PART II.

PSALMS LI., LXV.-LXVII., XLV., ETC.

We now pass to a psalm which, though akin in spirit to its predecessor, must rank still higher in our estimation. For surely there is no passage in the Old Testament at once more inspiring and inspired than the 51st psalm. Must we not, then, be eager to throw what light upon it we can from the circumstances of its origin? True, it will be answered, but this has already been done. In the matter of the psalmheadings, or at any rate of an arbitrary selection from them, we most of us still stand where our forefathers stood in the seventeenth century. The vowel-points, indeed, are no longer held to be inspired, but the titles, or at least some of them, virtually are. A full account of the occasion of Ps. li. is given in the heading. To this I must object that hitherto the titles of the psalms have not yielded a single trustworthy biographical reference, and that a faithful exegesis proves that the title of Ps. li. is no exception. I do not say that it is valueless. It suggests thus much, that when the editor of this psalm lived, the ordinary tone of the Jewish Church was less penitential than it was sometimes-less so, for instance, than when church-writers penned the confessions in Ezra ix. and Dan. ix., and especially in Isa. lix. and lxiv. The original writer, if I may build upon the printed results of my own exegesis, spoke in the name of the Church. The editor, however, did not perhaps feel the appropriateness of a' general confession to be said of the whole congregation,' no provision for which is made even in the deepest part of Leviticus-the law of the Day of Atonement. He owned the touching beauty of the psalm, but set it on one side, as it were, for great sinners like David, justifying this, no doubt, by the superficial resemblance between v. 6a (hastily read) and 2 Sam. xii. 13a. That the

M

title implied this, may have been felt by our prince of poets, when he made King John say:

But in the spirit I cry unto my God,

As did the kingly prophet David cry,

Whose hands as mine with murder were attaint.

This great psalm is in every sense the crown of the second 'Davidic' collection. If you cannot enjoy it without imagining that you know its author, then you might not unreasonably, upon exegetical grounds, give your voice for the poet-prophet whom we now call the Second Isaiah. It is a proof of the desultoriness of ancient criticism that the Septuagint translator, who assigns several of the psalms to prophetic writers, left this obvious conjecture for Hitzig. But, for my own part, I think it safer to ascribe our psalm, not to the Second Isaiah, but to one of those lyric poets (see p. 71) who were subject to the spell of his genius. May we presume that the psalmist lived during the Babylonian Exile? Both Theodore of Mopsuestia and Ewald held this theory, which is pleasing enough to the imagination. The sacred singers, according to Ps. cxxxvii., hung their harps upon the willows; here we see the harps taken down and used. The view is not precluded by the reference to the priestly rite of purification (v. 9; cf. Appendix), nor by vv. 20, 21, an epilogue which may, or must, have been added in the time of Nehemiah (cf. on Ps. cxlvii.). Nor does the view of sacrifices in vv. 18, 19, of itself prove that Ps. li. is quite contemporaneous with Ps. 1. Still we must remember that the other Deutero-Isaianic psalms are postExilic, and that Isa. lix. and lxiii. 7-lxiv., of which this church-psalm in parts so strongly reminds us, are also at earliest works of the age of Nehemiah. We may reasonably consider, then, that Ps. li. was written during the Restoration period, before the great rebuilding of the walls by Nehemiah (see v. 20).

Let us now turn to Pss. lxv., lxvi., and lxvii., of which the first is called Davidic; the other two are nameless. When were they written? Ewald finds a great resemblance between Ps. lxv. (Te decet hymnus) and Pss. xlvi. and xlviii., which he brings close up to Judah's great deliverance in Hezekiah's reign. The parallelism, however, is really confined to a single verse (v. 8; cf. Ps. xlvi. 3, 4, 7), nor is it urged by Delitzsch,

e

though he agrees with Ewald as to the date of the psalm. My own grounds for differing from both are derived from the phraseological affinities of the poem and from the history of Biblical theology. It is the second temple which engrosses the church's affection, and which Israel longs to see the spiritual centre of the world, and it is deliverance from one of the troubles that befell Judah, say, under Artaxerxes I. (465-425), which calls forth the song of grateful praise. The same period will suit the somewhat similar 67th psalm (Deus misereatur), which is a psalmist's commentary on the priestly blessing, Num. vi. 24–26. We now come to Ps. lxvi. (Jubilate Deo), which one modern critic (Tholuck), under the glamour of the Isaianic period, actually refers to king Hezekiah. But must we may we—on these four slender grounds, (1) that an individual gives thanks for the nation; (2) that he and they have been delivered from a crushing burden and a furnace of affliction; (3) that his prayers are the expression of an honest and believing heart; and (4) that Hezekiah was, according to the common opinion, a poet, ascribe the psalms to that pious. king? The acute Theodore of Mopsuestia gives a much more reasonable explanation of this and the preceding psalm. In accordance with his theory of prophecy, he thinks that David was transported into distant times, and prophesied the return from the Exile. His Biblical theology may be at fault, but the critical view which he implies is here again almost equal to the best. The 66th psalm does not belong to the Solomonic temple, and though post-Exile, is not, on the ground of a single expression (cf. v. 7 with lxviii. 19), to be brought down as late as the Greek period.

