But as David's life thus shines in his
poetry, so also does
his
character. That character was no common one. It
was
strong with all the strength of man, tender with all the
tenderness
of woman. Naturally brave, his courage was
heightened
and confirmed by that faith in God which
never,
in the worst extremity, forsook him. Naturally
warm-hearted,
his affections struck their roots deep into
POETRY OF THE HEBREWS.
9
the
innermost centre of his being. In his love for his
parents,
for whom he provided in his own extreme peril—
in
his love for his wife Michal—for his friend Jonathan,
whom
he loved as his own soul—for his darling Absalom,
whose
death almost broke his heart—even for the infant
whose
loss he dreaded,—we see the same man, the same
depth
and truth, the same tenderness of personal affection.
On
the other hand, when stung by a sense of wrong or
injustice,
his sense of which was peculiarly keen, he could
flash
out into strong words and strong deeds. He could
hate
with the same fervour that he loved. Evil men and
evil
things, all that was at war with goodness and with
God—for
these he found no abhorrence too deep, scarcely
any
imprecations too strong. Yet he was, withal, placable
and
ready to forgive. He could exercise a prudent self-
control,
if he was occasionally impetuous. His true cour-
tesy,
his chivalrous generosity to his foes, his rare delicacy,
his
rare self-denial, are all traits which present themselves
most
forcibly as we read his history. He is the truest of
heroes
in the genuine elevation of his character, no less than
in
the extraordinary incidents of his life. Such a man
cannot
wear a mask in his writings. Depth, tenderness,
fervour,
mark all his poems.
The Third Psalm, written, there can be
little doubt, as
the
title informs us, on his flight from Absalom, combines
many
traits:—his undaunted courage: "I laid me down
and
slept; I awaked; for Jehovah sustaineth me: I will
not
fear ten thousands of the people, who have set them-
selves
against me round about" (ver. 5:6); his strong
conviction
that he had right on his side, and that therefore
his
foes would be overthrown: "Thou has smitten all mine
enemies
on the cheekbone; Thou hast broken the teeth
of
the ungodly" (ver. 7); the generous prayer for his
misguided
subjects: "Thy blessing be upon Thy people"
(ver.
8).
So again, in the Fifth Psalm, what
burning words of
indignation
against the enemies of God and of His chosen:
"Punish
Thou them, O God; let them fall from their
counsels;
in the multitude of their transgressions cast them
10 DAVID AND THE LYRIC
away;
for they have rebelled against Thee" (ver. 10).
(Comp.
vii. 14-16.) In the Seventh, what a keen sense of
injury,
what a lofty, chivalrous spirit: "O Jehovah my
God,
if I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands;
if
I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with
me;
(yea, rather, I have rescued him that without any
cause
was my enemy:) let the enemy persecute my soul,
and
take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the
earth,
and make my glory abide in the dust" (ver. 3-5).
In
the Fifteenth, what a noble figure of stainless honour, of
the
integrity which can stand both before God and before
man!
In the Sixteenth (ver. 8-11), Seventeenth (ver. 8-15),
and
Eighteenth (ver. 1, 2), what deep personal affection
towards
God, an affection tender as it is strong, yet free
from
the sentimentalism which has so often degraded the
later
religious poetry of the Church!
One Psalm in particular exhibits with
singular beauty
and
truth both sides of David's character. It is the Sixty-
third.
The same tenderness of natural affection, the same
depth
of feeling, which breathes in every word of his elegy
upon
Jonathan, is here found chastened and elevated, as he
pours
out his soul towards God. It is the human heart
which
stretches out the arms of its affections, yearning,
longing
for the presence and love of Him who is more
precious
to it than life itself. This is the one side of the
Psalm.
The other is almost startling in the abruptness of
its
contrast, yet strikingly true and natural. It breathes
the
sternness, almost the fierceness, of the ancient warrior,
hard
beset by his enemies. From that lofty strain of
heavenly
musing with which the Psalm opens, he turns to
utter
his vow of vengeance against the traitors who are
leagued
against him; he triumphs in the prospect of their
destruction.
They shall perish, so he hopes, in his sight,
and
their carcases shall be the prey of jackals in the
wilderness.
I have lingered thus long upon David,
upon his character
and
his writings, because, in even a brief outline of Hebrew
poetry,
he, of necessity, occupies a foremost place, and
because
the Book of Psalms is almost identified with his
POETRY OF THE HEBREWS.
11
name.
Nor must it be forgotten, that he not only thus
personally
contributed more than any other individual to
the
great national collection of religious songs and hymns,
but
that he may be said to have founded a school of sacred
poetry
among the Jews. Asaph, Heman, and Ethan (or
Jeduthan)
whom he appointed as his three chief musicians,
were
all, it would appear, poets; the first of them so
famous
as to have reached to a position almost equal to
that
of David himself. Some of the Psalms, it is true,
which
go by his name could not have been written by him,
as
they bear manifest traces of later times. Others are,
with
more probability, ascribed to him. And these, the
Psalms
of the sons of Korah, and a few which are anony-
mous,
have many resemblances of thought and expression
to
those of David. He was the model after which they
copied;
his the fire which kindled theirs. So great a poet
inevitably
drew a host of others in his train.
Under Solomon, religious poetry
does not seem to have
flourished.
His own tastes and pursuits were of another
kind.
The Proverbs can scarcely be called poetry, except
that
they are cast in a rhythmical form. They are at least
only
the poetry of a sententious wisdom; they never rise
to
the height of passion. The earlier portions of the
Book
contain connected pieces of moral teaching, which
may
be styled didactic poems. In two passages especially
(iii.
13-20, viii. 22-31), where Wisdom is described, we
have
a still loftier strain. But there was no hand now to
wake
the echoes of the harp of David.* Lyric poetry had
yielded
to the wisdom of the mâshâl, the proverb, or
parable;
the age of reflection had succeeded to the age
of
passion, the calmness of manhood to the heat of youth.
Solomon
is said, indeed, as has already been remarked, to
have
written a thousand and five songs (1 Kings v. 12),
but
only two Psalms, according to their Hebrew titles, go
by
his name; and of these, one, the Seventy-second, may
*
Unless, indeed, we assume with Delitzsch that Psalm 1xxxviii.
which
is attributed to Heenan, and Psalm lxxxix. to Ethan, were written
in
the time of Solomon. From 1 Kings iv. 31 it may perhaps be
concluded
that Asaph was already dead.
12 DAVID AND THE LYRIC
perhaps
have been written by him: the other, the Hundred
and
Twenty-seventh, most probably is of much later date.
