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THE POETEY

EELIGION OF THE PSALMS

K\)t Croall l;ECtures, 1893=94

THE POETEY

AND THE

RELIGION OE THE PSALMS

JAMES ROBERTSON, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
AUTHOR OF
'THE EARLY RELIGION OF ISRAEL'
ETC.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCVIII

All Rights reserved

P E E F A C E.

The following pages are devoted to a consideration
of the Place of the Psalms in the History and the
Religion of the Old Testament, and under that
title they were delivered as the Croall Lectures
for 1893-94.
I have to thank the Trustees for extending to me
the time allowed for the publication of the Lectures.
The delay has enabled me to return once and again,
as I was desirous of doing, in something of the
attitude of a critic of my own positions. When
one's conclusions do not agree with the current
views of those who are regarded as authorities, it
becomes him at least not to be rash in the publi
cation of them.
Besides rearranging the material in the more
convenient form of chapters, I have not hesitated

VI PREFACE.
or may have come under my notice since the
Lectures were delivered. After the book was all in
print, there appeared in the ' Theologische Litera-
turzeitung' (No. 7 for 1898) a review of Wilde-
boer's ' Commentary on the Proverbs,' by Graf von
Baudissin, with some very seasonable and sug
gestive words on the subject of personal religion in
Pre-Exilian times, to which scholars would do well
to take heed. I have lately also discovered that,
in regard to some points, I have been anticipated
almost in identical terms by so competent a judge
as Mr Schechter, in his ' Studies in Judaism,' as,
e.g., on pages 229 and 295 of that work.
The Psalms are hallowed by so many personal
associations that one regrets writing anything of
a controversial character on the subject. At the
same time, the ordinary reader who takes an in
telligent interest in the progress of Old Testament
criticism cannot fail to be aware of a change of
attitude towards these compositions, and will be
prepared to consider the bearings of the questions
involved. With the verdict of such readers I stai
content to abide ; as a friend says to me. The
Psalms tvill take care of themselves.
In sending the book to the press, I have to
express my indebtedness for valuable suggestions

PREFACE. Vll
made to me by my esteemed friend and recent
colleague, Dr Dickson, Emeritus Professor of Divin
ity in the University of Glasgow. I have also to
express my thanks to two former students, Rev,
William Moffat, B.D., minister of Elgin, and Rev.
George Gordon Duncan, B.D., minister of Glen-
devon, for much help in the reading of proofs ; and
to my assistant in the University, Rev. Thomas H.
Weir, B.D., for taking the trouble to verify the
references. For the convenience of the reader,
these references, where it is not otherwise stated,
are made to the English Version.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTEE L
INTRODUCTOBY.
Three aspects of "religion." — The religion of the Psalms specially
interesting (1) because touching human nature so closely ; (2)
to the theologian as bearing on the connection between the Old
and New Testaments ; (3) for the history of religion generally,
and the question of the order of development. Prima facie case
for the existence of heart-religion from the beginning. The problem
of the Psalms is part of the broader problem of the Old Testament.
Not to be settled by assumptions but by method of historical
inquiry . . . Pp. 1-18

CHAPTEE IL
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
Survey of the history of criticism of the Psalms : 1. Earliest Jewish
opinions. 2. The Church fathers — Theodore of Mopsuestia.
3. Foundation laid for historical criticism by Calvin. 4. Inaugura
tion of modern critical treatment by De Wette, whose view was
carried out (a) negatively by Hupfeld, and (b) positively by Ewald
and Hitzig. 5. Olshausen perceived a background of national
history, and referred the Psalms to the Jewish Church of the
Maccabaean period ; similar position of Reuss. 6. More recent
writers carry out one or other of the lines already laid down,
thus : — (a) Delitzsch goes on the lines of Ewald and Hitzig — There
is a back - eddy in Hengstenberg and Havernick. (b) Smend

X CONTENTS.
develops Olshausen's idea of the personified Church, (c) Stade,
Wellhausen, Kuenen, Duhm, proceed on Reuss's conception of the
history, (d) Giesebreoht works an argument from the language of
the Psalms, (e) Cheyne, basing largely on conclusions of Olshausen
and Kuenen, elaborates an argument from groups. (/) Nowack,
Baethgen, Sellin, Beer ... Pp. 19-46

CHAPTEE III.
THE PROBLEMS OE THE PSALMS.
Conclusions from preceding historical survey : (a) The inscriptions can
not per se be taken to determine date and authorship of the Psalms ;
(6) nor can we start from a limited number of admitted " Davidic "
psalms ; (c) nor is the argument from " groups " workable. But the
whole discussion raises one broad question : Are the Psalms, or a
representative portion of them, the expression of pre-exilian re
ligion 1 The arguments for post-exilian origin may be reduced to
five : (1) Examination of first argument, that the Psalter was the
book of praise of the Second Temple. (2) Consideration of the linguistic
argument. There remain three arguments, which resolve themselves
into the question, What were the pre-exilian history and religion of
Israel ? They are these : (3) The historical allusions and situations
do not fit pre-exilian, but do fit post-exilian time. (4) The stage of
religious consciousness is too advanced for pre-exilian time. (5) The
Speaker in the Psalms is the personified post-exilian Church. In
stead of taking up these several points controversially, it is proposed
to institute a historical inquiry on the following lines : (a) to look
at evidence, outside of the Psalter itself, of the existence of a Psalter,
or of the practice of psalmody, in the period before the exile ; (/3) to
consider whether the Psalter itself gives evidence of a pre-exilian
origin. If these two lines of proof show certainly, or with the
greatest probability, that the Psalter originated in pre-exilian times,
it will then be proper to examine the literary, historical, and re
ligious features of the Psalms, in the light of pre-exilian history Pp. 47-66
CHAPTEE IV.
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
What is implied in the term " Canon,'' and what is known as to its
formation and completion. For our present purpose we have to

CONTENTS. XI
look for evidences of the Psalter being actually in the Canon at
certain dates, and draw legitimate inferences from that fact.
Evidence of extra-canonical books : (1) The existence of the
Psalter in the LXX. Version, and the inferences involved. (2) The
testimony of the books of the Maccabees. (3) The testimony
of the book of Eoclesiasticus . . .Pp. 67-88

CHAPTER V.
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE — Continued.
Evidence from the canonical books as to Psalter, psalms, or psalmody :
(1) Ezra, Nehemiah : " singers " returning from the captivity. (2)
The books of Chronicles, with references to {a) singing, &c., and
(6) actual psalms now in the collection. (3) The book of Jonah.
Pre-exilian books — Kings, Samuel, Amos. Summary of the
external evidence, with the strong confirmation \ of Psalm
cxxxvii. . . . . Pp. 89-124
CHAPTEE VI.
TESTIMONY OP THE PSALTER ITSELF.
(1) Not the work of one time or of one man. (2) Five books. (3)
Smaller collections. (4) Not in chronological order ; yet a hint of
such an order at Ps. Ixxii. General conclusion ; earlier psalms
towards the beginning. Two termini — the age of David, and the
age of the Maccabees. Both possible. At all events it is legiti
mate to go back to pre-exilian times for commencement Pp. 125-145
CHAPTEE VIL
POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
The foregoing evidence not only invites but compels us to go back to
pre-exilian time for the origin of psalmody. Three lines of inquiry
before us : (1) Whether, in pre-exilian times, the poetic faculty was
so well cultivated that lyrics of this kind were possible. (2)
Whether there were occasions sufficiently varied and sufficiently out
standing to explain national and religious references. (3) Whether
the religious consciousness had attained a development sufficient to

XU CONTENTS.
produce lyrics like the Psalms. In the present chapter we confine
ourselves to the^rei of these.— The stimulus to poetry furnished by
the scenery of Palestine— the wealth of imagery so produced— the
metaphoric element in the Hebrew language. Proofs of poetic
effort from the earliest times— indications of technical and pro
fessional attainment— variety in the kinds of poetry. Now in the
Psalms we find the same features of parallelism, metaphor, &c.,
as are exhibited, e.g., in poetical fragments in prose books and in
hymnic pieces in historical and prophetical works. Conclusion
that pre-exilian antiquity was capable of producing poetry of
the high literary standard o£ the Psalms. Question arises : What
led a people so musical to assign to David the highest place in
music and song 1 Argue that he must have given a new stimulus
and a new direction to music. (Parallels in our own literature.)
With him begins a distinctive kind of sacred poetry, the sacred
lyric or psalm ..... Pp. 146-173

CHAPTEE VIII.
THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
Inadequacy of the attempts to classify the Psalms according to their
matter ; and the reason for this. Yet certain dominant features
recur. Present chapter confined to the national element, which
assumes various phases : (1) The contemplation of the past history.
The movements, conflicts, &o., of pre-exilian times were exactly
of a nature to call forth such patriotic songs ; and in the historical
books we find outbursts of song just at the crises in history
when we should expect the poetic spirit to be stirred. Here we
can see the justification of the tradition that ascribes psalms
to David. (2) Psalms which concern the king ; these by their
mention of David and David's house justify the same tradition.
(3) Jerusalem psalms : but it was David that made it the capital.
The enigmatical reference to Melchizedek. In connection with the
Temple psalms may be taken the " guest " psalms, which also might
appropriately begin with David . . . Pp. 174-204
CHAPTEE IX.
SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
Pause here to answer an objection that arises. If, as we claim, the
Psalms, or some of them, may be referred to historical occasions

CONTENTS. Xlll
in pre-exilian times, how should there be any uncertainty in
determining the definite occasions 1 Answer : — (a) The records
we possess of pre-exilian history are scanty. (6) When closely
examined, the identifications claimed by critics with post-exilian
situations are equally shadowy. Then (c) metaphor is not a photo
graphic picture of an incident ; it is the coinage of a phraseology
to express inner feeling, (d) The Psalms are chiefly and essentially
subjective, not objective. Therefore the Psalms may belong to times
of which we do have records though they do not picture the events
but express the feelings. The idealising tendency seen most strik
ingly in the kingly psalms, and proved by the failure of critical
attempts to refer those especially to Gentile monarchs. Views of
Hitzig and Cheyne here .... Pp. 205-234

CHAPTEE X.

RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
This is an element in all the Old Testament books ; even the history
is sacred history. But in the Psalms we have religion by itself.
Two great themes : (1) What the writers say or imply as to God
Himself, His character, and His attitude towards creation ; and
(2) what they set forth as the attitude of nature and the world as
related to God, especially man's relation to Him (and by implica
tion the attitude of men to one another). (1) God's existence
taken for granted. So-called Anthropomorphism. Ethical char
acter — not metaphysical — God's near contact with His works,
especially His control of and observance of Man. Here consider
theophanies, which all have a gracious object. (2) Men are broadly
divided into two classes, variously designated. These various
designations on both sides, — the reciprocal attitude they imply,
and the active conduct which is the result. The moral world
here presented. Difficulty of forming a concrete connected
picture of it, because it is described in metaphorical language,
and largely idealised. As to the date at which such a conception
was possible, there is no doubt implied an education in the
handling of language to express spiritual experiences. Yet the
experiences described are possible in very simple states of society.
They are the situations largely dwelt on by early prophets.
Compare the social condition of the East at the present day
Pp. 235-257

XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTEE XL
THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
The religious element in the Psalms, constituting them the highest
embodiment of personal piety in the Old Testament, gives par
ticular interest to the inquiry, Who the Speaker is, and under
what circumstances he wrote them. This inquiry emphasised
by the position of modern critics that the Psalms are spoken
by the Jewish Church collectively. Personification a common
figure in the Old Testament, and clearly to be seen in certain
psalms. The modern theory of personification stated, and illus
trated. Support sought for the theory in the position that the
Psalter was the praise-book of the Temple. Examples of psalms
held to be spoken by or in name of the assembled congregation.
Examples to the contrary; and objections to the theory of personi
fication : — (1) that nothing is gained by it, and greater difficulties
remain ; (2) that it is inconsistent with the lyrical character of the
songs ; and (3) that it exhibits a retrograde view of the religion.
An examination of the literary process leads to the conclusion that
individual conception, observation, and experience must underlie
personification ; therefore personal individual religion must pre
cede collective representation of religious experience, and this is
the vital point in question. Arguments here drawn from the
experiences by which prophets were taught the truths they pro
claimed, from the feelings with which psalms of a personal tone
would naturally be recited by a body of worshippers, and from
the religious consciousness in all ages . . Pp. 258-290

CHAPTEE XII.
PERSONAL RELIGION IN PBE-EXILIAN TIMES.
Every step in the preceding discussion shows that there is an under
lying question as to the quality of the pre-exilian religion, which
must now be considered. As explained by the critics, the post-
exilian spiritual religion turns out to be a "corporate" religion,
not personal piety. To which there are two objections : — that this
is no essential advance on earlier religion, and that it is not ade
quate to account for the spiritual tone of the Psalms. The ques
tion in dispute comes to be : whether, early or late, the individual

CONTENTS. XV
did not count for more than these critics allow. — Although the
religion had always a national sphere and boundary, yet, within
this corporate religion, there was room for the free exercise of
personal piety. From the records of pre-exilian time, it is argued
that : — (1) Law implies recognition of individual responsibility.
(2) The books, and the very function of the prophets, imply a dis
tinction of good and evil men in the community. We find in the
prophets almost the very words of the Psalms, or, by turning pro
phetic into psalm language we get certainly the situation under
lying the Psalms. And it is difficult to conceive any state of
society in ancient Israel in which it could be otherwise. Compare
the modern condition in the East. (3) The oldest historical books
show ; (a) how the nation grew out of the family, and the family
out of the individual — the history is full of biography ; (b) how the
individual may bring harm on the community ; (c) how the indivi
dual may act as intercessor for others ; and (d) generally how the
individual is in direct relationship to God. — All this sufficient to
confute the view, held since Vatke, that the individual did not count
for anything, and to show that such a sweeping distinction between
pre-exilian and post-exilian religion is untenable . Pp. 291-318

CHAPTEE XIIL
DAVID THE PSALMIST.
The ground now cleared for putting the question. Whether we know
of individuals in pre-exilian times high enough in spiritual tone to
write psalms and situated similarly to the psalmists? (1) The
individual prophets are the best instances of good men, alone
against a multitude, and standing in direct relation to God. Amos,
Samuel, Moses, all exemplify this and use language like the Psalms.
Jeremiah a conspicuous example, but not essentially different from
other prophets. From him and others we have language, and even
pieces quite like the Psalms. But (2) the prophets did not stand
alone. Cases of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and even Elijah. A prophet's
life not spent in giving public addresses. We know they prayed
for the people. Did they never pray with them ? (3) Therefore the
difference between prophetic and psalm religion is more one of form
and audience than of substance. As to the objections to Davidic
psalms : We must allow for the versatility of David's muse, and we
must acknowledge the possibility of various elements in his char
acter. Parallels in both lines are abundant in literature and