We are now approaching another station in our route. Ps. xlvii. has only an artificial connexion with Pss. xlvi. and xlviii. It struck a later editor as the lyrical expansion of the idea of Ps. xlvi. 11, that Jehovah is both de jure and de facto the governor of the nations. But it interrupts the far closer as well as more obvious connexion of Pss. xlvi. and xlviii. It was not amiss to group these three psalms for the temple-service, but, considering the clear affinities between P's. xlvii. and the 'new song' in celebration of the second temple (viz. Pss. xciii. and xcv.-c.), we are bound to regard it as properly a misplaced fragment or perhaps a replica of that new song.'i Pss. xlvi.

and xlviii., however, have a family connexion. They agree in presenting remarkable coincidences both of thought and of expression with Assyrian prophecies of Isaiah. Nowhere can these be found so fully set forth as in the commentary of Dr. Perowne, to which I may refer the reader. My own opinion has varied. In 1870 I thought with Hitzig that the prophet Isaiah might have been also a psalmist, and have written these psalms on the great deliverance from Sennacherib. I no longer think so. The Jewish Church in Isaiah's time was far too germinal to have sung these expressions of daring monotheism and impassioned love of the temple; and the word 'Elyōn (xlvi. 5; cf. xlvii. 3) as a title for Jehovah never occurs in Isaiah, but frequently in the (probably) later psalms. Of what later age, then, are these fine psalms the records?

Well, Isaiah soon became a favourite prophet-Jeremiah for instance abounds in allusions to him, and in any part of the post-Exile period the temple-poets may have resorted to him for stimulus. The divine name, Jehovah Sabáoth, and the title 'Elyōn, were in use both in the Persian and in the Greek period (see for the former, Pss. lxxxiv. 9, lix. 6), and the admiration expressed for the beauty of Jerusalem in Ps. xlviii. 3 reminds us of the loving encomium in Ps. 1. 3, and points to a period subsequent to the completion of the second temple. Then indeed it was true in a far larger sense than ever before, that Jerusalem was 'the joy of the whole earth.' Then it was, that at the great feasts Jerusalem became too small for the thronging Jewish pilgrims from every land, all familiar with the leading parts of the Scriptures, and eager to realize the scenes of the sacred story. To whom so fully as to a pilgrim of the Diaspora do these words apply?—

m

According to thy name, Elohim, so is thy praise

Unto the ends of the earth:

Thy right hand is full of righteousness.

Walk about Zion, and make the round of her,

Reckon up the towers thereof.

Mark well her rampart,

Study her palaces,

That ye may tell the next generation.-(Ps. xlviii. 11, 13, 14.)

An allusion to Lam. ii. 15.

Yes; Ps. xlviii. at any rate is, I think, a festival psalm, inspired by the idea, now becoming a practical reality, of the Catholic Church. It presupposes a knowledge of the Scriptures, and may be grouped with the well-known historical psalms, from which it differs only in its more poetic character. Thus and thus only can we account for the exaggeration in v. 5,

For, behold, the kings" assembled,
They passed on together.

Not thus would a contemporary of Isaiah have written. But after the Return it was perfectly natural to use this seeming exaggeration. For the overthrow of Sennacherib, like that of Pharaoh, became then typical of the great future overthrow of the assembled hostile nations predicted by the later prophets.1

The use of historical motives in Ps. xlvi. is more delicate than in Ps. xlviii., though not less certain. You have one parallel for it close by in Ps. xlvii. 4, 5, which is a retrospect of the subjugation of the Canaanites and the conquest of Canaan. You have another in a psalm to which I would next invite your attention--Ps. lxxvi., which, together with Ps. lxxv., Ewald places immediately after Pss. xlvi. and xlviii. and considers to have been occasioned by Sennacherib's overthrow. You will observe at once that Ps. lxxvi. begins, like Ps. xlviii., with a reference to Jerusalem, and that lxxvi. 9 and lxxv. 4 are parallel in part to xlvi. 7. Affinities to Isaiah are not wanting P in either of these psalms, though they are much less striking than those in the former pair. The Septuagint, moreover, prefixes to Ps. lxxvi. the title on pòs Tòv 'Aoσúpiov. But if Pss. lxxvi. and lxxviii. are post-Exilic, much more are Pss. lxxv. and lxxvi. Observe, for instance, the use of Salem' for 'Jerusalem' in Ps. lxxvi. 3 (as in the post-Exilic passage, Gen. xiv. 18-20; see p. 42), and the legal tone of 'Make vows and pay them' in Ps. lxxvi. 12. Notice also the pervading antithesis in both psalms between the ungodly' and the 'evil-doers' on the one hand, and the 'righteous' and the afflicted' or 'humble-minded' on the other. This last feature may even suggest to some the

1 Comp. Ezek. xxxviii., xxxix., Isa. lxvi. 6-24, Joel iii. 2, Zech. xiv. 2.