Besides these, two other of the
Poetical Books of the
Bible
have been commonly ascribed to Solomon. One
of
them bears his name, "The Song of Songs which is
Solomon's;"
the other, whether written by him or not,
represents
with singular truth and fidelity the various
phases
of a life like that of Solomon. But Ecclesiastes
is
not a Poem. It is the record of a long struggle with the
perplexities,
the doubts, the misgivings, which must beset
a
man of large experience and large wisdom, who tries to
read
the riddle of the world, before his heart has been
chastened
by submission, and his spirit elevated by trust
in
God. The Song of Songs is a graceful and highly-
finished
idyll. No pastoral poetry in the world was ever
written
so exquisite in its music, so bright in its enjoy-
ment
of nature, or presenting so true a picture of faithful
love.*
This is a Poem not unworthy to be called "the
Song
of Songs," as surpassing all others, but it is very
different
from the poetry of the Psalms.
From the days of Solomon till the
Captivity, the culti-
vation
of lyric poetry languished among the Hebrews,
with
two memorable exceptions. These were in the reigns
of
Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah. Both monarchs exerted
themselves
to restore the
for
the musical celebration of its services. To both, in
circumstances
of no common peril, were vouchsafed won-
derful
deliverances, which called forth hymns of praise
and
thanksgiving.+ Both were engaged in meritorious
efforts
for the promotion and cultivation of learning.
Jehoshaphat
appointed throughout his dominions public
instructors,
an institution similar, apparently, to that of
the
Corlovingian missi; Hezekiah, who has been termed
*
This is not the proper place to enter upon the question of the
religious
meaning of this Book: I am speaking of it simply as poetry.
But
I may say generally that I accept the interpretation of the poem
given
by Dr. Ginsburg in his valuable commentary. No objection can
be
made to that interpretation, on the score of the place that the
Book
occupies in the Canon, which would not apply equally to
Deborah's
Song, or to the Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan.
+
2 Chron. xx. 21, 29 ; xxix. 25, 30.
POETRY OF THE HEBREWS. 13
the
Pisistratus of the Hebrew history,* established a
society
of learned men (Prov. xxv. I), whose duty it was
to
provide for the collection and preservation of all the
scattered
remains of the earlier literature. To their pious
labours
we are doubtless indebted for many Psalms which
would
otherwise have perished. The arrangement of some
portion,
at least, of the present Psalter, it may reasonably
be
supposed, was completed under their superintendence.
Smaller
separate collections were combined into one; and
this
was enriched partly by the discovery of older hymns
and
songs, and partly by the addition of new.+ A fresh
impulse
was given to the cultivation of Psalmody. The
use
of the ancient sacred music was revived, and the king
commanded
that the Psalms of David and of Asaph
should
be sung, as of old time, in the
self
encouraged the taste for this kind of poetry by his
own
example. One plaintive strain of his, written on his
recovery
from sickness, has been preserved in the Book
of
the Prophet Isaiah (chap. xxxviii.). In some Latin
Psalters,
several Odes, supposed to belong to the time of
the
Assyrian invasion, have his name prefixed to them.
How far any of the Psalms found in
our existing collec-
tion
can be placed in the time of Jehoshaphat is doubtful;
on
this point critics are divided: but there can be no doubt
that
several are rightly assigned to the reign of Hezekiah.
Amongst
these are a number of beautiful poems by the
Korahite
singers. The Forty-second (and Forty-third)
and
Eighty-fourths Psalms were written, it has been con-
jectured++
by a Priest or Levite carried away into captivity
by
the Assyrians. The Forty-sixth, Forty-seventh, and
Forty-eighth
still more certainly refer to that period.
These
must all have been written shortly after the over-
throw
of Sennacherib and his army. The first has many
striking
coincidences of thought and expression with the
prophecies
of Isaiah, delivered not very long before under
Ahaz.
The last opens with a vivid picture of the approach
*
See Delitzsch, Commentar über den Psalter, ii. 377.
+
For the proof of this see below, Chapter IV.
++
Bleek, Einl. in das A. T., p. 168.
14 DAVID AND THE LYRIC
of
the Assyrian army, and of its sudden and complete
overthrow—a
picture rivalling in its graphic force and
concentrated
energy the delineations of the same Prophet
in
sight of the same catastrophe—and concludes with a
grand
burst of religious and patriotic exultation, such as
might
naturally be called forth by an occasion so memor-
able.
Religion and patriotism are here blended in one,
and
find, united, their truest and noblest expression.* To
the
same period of the Assyrian invasion may be referred
the
Sixty-fifth and Seventy-sixth Psalms, and possibly,
also,
the Seventy-fifth.
But from this time till the return
from the Captivity,
comparatively
few Psalms were written. It is probable,
indeed,
that as there was no period during the existence
of
the Jewish monarchy when the voice of Prophets was
not
heard, so also there was no long period during which
the
sweet singers of
Prophets
themselves were Psalmists: Jonah (chap. ii.),
Isaiah
(chap. xii.), Habakkuk (chap. Hi.), were all lyric
poets.
It would be but natural that, in some instances,
their
sacred songs should be incorporated in the public
liturgies.
After the Exile, when the Prophets took so
active
a part in the rebuilding of the
restoration
of its services, this seems almost certainly to
have
been the case.+ Before the Exile the same thing
may
have happened. Two Psalms, the Thirty-first and
the
Seventy-first, have been supposed by eminent critics
to
have been written by Jeremiah; a supposition which
derives
countenance from their general character, from the
tone
of sorrowful tenderness which pervades them, from
the
many turns of expression like those to be met with in
the
writings of the Prophet, and, in the case of the latter
Psalm,
also from its Inscription in the Septuagint, accord-
*
See the Notes on these Psalms.
+
The Seventy-sixth is expressly styled in the Inscription of the
LXX.
w]dh> pro>j to>n ]Assuri<on. With less probability
they entitle Ps.
1xxx. yalmo>j u[pe>r tou?
]Assuri<ou.
++
Several of the later Psalms are, by the LXX. Syriac and Vulgate,
said
to have been written by Haggai and Zechariah. See the Article
ZECHARIAH
in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.
POETRY OF THE
HEBREWS. 15
ing
to which it was a favourite with the Rechabites and
the
earlier exiles.
Even in
the
Hundred and Second Psalm was evidently composed,
towards
the close of the Seventy Years, and in prospect of
the
speedy restoration of the captives to the land of their
fathers;
there possibly, also, at an earlier period, the
Seventy-fourth
and the Seventy-ninth, which describe
with
so much force of pathos the sack of
burning
of the
inhabitants.
Still, during the five hundred years
which elapsed from
the
death of David to the time of Ezra, a period as long
as
from the days of Chaucer to our own, no great suc-
cessors
to David appeared; no era but that of Hezekiah,
as
has already been observed, was famous for its sacred
singers.
Here and there a true Israelite, in his own
distress,
or oppressed by the sins and calamities of his
nation,
poured out his Complaint before God; or for his
own
or his people's deliverance sang aloud his song of
thanksgiving.
And some few of these songs and com-
plaints
may have been collected and added to the earlier
Psalms;
some even, whose authors were unknown, may
have
been ascribed to David, the great master of lyric
poetry.
But what Eichhorn has remarked, remains true,
that
the Psalms belong, as a whole, not to many, but
chiefly
to two or three periods of Jewish history,—to the
age
of David, to that of Hezekiah, to the return from the
Babylonish
Captivity.