XVI CONTENTS.
history. The " tradition " in regard to David implies the existence
of such qualities and such a variety of qualities in the historical
David, as (a) formed the empire he left, and (6) impressed the heart
of Israel in such a way as to give the tradition that precise shape.
He was already idealised in his lifetime. Cheyne's explanation of
"Davids" examined. An unbiassed reading of the documents
and a fair interpretation of the Psalms make Davidic psalmody
credible. The events in his life are sufficient to enable us to say,
Here was a man capable of producing songs like some of those in
the Psalter. Illustration from one day in his life. The varied
experience and the long years through which his character was
matured . . . .Pp. 319-351

CONCLUSION".
The aim of these pages is to vindicate for the Psalms an earlier date
and a higher position than some critics assign to them. The
argument is general, because broad issues are in question. Inter
esting as it would be to know the individual authors, perhaps even
if we could recall the singers, they would not greatly satisfy our
curiosity. It is the mood, not the surroundings, that explains the
poem, and the great thing is that there were singers of these moods.
The disparity of explanation of psalms by various expositors is
proof that to the writers the occasion was not the principal thing,
but something so universal that it was bound to repeat itself, so
broad that it could not be confined by precise words — the eternal
conffict between good and evil, as old as the dawn of conscience,
and ever going on. But the psalms are not descriptions of that
conflict, but the sighs or shouts of the combatants. Dean Stanley's
observation of the ivy-like character of the Hebrew lyric poetry,
clinging to the epic trunk of history. But the history is religious ;
and to take away religion from the lyrics is to denude the trunk of
its clothing, and even to deprive the history of its living sap.
Prophetic-religion and Psalm-religion cannot be separated, and our
estimate of the one controls sur estimate of the other ; but without
the existence of pre-exilian psalm-religion the whole history be
comes an insoluble riddle. Songs, no doubt, modified in course of
transmission. Compare the history of the Hebrew Prayer-Book
and of lyric poetry in general. So also late and early may lie side
by side. Psalmody, however, once started, became the outlet for
the expression of all that was best in Judaism. As God was never
without a witness, so were His people never without a son" Pp. 352-360

THE POETRY AND RELIGION
OE THE PSALMS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

There are three aspects in which the religion of a
people may be regarded. In the first place, it may
be contemplated as a thing objectively put before
the people who profess it, in the form of certain
truths to be received, and a number of duties to
be performed. Whether the people act up to its
requirements or not, the religion as a whole is
there, existent as a system, whose history and
characteristics may be studied. In the second place,
we may contemplate religion in action, either prac
tised in formal observances and exemplified in the
daily life, or, better still, stirring the emotions and
sentiments of the heart and finding expression for
itself in the language of devotion. In the third
A

INTRODUCTORY.

place, it may be observed as an intellectual move
ment, the spirit seeking to understand the problems
which press for solution as to the causes of things,
the obligations of duty, the world unseen. In the
first case, we may say we have God speaking to
man with authority, seeking to reach man's con
science and control his will ; in the second case,
we have man speaking to God, the human heart
answering the divine message ; while, in the third,
we may say we have man speaking to himself,
seeking to give account to himself of the mys
teries which perplex him.
The religion of the Old Testament presents
itself in all these phases ; and we may even dis
tinguish three sets of the Old Testament writings
as characterised by the respective phases which
they embody. In the Law and the Prophets, we
have God's call to man, characterised, in the
former, by a system of rules to be observed in the
life, in the latter by the enforcement of eternal
principles on which God's claim to man's obedience
is rested. In the second place come the Psalms,
which are the expression of man's religious feel
ings in their struggle to reach God and to find
peace. " The psalmists," says Reuss,i " seek God,
and know where to find Him ; the prophets, for
the most part, address men who have forgotten
Him." And, lastly, we have what is called the
^ Das Alte Testament (1893), Band v. p. 36.

THE PSALMS AND HUMAN NATURE. 3
Wisdom literature, the nearest approach which
the Old Testament exhibits to philosophising or
speculation, the distinctive examples of which are
the Proverbs, and more particularly the books of
Job and Ecclesiastes. Here, however, the writers
do not set themselves to elaborate either a philo
sophy or a theology, but concern themselves with
ethical problems as to the mystery of suffering in
the world and the duty resting on man as the
subject of divine government.
From several points of view the phase of religion
exhibited in the Psalms is of special interest.
1. These sacred songs touch our common human
nature very closely and at many points. We see
here the religious sentiment in actual exercise under
all vicissitudes, — breathed forth in humble prayer
or grateful praise, impeded in its current by suffer
ing or sorrow, agitated to its depths by temptation,
passion, or persecution, or hurried along by exuberant
hope and triumphant expectation. And the expres
sion of these varying moods of the religious spirit
is so simple, the terms are so general and compre
hensive, the situations of the poets apparently so
unencumbered with local or temporary details, that
it is not difficult for a reader at any time to place
himself in sympathy with them. As we read the
Psalms, we feel that people who had any religion
worthy of the name might have been uttering the
same things from the beginning, and may go on

4 INTRODUCTORY.
saying them to the end of the world. So it has
come about that these old songs of Israel, at what
ever times they may have been written, and what
ever occasions may have called them forth, have
become, in a sense that is true of no other religious
compositions, the devotional handbook of the world.
The Psalms have proved how genuine and true their
religious tone is by the way in which they have lent
themselves to the expression of the finest spiritual
experience. As that experience deepens it finds
outlet for itself in the more general and compre
hensive, the more simple language. When "good
books" and manuals of devotion lose their fresh
ness and relish, when the best compacted arguments
fail to bring conviction to the mind and satisfaction
to the spirit, when signs and wonders produce no
faith, the heart responds Amen to the simple words
of the Hebrew poets and finds peace. Such a psalm
as the twenty-third is so general in its expressions
that it may be sung in unison by the oldest and
the youngest around the family altar ; yet it is so
suggestive and satisfying that, when all other words
put together fail to express the emotion of an over-
ffowing heart, it comes to the believer's aid and
furnishes relief One of the first to be learned by
the child, it is the sweetest music that can fall on
the ear of the aged Christian who has fought the
good fight. Dr John Ker, in his pleasant little
book, ' The Psalms in History and Biography,' after

THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 5
giving instances from the times of persecution in
Scotland of the use of this psalm for heartening,
mentions also that Edward Irving when on his
deathbed repeated it in Hebrew, and that the
dying words of Sir William Hamilton were, " Thy
rod and Thy staff" they comfort me." ^
2. The Psalms have also a special interest to the
Christian theologian. Augustine made the remark,
which has been often repeated in different forms,
that Christianity was as old as the world ; and
Tertullian put the same truth into the startling
words, that in the Old Testament history Christ
was schooling Himself for incarnation.^ It is ac
cordingly of the deepest interest to the Biblical
theologian to group and systematise, with due
regard to proportion and historical emergence, the
truths that are contained in both dispensations.
It is evident that our appreciation of Christianity
will be more clear and intense the more we can
perceive a positive preparation for it, and a laying
of its foundations in the antecedent religion of the
Old Testament. If Christianity is in any appro
priate sense as old as the world, we ought not only
to observe adumbrations of it in all the best of
the ancient religions, but also to find these most
1 It is an ingenious conjecture of a recent commentator on Shake
speare that even the dying Falstaff' was thinking of the 23rd Psalm
when he " babbled of green fields" (King Henry V., Act ii. sc. iii.)
2 De Carne Christi, vi.

6 INTRODUCTORY.
manifestly displayed in the religion of Israel, with
which it is so closely connected in historical sequence.
And, further, if Christianity is both the last and
the best of religions — the absolute truth — we ought
to find in the antecedent religion germs at least
of ulti^nate truth, which are independent of local
occasion, and retain their vitality through all lapse
of time.
Now, just as the religion of the Old Testament,
as a thing attained, reaches its culmination in the
Psalms, so the points of contact between the Old
and New Testaments increase when we look at the
Psalter in relation to the new dispensation. The
connection here lies deeper than in mere references
in the New Testament to individual passages in the
Old, or in the fulfilment of Messianic prophecies or
accomplishment of types. For religion, from our
present point of view, is not a speculative but an
active thing ; Scripture is not so much an embodi
ment of so many truths made known for man's
instruction, as a record of a movement of man's
spirit by the spirit of God for a practical end,
man's salvation. Accordingly, the religion of the
Old Testament appears not as a problem which man
seeks to solve for himself, nor as a series of questions
propounded by God to man's intellect, but as a
course of discipline to prepare man's soul for the
good that was in store for him. In this way the
Old Testament was the schoolmaster to lead to

THE PSALTER A NEW TESTAMENT BOOK. 7
Christ, by quickening in man the sense of sin and
the desire for renewal ; in other words, it is not
merely nor even principally a record of revelation,
but a record of the process of redemption. From
this aspect, the points of contact between the Old
and the New Testaments are seen not only to
increase in number but to gain in significance.
And so we can understand how the New Testa
ment writers, to whom this view was paramount,
refer so frequently to the Psalms, although there
are fewer direct Messianic references in the Psalms
than in the prophetic Scriptures. It is said^ that
there are in all two hundred and eighty - three
quotations from the Old Testament in the New,
and that of these a hundred and sixteen are from
the Psalms.
It is therefore not by accident or out of simple
convenience that the Psalms are bound by us in one
volume with the New Testament as if they were
New Testament Scripture. The Psalter has indeed
become a New Testament book and come to be in
corporated into the liturgies of nearly every branch
of the Christian Church. " It was the first book
which the early Church put into the hands of her
young converts, the primer of her religious teaching ;
and no man could be admitted to the highest order
of the clergy unless he knew the Psalter by heart.
It was used for singing in the first assemblies for
1 Van Dyke, The Story of the Psalms, ad init.

8 INTRODUCTORY.
Christian worship,"^ and it has ever continued to
be used, sometimes as the sole book of praise, and
always as the best and most enduring of all.
3. In a wider field, to the scientific inquirer into
the history of religion, the Psalms present a very
interesting subject of study. For the question
occurs, Whether the three phases of religion of
which we have spoken are evolved in historical
succession, or whether they may not have emerged
simultaneously, or at least may not have in a
measure run a parallel course before assuming a
formulated shape in writing ? Though we have
specified different books as examples of the differ
ent tendencies, a hard - and - fast line cannot be
drawn among the books of the Old Testament in
this respect, for there are reflective or speculative
psalms, and there are subjective devotional ele
ments in the Prophets. It would seem that the
reflective phase came somewhat late to its fuller
development among the Hebrews ; but then it is
to be noted that speculative problems such as
early exercised Greek philosophers seem scarcely
to have troubled the Hebrew mind ; for, as Matthew
Arnold has pointed out, while the Hellenistic tend
ency was towards speculation, the Hebraistic was
towards practical righteousness. So that it would
not be safe to lay down any a priori dictum as
to what must be the order of development in
1 Van Dyke, ut sup.

THE PSALMS AND THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. 9
these matters. But as regards the devotional
phase of religion exhibited in the Psalms, it is
a question not only of great interest but of vital
importance in connection with the history of the
religion of Israel, whether such a kind of religion
came comparatively early to maturity ; for on the
answer to this question depends the estimate that
we shall form of the greater part of the pre-exilian
history. We do not require at this point to raise the
deeper antecedent question as to the origin and
earliest phases of the religion of Israel, nor to
pronounce an opinion as to whether the Law pre
ceded or succeeded the Prophets. Both of these
taken together may be said to represent generally
the objective phase of the religion. The prophets,
however, are on all hands regarded as teachers of
a purer and more spiritual religion ; and the ques
tion to which we restrict ourselves in the mean
time is — Whether, concomitant with their teaching,
there existed among the people, in narrower or wider
circles, a religion such as the Psalms express, or
whether this latter phase is of slower growth and
the product of a later time ? The question will, in
fact, occupy much of our attention in the sequel.
Lest, however, any bar should be placed upon its
consideration by some preliminary assumption as
to the course of development which the religion
must have run, one remark may be made at this

1 0 INTRODUCTORY.
point. It is this. The prophetic teacher himself
is the human medium of the divine authoritative
teaching, and we can hardly suppose a prophet
raised up to declare such truths as the Hebrew
prophets proclaim, without being himself imbued
with the truths he enforces, and animated by them
as living principles. The prophetic message is not
like what Mohammed called his Qor'an, a tanzil,
something handed down in a concrete form from
heaven — not like the tables of stone given to Moses
on the mount. It was a continuous though varied
message, addressed by living men of the time to men
in special circumstances, reiterating the same funda
mental truths in application to the changing events
of history. The earnestness and force with which
each prophet delivered his word — nay, the persecu
tion and opposition he encountered in the delivery
of it — are proofs that he himself was a witness
and example of the truths he made known. The
word was not only in his mouth, but it was a
burning flre in his heart {Jer. xx. 9), impelling
him, not less than did the divine command, to
deliver his message.
Now, if we are to believe the prophets them
selves, they were not isolated witnesses, but rather
connected representatives of a purer religion than
that which commonly prevailed in the nation.
And if it was their personal religion that gave
them the power to stand forth as unshaken wit-

THE PROPHETS AND THE PSALMS. 11
nesses, then there was a line' of good as well as
true men, and the prophets were not only the
light of the world but also the salt of the earth.
Of course we cannot thus summarily draw the con
clusion that psalm composition was contemporaneous
with prophetic teaching ; but it is important to
make it clear at the outset that we have no right
to assume that it was not. And the reason for
touching on the point now is, because the main
problem connected with the Psalms lies just here.
The vital question in Old Testament criticism is not,
Who wrote such and such books ? but. Do they give
a fair representation of the history of the religion as
it was made known and received ? In regard to
the Pentateuch, for example, the essential question
is not. Was Moses the author of the book ?
but, Was Mosaism, and was the patriarchal re
ligion which preceded it, such as the Pentateuch
represents them to have been ? And in regard to
the Psalms, more fundamental than the question.
Did David write all the Psalms ? or. How many of
them did he write ? is the question. Was there a
religion such as the Psalms express, from David's
time onwards ? Were there men in Israel, ex
pressing in songs like these their trust in God,
their feelings of sin and misery, their hope of the
ultimate triumph of good over evil 1
Now, the tendency of modern criticism is to repre
sent the earliest phases of the religion of Israel as

