Value.-(i.) The book shews us * the kind of answer to the ever-recurring problem of the distribution of human happiness and suffering which commended itself to a pious Alexandrian Jew, learned in the philosophical systems which found favour in his day, yet faithful to his traditional beliefs.

(ii.) It has furnished us with more than one expression, the beauty of which has secured for it a permanent place in Christian thought. Such are "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," † a hope "full of immortality,” ‡ “Thou sparest all for they are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls." §

(iii.) The preparation which this book unconsciously makes for the teaching of the New Testament is illustrated by its introduction of words expressing the virtues of faith, hope, and love, united as these are in the teaching of St. Paul,|| St. Peter, and the Epistle to the Hebrews.**

(iv.) The book marks the highest point of religious knowledge attained by the Jews in the period between the close of the Old Testament Canon and the beginning of the Gospel dispensation.

It sets forth, though with a certain amount of inconsistency, a future retribution of the wicked, consisting, according to 1. 11, of annihilation, according to another passage (4. 18-20), of conscious anguish. It approaches the truth of an individual

*See above. Ibid. 3. 4.

+ Wisd. of Sol. 3.1.

§ Ibid. 11. 26, A. V. The Greek corresponding to "lover of souls" is one of the few instances in which the writer uses a word in a sense wholly different from that belonging to it in the classical period of the language, viz. in this case lover of life, cowardly.

Rom. 5. 1-5; 1 Thess. 1. 2, 3.

¶ 1 Pet. 1. 21, 22.

** Heb. 10. 22-24 (R. V.). For these three characteristic moral conditions, thus grouped, and generally typical of the Christian life, see T. B. Strong's Christian Ethics (Bampton Lectures for 1895), pp. 79 ff. London, 1896.

immortality beyond the grave (2. 23; 6. 19; 8. 17; 15. 3); it expresses the nature of God as being predominantly "love (11. 26; 11. 10): it represents love as the final law of creation (7. 22, 23; 11. 24, 26).*

(v.) By the personification of Wisdom, which is set forth, even if it be only as a poetical figure, in this book, it prepares the way for the Christian realisation of the mediatorial office of the Son of God. "In its picture of the righteous sufferer it almost attains (however unconsciously) to a prophetic picture of the death of Christ" (2. 13-20),† and the ideal thus framed "helped the early Jewish-Christian Church to get over the stumbling-block of the Cross, and to recognise in Jesus the fulfilment of the long anticipations of a yearning world." +

INFERIORITY TO THE CANONICAL BOOKS.

In spite of what has just been said, there are obvious points in which the teaching of this book falls short of that given elsewhere in the Old Testament, as well as of the book which most closely resembles it in the New, viz. the Epistle to the Hebrews.

While the existence of sin is clearly recognised, and there is even the identification of the tempter of Gen. 3 with the devil, as the one by whom death entered into the world, § there is scarcely any hint of sin in its character of a universal malady, or as affecting in any degree those who had given themselves to wisdom as their guide.||

Again, when we compare it with the above-named New Testament Epistle, we find that the latter "is incomparably more logical, more truthful, more original, and more rich in

* Farrar, op. cit., p. 408 f.
§ 2. 23, 24.

+ Ibid.

Ibid. p. 420.

|| Only in 15. 2.

divine instructiveness than the best efforts of the pseudoSolomon."*

Lastly, it contains no indication of a personal Messiah. Israel should have universal dominion over other nations, and with that dominion the worship of the God of Israel should supplant idolatry throughout the world-this was the extent of the Messianic hope-at best a kingdom without a king.

Farrar op. cit., p. 407.

IT

CHAPTER XV.

POETIC LITERATURE.*

Canonical Post exilic Psalms.

T is clearly impossible to discuss here with anything like adequacy the question whether any Psalms are to be reckoned as composed after the Exile, and, if such be found, to what dates they respectively belong. In the few pages that follow we shall only attempt (a) to point out the inherent difficulties which present themselves in dealing with the subject; (b) to comment upon the probability that some Psalms are post-exilic; and (c) to notice a few prominent Psalms which have been placed by some critics as late as the days of the Maccabees.

DIFFICULTIES IN DETERMINING THE DATES OF INDIVIDUAL PSALMS.

These arise (i.) from the nature of the Canonical Psalms; for utterances which take the form of prayer, of lamentation, of thanksgiving, are to a large extent of so general a character as to be appropriate to the various experiences of individual souls in very different periods, as well as to the circumstances of a nation at more than one epoch of its history; (ii.) from the brevity of many of the Psalms, for if, as we have seen, it be sometimes hard to fix the date of a book of the size of Wisdom, or even Tobit, how much more in the cases we are now dealing with; (iii.) from the fact that, just as has happened with the

* With regard to the poetic fragments embodied in Judith (16. 2-17), Tobit (13), Ecclesiasticus (51), it does not seem needful to add anything to what has been said in commenting on those books.

hymns of later days, the language of various Psalms has been modified in more ways than one, either in order, we may suppose, to adapt them to some new occasion, or from other causes. Psalm 19 is a case in point. The two subjects with which it deals, viz., the glory of God as manifested in Nature and in the Law plainly indicate the union of two different compositions, so that vv. 7 ff. may be taken as a subsequent addition. For similar signs of editing we may compare the many slight variations which occur in Psalm 18 as compared with the form which it assumes in 2 Sam. 22. So Psalms 14 and 53, substantially identical, vary in slight details, and the same may be said of Psalm 70, as compared with 40. 13-17, and 108, which is made up of 57. 7-11, followed by 60. 5–12.

A similar inference may be drawn from the occasional occurrence of breaks in the alphabetical sequence of verses, or half verses, or of larger portions in an acrostic Psalm.* So great is the lack of completeness from an acrostic point of view in the case of Psalms 9, 10 (properly to be reckoned as one Psalm) that it is impossible to recover the original form.

The Book of Psalms, as is well known, is to a large extent made up of groups formed by earlier collections. Of these there are three principal ones, corresponding to (a) Book I. (Psalms 1-41), (b) Books II. and III. (Psalms 42–89), (c) Books IV. and V. (Psalms 90-150). But although on the whole it may be said that the order of the Psalms corresponds, though very roughly, with their dates, yet there are many obvious exceptions, earlier Psalms being placed in later books, and vice versa. Accordingly this fact, together with our uncertainty as to the time when these various compilations were made, gives us good cause to hesitate before assigning precise dates with anything like confidence.

*Such Psalms are 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, 145.