This, indeed, is only in accordance
with what has been
observed
in other nations, that certain great crises of history
are
most favourable to poetry. From the throes and travail-
pangs
of a nation's agony are born the most illustrious of
her
sons in arts as well as in arms. The general commo-
tion
and upheaving, the stir and ferment of all minds, the
many
dazzling occasions which arise for the exercise of the
loftiest
powers,—all these things give a peculiar impulse, a
higher
aim, a nobler resolve, to those who, by the preroga-
tive
even of their natural gifts, are destined to be the
16 DAVID AND THE LYRIC
leaders
of the intellectual world. Hence, likewise, poets
appear
in clusters or constellations; for only in seasons
of
great peril, or signal and splendid triumph, are those
deeper
and stronger feelings called forth which are the soul
of
the truest and most perfect poetry.
Such a crisis to the Jews was the Return
from the
Captivity.
And, accordingly, to this period a very con-
siderable
number of Psalms, chiefly in the Fourth and
Fifth
Books, may without hesitation be referred. The
Jews
had carried with them to
and
the Psalms of David and his singers. The familiar
words
associated with so many happy memories, with the
best
and holiest hours of their lives, must often have
soothed
the weariness of exile, even if their hearts were
too
heavy to sing the song of Jehovah in a strange land.
The
fact that their heathen masters "required of them a
song"
to enliven their banquets, shows how great a skill in
music
they possessed, and how well it was appreciated.
Nor
did exile make them forget their cunning. When the
first
joyful caravan returned under Zerubbabel, we are
particularly
informed that it comprised singing men and
singing
women.
The first expression of their joy was in
Psalms.
Many of the beautiful little songs in that ex-
quisite
collection entitled "Pilgrim Songs," or "Songs of
the
Goings-up," must have been first called forth by the
recollection
of their going up from
if
not first sung by the way. They are full of touching
allusions
to their recent captivity, full of pious affection for
their
land, their city, their temple. They were afterwards
comprised
in one volume, and were then intended for the
use
of the pilgrims who went up from all parts of the
with
something of its former splendour, notwithstanding
all
that had been irreparably lost when the beautiful house
wherein
their fathers had worshipt was laid in ashes, many
hymns
and songs were especially composed. Amongst
these
was that long series of Psalms which open or close
with
the triumphant Hallelujah, a nation's great thanks-
POETRY OF THE
HEBREWS. 17
giving,
the celebration of a deliverance so wonderful, that
it
eclipsed even that which before had been ever regarded
as
the most signal instance of God's favour towards them,
the
deliverance of their fathers from the bondage in
Hallêl,"
* or, as it was sometimes called, "the Egyptian
Hallêl,"
as if with the purpose of bringing together the
two
memorable epochs of the national history, was sung at
the
great festivals in the
at
Pentecost, at the Feast of Tabernacles, and also at the
Feast
of Dedication and at the New Moons. This was
doubtless
"the hymn " which our Lord and His Apostles
are
said to have sung+ at His last solemn Passover before
He
suffered.
Nearly all these later Poems are in
character and style
unmistakeably
different from the earlier. They have the air
and
colouring of another age, of a different state of society.
They
are, for the most part, no longer individual, but
national,
a circumstance which of itself, perhaps, in some
instances
abates their interest. They want the terseness,
the
energy, the fire, of the Psalms of David. They have
neither
the bold vehemence nor the abrupt transitions
which
mark his poetry. They flow in a smoother and a
gentler
current. We hardly find in the Anthems which
were
intended for the service of the
the
vigour, the life, the splendour, the creative power,
conspicuous
in those which, when the
its
resting-place on the holy mountain, rolled from the
lips
of "the great congregation," like "the voice of many
waters,"
beneath the glorious canopy of a Syrian heaven.
The
last age of Hebrew Poetry, if poetical excellence alone
be
considered, was scarcely equal to the first. But it has
its
own peculiar interest: it was a second spring, and it
was
the last.
One question remains to be considered
before we
conclude
this rapid and necessarily very imperfect sketch
*
Delitzsch, Psalmen, ii. 16o n. (1st Edit.) He points out that "the
Great
Hallêl" is the name, not of these Psalms, but of Ps. cxxxvi.
+
Matt. xxvi. 30 ; Mark xiv. 26.
VOL.
I.
18 DAVID AND THE LYRIC
of
Hebrew Lyric Poetry. Are any of the Psalms in our
present
Psalter later than the times of Ezra and Nehemiah?
Three
or four critics, with that strange perverseness so
often
to be found in minds naturally rather acute than
profound,
have insisted that more than one-half of the
entire
collection is as late as the days of the Maccabees.
But
this singular literary heresy apart, the verdict is
almost
unanimous the other way; the large majority have
maintained
that not a single Psalm in the collection can
be
brought down to a period so late. It has been argued
and
repeated again and again, that the history of the
Canon
precludes the possibility of Maccabean Psalms.
That
history shows us, it has been said, that the whole
volume
had long before received its recognised place as a
Canonical
book. The argument advanced on this side
of
the question rests on the following grounds:--First, in
the
Prologue to the Book of Ecclesiasticus, written some
time
before the outbreak of the Maccabean struggle, a
threefold
division of the Scriptures is recognised,--the
Law,
the Prophets, and "the other books of the fathers."
This
last expression has been generally supposed to
denote
that division of the Scriptures commonly called the
Hagiographa,
and in which the Psalms were comprised.
Secondly,
we are told in the Second Book of Maccabees
(ii.
13), that Nehemiah made a collection of the sacred
writings
which included "the works of David." Hence it
has
been inferred that the Psalter was finally brought to
its
present shape, and recognised as complete, in the time
of
Nehemiah. But this is thoroughly to misunderstand
the
nature of the formation of the Canon, which was
manifestly
a very gradual work.* Even granting that by
"the
works of David" we are to understand a general
collection
of Psalms, it does not follow that the collection
contained
the exact number, neither more or less, now
comprised
in the Psalter. The Canon itself was not closed
under
Nehemiah. Additions were made by him to other
Books.
Why should not additions be made at a later
*
See Prof. Westcott's able article on the CANON in Smith's Dic-
tionary
of the Bible.
POETRY OE THE
HEBREWS. 19
period
to the Psalter? Ewald himself, who strenuously
maintains
that no Psalms are so late as the Maccabean
period,
admits nevertheless that under Judas Maccabeus a
large
number of books were added to the Canon—the
Proverbs,
the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Daniel,
Esther,
the Chronicles.* But if so, on what possible
grounds
can it be alleged that the Psalter, merely because
collected
into a whole under Nehemiah, was finally closed
against
all later additions?
A far stronger argument on that side of
the question
would
be found in the Septuagint Version, if it could be
shown
that the translation of the Psalms was finished at
the
same time with that of the Pentateuch under Ptolemy
Lagi
(B.C. 323—284). This, however, cannot be proved,
though
the expression in the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus
may
seem to imply it. But it is worthy of notice, that
the
writer of the First Book of the Maccabees is evidently
acquainted
with the Alexandrine Version, and that this
Version,
though it ascribes some Psalms to Haggai and
Zechariah,
mentions none of a later date.