1 2 INTRODUCTORY.
of a crude, unrefined character, and to bring lower
and lower down in date the beginnings of the re
ligion in a purer and spiritual form. And it will
be at once apparent that the Psalms must be in
volved in such a rearrangement. If it was not,
say, till the eighth century before Christ that the
prophets began for the first time to teach, as a
new and strange thing, an ethic monotheism, we
need not look for psalms breathing a spiritual reli
gion at that period, much less in the time of David,
two centuries earlier. It will be found, accordingly,
that the view taken of the Psalms has undergone
modification in accordance with the modified view
of the Old Testament history of religion as a whole.
But just because the problem of the Psalms is thus
part of a greater problem, it must be approached in
dependently and without prepossession or assump
tion of what is still matter of dispute on the broader
field. The Psalms may, in effect, contribute their
share of evidence for the settlement of the greater
question, and ought to be regarded as independent
witnesses. It is illegitimate, for example, to say :
The pre-prophetic or the prophetic religion was of
such and such a character, and these Psalms, exhibit
ing a far higher type of religion, must therefore be
later than the pre-prophetic or the prophetic period.
Neither can the assumption be allowed that David's
personal character and the circumstances of his age
were so far below the level of the religion of the

THE PROBLEM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 13
Psalms that he cannot possibly be regarded as the
author of any of them. There has been far too
much assertion of this kind, which owes its accept
ance more to the confidence with which it is reiter
ated than to the solidity of the arguments on which
it is supported. It may please those who are
wedded to a hard-and-fast theory of development to
arrange the facts of religious experience as a natur
alist arranges specimens in a cabinet ; but the actual
course of history shows how artificial is such a pro
cess of systematising ; and those who believe that
" If there be
A devil in man, there is an angel too,"
will see nothing incredible in the idea that side by
side with ignorance and superstition there may have
existed a simple and pure faith, and that the solu
tion of the over-perplexed problem of Old Testament
religious history is to be sought, not in a dead uni
formity of evolution, but in a contemporaneous
movement of good and bad, such as all ages have
witnessed, and such as is going on in the world
around us.
If there is any force in these remarks, it will
appear that, although it is not a matter of entire
indifference who wrote the books of the Old Tes
tament, yet the inquiry into this subject should
be allowed to fall into its proper place. When
we have before us a mass of ancient literature,

14 INTRODUCTORY.
a great proportion of which is entirely anonymous,
it becomes a very difficult and delicate task to
assign the various portions to their respective
dates and authors. Such an inquiry cannot be
confined to the books themselves which are in
dispute, but must proceed on broader historical
evidence. And in prosecuting it we shall, no
doubt, have at many points to confess our ignorance
or our inability to determine many things in detail.
We may not, for example, be able positively to
prove the authorship of the Pentateuch, or even
to fix the dates and origin of its different parts ;
or we may not be able to tell what psalms, or
how many, were written by David, and who were
the authors of the rest. Still, on the line of
cautious historical inquiry, we may make it prob
able that the position and work of Moses were
such as are assigned to him in the Pentateuch ;
and that, without a Mosaic period such as is de
scribed in the Pentateuch the succeeding history
is not intelligible. So, in regard to the Psalms,
if by any argument we can make it appear prob
able that there was from David's time such a set
of circumstances and such a religious consciousness
and experience as find expression in the Psalms,
— even though we may not be able to determine
the precise occasion and circumstances in which the
individual pieces were composed, — we gain a histor
ical foothold for further inquiries into the literary

INTEREST OF THE AUTHORSHIP. 15
history of the collection. But on such a line of in
vestigation it is evident that we must not attempt
to begin with David, but be content if we can end
with him.
And yet, as has just been said, the authorship
of the Old Testament books, and particularly the
authorship of the Psalms, is far from being a matter
of indifference even to the reader unskilled in tech
nical criticism. Indeed to him it is in an important
respect more vital than to the critic. There is some
justification for the alarm that is manifested by or
dinary readers of the Bible in the face of the appa
rent havoc that is being made in these days among
the books which they have been accustomed to
revere so highly. And generous allowance should
be made for what may be called the criticism of
religious sentiment. If a poet can best understand
and criticise poetry, religious experience may claim
to be heard in settling the primary reference of com
positions that take strong hold of the religious con
sciousness. It may be true, as a recent writer has
said,^ that the value of the 51st psalm "To him
who reads it in the inner chamber, ' having shut
to the door,' is the same, whether it expresses the
passion of penitence which shook David's soul after
his great sin, or the collective confession of the
Jewish Church-nation." Yet I doubt if the general
concession which underlies this statement will sat-
1 W. T. Davison, The Praises of Israel, p. 32 f.

1 6 INTRODUCTORY.
isfy the mind of the devout Christian. Much as
the psalm has been prized for its own sake as the
expression of sincere repentance, the reader would
like to feel assured that he has before him the
confession of one of like passions with himself
And its power to give comfort has been enhanced
by the reflection at every turn that if David, or an
individual precisely situated as David was, after so
great a crime as he is supposed to be confessing,
could take heart of hope to believe in God's forgive
ness, the same mercy will not be withheld from any
other penitent suppliant.
To the philosopher, investigating the history of
" ideas " in the dry cold light of speculation, it may
seem a matter of no consequence that Abraham be
explained as a creation of legend, and Moses and
David turn out not to be so much names of histor
ical individuals as symbols of tendencies and periods
in history. But for the plain man, to whom re
ligion is not an object of abstract study but a
vital concern of practical life, these are not alto
gether matters of indifference. A very great part
of the Old Testament is biography, religion exem
plified in the lives of individuals ; and it is this that
not only constitutes to a great extent the literary
charm of the books, but explains the powerful hold
they take upon the heart, and accounts for their
influence as a religious education. Just as in any
perplexity or sorrow we are helped more by the

METHOD OF INQUIRY. 17
sympathy of one who has gone through the same
experience himself than by any amount of common
place maxims, however sound ; so, in turning to the
Bible for consolation or guidance or encouragement,
we wish to get into contact with persons and not
merely to find ideas. The great Teacher Himself
enforced His lessons by concrete examples, and
moved men's hearts by an exhibition of the indi
vidual and the minute. The care of the divine
Father for the sparrows and for the lilies of the
field touches a more tender chord than the contem
plation of the starry worlds. And though, abstract
ly considered, they both teach the same lesson,
we derive more comfort from the experiences of an
individual than from the records of Church history.
We wish to feel kindred with men of flesh and blood
who had like passions with ourselves, and we love
to believe that the religion which is our own stay
and support was the stay and support of men like
ourselves before us, that the God in whom we trust
has been the dwelling-place of His people in all
generations. The foregoing remarks will indicate what is the
purpose of the following pages. No attempt is to
be made to determine the authorship of individual
psalms, nor will the main attention be concentrated
on the Psalter itself The inquiry will be of a more
general kind. First of all, an attempt will be made
to trace the existence of the Psalter or of a Psalter,
B

i o INTRODUCTORY.
and generally the practice of psalmody, as far back
as the evidence from different sources will warrant.
It will then be necessary to take a general survey
of the Psalter itself, and make an appreciation of
its internal character and contents. And finally,
an endeavour will be made to determine how far
it is possible to find room in pre-exilian times
for such a religion as is expressed in the Psalms.
If it can be shown to be probable that the prac
tice of psalmody goes back to Hebrew antiquity,
that the general situations of the Psalms agree
with the situations of early time, and that the
tone of religious experience expressed in them is
not too high for those times, we shall not only
be vindicating for the Psalter its right place
among the Old Testament books, but showing
also that the earlier Old Testament religion was
a richer and fuller thing than many in modern
times are disposed to allow.
We must, however, begin with a rapid survey
of the opinions that have been held regarding the
Psalms in ancient and modern times, that we may
see how the various problems in the inquiry have
emerged, and estimate precisely the present posi
tion of the question. This will be the subject of
the next chapter.

19

CHAPTEE IL
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
In endeavouring to determine the place of the
Psalms in the religion and history of the Old Tes
tament, we naturally inquire in a preliminary way
what attempts have been made in this direction in
ancient and modern times.
The earliest of all the indications of opinion on
this subject is furnished in the titles and super
scriptions which are found in the Hebrew text.
The most cursory English reader cannot but have
noticed the headings, " To the chief musician, a
psalm of David," and so on. Being found m the
Hebrew Bible, they are, of course, retained in the
Revised Version; but are to be carefully distin
guished from those summaries of contents found in
ordinary English Bibles, which come only from the
translators. If these headings are, as is usually
admitted, later than the Psalms themselves, they
must represent the belief, resting on tradition, or

20 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
based on a view of the contents of the Psalms, as to
the persons who wrote them. It is a question when
these headings were affixed to the Psalms. Ac
cording to Eeuss they are the work of Jewish
scholars, but of unknown date ; yet in no case
much older, and possibly even later, than the
Christian era.^ The superscriptions are, at all
events, older than the LXX. Version ; for the
Greek translators had them before them, and
clearly did not, in some instances, understand
their signification.
This view is also found expressed in the Talmud
in the famous passage ^ in which the authorship of
the various books of the Old Testament is formally
stated — viz., that the Psalms come from the persons
whose names are attached to them in the headings.
It is, indeed, not very clear what is meant in that
passage by the expression that David wrote the
Psalms "at the hands of ten elders"^ — viz., those
whose names are mentioned besides his own. At
any rate, the view which prevailed in the middle
ages, following Jerome and Eusebius, and which
has found expression in the commentaries of Aben
' Das Alte Testament, Band v. p. 38 f.
2 Baba Bathra, fol. 14. A translation of the passage is given by
Ryle, ' The Canon of the Old Testament,' Excursus B.
^ Or, as Driver translates, "at the direction of." Dalman, how
ever, explains the expression as meaning "in the name of," and for
Talmudic usage in support of this rendering appeals to the Mishna
Bab. Mez., vii. 9, and Gemara Gittin, 67 b. See 'Der Gottesname
Adonaj,' p. 79, note.

VIEW OF THE TALMUD. 21
Ezra and David Kimchi, is, as just stated, that
the names attached to the Psalms denote author
ship. As to the psalms which bear no name, the
tendency was to assign them all to David, or to
ascribe anonymous psalms to the author last named
in a preceding one — a method favoured by Jerome
and Origen.^
This mode of representing David as having com
posed the Psalms " at the hands of," or " in the name
of" others, passed practically into the habit of as
cribing the Psalter as a whole to David. And one
need not be surprised that this became the current
mode of speaking of the book of Psalms. We find
it formulated in the Talmud ; ^ and, in the New
Testament books, " David " seems to stand as an
equivalent for the book of Psalms.^ Such a mode
of speaking of the Psalter was natural before liter
ary study, not to say criticism, had come into opera
tion. The Old Testament books were handed down
from ancient time, each with a great name attached
to, or associated with it — probably the name of the
first or greatest individual who had literary connec-
1 See Baethgen, Psalmen, Einl., § 4.
2 By E. Meir in Pesachim, 117 a.
3 "As He saith in David" (Heb. iv. 7) refers to Psalm xcv., which
in the original is anonymous. So in Acts iv. 25 the 2nd Psalm, which
is also anonymous, is quoted as the words of David. It is only infer-
entially that we can class the Chronicler as holding the same view.
There is no doubt that he refers to David's time the full practice of
psalmody. But the passage ( 1 Chron. xvi. 7 ff. ) does not positively assign
to David the psalm there given. But more of this in the sequel.

22 HISTORICAL SKETCH OP PSALM CRITICISM.
tion with it — and the book was then spoken of as his
work. So we have come to speak of the " Books of
Moses," the " Psalms of David," and the " Proverbs
of Solomon." Closer study may enable us to rectify
such designations ; and the books themselves some
times declare that they are not in all parts from
one writer. Yet we should neither, on the one hand,
overlook the elements of truth involved in these rep
resentations, and scout all tradition as worthless ;
nor should we, on the other hand, hold the early
writers who employ such language as committed to,
or binding us to, positions in literary criticism that
are not warranted by the general language which
they employ and the popular view which they
present. The early Church Fathers, as they received the
Old Testament canon from the Jews, received from
them also the traditions as to the origins of the
books, and so they usually proceed on the assumption
that the Psalms were all written by David. When
other names occurred in the headings, they were
explained as the names of persons to whom David
delivered the Psalms to be sung or set to music, or
else as names of persons concerning whom, or in
whose name, he wrote. As to the contents of the
Psalms, it was supposed that David wrote many of
them prophetically, so that it did not excite sur
prise that in some of them reference was made to
the time of the Captivity or the return from it, or

THE CHURCH FATHERS. 23
that others could be referred to the times of the
Maccabees, or others again to the wa,rs of the
Romans against the Jews. This mode of interpre
tation was quite common among the Jews also, as
the Targums abundantly show.^ Of course, when
in the heading there was mention of the occasion
of the composition of a psalm by David (for it is
only in " Davidic " psalms that such notices occur),
the references were by most of the Fathers accepted,
and the psalms explained accordingly.
A notable exception, however, to this mode of
explaining the Psalms meets us in the school of
Antioch, particularly in the treatment of the psalms
by Theodore of Mopsuestia,^ the great exegete of
that school. Differing as the theologians of Antioch
did from those of Alexandria on the great doctrinal
questions that were then discussed, they differed
no less in exegetical methods. Just as the Alex
andrians, in their views of the two natures of Christ,
almost merged the human in the divine, while the
tendency in Antioch was to make the two natures
almost distinct ; so in exegesis the prevailing tone
among the Alexandrians was allegorising, to the
exclusion of the primary reference, while the Anti-
ochians looked for the primary reference and the
1 Not only the late Targums, but even Targum Jonathan, as, e.g.,
on Hannah's song. See the Cambridge Bible for Schools, 1 Sam.
Appendix III.
2 Born at Antioch about 350, died at Mopsuestia in Cilicia Secunda
A.D. 428 or 429.

24 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
historical setting and unfolding of Scripture, and
thus indeed anticipated modern critical study. Of
this school Theodore, though not the earliest, is the
most distinguished representative ; and when we re
member that he was a contemporary of Chrysostom
and of Jerome, and when we compare, as we are
now able to do, his exegetical method and results
with the conclusions of modern scholars, we shall
see that he is eminently entitled to be called the
exegete of the ancient Church.
By virtue of his critical talent, which manifests itself with
particular distinctness in his Commentary on the Psalms,
Theodore takes a position quite unique in the whole of
antiquity. The manner in which he expresses himself in
regard to the inscriptions of the Psalms, and his strict
following up of the historical references, at no point toler
ating allegory, that enemy of all sound exegesis, exhibit him
as a stranger in his immediate surroundings, and as belong
ing to an epoch later than himself by many centuries. With
this critical faculty, moreover, he combines an eminent
ability to penetrate into the thoughts of the poet, to trace
their inner connection, to enter into the feelings of the
psalm-singers, and finally to simplify and accommodate all
this to the readers of his Commentary.^
Theodore, like others of his time, ascribed all the
Psalms to David, taking the common view that, in
many of them, the Psalmist spoke prophetically.
" In the Compendium of Isagogic of Junilius Afri-
^ Baethgen in Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft,
hereafter for brevity cited as zatw, for 1886, p. 262.

THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA. 25
canus, which reflects the theology of the schools
of Antioch and Nisibis, the Psalms are reckoned
among the prophetical writings." ^ The two main
things to be noted in regard to Theodore's position
are : (l) his setting aside of the titles as of no value
in indicating the reference of the Psalms, and (2)
his endeavour, by an examination and exegesis of
the Psalms themselves, to determine the circum
stances to which they referred. It is to be re
membered that, apparently, he was not much of
a Hebrew scholar,^ and that the basis of his
exegesis was the Greek LXX., in which there is
a considerable divergence in the matter of the
headings from the Massoretic text ; and Baethgen
suggests that it was perhaps owing to Theodore's
influence that the Syrian Church discarded the
Hebrew titles altogether from the Psalms, sub
stituting for them an entirely new set of super
scriptions.^ No doubt, also, his view of prophecy
as operative in the Psalms was a very mechanical
one, for David is represented by him as speaking
"in the person of" (e/c tov irpoa-MTTov) this or that
individual, and with reference to definite concrete
events and situations. But the very crudeness of
this view of prophecy aided Theodore in his search
for precise historical occasions or correspondences
between the Psalms and the situations for which
above, p. 266 f. ^ jbid., 265 f.

1 Baethgen, as above, p. 266 f. ^ I
3 Baethgen, Psalmen, Einl., § 2.

26 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
they were composed.^ In this way it is that he
anticipated modern criticism ; for it will be found
that psalms which he, on his method, regarded
as prophetically referring to certain times, are by
modern writers assigned to these times for their
actual composition.
Theodore, as is well known, was condemned for
heresy by the Fifth Council of Constantinople in
A.D. 553, one of the grounds of his condemnation
being that he had explained reputed Messianic
psalms "in a judaising manner" — i.e., in fact, that
he had referred them to events in Jewish history.
And it was no doubt on this account, and owing
to the suspicion attaching to the school of Antioch
generally, that his exegetical method was not carried
out in the ancient Church, and his exegetical labours
lay so long neglected. It is not indeed till the
Reformation period that we find a positive advance
on his view in regard to the Psalms.
It is, in fact, to Calvin that we are indebted
for the first attempts at what may be called the
historical criticism of the Psalms. Discarding the
mechanical view of prophecy in regard to the
Psalms, which had hampered Theodore, he repeat-
, edly draws a distinction between the modes of
prophetic and poetic diction. Prophets speak of
future things ; but the Psalms should be interpreted
as referring to, and therefore giving evidence of the
1 Baethgen, zatw, 1886, p. 268.

CALVIN. 27
circumstances and situations of, the poets who com
posed them. Thus, in commenting on Ps. cxxxvii.
("By the rivers of Babylon," &c.), he says:
" This is not the way the Prophets speak of future
events ; here the discourse is evidently of a thing
known and experienced." So on Ps. cxxvii.
("Except the Lord build the house," &c.), which
is inscribed " to Solomon," he says : " The Jews
without reason refuse to ascribe this psalm to
Solomon ; for the expression in the heading is
exactly similar to that which assigns other psalms
to David." So in regard to Ps. xc, which is entitled
" A prayer of Moses the man of God," after saying
that it is doubtful whether the psalm was actually
composed by Moses or adapted for popular use by
some one of the prophets out of traditional matter,
he has no hesitation in accepting it as the work
of Moses himself Again, on Ps. Ixxxix., which
is inscribed to Ethan the Ezrahite, after discussing
who Ethan may have been, he adds: "As for
those who will have it that the people are here
warned by the spirit of prophecy in regard to future
calamities, they are easily refuted by the contents
of the psalm, in which the writer, whoever he
was, clearly laments the change that took place
after the revolt of Jeroboam." Again, to take one
more example, on Ps. Ixxix. (" 0 God, the heathen
have come into Thy heritage," &c.), which is one of
the Asaphic psalms regarded as Maccabaean by

28 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
those who admit that there are such in the Psalter,
Calvin remarks : —
This psalm, among others, clearly proves itself to have been
composed after the death of David. There is no reason for
the objection urged by some that the spirit of prophecy here
predicts future misfortunes of the Church, in order that a
coming generation might be prepared to bear the calamity.
For prophets are not wont in their predictions thus to speak
historically ; and whoever will read the psalm with unbiassed
mind will clearly perceive that it must have been composed
either when by the Assyrians the temple was burned, the
city laid waste, and the people carried into captivity, or
when by Antiochus the temple was polluted amid much
slaughter. The contents will suit either time.
From which it appears (1) that Calvin did not
place reliance on the inscriptions, but sought to
determine the reference of a psalm from its own
contents, and (2) particularly that he regarded the
Psalms as severally the reflection of the times and
circumstances in which they were produced. He
is not, indeed, quite consistent with himself in his
treatment of the inscriptions. For whereas he
allows to David all the psalms assigned to him
in the titles, and others besides (as Ps. cxix., for
example), he has no hesitation in making Asaphic
psalms late, some of them as late as the Maccabees
{e.g., Pss. Ixxiv., Ixxvi., Ixxix.), though Asaph is a
contemporary of David (see 1 Chron. xvi.) And
even in his treatment of Davidic psalms, when
he finds that the internal situation does not agree

RUDINGER. 29
with David's circumstances, he falls back on the
old method, and says that David composed the
psalm as a mirror for future times, as, e.g., Ps.
cxxiv., and Ps. Ixix. 35 ff".
Rudinger, who had been Melanchthon's friend
and colleague at Wittenberg, and went over to
the Moravian Brethren, may be described as
Calvin's exegetical successor. It was while he
was among the Moravian Brethren that he wrote
his Latin paraphrase of the book of Psalms, which
appeared in 1580 and 1581, and was after Calvin's
exposition the most important exegetical work of the
sixteenth century.^ In general we may say that
he carried out Calvin's method more consistently
than the reformer had done. Finding things in
individual psalms which did not agree with the
titles attached to them (as, e.g., in Pss. xc. and
cxxiv.), he puts the question, "If some of these
titles are false, why should we believe the rest,
especially as the LXX. has quite a different set
of titles from the Hebrew ? " And thus, from
examination of the Psalms alone, he sought to
assign them to different periods, from David to
the Maccabees.^
Rudinger's investigations proceeded mainly on
1 Ehrt, Abfassungszeit und Abschluss des Psalters, &e., p. 3. On
Rudinger's application of the Psalms, in a corporate way, to the
Church, see Smend's article on the Ich der Psalmen in zatw, 1888,
p. 57.
2 It may be mentioned that Rudinger positively assigned twenty-

30 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
what may be termed historical considerations, and
less on inner exegetical grounds ; but his position
was practically that maintained by the majority
of succeeding expositors who sought to determine
the historical occasions of the Psalms.
The seventeenth century was a time of dogma
tic rather than of exegetical activity ; ^ but the
eighteenth century shows a greater historical inter
est in the Psalms; And, although the prevailing
spirit (represented, e.g., by J. H. Michaelis) inclined
to a Messianic and typical interpretation, and thus
favoured the old view of the Psalms being prophet
ically written by David, yet there were others,
notably Venema (Comment, in Psalmos, 1762-67),
who boldly assigned the Psalms to the times to
which their contents severally related.
It is with De Wette (born 12th January 1780,
died 16th June 1849) that a decided turning-point
is reached in the interpretation of the Psalms, and
what we may call the modern method sets in. De
Wette was the first, says Delitzsch, to clear away
the rubbish under which exposition had been buried,
and to introduce into it taste, after the example of
five psalms to the Maccabaean age — viz. : i., xiiv., xlix., Ivii., Ix., cviii.,
Ixvi., Ixviii., Ixxvi., Ixxiii., Ixxiv., Ixxix., Ixxvii., Ixxx., Ixxxviii.,
Ixxxix., xc, cxix., cxx., oxxi., cxxiii., cxxv., cxxix., cxxx., cxxxiv. In
regard to two others, xxvi. and xxviii., he leaves it open as to whether
they are Maccabaean or not.
1 The chief work on the Psalms in that century, the Commentary of
Geier (1668, 2 vols. 4to, and later, 1709, fol.) has furnished dogmatic and
homiletical material for succeeding expositors.

DE WETTE. 31
Herder, and grammatical precision, under the in
fluence of Gesenius. Former scholars had agreed
that a greater or less number of the psalms ascribed
to David were written by him, and they usually
proceeded on the principle of not assigning psalms
to other writers unless on clear grounds, such as the
indubitable mention of, or reference to, later events
or situations, as the Temple, the Exile, &c. De
Wette, however, pushed Rudinger's method farther.
The credibility of the inscriptions being shaken by
the cases in which David is said to be, and yet
manifestly cannot be, the author, the genuineness of
all the other Davidic psalms becomes problematical.
" It is not enough," he says, " that the contents and
character of the psalms merely do not contradict the
inscriptions ; there must be positive grounds of pro
bability to remove the suspicion which rests upon
the inscriptions. Still more precarious is it to ascribe
anonymous psalms to David ; the reasons that have
been urged for so doing are utterly weak and un
worthy of consideration." ^
To a certain extent De Wette shows a reaction
from Rudinger and Venema, who had been too
positive in fixing precise dates for the Psalms. De
Wette "declines altogether to dogmatise on the
occasions when the Psalms were composed," - though
I Comment, uber die Psalmen, Einl., iii., 5te Aufl., pp. 12, 13.
2 Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 38. Some of the
psalms whose authorship he declines to determine are, iii., vii., &c.

32 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
he does believe David was a psalm - writer, and
ascribes to him certainly Psalm xviii. It was he,
however, who gave to succeeding writers on the
Psalms an impulse which they followed on different
lines, according as they accentuated one side or
another of his critical principles.
Hupfeld (born 31st March 1796, died 24th April
1866) may be taken as the representative of the
more negative side of De Wette's position. Indeed
he glories in declaring himself an adherent of it by
that epithet. His position is this : ^ Seeing that the
superscriptions are not to be relied upon, we are
thrown back on internal indications of date, occasion,
&c. But in view of our limited knowledge of Hebrew
history, the great absence of clear personal or his
torical traits in the Psalms (which for the most part
move in a certain sphere of standing ideas and
phrases), and also in view of the ambiguity of most
of the linguistic and poetical phenomena, such an
investigation has not got beyond a process of uncer
tain groping and arbitrary opinions. The conjectures
of the most recent interpreters accordingly — the
field being widened by the removal of the boundary-
stones of the inscriptions — move hither and thither
between termini which are more than eight centuries
apart, in such a manner that the same psalm is by
one ascribed to David, by another to the Maccabaean
1 Stated in the Einleitung to his Comm. on the Psalms, § 6, with
Anmerk. 27.

HUPFELD. 33
or even a later period. "I hold it," he says, "to be un
worthy of serious research to give oneself up to such
childish play at hypotheses, and consider it a duty
to restrain oneself within the limits which are fixed,
and resolutely to forego eveiy reference to historical
events which rests only upon uncertain guesses."
In thus stating his position he has an implied
controversy with his contemporaries, Ewald and
Hitzig, whose position will be stated presently.
He says that the exercise of what they claimed to
be positive criticism is in his opinion less excusable
in regard to the Psalms than elsewhere, "because
the Psalms, by virtue of their general human and
poetical import — which is intelligible in itself, and
for us has its value for edification only because of
its general character — can dispense with a [precise]
knowledge of their historical relations more readily
than any other Scripture." Proceeding on such
lines, Hupfeld is content to leave a large propor
tion of the Psalms undetermined as to their author
ship and occasion. He seems to take a delight,
in his introduction to each psalm, in collecting
together the various opinions — very various often
times — that have been held as to the date and
occasion ; and then concludes by waiving them all
aside, and giving a general statement of the import
of the psalm and the situation of the unknown
writer. The dates of some, of course, within some
what broad boundaries, as post-exilian or pre-exilian,,
c

34 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
he considers evident enough ; but he refuses to make
any as late as the time of the Maccabees, and this
chiefly on the ground that the collection was closed
before that time.
The more positive side of De Wette's criticism
was, as has just been indicated, carried out by
Ewald and Hitzig, with whom may also be classed
Koster.^ Although not disposed to rely on the
titles as giving proof of authorship, they assumed
that the ascription of psalms to David, to such an
extent that the whole Psalter was regarded as his
work, could not be a baseless tradition, but must
rest upon some foundation of fact — in other words,
that he must be assumed to be the founder of
psalmody, and that the Psalter must contain at
least a kernel of Davidic psalms, which they set
themselves, each in accordance with his own
method, to determine.
Hitzig (born 23rd June 1807, died 22nd January
1875), after stating the well -authenticated facts
relating to David's poetical talent and musical skill,
and rejecting the supposition that all David's psalms
should have been lost, concludes that it was only
possible for the whole Psalter to be ascribed to
David on the supposition that some at least were
his work ; and he sums up the position as follows :
" Finally, in individual cases, since the traditional
^ Koster, Die Psalmen nach ihrer strophischen Anordnung iibersetzt
mit Einleitungen u. Anmerkungen. Konigsberg, 1837.

HITZIG AND EWALD. 35
statements [of uncertain date] are not to be relied
upon, criticism must decide independently the ques
tion of authorship ; and it has decided that a portion
of those psalms which in the superscriptions are
assigned to David, certainly came from him." ^
Ewald (born 16th November 1803, died 4th May
1875) took substantially the same position with
regard to David's influence, and the existence of
Davidic psalms ; and both these writers accepted
a number — although a limited number — of psalms
as authentically David's, Ewald ascribing to him
eleven, and Hitzig fourteen.^ There was this differ
ence in the method of these two critics — the mark
of Davidic authorship insisted upon by Ewald was
more a literary one, Hitzig's criterion was mainly his
torical. Ewald said : " A poet of such eminence and
consciousness, of such fortunes and experiences, so
unique among the whole people, must reveal himself
clearly in every song and every sentence." Hitzig
said in substance : " Those songs alone are to be
assigned to David which can be referred to the
precise situations in which the history shows that
he was placed." Each of them, however, gave
1 Die Psalmen (1863), Erster Band, Einl., p. xiv f.
2 The fourteen psalms ascribed by Hitzig to David are all those
between Psalms iii. and xix., with the exception of v., vi., and xiv.
Ewald, in addition to eleven entire Psalms — iii., iv., vii., viii., xi., xviii.,
xix., xxiv., xxix., xxxii., ci.— assigns to David also the fragments : Ix.,
8-11, and Ixviii., 14-19. See Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 208,
note c.