The question, therefore, still remains
an open one; and
there
is no reason, so far as the History of the Canon is
concerned,
why we should refuse to admit the existence
of
Maccabean Psalms. Psalms like the Forty-fourth, the
Seventy-fourth,
and the Seventy-ninth, seem more easily
explained
by referring them to that period of Jewish
history
than to any other; though the last two, as has
already
been remarked, may, not without some show of
probability,
be referred to the time of the Chaldean
invasion.+
Such, in its merest outline, is the
history of Sacred
Psalmody
among the Hebrews. It occupies between its
extreme
limits a period of a thousand years, from Moses
to
Nehemiah, or perhaps even to a later age. During a
large
portion of that period, the Psalms shine like "a light
*The
passage in 2 Maccabees ii. 13 is as follows:—e]chgou?nto
de> kai>
e]n tai?j
a]nagrafai?j kai> e]n toi?j u[pomnhmatismoi?j toi?j kata> to>n
Neemi<an ta>
au]ta<, kai>
w[j kataballo<menoj biblioqh<khn e]pisunh<gage ta> peri> tw?n
basile<wn
kai> profhtw?n
kai> ta> tou? Daui>d kai> e]pistola>j
basile<wn peri a]naqema<twn.
+See
more on this subject in the Introduction to those Psalms.
20 DAVID AND THE LYRIC
in
a dark place." They tell us how, amidst corruption,
idolatry,
and apostasy, God was truly loved and faithfully
worshipt.
Not only as "given by inspiration of God"
are
they a witness to the fact that God was teaching His
people.
So far they are what the Prophetical Books are.
Psalmists
as well as Prophets were chosen by Him to be
the
interpreters of His will, to declare His truth. Both the
one
and the other are the organs and vehicles of the Divine
communications.
But there is this further significance in
the
Psalms. They are not only, not chiefly, it may be
said,
the voice of God to man. They are the voice of man
to
God. They are prayers, indeed, far beyond merely
human
utterances; they are prayers which the Spirit of
God
himself has given as the model of all prayer and
intercession.
But they bear witness at the same time to
the
reality of the soul's spiritual life in those who uttered
them.
Truly divine, they are also truly human. They go
infinitely
beyond us; they have a depth and height, and
length
and breadth of meaning, to which the best of us
can
never fully attain. We feel that they rise into regions
of
peaceful and holy communion with God to which we
may
aspire, but which we have not reached. But mean-
while
they have a reality which satisfies us that they are
the
true expression of human hearts pouring themselves
out
towards God, though often themselves carried beyond
themselves
through the power of the Holy Ghost.
There are times, no doubt, when we
read one and
another
of these Psalms with something like a feeling of
disappointment.
There are times when we cannot repress
the
wish to know more of the circumstances which called
them
forth, of the feelings, the views, the hopes, with which
they
were written. We ask ourselves what the peril is
from
which the Sacred Poet has barely escaped; who the
enemies
were whose machinations so terrified him; what
the
victories, the successes, the deliverances, which he
celebrates
with such loud songs of thanksgiving. We
should
read them, we think, with fresh interest, could
we
tell with certainty when and by whom they were
written.
But if we could do this, if the picture of those
POETRY OF THE HEBREWS. 21
circumstances
were clear and well-defined, we might lose
more
than we should gain. For the very excellence of the
Psalms
is their universality. They spring from the deep
fountains
of the human heart, and God, in His providence
and
by His Spirit, has so ordered it, that they should
be
for His Church an everlasting heritage. Hence they
express
the sorrows, the joys, the aspirations, the struggles,
the
victories, not of one man, but of all. And if we ask,
How
comes this to pass? the answer is not far to seek.
One
object is ever before the eyes and the heart of the
Psalmists.
All enemies, all distresses, all persecutions, all
sins,
are seen in the light of God. It is to Him that the
cry
goes up; it is to Him that the heart is laid bare; it
is
to Him that the thanksgiving is uttered. This it is
which
makes them so true, so precious, so universal. No
surer
proof of their inspiration can be given than this,
that
they are "not of an age but for all time," that the
ripest
Christian can use them in the fulness of his
Christian
manhood, though the words are the words of
one
who lived centuries before the coming of Christ in
the
flesh.
CHAPTER
II.
THE
USE OF THE PSALTER IN THE CHURCH AND BY
INDIVIDUALS.
DEEP
as is the interest attaching to the Psalter as the
great
storehouse of Sacred Poetry, and vast as is its
importance
considered as a record of spiritual life under
the
Old Dispensation, scarcely less interest and importance
attach
to it with reference to the position it has ever
occupied
both in the public worship of the Church and in
the
private life of Christians. No single Book of Scripture,
not
even of the New Testament, has, perhaps, ever taken
such
hold on the heart of Christendom. None, if we may
dare
judge, unless it be the Gospels, has had so large an
influence
in moulding the affections, sustaining the hopes,
purifying
the faith of believers. With its words, rather
than
with their own, they have come before God. In
these
they have uttered their desires, their fears, their
confessions,
their aspirations, their sorrows, their joys,
their
thanksgivings. By these their devotion has been
kindled
and their hearts comforted. The Psalter has been,
in
the truest sense, the Prayer-book both of Jews and
Christians.
The nature of the volume accounts for
this; for it is in
itself,
to a very great extent, the converse of the soul with
God.
Hence it does not teach us so much what we are to
do,
or what we are to be, as how we are to pray; or, rather,
it
teaches us what we are to do and to be through prayer.
"This,"
says Luther, "is the great excellence of the Psalter;
that
other books, indeed, make a great noise about the
works
of the saints, but say very little about their words.
But
herein is the pre-eminence of the Psalter, and hence
22
THE USE OF THE PSALTER. 23
the
sweet fragrance which it sheds, that it not only tells
of
the works of the saints, but also of the words with which
they
spake to God and prayed, and still speak and pray."
Nor is the influence of this Book on
the Church at
large
and on our public Liturgies less remarkable. "The
primitive
Church," says Bishop Taylor, "would admit no
man
to the superior orders of the clergy, unless, among
other
pre-required dispositions, they could say all David's
Psalter
by heart." Tertullian, in the second century,
tells
us that the Christians were wont to sing Psalms at
their
agap, and that they were sung antiphonally. From
the
earliest times they formed an essential part of Divine
Service.
We learn from Augustine and other writers, that,
after
the reading of the Epistle, a whole Psalm was sung,
or
partly read, partly sung—taking them in the order in
which
they stood in the Psalter--and that then followed
the
reading of the Gospel.+ Hilary, Chrysostom, Augustine,
all
mention the use of the Psalms in the public service, and
describe
them, sometimes as being sung by the whole
congregation,
at others as being recited by one individual,
who
was followed by the rest. The practice of antiphonal
chanting
was common in the East, and was introduced by
Ambrose
into the
sang
the verses of the Psalm alternately, in two choirs, the
one
answering to the other, or, sometimes, the first half of
the
verse was sung by a single voice, and the other half
by
the whole congregation.
We learn from the Talmud, as well as
from the Inscrip-
tions
of the LXX., that certain Psalms were appointed in
the
same
custom also obtained in the Christian Church. The
Morning
Service used to begin with Psalm lxiii., the
Evening
Service with Psalm cxli. In Passion Week, Psalm
xxii.
was sung. Since the time of Origen, Seven Psalms
have
received the name of Penitential Psalms, which were
used
in the special additional services appointed for the
*
Sermon on the Whole Duty of the Clergy. Works (
vol.
viii, p. 507.
+
August. Serm. 176, Opp. torn. v. pp. 1212-14.
24 THE USE OF THE PSALTER
season
of Lent. These were Psalms vi. xxxii. xxxviii. li.
cii.
cxxx. cxliii.*
In the Church of Rome, Psalms occupy a
prominent
place
in the Service of the
consist
of three parts: the Sacramentary, containing the
prayers
of the officiating priest; the Lectionary, containing
the
lessons from the Bible; and the Antiphonary, contain-
ing
the Psalms and antiphons, or verses from the Psalms
and
Prophets which served as the Introit, and received
the
name from their being sung responsively. The term
"gradual
" in the Mass is a remnant of the ancient custom
before
referred to. The Psalm which was sung before the
Gospel
was called Responsorium graduale, because it was
intoned
by two voices from the steps (gradus, whence the
name)
of the ambon, and then taken up by the people.
In
the Seven Canonical Hours, as they are called, the
Psalms
form no inconsiderable part of the service; and
the
Romish priest prays them daily in his Breviary. Our
own
Church has provided for the daily recital of some
portion
of them in her services, and has so distributed
them
in her Liturgy, that the whole book is repeated every
month.
In a very large part of the Reformed Churches
they
take the place of hymns. Thrown into metrical
versions,
they are probably sung by most congregations
of
professing Christians amongst ourselves, little as any
metrical
version has succeeded in preserving the spirit and
glow
of the original. In many places, especially among
Protestant
communities abroad, it is usual to bind up
the
Psalter with the New Testament, from the feeling,
doubtless,
that, more than any other part of the Old, it
tends
directly to edification. Nor is this feeling modern,
or
peculiar to Protestants. Two facts will show how widely
it
has prevailed. The one is, that when the Council of
a
special exception was made in favour of the Psalter:
*
The seven Psalms were selected with reference to the sprinkling
of
the leper seven times in order to his cleansing, and the command
to
Naaman to wash himself seven times in the
say,
as corresponding to the seven deadly sins. (See I)elitzsch on
Ps.
cxliii.)
IN THE CHURCH AND BY
INDIVIDUALS. 25
the
other is, that the Psalter was the first portion of the
Hebrew
Bible which ever issued from the press.
To follow the history of such a Book, to
listen to the
testimonies
which have been borne to it by God's saints
in
all ages, must be a matter of no little interest. I will,
therefore,
set down here some of the most striking of these
testimonies.
I will first cite Athanasius, Bishop
of Alexandria in the
fourth
century, who, in his Epistle to Marcellinus, prefixed
to
his Interpretation of the Psalms, professes to tell him
the
opinion of an old man whom he once met, concerning
the
Book of Psalms. He says:
"He who takes this Book in his
hands, with admiration
and
reverence goes through all the prophecies concerning
the
Saviour which he finds there as in the other Scriptures;
but
the other Psalms he reads as if they were his own
words,
and he who hears them is pricked at the heart
as
if he said them himself." No one, he goes on to
observe,
can take the words of the Patriarchs, or Moses,
or
Elijah, to himself, and use them always as his own; but
he
who uses the Psalms "is as one who speaks his own
words,
and each one sings them as if they had been written
for
his own case, and not as if they had been spoken by
some
one else, or meant to apply to some one else."
Again:
"To me, indeed, it seems that the Psalms are to
him
who sings them as a mirror, wherein he may see
himself
and the motions of his soul, and with like feelings
utter
them. So also one who hears a psalm read, takes it as
if
it were spoken concerning himself, and either, convicted
by
his own conscience, will be pricked at heart and repent,
or
else, hearing of that hope which is to God-wards, and
the
succour which is vouchsafed to them that believe, leaps
for
joy, as though such grace were specially made over to
him,
and begins to utter his thanksgivings to God" (§ 12).
Again: "In the other Books (of
Scripture) are dis-
courses
which dissuade us from those things which are evil,
but
in this has been sketched out for us how we should
abstain
from things evil. For instance, we are commanded
to
repent, and to repent is to cease from sin; but here has
26 THE USE OF THE PSALTER
been
sketched out for us how we must repent, and what we
must
say when we repent. And again, Paul hath said:
'Tribulation
worketh patience for the soul, and patience,
proof,'
&c.; but in the Psalms we find written and engraven
how
we ought to bear afflictions, and what we should say
in
our afflictions and what after our afflictions, and how
each
one is proved, and what are the words of them that
hope
in the Lord. Again, there is a command in every-
thing
to give thanks; but the Psalms teach us also what to
say
when we give thanks. Then when we hear from others,
'They
that will live godly shall be persecuted,' by the
Psalms
we are taught what we ought to utter when we are
driven
into exile, and what words we should lay before
God,
both in our persecutions and when we have been
delivered
out of them. We are enjoined to bless the Lord
and
to confess to Him. But in the Psalms we have a
pattern
given us, both as to how we should praise the
Lord
and with what words we can suitably confess to Him.
And,
in every instance, we shall find these divine songs
suited
to us, to our feelings, and our circumstances" (§ 1o).
These words of Athanasius are doubly
interesting when
we
remember what his own life had been; how often he
had
been driven into exile; what persecutions he had
endured;
from how many perils he had been delivered.
Let us hear next Ambrose, Bishop of
Milan in the fourth
century,
in the preface to his Exposition of Twelve of the
Psalms
of David.* "Although all divine Scripture breathes
the
grace of God, yet sweet beyond all others is the Book
of
Psalms," . . . "History instructs, the Law teaches, Pro-
phecy
announces, Rebuke chastens, Mortality [? Morality]
persuades:
in the Book of Psalms we have the fruit of all
these,
and a kind of medicine for the salvation of man."
…"What
is more delightful than a Psalm? It is the
benediction
of the people, the praise of God, the thanks-
giving
of the multitude, . . . the voice of the Church, the
harmonious
confession of our faith," &c.+
*
Opp. Venet. 1748, tom. ii. In
+Afterwards,
in enumerating other excellences of the Psalms, he
throws
a curious light on the state of the churches in
IN THE CHURCH AND BY INDIVIDUALS. 27
With deep feeling Augustine narrates what
the Psalms
were
to him in the days of his first conversion to God.