36 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
weight to the other's contention — i.e., Ewald to
the historical criterion, and Hitzig to the literary.
Starting as they do at the same point, and ac
knowledging at the outset practically the same
number of Davidic psalms, both proceeding, more
over, on the same principle of positive criticism,
Hitzig and Ewald arrive at very different conclu
sions not only in regard to the actual Davidic
psalms, but in regard to the great bulk of the col
lection. On the one hand, Hitzig, after the Davidic
psalms, assigns a very considerable number to Jere
miah (twenty-seven according to Ehrt), three to
Isaiah, and four to the Deutero-Isaiah ; but then
he assigns all the psalms from the Ixxiii. onward
to the Maccabaean period, with the exception of a
few smaller psalms of Book III., which were com
posed immediately before the outbreak of the perse
cution.^ So confident is he in his historical insight
that he arranges these later psalms into seven differ
ent periods, from the time of Antiochus the Great
(b.c. 224-187) to that of Alexander Jannseus (b.c.
104-78). He claims^ to have shown that the
Psalms move step by step in pace with the progress
of the history, so that, as has been said,^ on Hitzig's
view the first book of the Maccabees would furnish
the scholia for a historical interpretation of the
Psalms from Ps. Ixxiii. to cl.
' Ehrt, Abfass., &c., p. 8 f.
- Hitzig, Psalmen, vol. ii., Einl., p. xi. 3 gjirt, p. 10.

HITZIG AND EWALD. 37
Ewald, on the other hand, after declaring that it
is of the utmost consequence to determine the his
torical occasion of the Psalms, confesses that it is
impossible always to be precise as to the day and
date of each, owing to the lack, e.g. , of proper names
and definite historical references. He arranges and
comments upon the Psalms, however, in groups ac
cording to their chronological succession, viz. : —
I. Psalms of David and David's time.
II. After David (viz., to the close of the mon
archy).
III. Psalms of the Dispersion.
IV. Psalms of the restored Jerusalem.
V. Last psalms.
In his last group he includes twenty-four psalms,
which he places in the middle of the fifth century
B.C. — in fact, about the time of Ezra.^
Our object is not to present all the various
views that have been held by the many writers
who have given themselves to a study of the
Psalms. It is proper, however, to mention as
reactions against the critical movement, both in its
negative and its positive side, the position taken
by Hengstenberg, Havernick, Keil, &c., who even
endeavoured to show (by the example of Arabian
poets) that the inscriptions of the Psalms were
added by the psalmists themselves, and that
the contents of the Psalms did not in any case
1 Dichter des Alton Bundes, Erster Theil, Zweite Halfte.

38 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
disagree with the titles and occasions as set forth
in the headings. Perhaps no one now will seek
to defend the authenticity of the titles. The
exposition of the Psalms, however, by Hengsten
berg is still of value to the Christian theologian,
as a devout attempt to look at these sacred songs
in connection with the sacred history and the life
of the Church. The same may be said, and much
higher praise must be given to the Commentary
of Delitzsch, who may be taken as the representa
tive of the attempt to combine literary criticism
with an adherence, as far as possible, to tradition.
He agrees with Ewald and Hitzig in assigning a
number of psalms to David, but would increase
the number to somewhere about forty-four. He
is, however, willing to allow Jeremiah to have
been the author of some psalms ; and, though he
does not regard with favour the view that there
are Maccabaean psalms, he does not deny its pos
sibility.^ Delitzsch's position is virtually assumed
by Strack and F. W. Schultz. Kohler also ascribes
not a few psalms to David.
We have next to look at the view of Justus
Olshausen (born 9th May 1800, died 28th Decem
ber 1882), whom we may regard as representing
another development of the critical position of De
1 Delitzsch's characterisation of the literary features of the Davidic
psalms, after the manner of Ewald, may be seen in his Comm., vol. i.,
Introd. iii.

DELITZSCH — OLSHAUSEN. 39
Wette. 1 At all events De Wette gave a hint of
a line of thought which he carried out system
atically and rigorously. De Wette had remarked
that, in very many of the psalms, the persecution
which is represented as endured by the poet is
described always in very similar terms, and in
explanation of this he put forth the consideration
that national misfortune characterises the whole
course of Israel's history. Wherever, therefore,
persecutors are referred to in the Psalms, he
understood the reference to be to the heathen
nations. The point to be noted is that De Wette
considered national misfortune to be the back
ground of these plaintive songs ; although he still
regarded the speaker in the Psalms as an indi
vidual. Rosenmiiller caught up the idea, and
revived in a way the old method of referring the
Psalms to the Church. But Olshausen appropriated
it in a more critical manner, and straightway
characterised the Psalter as the book of praise
of the Church of the Second Temple, the speaker
being the Jewish Church personified.
Olshausen's view led him to an extreme position
^ Smend points out this connection in his article on the "Ich,''
ZATW, 1888, p. 58. Proximately of course Olshausen, as well as von
Lengerke, may be described as following out the view of Hitzig (see
Delitzsch, Comm., i., Introd. iii.) Olshausen assigned the composi
tion of the latest psalms and the compilation of the Psalter to the
time of John Hyrcanus (b.c. 135-107) ; while Hitzig comes still farther
down, ascribing some psalms and the arrangement of the whole to
Alexander Jannseus, son of John Hyrcanus.

40 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
in the dating of the Psalms. Taking the persecuted
" I " to be the Jewish Church of the Second Temple,
he perceived that the persecutors were not always
heathen, but even more frequently were the godless
part of the people. In his endeavour to understand
such a schism in the Jewish Church, he felt com
pelled to come down to the time of the Syrian per
secutions, the " godless " among the people being
the Hellenising party ; so that, in fine, the Psalter,
in his view, was mainly composed in the Maccabaean
age. It was perhaps this extreme that made Olshau
sen's view, as first published, unpopular, or at all
events prevented its gaining ground ; though, as we
shall presently see, he has only anticipated some of
the conclusions of the most recent time.
We are thus brought to the period of contempor
ary criticism, and to the phase of speculation which
may be said to have been inaugurated by Reuss of
Strassburg (born 18th July 1804, died 15th April
1891). He has the honour of having given the
start to the theory of Graf, and to have taught it
before Graf himself published it — the theory, viz.,
that the Prophets precede the Law, and that the
Pentateuch is the law-book of the restored post-
exilian community. Closely connected with that
position, and in fact flowing from it, on the princi
ples of this school of criticism, is the position, taught
also by Reuss, that the Psalter comes after the

REUSS — WELLHAUSEN. 41
Law. Reuss, in fact, as he claims priority in enun
ciating the Grafian hypothesis, claims also to have
been the first to express the doubt whether there
are any Davidic psalms.^ In the same manner he
is to be classed along with Olshausen in the view
of the Psalms which has just been explained ; for,
more than fifty years ago, he laid stress on the
personification that runs through the Psalms, and
referred a very large number to the Church and
not to any individual speaker.
The leading representatives of the modern school
of advanced criticism agree in the main with -the
conclusions which have just been mentioned, though
emphasising different details according to the vary
ing bent of their speculations and the lines of
reasoning which they employ. Wellhausen's dictum
on the subject of the Psalms is quoted again and
again by different writers, as giving a summary
statement of the present attitude of criticism :
"As the Psalter belongs to the Hagiographa (i.e.,
the last division of the Old Testament canon), and
was the praise -book of the Church of the Second
Temple ; as also the inscriptions imply the arrange
ments of musical service described in the books of
Chronicles, the question is not whether it contains
any post - exilian psalms, but whether it contains
any that are pre-exilian." ^
1 Eeuss, Geschichte der heil. Schriften A. T, p. 186.
2 Bleek, Einleitung, 4te Aufl., § 251, note.

42 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
Stade, who has written a voluminous History of
Israel from the advanced critical point of view,
maintaining that the pre-prophetic religion was
based upon nature - worship, and that even the
prophetic religion was of late and tardy growth,
of course brings the Psalms down to a post-exilian
period. " That the Psalms are a product of post-
exilian piety appears pre-eminently from the faith
in God which they exhibit, — a faith which in
every article bears the post-exilian stamp ; and the
same views pervade the whole book." The Psalter,
he says, we are entitled to take generally as the
source of information regarding the world of re
ligious thought among the Jews between the time
of Ezra and that of Alexander the Great, wherever
there is no deflnite reason for thinking of a later
origin. And since it expresses the hopes, prayers,
fears, anticipations of the corporate Jewish Church,
" the Psalter is the Messianic book of the Old
Testament." ^
Duhm, again, approaching the question from the
side of the development of religious thought, carries
out Olshausen's line,- and seeks ^ to determine the
dates at which such expressions as the "pious" or
" holy " ones and the " wicked " stand for repre
sentative parties in later Judaism.
Smend, however, has recently taken up Olshau-
^ Stade, Geschichte Israels, Band ii., pp. 213, 215, 216.
2 Theologie der Propheten, p. 20, note.

STADE — DUHM — SMEND — GIESEBREOHT. 43
sen's view where that writer left it, and sought to
carry it out without his strong Maccabaean bias.
He thinks that Olshausen was wrong in assigning
most of the Psalms to the Maccabaean era, because
there were parties and animosities among the post-
exilian Jews from the first. The special task,
however, which Smend has taken upon himself is
to exhibit the principle of personification in the
Psalms. He has examined all the psalms in
which an " I " is the speaker, and has come to
the conclusion that in all these, without excep
tion, it is the Church personified, and not any
individual, that speaks.^ Smend's view of the (
whole subject of Israelite religion, early and late,
of which his view of the Psalms is a part, is
elaborated in his more recently published ' Lehr-
buch der Alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte,'
1893. Another modern writer, Giesebrecht, has ap
proached the subject from the linguistic side,
and maintains that the majority of the Psalms
can be proved on this ground also to be post-
exilian.^ Then we have the elaborate work of Prof
Cheyne, 'The Origin and Religious Contents of
1 Smend, Ueber das Ich der Psalmen, zatw, 1888, pp. 49-147 ; along
with which is to be taken his review of Nowaok's edition of Riehm's
Psalmen in Theoh Literaturzeitung, 2nd November 1889.
2 ZATW, 1881, p. 276 ff.

44 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
the Psalter' (Bampton Lecture for 1889). Be
ginning his critical studies, as he tells us himself,
in the school of Ewald, he has passed latterly into
that of Kuenen and Wellhausen ; ^ and he has,
in regard to the Psalms, reached a position even
in advance of most Continental critics. Not one
of the Psalms, he tells us, can be assigned to pre-
exilian times, except a part of Ps. xviii., and even
that is as late as the time of Josiah. He makes
no secret of his view as to the pre-prophetic reli
gion, and says in effect that the religious tone
of the Psalms is far above what could have been
reached by David or long after David's time.
Though he does not go so far as Smend in the
theory of personification, yet he sees a collective
reference not only in the Psalms but in other parts
of the Old Testament, and generally regards the
Psalter as " a monument of Church consciousness." ^
But the distinguishing feature of his work is the
critical method by which he reaches his conclusions
as to the dates of particular psalms or small groups
of psalms. Starting with a psalm, or with several
that give tolerably clear indications of their date
and occasion, he lays it down as "a canon of
criticism that when certain psalms, all of which
agree in some leading features, and positively
disagree in none, have come to us from ancient
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 191, &c. 2 ii,i±^ pp_ £65, 277.

CHEYNE — BAETHGEN — SELLIN. 4 5
times in one group, we are bound to assign them
to the same period, though it is only in one instance
that we can from internal evidence speak positive
ly as to their date."^ Provided with this critical
canon, he exclaims : " A truce then to the incon
clusive vagueness of De Wette and Hupfeld," and
proceeds with the utmost confidence in his pro
cesses till he leaves even Hitzig behind in the
definiteness of the dates to which he assigns the
Psalms or psalm-groups.
The object of the foregoing review has been to
exhibit the various steps by which the problem of
the Psalms has been brought to its present position,
not to enumerate all the leading writers or com
mentators. The problem is still under lively dis
cussion. Besides the new edition of Hupfeld's
Commentary by Nowack, published in 1888, we
have the Commentary of Baethgen,^ which, in a
calm and impartial tone, takes account of the
positions of other modern writers, and is par
ticularly valuable for its notices of the views of
Theodore of Mopsuestia. Special mention should
also be made of a dissertation by Sellin,^ with the
view of proving that the first book of the Psalter
^ Origin of the Psalter, pp. 18, 19.
2 Die Psalmen (1892) in Nowack's Handkommentar zum Alten
Testament. A second edition has appeared (in 1897).
2 Disputatio de Origine Carminum quae primus Psalterii liber con-
tinet (1892).

46 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PSALM CRITICISM.
contains pre-exilian psalms. The same writer has
more recently published ^ the first two of a projected
series of treatises on the Old Testament Religion,
in which in a more systematic way he adduces
proofs that in pre-exilian antiquity the individual,
as well as the nation, stood in direct religious re
lation to God, — in other words, that there was an
individual as well as a national religion. Lastly,
we have a special treatise by Beer,^ intended to
distinguish the psalms which have an individual
reference from those that were composed in the
name of the Church.
1 Beitrage zur Israelitischen und judischen Religionsgeschichte,
Heft i., 1896 ; Heft ii., Erste Halfte, 1897.
2 Individual- und Gemeinde-Psalmen, 1894.