"What
words did I utter to Thee, O my God, when I read
the
Psalms of David, those faithful songs, those pious
breathings
which suffer no swelling spirit of pride, when I
was
as yet uninstructed in all the truth and fulness of Thy
love,
a catechumen in that country-house, keeping holiday
with
the catechumen Alypius, whilst my mother remained
with
us, in the garb of a woman, (but) with the faith of
a
man, with the calmness of an old woman, with the
affection
of a mother, with the piety of a Christian. What
words
did I utter to thee in those Psalms; how was my
love
to Thee inflamed thereby; how did I burn to recite
them,
were it possible, through the whole world, against
the
proud swelling of men! And yet they are sung
through
the whole world, and there is none who is hidden
from
Thy heat.* How vehement and how sharp was my
grief
and indignation against the Manicheans; + and yet,
again,
how I pitied them because they knew not these
sacraments,
these medicines, and showed their insanity in
rejecting
the antidote which might have restored them to
sanity!
How I wish they could have been somewhere near
me,
and, without my knowing that they were there, could
have
seen my face and heard my words when I read the
Fourth
Psalm, in that retirement in which I was, and have
known
all that that Psalm was to me!" And then he goes
through
the whole Psalm, describing the feelings with
which
he read it, and the application which he made of it
to
his own case—an application very wide indeed of the
proper
meaning of the Psalm, but one which, nevertheless,
poured
light and peace and joy into his soul.
We pass on to the time of the
Reformation. Let us
hear
how two of its great master spirits speak. "Where,"
celebration
of Divine Service. "What difficulty there is," he says, "to
procure
silence in the church when the Lessons are read! If one
speaks,
all the rest make a noise. When a Psalm is read, it produces
silence
of itself. All speak, and no one makes a noise."
*
In allusion to Ps. xix. 7.
+
Because, as rejecting the Old Testament, they robbed themselves
of
the Psalms.
28 THE USE OF THE PSALTER
says
Luther, in his Preface to the Psalter (published in
1531),
"will you find words more aptly chosen to express
joy,
than in the Psalms of praise and the Psalms of thanks-
giving?
There thou mayest look into the heart of all the
saints,
as into fair delightful gardens, yea, even into heaven
itself,
and note with what wonderful variety there spring
up
therein, like so many exquisite, hearty, delightful
flowers,
sweet and gladsome thoughts of God and His
benefits.
On the other hand, where canst thou find deeper,
sadder,
more lamentable words of sorrow than are to be
found
in the Psalms of complaint? There again thou
mayest
look into the heart of all the saints, as into death,
yea,
as into hell. How dark and gloomy it is there with
the
manifold hiding of God's countenance! So likewise
when
the Psalms speak of fear or hope, they speak in such
manner
of words that no painter could so paint the fear
or
the hope, and no
express
them to the life more happily."
Again, in the Preface to his Operationes
in Psalmos,* he
observes:
"This Book is, in my judgement, of a different
character
from the other books. For in the rest we are
taught
both by word and by example what we ought to
do;
this not only teaches, but imparts both the method
and
the practice with which to fulfil the word, and to copy
the
example. For we have no power of our own to fulfil
the
law of God, or to copy Christ; but only to pray and to
desire
that we may do the one and copy the other, and
then,
when we have obtained our request, to praise and
give
thanks. But what else is the Psalter, but prayer to
God
and praise of God; that is, a book of hymns? There-
fore
the most blessed Spirit of God, the father of orphans,
and
the teacher of infants, seeing that we know not what or
how
we ought to pray, as the Apostle saith, and desiring
to
help our infirmities, after the manner of schoolmasters
who
compose for children letters or short prayers, that they
*
D. Martini Lutheri Exegetica Opp. Latina, Ed. Irmischer, torn.
xiv.
p. 1o. This Preface bears the date Wittenbergae, sexto calen.
Aprilis,
Anno M.D.xix. I have to thank Dr. Binnie (The Psalms, their
Teaching
and Use,
p. 381) for correcting an error in the reference in
the
first of my two quotations from Luther.
IN
THE CHURCH AND BY INDIVIDUALS.
29
may
send them to their parents, so prepares for us in this
Book
both the words and feelings with which we should
address
our Heavenly Father, and pray concerning those
things
which in the other Books He had taught us we
ought
to do and to copy, that so a man may not feel
the
want of anything which is of import to his eternal
salvation.
So great is the loving care and grace of our
God
towards us, Who is blessed for evermore."
The following passage from Calvin's
Preface to his Com-
mentary
will show the high value which he set upon the
Psalms.
"If," he says, "the
much
benefit from (the reading of) my Commentaries, as I
have
myself derived from the writing of them, I shall have
no
reason to repent of the labour I have taken upon me.
....
How varied and how splendid the wealth which this
treasury
contains it is difficult to describe in words; what-
ever
I shall say, I know full well must fall far short of
its
worth. . . . This Book, not unreasonably,am I wont to
style
an anatomy of all parts of the soul, for no one will
discover
in himself a single feeling whereof the image is
not
reflected in this mirror. Nay, all griefs, sorrows, fears,
doubts,
hopes, cares, and anxieties—in short, all those
tumultuous
agitations wherewith the minds of men are wont
to
be tossed—the Holy Ghost hath here represented to the
life.
The rest of Scripture contains the commands which
God
gave to His servants to be delivered unto us; but
here
the Prophets themselves, holding converse with God,
inasmuch
as they lay bare all their inmost feelings, invite
or
impel every one of us to self-examination, that of all the
infirmities
to which we are liable, and all the sins of which
we
are so full, none may remain hidden. It is a rare and
singular
advantage when, every hiding-place having been
laid
bare, the heart is cleansed from hypocrisy, that foulest
of
plagues, and is brought forth to the light. Lastly,
if
calling upon God be the greatest safeguard of our
salvation,
seeing that no better and surer rule thereof can
be
found anywhere than in this Book, the further any man
shall
have advanced in the understanding of it, the greater
will
be his attainment in the
30
THE
USE OF THE PSALTER
prayer
springs first from a feeling of our necessity, and
then
from faith in the promises. Here the readers will
both
best be awakened to a due sense of their own evils,
and
warned to seek the proper remedies for them.