47

CHAPTER IIL
the PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
The foregoing review of the past course of Psalm
criticism brings into prominence the leading prob
lems that call for solution, and suggests an inquiry
into the method that ought to be employed in the
discussion. It is evident, first of all, that we cannot accept
the inscriptions as authoritative or reliable indica
tions of the authorship and occasions of composition
of the psalms to which they are attached. These
headings have a historical value of a certain kind,
and furnish important evidence as to the Psalter as
a whole — an evidence at which we shall have to
look in the sequel. In the present connection we
speak of them merely in so far as they profess to
give information as to the authorship and occasion
of the particular psalms to which they are prefixed.
There is nothing to lead us to suppose that they
were written by the authors of the respective com-

48 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
positions. On the contrary, everything tends to
prove that they were appended at a later time —
how late we cannot precisely tell — either on some
traditional grounds or as a crudely critical infer
ence from the contents of the psalms in question.
That they must belong to a period antecedent to
the time of the LXX. translation appears from the
fact that the translators evidently had the Hebrew
headings before them. But it is equally evident
that the translators either possessed them in a
varying form or considered them of so little his
torical value that they permitted themselves to
alter or add to them, — a course they would scarcely
have followed had they regarded these headings
as an integral part of the text.^
Another inference we may safely draw from the
attempts of critics to determine the dates and
authorship of the Psalms is : that it is impossible
to start with a limited number of acknowledged
Davidic psalms and make them a standard of com
parison for others. The actual number of psalms
allowed to David by different critics sufficiently
indicates how unsubstantial are the grounds on
which the conclusions are reached. Hitzig and
Ewald each enumerated about fourteen (which were
not, however, the same in each enumeration) ;
Delitzsch increased the number to forty ; Schultz
' An exhaustive statement of the inscriptions, and of their renderings
in the Versions, is given in Baethgen's Psalmen, Einl., §§ 2 3.

OBJECTION TO CRITERION OF EWALD. 49
reduces it to ten ; and Baethgen limits it still
further to a few at the beginning of the Psalter.
It is evident that a canon of literary excellence,
by which Ewald was mainly guided, is always
liable to be variously applied according to the taste
of the individual critic. And in any case we must,
first of all, obtain some undoubted production of
David before we can set up a standard of com
parison. And though Strack, for example, has
advocated this method as the only safe process of
literary criticism, and proposes to start with the
18th Psalm as beyond all controversy Davidic,
recent criticism has shown that not even this lyric
can be taken as a basis of comparison ; for it is
declared to be, if even pre-exilian at all, not earlier
in date than the time of Josiah.
It is proper to remark here, however, that if
this much has to be conceded on the one side, there
must be a corresponding concession on the other.
That is to say, if we are not allowed with Ewald to
set up a high literary standard for Davidic psalms,
and to reject all compositions that do not come
up to it, neither should we allow ourselves to
pronounce psalms to be non-Davidic on the ground
that they are too high in literary merit or religious
character. For this would be simply the setting
up of another standard of comparison even more
shadowy and subjective than the other.
Again, the method of determining the dates
D

50 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
and occasions of psalms from some supposed refer
ences in them to the times and circumstances of
the author has not yielded encouraging results.
The confldence which individual critics have ex
pressed in their conclusions in this direction has
generally been conflned to themselves ; for different
critics have with equal certainty assigned the same
psalms to very different persons and occasions, as
a glance at any comprehensive critical commentary
will show. The considerations which restrained
Hupfeld from a positive determination of the
occasion of individual psalms on this line still re
tain their weight. The references in these lyrics
to the situations of the writers or the circum
stances of the times are in the nature of the case
very general, and therefore capable of application
to various times. And even where there seems to
be a correspondence in the psalms with recorded
events in the national history, and a reflection of
known situations of certain writers, it is to be
remembered that our acquaintance with long tracts
of the history is exceedingly meagre, and that the
situations and experiences of writers repeat them
selves at different times. For this reason it is
comparatively easier to find suitable occasions for
many psalms in the later periods of history, of
which we have full records — as in the first book
of Maccabees and the pages of Josephus — than in
the pre-exilian period, where details fail us. And

CRITERION OP GROUPS. 51
even where such historical identifications are
claimed by critics to be made out, it will be
found that all they amount to is perhaps the
conviction that such and such a psalm might
have been composed at such and such a time.
There are, indeed, certain psalms, as we shall see,
that proclaim themselves to be post-exilian ; there
are a few others so strongly marked that even
conservative critics admit the probability of their
being as late as the Maccabaean period. But it
may be safely said of a very great majority that,
had their own testimony to the time and circum
stances of their composition been definite, it would
have been recognised long ago.
The canon of criticism laid down by Prof
Cheyne promises at first sight to furnish a better
principle of procedure ; and no doubt in such a
direction lies the only hope of being able to deter
mine the relative dates of the Psalms. But the
rule he lays down in regard to "groups" must be
applied with great caution, and his canon can only
be accepted with important reservations.
Psalms that " have come to us from ancient times
in one group" can at most attest only the time
from which they existed as a group. The date of
the component elements remains still to be deter
mined. We have before us the striking example
of the Twelve minor prophets. These have existed
" as a group" from ancient times ; perhaps the very

52 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
first notice we have of them in history is a reference
to them as a collection, known as " the Twelve."
Yet that group contains what are now believed to
be both the earliest and the latest written pro
phetical works, separated by many centuries — pre-
exilian and post-exilian being placed side by side.
Now, each of the psalms is primarily a separate
composition, as independent in its origin, for aught
we know, as each book constituting the "group" of
the minor prophets. One member of any group
may, for aught that the existence of the group tells
us, have been composed and used long before the
origin of other members in the same group. In a
word, the presence of groups of psalms in the Psalter
furnishes only a relative evidence bearing on the
history of the collection, but affords no proof of the
dates, relative to one another, of the individual
psalms. But the canon under consideration stipulates that
the psalms in each group shall " all agree in some
leading features and positively disagree in none";
and it is claimed that, under these conditions, if we
can determine the positive date of one of the group,
all the members of the group must be assigned to
the same period, " though it is only in one instance
that we can from internal evidence speak positively
as to their date." Let us consider what this
involves. It implies obviously the setting up of a standard

CRITERION OF GROUPS. 53
of some kind, according to the " leading features "
of the psalms to be compared. But who is to fix
that standard, and how is it to be applied ? Is the
standard to be a literary one, or is it to be deter
mined by historical indications or by religious tone ?
Manifestly there will be varieties of opinion in
regard to any one or all of these as to what con
stitutes a " leading feature " for the matter in hand
— viz., the origin and composition of the Psalms.
And there is likely to be as little unanimity as to
whether a number of psalms — occurring in a group
or otherwise — come up to, or do not deviate from,
such a standard. In point of fact, is it not just
the uniformity of tone and absence of deflnite indi
cations — the want, in short, of common "leading
features " — that make it a matter of so much
difficulty to decide the dates of these composi
tions ? Take, for example, a group of psalms
which have evidently been long associated — the
Pilgrim Psalms (cxx. -cxxxiv.) The points of essen
tial agreement here are few and secondary as
compared with the points of diversity. For some
reason, valid to the collectors, these psalms have
been classed together under one common title, and
so have " come down to us from ancient times in
one group." But that title, " Songs of Degrees " or
" Songs of Ascents," which is the expression of the
fact or belief that they had "one common feature"
at least, though apparently intended to be signifi-

54 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
cant, is at the present day variously interpreted,
and may adapt itself to one of several " features "
having no necessary connection with date. So that
it is quite legitimate and even reasonable to con
clude that the individual psalms of the group may
belong to different situations and times, and that
the inclusion of the whole into one group may fall
comparatively late, and have been occasioned by
secondary and accidental considerations. How very
arbitrary this method may become appears when we
look at its operation. Prof Cheyne, for example,
with great confidence sets down the four criteria
of a non-linguistic kind for the detection of Mac
cabaean psalms : (1) The presence of some fairly
definite historical allusion ; (2) a uniquely strong
Church feeling ; (3) a special intensity of monothe
istic faith ; and (4) an ardour of gratitude for a
wonderful deliverance. But he has no sooner an
nounced these criteria than he shows that one of
them — the last — will not apply to some of the
psalms which have usually been regarded as having
a special claim to be classed as Maccabaean — viz.,
Ps. xliv., Ixxiv., Ixxix. ^
Moreover, should it be found that several psalms
placed in one group do agree or do not positively
disagree in their main features, this is no proof that
they all belong to the same time and the same
author. For, in the first place, it may have been
^ Origin of the Psalter, p. 95.

CRITERION OF GROUPS. 55
precisely on the grounds of such resemblances that
psalms of very different ages were grouped together
by some later collector ; and, in the second place,
we cannot so circumscribe the poetical and religious
activities of the writers, nor so mechanically divide
off" the history into periods, as to say that similar
occasions may not arise at very different periods,
and modes of thought and phases of feeling may
not recur at far remote intervals.
There might be some hope of successful results
from this comparison of groups, if the groups them
selves were historically attested and well defined, for
then we might say for certain that all the members
of a particular group were at least limited in their
dates by the date of that collection ; and we could
at least, in such circumstances, arrange the Psalms
relatively if not absolutely. But when the admis
sion comes into play that groups may have been
broken up, at or before the final redaction, and when,
on the strength of some internal resemblance, one
member of a group here is found to have affinity
with one or two members of some other group there,
and forthwith these outlying members are brought
together into one sphere of time, it is manifest that
the principle of grouping is a speculative one, and
the results are dependent on the judgment of the
critic. In fact, it comes finally to this, that instead
of groups, in the sense of attested collections that
have come down together, we are presented with

56 THE PROBLEMS OP THE PSALMS.
groups that are formed on grounds of internal criti
cism. Before acquiescing in a canon of criticism so
sweeping as this, we should do well to imagine its
application to any other literature — the attempt, for
example, to arrange chronologically in " groups " the
productions of some lyric poet, secular or sacred, on
the ground of some leading feature common to all
of them. And the case before us is much harder,
M^hen we have, for aught we know, productions
of ages far apart and of men of most varied at
tainments and situations. Neither individuals nor
nations have the habit of exhausting a subject at
one time and never recurring to it.
Amid all this uncertainty, one thing becomes
clear, that in the final appeal we must fall back
upon each individual psalm for indications of its
date and authorship. Whether these indications
will suffice to establish a safe conclusion is another
matter ; but it is evident that here, as always,
exegesis must be the basis of criticism.
Since, however, the present trend of criticism is
towards a late date of the Psalms, it is proper
now to consider the various lines of argument on
which that conclusion is reached. For there are
a few broad principles, which are either tacitly
or overtly assumed as proved, on grounds not
always strictly exegetical, and which, if accepted
at the outset in the sense in which they are
put forward, would no doubt warrant us in rele-

ARGUMENTS FOR LATE DATE. 57
gating the Psalter to a late date. The chief of
these are —
1. The Psalter stands in the third division of the
Canon, and was the praise - book of the
Second (or post-exilian) Temple.
2. The language of the Psalms is incompatible
with pre-exilian origin.
3. The historical allusions and the situations im
plied in the Psalms do not agree with pre-
exilian but do agree with post-exilian times
and circumstances.
4. The stage of religious consciousness that is
reached in the Psalms is too advanced for
pre-exilian times.
5. The speaker in the Psalms who utters thanks
or supplicates divine aid is not an individual
but a personification, the Church of the
Second Temple.
In regard to these various positions it is necessary
here to make a few remarks.
1. On the position that the Psalter was the
praise-book of the Second Temple, the remark is
obvious that this assertion, made in this axiomatic
tone, proves no more as to the age of the Psalter
than the statement that the Psalms are the only
praise-book of a certain body of Presbyterians, and
does not at all warrant the inference that the whole
of the Psalms were composed after the Exile. At
the most the fact — if it be a fact — can only guar-

58 THE PROBLEMS OP THE PSALMS.
antee the inference that the Psalms were regarded
as suitable for and introduced into the worship of
the Second Temple. But whether the whole or
any number of them were earlier or later than the
Captivity is a matter for independent investiga
tion. The fact that the Psalter stands in the last
division of the Canon, along with books which are
confessedly late, cannot be urged in proof of the
post-exilian date. Least of all can this fact be
insisted upon by those who are also adherents of
the prevailing theory as to the dates of the Penta
teuch and the prophetical books. For these critics
maintain that many of the prophetical books are
older than the Pentateuch ; yet the Pentateuch
was the first to be codified, the first also to be set
apart and used in the public service of the Second
Temple. If, therefore, prophetical books were in
existence before they were canonised Scripture and
publicly read in the Temple worship, why should we
be required to admit that psalms were only written
after the Exile, because they are included in the
third division of the Canon ? The very fact that the
Psalter consists of psalters within the Psalter, as
we are continually told — that is, that it is composed
of different minor collections — would lead to the
conclusion that it is of gradual growth ; and, as the
" Twelve " minor prophets is a collection containing
both the very earliest and the very latest propheti
cal books, it remains a matter of investigation, not

THE PRAISE-BOOK OP THE SECOND TEMPLE. 59
to be settled by off'-hand statement, whether the
Psalter is in whole or in part a pre-exilian or post-
exilian production. In fact, the assertion itself,
that the Psalter Avas the praise-book of the Second
Temple, is misleading and requires qualification.
For, in the first place, those who make the asser
tion do not mean by it that the whole collection
was prepared and ready for use as soon as the wor
ship of the Second Temple was inaugurated ; on the
contrary, they maintain that it only began to grow
in post-exilian time. And, in the second place, the
assertion, even if admitted, would not prove that
no part of the Psalter was employed in the worship
of the First Temple. Indeed, if it were established
that psalms or a psalter was employed from the first
inauguration of worship in the Second Temple, we
should be led to look to an earlier time for the com
position of such psalms. But even if it were ascer
tained that psalms were not in use in the First
Temple, that would not amount to proof that the
Psalms, or many of them, were not composed in
pre-exilian times. As a matter of fact, there is no
evidence that the Psalter as a whole ever formed
part of the liturgical service either of the Second
Temple or of the synagogue. We may legitimately
infer, as we shall see by-and-by, from statements in
the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, that
at the time these books were written psalmody was
known and certain psalms employed in public wor-

60 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
ship, but that is a very different thing from the use
of a complete collection like the Psalter. There are
also indications in a few of the headings ^ that cer
tain psalms were appropriate for certain days or
occasions ; and such indications are more numerous
in the Versions and in the Rabbinic literature. ^
But these would rather tell against than for the
regular use of the Psalter as a whole. Not even
does the Jewish Prayer-book incorporate the entire
Psalter. In a word, the Psalter is not so integral
a part of the liturgy of the Jewish synagogue as it
is of the service of the Church of England.
Let us take the parallel case of the book of
Proverbs, which also stands in the third division
of the Canon. Suppose it was proved that that
book was composed or redacted at a comparatively
late post - exilian period, this would be no proof
that all its contents were of post - exilian origin,
or that none of the smaller collections which it
contains belongs to an earlier time. Much less
would it prove that the practice of speaking in
proverbs was entirely unknown to Hebrew an
tiquity. Therefore the portentous dictum as to
the Psalter being the book of praise of the Second
Temple should not be put forth as a starting-point
in this discussion. It proves nothing as to the
' See Ps. XXX., xcii. There are more in the LXX.
2 See Beer, Individual- und Gemeinde-Psalmen, p. ii. ff., for a list of
these.

ARGUMENT FROM LANGUAGE. 61
main point in dispute, at what time the composi
tion of psalms commenced.
2. The argument from the language of the Psalms
is somewhat technical, and involves a consideration
of many minute details. There are, however, some
facts of a more general kind which call for mention,
regard to which will indicate the nature of the
linguistic argument and the limits within which it
has to be prosecuted.
(a) In the first place, it is only natural that in
the Psalms we should find distinctive linguistic /
peculiarities. In all languages there are words and ' ,
expressions which are either confined to poetry or ~
affected specially by poets. These may be archaic
or they may be simply peculiar to poetical composi
tion in general ; and since, as is well known, songs
and ballads are among the earliest efforts at literary
composition, we may be prepared to find in the
poems of any age the archaic forms and special
phraseology which have become associated with this
kind of composition.
(b) In the next place, Hebrew poetry was liable
in a pre-eminent degree to a variation in the phra
seology, resulting in a special enrichment of the
poetic vocabulary. The parallelism, which is the
outstanding feature of Hebrew poetry, demands in
many cases the repetition of the thought in varying ;
expression, and in every case leads to some modifi- 1
cation of the expression in one member of the verse

62 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
to correspond with a variation of the thought in
another. So marked is this characteristic that an
attentive regard to the parallelism often helps the
expositor over a difficulty that arises from the ob
scurity of an expression in one clause, a clearer
expression of the thought being usually found in
the other. It will be evident that in this manner
Hebrew poetry attains a richness of vocabulary and
a variety of diction which is not found in prose, the
poet being obliged to ransack the literary stores of
all ages and adopt decadent or unusual expressions,
as well as to coin new phrases or give special turns
to existing words, in order to bring out the modifi
cations of thought and the niceties of distinction
which compositions of this kind demand.
This being so, it is far from safe to argue from a
word or phrase which may occur in one member of
a parallelism, without taking into consideration its
correspondent in the other. Equally unsafe is it to
reason from an expression of a peculiar kind which
may be found in two different psalms, that both com
positions belong to the same age ; for the two occur
rences may arise from a similarity in the thought of
the two writers, or from the choice by a poet of a
peculiar word or words in the service of his art.
When a comparison of this kind is carried out in
conjunction with the assumption of the late date of
a number of other books, no doubt a formidable
array of instances can be produced, and very short

ARGUMENT FROM LANGUAGE. 63
work is made in determining the dates of particular
Psalms. Thus, for example, it is argued ^ that such
Psalms as viii., xix., and xxix. are post-exilian, be
cause they refer to the first chapter of Genesis, and
the word " firmament " occurring in Ps. xix. is only
found in late books, such as Ezekiel and Daniel.
But if we are to assume that so simple a cosmogony
as that of Ps. viii., and so obvious a parallel word
to heaven as firmament, with all the other words
and ideas which Giesebrecht, e.g., pronounces late,
were unknown to the Hebrews till the period of
the Exile, we run the risk of not only attenuating
the ideas of the time, but even of depriving the
people of a working vocabulary.
(c) It is to be observed, in the third place, that
the argument from language does not amount to
the plea that the linguistic style of the Psalms
as a whole indicates a late period of the language.
There are some books in the Old Testament which,
as it has been said, must be pronounced late if
there is any history of the language at all. And
it may be granted that some of the Psalms ^ bear
such marks of lateness from beginning to end. But
the attempt to prove this of the Psalms as a whole
ends in absurdity. Nay, so far is it from being the
case, that a critic so competent as Reuss, in arguing
1 Beer, Individual- und Gemeinde-Psalmen, p. Ivii ; but compare
Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 468.
2 E.g., Psalm cxxxix.

64 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
for a late date of the Psalter, feels called upon to
meet the objection that the language of the Psalms
is good, pure, classical Hebrew. Except in places
where it may be supposed the copyists have not
correctly preserved the text, he says, the language
is so simple that the Psalms may be given as exer
cises in reading to beginners.-^ But this purity of
language he does not accept as a proof of early
date ; his explanation being that the psalm- writers
affected the language of the Law and the Prophets,
to which the people were accustomed, very much
as in modern times the liturgical and devotional
compositions used in Christian Churches have an
archaic cast, in keeping with that of the sacred
books with which the worshippers are familiar.^
Whether his reasoning be valid or not, it is suf
ficient to prove how dubious the argument from
the language of the Psalms becomes. And it is
not to be wondered at that Giesebrecht, who has
set himself^ to prove the lateness of the Psalter
from the language, finds so many marks of late
date, and these in so many of the psalms, that it
becomes difficult to conclude what style he would
allow to be pre-exilian at all. On the whole, his
contention is hardly approved of even by those who
1 Reuss, Das Alte Testament, FUnfter Band, p. 46.
^ At the same time, however, he concludes the lateness of such a
psalm as cxxxix. from the decadent phase of the language which it
exhibits. 3 ZATW, 1881, p. 276 ff.

REMAINING ARGUMENTS. 65
on other grounds are disposed to bring down the
Psalms to a late date. In the words of Professor
Driver,^ the essay " contains much that is superficial
and crude " ; and Professor Cheyne ^ characterises it
as " a suggestive but too indiscriminate collection of
the evidence for a late date of the Psalms."
Neither of the two preceding arguments, there
fore, constitutes a preliminary bar to the supposition
that the Psalter may be, in greater or less part at
least, of pre-exilian origin. As to the other argu
ments which have been mentioned, it will be found
that they raise wider issues than a simple exegesis
of the Psalms, involving, in fact, the whole question
of the pre-exilian history and religion. When, for
example, it is asserted that the historical allusions
and situations of the Psalms do not agree with the
circumstances of pre-exilian times, there is involved
a certain theory of the early history, and a judg
ment on the credibility of certain of the historical
books. Or when, again, it is maintained that the
tone of religious experience in the Psalms is too
high for pre-exilian times, and that the speaking
" I " in the Psalms is Israel personified, there are
involved the deeper questions of the so-called pre-
prophetic religion of Israel, the origin of the pro
phetic conceptions, the extent to which these con
ceptions influenced a wider circle, and the whole
1 Introduction, p. 361, footnote. Compare 6th edition, p. 3^3.
2 Origin of the Psalter, p. 461. E

66 THE PROBLEMS OF THE PSALMS.
contrast between pre-exilian and post-exilian times.
In short, as has been already indicated, the problem
of the Psalms is part of the larger problem of the
Old Testament religion in its widest acceptance.
No doubt, if these underlying assumptions were
admitted, the question of the Psalms would become
simple enough, and would settle itself as a matter
of course. Seeing, however, that they are subject
of controversy, and that an independent consider
ation of the Psalms may help to throw light on
those very points, we cannot admit them at the
outset as postulates. They will have to be faced
as we proceed, but, in order to make our inquiry
as little controversial as possible, it will be better
to approach the subject in another way.
What it is proposed here to do, therefore, is, in
the flrst place, to look for any historical evidence,
outside of the Psalter, of the earliest existence of
a psalter or of the practice of psalmody ; and then
to consider what may be gathered from the Psalter
itself as to its origin and collection. If these two
lines of proof show with certainty, or with great
probability, that the Psalter originated in pre-
exilian times, it will then be proper to examine the
literary, historical, and religious features of the
Psalms, and consider whether there is room and
place in pre-exilian antiquity for the manifestation
of these features, and to what times and occasions
the manifestation of them may be ascribed.

67

CHAPTER IV.

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.

Any available evidence as to the date and origin
of the Psalter must be derived — it need hardly be
said — either from the Psalter itself or from other
ancient documents. We have already seen that
the notices found in the headings of the Psalms,
being later than the Psalms themselves and of
unknown origin, cannot be summarily taken as
authentic information on the subject ; and we shall
see by-and-by that evidence of another kind drawn
from the Psalms themselves requires to be very
carefully handled, and has, in fact, been found to
lead, in different hands, to very different conclu
sions. The references in the Psahns to historical
occasions and prominent characters are either so
scant or so general and indefinite that (as has
been shown in chap, ii.) both Ewald and Hupfeld
confess their inability to do more than fix bound
aries somewhat wide and elastic. Others, however.

68 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
have not been so diffident, as we have also seen ;
and, in point of fact, it is the internal evidence
from the Psalms that is chiefly relied upon by
the more recent school of criticism for a deter
mination of the literary history of the Psalter.
It is important, therefore, to remember that there
is another line of evidence, drawn from external
sources, which has been too much overlooked. This
kind of evidence, if it does not furnish precise re
sults in detail, is valuable as being more tangible
and substantial so far as it goes, and therefore it
affords a guide in our endeavours to estimate in
ternal evidence, and lays down wholesome restraints
within which that evidence must be arranged.
Critics are too much inclined to undervalue this
kind of evidence, either by questioning the facts
themselves or refusing to draw from them the in
evitable inferences. And yet even a few hard,
positive, historical facts — which require to be ac
counted for, and thereby suggest underlying or
antecedent facts — are much more reliable evidence
than a series of inferences drawn from what may
be a disputed interpretation of sporadic phrases in
the Psalms themselves.
The external evidence, to which we now turn, is
pretty considerable in amount ; it forms a well-
connected chain, each individual link of which may
be put to a severe test ; and if I mistake not, it
is not reconcilable with, at least, the more advanced

ITS VALUE. 69
modern position which makes the whole Psalter
post-exilian. For we have to bear in mind, in ap
proaching it, that Prof. Cheyne, for example, makes
the very earliest psalm in the collection (with the
exception of Psalm xviii., which may partly belong
to the age of Josiah) as late as the completion of
the Second Temple (b.c. 515), and brings down the
latest to the time of the death of Simon Maccabfeus
in B.C. 135 — assigning twenty-seven psalms alto
gether to the Maccabaean period (b.c. 170 to 135).
And we have to consider how such a position can
maintain itself in presence of certain well-known
literary and historical facts.
The i^ost satisfactory mode of prosecuting a
historical inquiry of this kind is to commence at
some date at which there is no doubt of the exist
ence of the Psalter, and to work our way backwards
to earlier dates, according as we find indications
either of a completed psalter or of its process of
growth. If we had positive information of the
final closing of the canon of the Old Testament,
we should have an undisputed starting-point of
this kind, however late it might be ; and we natur
ally inquire, first of all, whether that date can be
determined. It used to be considered a sufficient answer to
those who maintained that there are Maccabaean
psalms in the Psalter, to say that the thing was
impossible, because the Canon was closed before

70 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
the time of the Maccabees. This was on the
supposition prevalent at the time that the Old
Testament collection was virtually completed by
Ezra and Nehemiah, — a position which cannot, how
ever, be taken for granted, and which, indeed, a
closer study of the whole question shows to be
untenable. It is a very difficult matter to determine the
date of the final closing of the canon of the Old
Testament. We have no historical account of any
formal act, which can be interpreted as an authori
tative setting apart or sanctioning of the books of
the Old Testament as a whole, as the sole Scrip
ture acknowledged by the Jewish Church.^ We
may take it as established that the three com
ponent parts of the Hebrew Bible, Law, Prophets,
and Hagiographa, indicate three successive stages
in the gradual formation of the Canon ; and we
know that, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah,
the first portion, the Law, was brought into special
prominence in connection with the public worship.
But we find at no subsequent period such a formal
1 The assembly at Jamnia (held about a.d. 90), at which Graetz
thinks the Canon was fixed, is not to be regarded in this light. The
discussions which then took place touched rather the claims of certain
books to be in the Canon than the fact of their being already included
in it. And, in the present connection, it is to be observed that the
Psalter was not one of the questioned or disputed books, which were
Ecclesiastes and Canticles, and, to a certain extent, Ezekiel. But all
the books mentioned were already in the Canon, as the references in
the New Testament and Josephus sufficiently prove.

CLOSING OP THE CANON. 71
act of the nation or of any council as would amount
to the stamping of the other portions with pubhc
authority. This much is quite clear, from the refer
ences in the New Testament and the often-quoted
words of Josephus, that by the first century of our
era the Old Testament was of the same compass as
the present Hebrew Bible, and was then regarded
as of undisputed authority and of long standing.^
On the strength of these references it is generally
admitted on all hands that, in the first Christian
century at all events, and presumably at some
undefibaed time before it, the Old Testament canon
had its present compass. It may not be super
fluous, however, to draw attention to the general
character of these references. They do not attest
the compass or magnitude of the individual books.
The New Testament references to the Psalms, for
example, though numerous, do not entitle us, in the
strict letter of the matter, to say that any psalm
now in the Psalter was there in its present form
at that period. This remark is made in order to
show the kind of evidence that, in the nature of
the case, is forthcoming. If it is so general at
the time when no doubt is entertained as to the
compass of the Canon, we may be prepared for
an equal vagueness at an earlier time.
1 The passages relied on are such as Matt. xxii. 29, Luke xxiv. 44,
John vi. 45, Acts vii. 42, xiii. 40, xviii. 24, 28, &c. Josephus, Contra
Apionem, i. 8.

72 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
When, however, we speak of the Canon and the
closing of the Canon, we must beware of being
led astray by the use of a phrase. The Canon was
not some repository into which books were placed
as soon as they were written. Nor was it a
theoretic standard of a certain class of books
which the Jews set themselves in advance to pro
duce or collect. The word itself is much later
than the thing ; there must be books before there
is a canon. All that we know on the subject
leads us to the conclusion that at certain periods
certain books had attached to them such regard,
and were found of such utility for the instruc
tion and worship of the people, that they were
brought into connection with the temple or syna
gogue service, and in a public and official manner
acknowledged as of ultimate authority. Such
books would presumably be old enough to have
a prescriptive claim to recognition, or be known
or believed to be the work of men who were
universally looked upon as organs of divine reve
lation ; but we have no right to assume that the
oldest books would be the first to be thus treated
— in other words, to be first formed into a canon,
in the sense in which we have explained it. It
is quite conceivable that books known or reputed
to be old and sacred would be in the possession
of the people, and yet for some time not included
among the books that were thus officially set

CLOSING OP THE CANON. 73
apart for use in the worship of the Church. And,
conversely, the time at which a book or assemblage
of books was brought into such use would be no
test of their supposed antiquity, and of the in
trinsic value they possessed in the eyes of the
people. The position of the Prophets in the
Canon furnishes the best example of what I mean.
It is generally admitted that the Pentateuch was
in the first place what we may call the only Bible
of the Jews, being the Canon set up by Ezra and
Nehemiah. Nevertheless the books of most of the
Prophets were at that time in the possession of
the people ; they were known to be old, were re
garded as the work of God's messengers, and were
even appealed to by the very men who brought
the Pentateuch into its prominence.-^ Yet it is
believed that a considerable time elapsed before
the second division of the Canon, the Prophets,
was placed side by side with the Law, and made
equally with the Pentateuch public authoritative
Scripture.^ The bearing of this on the Psalter will be ap
parent. The Psalter stands in the third division
1 See, e.g., Neh. ix. 26 ff.
2 The view generally entertained at the present time is that the first
Canon, embracing the Pentateuch alone, dates from about 440 b.c;
the second, embracing the Nebiim or Prophets, from some time in the
third century ; and the third, or Ketubim, a century later. See Ryle,
'The Canon of the Old Testament,' and the article "Canon of the Old
Testament" in the new edition of Smith's 'Bible Dictionary,' voL i.
p. 500.