"Moreover, whatever would serve to
encourage us in our
prayer
to God is shown us in this Book. Nor yet are they
only
promises that meet us here; but we have often set
before
us one who, with the invitation of God calling one
way,
and the hindrances of the flesh another, girds him-
self
bravely to prayer; so that if ever at any time we be
harassed
by doubts of one kind or another, we may learn
to
wrestle against them, till our soul takes wings and
mounts
up with glad freedom unto God. Nor that only,
but
that through hesitations, fears, alarms, we may still
strive
to pray, till we rejoice for the consolation. For this
must
be our resolve, though distrust shut the door to our
prayers,
that we must not give way when our hearts are
shaken
and restlessly disturbed, till faith comes forth
victorious
from its struggles. And in many passages we
may
see the servants of God, so tossed to and fro in their
prayers
that, almost crushed at times, they only win the
palm
after arduous efforts. On the one side the weakness of
the
flesh betrays itself; on the other the power of faith
exerts
itself. . . . This, only in passing, is it worth while to
point
out, that we have secured to us in this Book, what is of
all
things most desirable, not only a familiar access unto
God,
but the right and the liberty to make known to Him
those
infirmities which shame does not suffer us to confess
to
our fellow-men. Further, the sacrifice of praise, which
God
declares to be a sacrifice of sweetest savour and most
precious
to Him, we are here accurately instructed how to
offer
with acceptance. . . . Rich, moreover, as the Book is
in
all those precepts which tend to form a holy, godly, and
righteous
life, yet chiefly will it teach us how to bear the
cross;
which is the true test of our obedience, when, giving
up
all our own desires, we submit ourselves to God, and so
suffer
our lives to be ordered by His will, that even our
bitterest
distresses grow sweet because they come from His
hand.
Finally, not only in general terms are the praises
IN
THE CHURCH AND BY INDIVIDUALS. 31
of
God's goodness uttered, teaching us so to rest in Him
alone,
that pious spirits may look for His sure succour in
every
time of need, but the free forgiveness of sins, which
alone
reconciles God to us, and secures to us true peace
with
Him, is so commended, that nothing is wanting to the
knowledge
of eternal salvation."
He adds, that his best understanding
of the Psalms had
come
to him through the trials and conflicts which he had
himself
been called upon to pass through; that thus he
was
not only able to apply better whatever knowledge he
had
acquired, but could enter better into the design of each.
writer
of the Psalms.
Hooker, reasoning in his immortal work
with the sectaries
of
his times, and defending the use of Psalms in the Liturgy,
says:
"They are not ignorant what
difference there is between
other
parts of Scripture and the Psalms. The choice and
flower
of all things profitable in other books, the Psalms
do
both more briefly contain and more movingly also ex-
press,
by reason of that poetical form wherewith they are
written.
. . . What is there necessary for man to know which
the
Psalms are not able to teach? They are to beginners
an
easy and familiar introduction, a mighty augmentation
of
all virtue and knowledge in such as are entered before,
a
strong confirmation to the most perfect among others.
Heroical
magnanimity, exquisite justice, grave moderation,
exact
wisdom, repentance unfeigned, unwearied patience,
the
mysteries of God, the sufferings of Christ, the terrors
of
wrath, the comforts of grace, the works of
over
this world, and the promised joys of that world which
is
to come, all good necessarily to be either known, or done,
or
had, this one celestial fountain yieldeth. Let there be
any
grief or disease incident unto the soul of man, any
wound
or sickness named for which there is not in this
treasure-house
a present comfortable remedy at all times
ready
to be found. Hereof it is that we covet to make the
Psalms
especially familiar unto all. This is the very cause
why
we iterate the Psalms oftener than any other part of
Scripture
besides; the cause wherefore we inure the people
32
THE USE OF THE PSALTER
together
with their minister, and not the minister alone, to
read
them as other parts of Scripture he doth."*
Donne says: "The Psalms are the manna
of the Church,
As
manna tasted to every man like that he liked best, so
do
the Psalms minister instruction and satisfaction to every
man,
in every emergency and occasion. David was not
only
a clear Prophet of Christ himself, but of every
particular
Christian; he foretells what I, what any, shall
do,
and suffer, and say." +
In later times we find similar
testimonies repeated in
great
abundance. A. H. Francke, in his Explanation of
the
Psalms with a View to Edification (
p.
904), thus expresses himself: "So long as a man has not
the
Spirit of Christ, so long as he does not deny himself,
and
take up his cross daily and follow Christ, no Psalm
seems
sweet to him. He has no pleasure therein; it seems
to
him all like dry straw, in which he finds neither strength
nor
juice. But when he is himself led through a like course
of
suffering and affliction, when he is ridiculed, scorned,
and
mocked by the world for righteousness' sake and
because
he follows Christ, and sees what it is to press
through
all the hindrances which meet him from within
and
from without, and to serve God the Lord in truth,—
then
it is that he observes that in the heart of David far
more
must have gone on than that he should have troubled
himself
merely about his outward circumstances. He is
conscious,
in his daily struggle, of the same enmity, which
has
been put by God between Christ and Belial, between
those
who belong to Christ, and those who belong to the
devil,
and that precisely the same contest in which so much
is
involved is described in the Psalms; and of which, in
fact,
even the First Psalm speaks, when it says, ‘Blessed
is
the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,’
&c.
He therefore that denies himself and the world, with
all
its greatness, with all the riches and the favour of men,
who
will have nothing but God's word as his rule, and seeks
*
Hooker, Eccl. Pol., Book v. ch. xxxvii. § 2.
+
Donne, Sermon lxvi. Works, vol. iii. p. 156 (Alford's edit) See
also
the Introduction to Psalm lxiii.
IN THE CHURCH AND BY INDIVIDUALS. 33
to
take a cheerful conscience with him to his death-bed,
learns
by experience what a real struggle it costs to effect
this.
But he who learns this, learns also how to understand
the
Psalms aright."
From many passages which might be
quoted from
Herder's
writings I select one: "Not merely as regards
the
contents, but also as regards the form, has this use of
the
Psalter been a benefit to the spirit and heart of men.
As
in no lyric poet of
teaching,
consolation, and instruction together, so has there
scarcely
ever been anywhere so rich a variation of tone in
every
kind of song as here. For two thousand years have
these
old Psalms been again and again translated and
imitated
in a variety of ways, and still so rich, so compre-
hensive
is their manner, that they are capable of many a
new
application. They are flowers which vary according
to
each season and each soil, and ever abide in the fresh-
ness
of youth. Precisely because this Book contains the
simplest
lyric tones for the expression of the most manifold
feelings,
is it a hymn-book for all times."*
From Bishop Horne's Preface to his
Commentary, I will
quote
a few lines, partly because of the striking coincidence
of
expression which they exhibit with two passages already
quoted,
the one from Donne, and the other from Calvin.
"Indited," he says,"under
the influence of Him to whom
all
hearts are known, and events foreknown, they suit
mankind
in all situations, grateful as the manna which
descended
from above and conformed itself to every
palate.
. . . He who hath once tasted their excellences
will
desire to taste them again; and he who tastes them
oftenest
will relish them best.
"And now, could the author flatter
himself that any one
would
take half the pleasure in reading the following
exposition,
which he hath taken in writing it, he would not
fear
the loss of his labour. The employment detached him
from
the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics, and
the
noise of folly; vanity and vexation flew away for a
*
Abhandlungen and Briefen zur schonen Literatur. Sämmtliche
Werke.
Th. xvi. p. 17.
VOL.
I.
34
THE
USE OF THE PSALTER
season,
care and disquietude came not near his dwelling.
He
arose, fresh as the morning, to his task; the silence of
the
night invited him to pursue it: and he can truly say
that
food and rest were not preferred before it. Every
Psalm
improved infinitely upon his acquaintance with it,
and
no one gave him uneasiness but the last, for then he
grieved
that his work was done. Happier hours than those
which
have been spent in these meditations on the songs of
Sion,
he never expects to see in this world. Very pleasantly
did
they pass, and moved smoothly and swiftly along: for
when
thus engaged, he counted no time. They are gone,
but
have left a relish and a fragrance upon the mind, and
the
remembrance of them is sweet."
“. . .The songs of
soul
and varied as human life; where no possible state of
natural
feeling shall not find itself tenderly expressed and
divinely
treated with appropriate remedies; where no con-
dition
of human life shall not find its rebuke or consolation:
because
they treat not life after the fashion of an age or
people,
but life in its rudiments, the life of the soul, with
the
joys and sorrows to which it is amenable, from con-
course
with the outward necessity of the fallen world.
Which
breadth of application they compass not by the
sacrifice
of lyrical propriety or poetical method: for if there
be
poems strictly lyrical, that is, whose spirit and sentiment
move
congenial with the movements of music, and which,
by
their very nature, call for the accompaniment of music,
these
odes of a people despised as illiterate are such. For
pure
pathos and tenderness of heart, for sublime imagina-
tion,
for touching pictures of natural scenery, and genial
sympathy
with nature's various moods; for patriotism,
whether
in national weal or national woe; for beautiful
imagery,
whether derived from the relationship of human
life,
or the forms of the created universe; and for the
illustration,
by their help, of spiritual conditions: more-
over,
for those rapid transitions in which the lyrical muse
delighteth,
her lightsome graces at one time, her deep and
full
inspiration at another, her exuberance of joy and her
IN THE CHURCH AND BY
INDIVIDUALS. 35
lowest
falls of grief, and for every other form of the natural
soul,
which is wont to be shadowed forth by this kind of
composition,
we challenge anything to be produced from
the
literature of all ages and countries, worthy to be
compared
with what we find even in the English Version of
the
Book of Psalms."*
This array of testimonies, so various
and yet so accordant,
shall
be closed with three from our own time. The first,
unhappily
a mere fragment, is from one of the most
original
thinkers and most eloquent preachers whom our
Church
has in these later times produced. The second is
from
the dying bed of one who was the ornament and the
pride
of a sister
The
third is from a devout and attached member of the
Church
of Rome.
"The value of the public reading
of the Psalms," says
the
late F. W. Robertson of
for
us, indirectly, those deeper feelings which there would
be
a sense of indelicacy in expressing directly. . . . There
are
feelings of which we do not speak to each other; they
are
too sacred and too delicate. Such are most of our
feelings
to God. If we do speak of them, they lose their
fragrance;
become coarse; nay, there is even a sense of
indelicacy
and exposure. Now, the Psalms afford precisely
the
right relief for this feeling: wrapped up in the forms of
poetry
(metaphor, &c.), that which might seem exagge-
rated,
is excused by those who do not feel it: while they
who
do, can read them, applying them without suspicion of
uttering
their own feelings. Hence their soothing power,
and
hence, while other portions of Scripture may become
obsolete,
they remain the most precious parts of the Old
Testament.
For the heart of man is the same in all
ages."
+
"It is this truth of human feeling
which makes the
Psalms,
more than any other portion of the Old Testa-
ment,
the link of union between distant ages. The
historical
books need a rich store of knowledge before
*
Collected Works, vol. i. pp. 386, 387.
+
Sermon IX. (Second Series), p. 119.
36 THE USE OF THE PSALTER
they
can be a modern book of life; but the Psalms are
the
records of individual experience. Personal religion is
the
same in all ages. The deeps of our humanity remain
unruffled
by the storms of ages which change the surface.
This
Psalm (the Fifty-first), written three thousand years
ago,
might have been written yesterday: describes the
vicissitudes
of spiritual life in an Englishman, as truly as
in
a Jew. 'Not of an age, but for all time. ' "*
Adolphe Monod, whilst suffering from the
cruel malady
of
which he died, speaks thus to the friends who were
gathered
about his sick-bed: "We must read the Psalms
in
order to understand the sufferings of David. The
Psalms
discover to us the inner man of David, and in the
inner
man of David they discover to us in some sort the
inner
man of all the Prophets of God. Well, the Psalms
are
full of expressions of an unheard-of suffering. David
speaks
in them constantly of his evils, his sicknesses, his
enemies
without number: we can scarcely understand, in
reading
them, what he means by the enemies of which he
speaks
so constantly; but they discover to us at least an
inner
depth of affliction, of which, with the mere history
of
David in our hands, we should scarcely have formed an
idea.
It is one of the great advantages of the Psalms."
He
then refers to the Thirty-eighth Psalm as an illustra-
tion.
Subsequently he says: "The capital object of the
mission
which David received of God for all generations
in
the Church was the composition of Psalms. Well, he
composes
his Psalms, or a great part of them, in the midst
of
the most cruel sufferings. Imagine then, bowed down
by
suffering, physical, moral, and spiritual, you were called
upon
to compose a Psalm, and that from the bosom of all
these
sufferings, and at the very moment when they were
such
as those which he describes in Psalm xxxviii., should
issue
hymns to the glory of God, and for the instruction of
the
Church. What a triumph David gains over himself,
and
what a humiliation it is for us, who in our weakness are
mostly
obliged to wait till our sufferings are passed, in order
to
reap the fruit of them ourselves, or to impart the benefit
* Sermon VII. (Second Series), p. 96.
IN THE CHURCH AND BY INDIVIDUALS. 37
to
others. But David, in the midst of his sufferings, writes
his
Psalms. He writes his Thirty-eighth Psalm whilst he
undergoes
those persecutions, those inward torments, that
bitterness
of sin. I know it may be said that David wrote
that
Thirty-eighth Psalm coldly, transporting himself into
sufferings
which he did not feel at the time, as the poet
transports
himself into sufferings which he has never ex-
perienced;
but no, such a supposition offends you as much
as
it does me: it is in the furnace, it is from the bosom of
the
furnace, that he writes these lines, which are intended
to
be the encouragement of the Church in all ages. O
power
of the love of Christ! O renunciation of self-will!
O
grace of the true servant of God! O virtue of the
Apostle,*
and virtue of the Prophet, virtue of Christ in
them,
and of the Holy Ghost! For never man (of him-
self)
would be capable of such a power of will, of such a
triumph
over the flesh." +
Frederic Ozanam, writing shortly before
his death to a
Jew
who had embraced Christianity, says: "The hand of
God
has touched me, I believe, as it touched Job, Ezechias,
and
Tobias, not unto death, but unto a prolonged trial. I
have
not, unfortunately, the patience of these just men: I
am
easily cast down by suffering, and I should be incon-
solable
for my weakness, if I did not find in the Psalms
those
cries of sorrow which David sends forth to God, and
which
God at last answers by sending him pardon and
peace.
Oh, my friend, when one has the happiness to