74 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
of the Canon, the division which, as such, was last
added to the Bible. But we have no right to
assume that the Psalter, as a book or collection, was
not known or not recognised as Scripture till after
the Law and the Prophets were formed into the
Canon of the time. Just as the second division of
the Canon contains works which are among the
earliest of the written books of Israel (many main
tain that most of the Prophets were written before
the Law), so the third division may contain works
older than some in the second division. Nay, the
Psalter in particular is a work of such a nature
that it might be easily preserved by itself and em
ployed by itself, either in public or in private, even
while the Canon was in process of formation, and
thus be practically canonical — in the sense of being
read and reverenced as a sacred book — before the
division of which it forms a part was formally and
as a whole joined to the rest of sacred Scripture.
Indeed there are indications, if I mistake not, that
not only were there three different stages in the
process of the formation of the Canon, but that
the individual books within the divisions gained
prominence in public regard also by different de
grees. The collection of the twelve minor jDrophets,
e.g., contains, along with the very earliest written
prophecies, the books of Haggai, Zechariah, and
Malachi, which are the very latest. It is not, how
ever, to be supposed that such a book as Isaiah,

CLOSING OF THE CANON. 75
to say nothing of earlier ones, remained without
such regard and veneration as made it in the eyes
of the people holy Scripture, till the books of
Zechariah, &c., were composed. Again, in the
Talmud we read of certain of the books of the
third division being read solemnly in the presence
of the high priest on the night before the great
day of Atonement ; and the five rolls were set
apart for five special occasions — all this showing
that the regard which led to canonicity might
vary in individual cases, and so a book be virtu
ally canonical before it was placed in a canonical
collection. And in fact there is nothing to hinder
us from supposing that a collection of psalms —
whether of the same compass as the existing
Psalter or smaller — may have been in recognised
pubhc use in the worship side by side with even
the earliest canonical Scripture.
Even, therefore, if we knew the date of the final
closing of the Canon, this would only give us a
fixed point, after which we could not suppose the
Psalter to have been incorporated into the collec
tion ; but it could not determine the dates of what,
presumably, may have been smaller collections of
psalms, much less the dates of the composition of
individual pieces. Since, however, it is maintained
in modern times that the great bulk of the Psalms
was not only incorporated into a psalter, but
actually composed later than the Exile, we must

76 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
consider how this position appears in the light of
certain important literary facts.
1. The Psalter is not only in the completed Canon
of the Hebrew or Massoretic text, but is found also
in the Greek or Septuagint Version, and must there-
i fore have been completed some time before that
translation was made. Although we know pretty
accurately the date of the commencement of this
translation, the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (b.c.
284-247, when the Law at least would be trans
lated), we have no direct information as to the time
covered by the execution of the whole, or the date
of its final completion. We may assume, however,
that the third division, in which the Psalter is found,
is somewhat later than the first : and we may also
assume that this third division would not be trans
lated until it was part and parcel of the recognised
Hebrew Canon ; for the Greek Version corresponds
to the completed Hebrew Psalter, even to the divi
sion into five books with the doxologies, which are
admitted to be features later than the Psalter itself.
We have indeed a pretty good indication that
some of the psalms, at all events, were old before
they were translated by the LXX. It is as clear as
possible that the musical or liturgical headings pre
fixed to some of the Hebrew psalms (and these occur
only in the earlier books) were unintelligible to the
' Greek translators, — a certain indication that those
psalms at least do not belong to near the period

THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEADINGS. 77
when the LXX. Version was made. An argument
of some value may indeed be drawn from the whole
treatment of these headings. It has been already
mentioned ^ that the Septuagint shows considerable
variations from the Massoretic text in the super
scriptions ; and this was, as early as the time of
Theodore of Mopsuestia, taken to be a proof that
the headings were not originally an integral part of
the Psalms. That is very likely, but in the present
connection it tells in favour of the antiquity of the
psalms to which they are attached. The variations
between the Hebrew and Greek prove, first of all,
that the titles are later than the Psahns. But they
are variations — i.e., the titles of the Hebrew psalms
were present in the copies used by the LXX. trans
lators. Yet, as we have just said, portions of these
titles were unintelligible to the Greek translators.
Therefore we infer that the titles belong to a time
considerably remote from the date of the Septuagint ;
and much more remote, therefore, are the psalms
themselves to which the titles are attached. It is
worthy of remark in this connection that there is no
allusion to these titles in the books of Ezra, Nehe
miah, and Haggai ; and only in the Chronicles is
there one reference — viz., 1 Chron. x v. 20, 21, where
the terms Alamoth and Sheminith occur. This argu
ment will not, of course, apply to the whole Psalter.
It would remain possible for some or many psalms
' Chap. ii. p. 25, chap. iii. p. 48.

78 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
to belong to a period much more near to the LXX.
translation. In any case we argue, on the one hand,
that even the latest of the psalms were in the col
lection some time before the whole book of Psalms
was translated — and the language of the trans
lation leads to the supposition that all the Psalms
were translated at one time ; and, on the other
hand, certain of the psalms, at all events, belong
to a period much more remote.
Now, before proceeding, it is proper to notice
how Prof Cheyne, for example, meets these facts.
The case is this. Certain psalms which he maintains
were composed in the Greek period are provided
with musical or liturgical headings which are un
intelligible to the LXX. translators of a not much
later time. Prof Cheyne admits the facts, though
he does not "feel the objections to be important,"
and believes that " thoroughly decisive answers must
be wanting until some private journal of the actors
of history is discovered." All the explanation he has
to offer is, that the Jewish scribes themselves may
have forgotten the meaning of the headings at the
time when the temple with its music was reorganised,
and the Psalter re-edited by Simon. ^ On which it
may be remarked — (1) that Prof Cheyne himself
confesses ^ that we have " no ancient record " of this
reorganisation of music and editing of the Psalter
by Simon, about B.C. 142. So far as I can see, it
^ Origin of the Psalter, p. 458. 2 jj^jj^ p_ ^-^^

ARGUMENT FROM THE HEADINGS. 79
is merely an assumption in the interest of a theory.
(2) Even supposing such a reorganisation to have
taken place, it is not at all likely that the recollec
tion of the older arrangement, which after all was
quite recent, would so soon have disappeared. (3)
If the Jewish scribes themselves may have forgotten
the meaning of the titles by the time of Simon, is
not this a proof that the titles were old, and there
fore the Psalms still older ? Are we to suppose they
would make use of antiquated and unintelligible
musical headings for psalms which belonged almost
to their own day ? Prof Cheyne himself admits ^
that " there may have been an earlier version of the
Psalter in its incomplete form" current in Egypt
before Simon's edition. The point here contended
for is, not that there are no Maccabaean psalms in
the collection, nor that " the complete Greek Psalter
was in existence much before the Christian era,"^
but that the treatment of the headings to a certain
number of psalms in the earlier part of the collection
shows that by the time the translation was made
these headings were old, and consequently the
psalms themselves older.
2. We have next to look at the evidence borne
by some of the extra -canonical books which are
included in the Alexandrian collection.
(a) The books of the Maccabees belong to about
100 B.C. ; the first book, which brings down the
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 12. ' Ibid-. P- 458.

80 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
history to the time of John Hyrcanus (b.c. 135-105),
being written, apparently, under the immediate im
pression of the events which it records. Now this
book contains an undoubted quotation from the
Psalms, introduced by the introductory formula
with which Scripture is quoted : " According to
the word which one wrote. The flesh of Thy saints
have they cast out, and their blood have they shed
round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury
them" (1 Mace. vii. 17), which corresponds so
closely with Ps. Ixxix. 2, 3, that the quotation is
not denied. The writer who makes the quotation
is speaking of the time of Judas Maccabseus, and
of the massacre of Jews committed by Alkimus and
Bacchides (b.c. 162), and he quotes the psalm as
Scripture fulfilled in that occurrence. The remark
able thing is that the psalm quoted is one of those
which, if there are Maccabaean psalms at all, are to
be referred to that period. And Prof Cheyne, ad
mitting the quotation, takes the psalm as referring
to the very events (if I understand him rightly) of
which the writer of the book of Maccabees regarded
it as an apt description. If this be so, then we must
suppose that the psalm, within twenty years of the
date of its composition, was included in the Psalter
(for Simon's completion of the collection is dated
B.C. 142), and then about forty years after that
date it was referred to by the writer of the book of
Maccabees apparently as ancient Scripture. Some

MACCABAEAN PSALMS. 81
will hesitate to believe, without further proof, that
things moved so rapidly. And, in this connection,
a point occurs which is worthy of consideration.
In the LXX. translation of the Psalms, as is well
known, the titles vary from the Hebrew in the
matter of the author's names to whom the psalms
are assigned. Not only is Jeremiah mentioned, but
even Haggai and Zechariah, as authors of some
psalms. It is very remarkable, however, that they
assign none to the Maccabaean age ; although, had
psalms been composed so abundantly as is alleged
at that time, it could scarcely have been beyond
their knowledge, the more especially if an earlier
version of the Psalms was current in Egypt before
Simon's time. Prof Cheyne's explanation of this
fact seems strangely unsatisfactory. " Of course,"
he says, " the Egyptian Jewish community received
no information on the subject of Maccabaean psalms.
It was not the interest of the Jerusalem editors
to publish the recent origin of a portion of the
Psahns." ^ What " interest "the Jewish editors at
Jerusalem had in concealing the origin of psalms
which they regarded as good enough Scripture for
themselves does not appear. But surely, if the
LXX. translators took so much interest in the
matter for themselves, that they thought it worth
while to note that certain psalms had a tradition
attached to them which the Jerusalem Jews had
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 458.
F

82 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
not communicated, and if they were aware of
psalms being composed as late as Zechariah, it
is a most extraordinary thing that they give no
hint of any psalms belonging to a period which,
as is alleged, was so fertile in this kind of
composition. (b) In the second book of the Maccabees there is
a passage of some value, as bearing on the general
subject of the collection of the Canon. It occurs
in the letter prefixed to the book (ch. i. 1-ii. 18)
purporting to have been sent by the Jews of
Palestine to their brethren in Egypt, in the year
B.C. 144 : "And the same things also were reported
in the records, namely, the memoirs of Neemias ; ^
and how he founding a library gathered together
the books concerning the kings, and prophets, and
the works of (ra tov) David, and epistles of kings
concerning holy gifts. And in like manner also
Judas gathered together all these books that had
been scattered by reason of the war we had, and
they are with us." Now even if we reject the
authenticity of this letter as a letter, we have at
least the date of the book in which it is contained,
and an evidence of what was commonly believed
at that time in regard to certain books. Some
would go so far as to say we have here evidence
that Nehemiah collected the second division of
the Canon (" the books concerning the kings and
^ The reference seems to be to some apocryphal book or books.

THE SECOND BOOK OF MACCABEES. 83
prophets" being the former and later prophets),
and that even a part or the whole of the third
division is referred to in the words, " the works
of David, and epistles of kings concerning holy
gifts" (viz., the Psalms, and such documents as
those that form part of the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah) — the reference to Judas being an inti
mation that the final closing of the completed
Canon was accomplished by Judas Maccabseus (b.c
166-161). That is perhaps too much to infer with
confidence from such a passage. On the other hand.
Prof. Cheyne goes too far when he says^ that this
account of the completion of the library of national
records by Judas is less credible than the reorgan
isation of the music and editing of the Psalter
by Simon, of which there is no ancient record
whatever. But, at all events, we have here an
enumeration of books by designations that are
worthy of attention. The order in which they
are mentioned certainly corresponds to the order
of the books of the Canon subsequent to the Law ;
they are spoken of as well-known public documents
"all with us"; "the works of David" can hardly
be anything else than some collection of Psalms,
and we know of no other than the existing Psalter ;
the designations apply to the existing canonical
books, and we know of no other books preserved
at that time that would be similarly designated.
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 11 f.

84 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
The very want of precision in the description may
be an indication that the books were well known
and easily recognisable by the titles given.
At the very least we are entitled to assume that
there is here expressed the belief that the Psalter,
or a Davidic Psalter, was in existence in Nehemiah 's
time : certainly a proof that such a thing existed in
the days of this writer ; and we are entitled to
demand from those who would make the whole
Psaltei' post-exilian, and a great part of it the
work of Maccabaean times, an explanation of what
these TO, TOV AauetS were, and why they are so
named. 3. A more precise indication is furnished by the
book of Eoclesiasticus or Ben Sirach.^ To this book,
which was originally composed in Hebrew, is pre
fixed a short preface by the grandson ^ of the
author, who translated the book into Greek. He
tells us the year in which he himself came into
Egypt, which on any explanation cannot be later
than B.C. 132 ; and this would fix the date of his
^ The book is entitled in the original Greek So^fo Seipax-
2 The expression i irdinros /j.ov is generally taken in its literal sense
of grandfather. On this view the Simon the high priest, of whom the
author gives a glowing description in chap. 1. 1-21, would be Simon
IL, son of Onias. The editor of the Complutensian Polyglott, how
ever, gives the more general designation eyyovos, "forefather," and
this would admit a reference to Simon the First, surnamed the " Just,"
and would place Jesus the author as early as b.c. 250. This view is
indeed taken by Horowitz in his 'Das Buch Jesus Sirach,' Breslau,
1865. Ehrt, Abfassungszeit, &c., p. 127.

BEN SIRACH. 85
grandfather somewhere about B.C. 200. Much later
it could scarcely have been, for the book has no
reference to the stirring times of the Maccabees,
which may be said to have begun in B.C. 175.
The editor, in excusing the imperfection of his
own translation, makes the remark that even " the
Law itself and the prophecies, and the rest of the
books, have no small difference, uttered in the
original " ; from which it is not too much to infer
that by this time there were some books — ap
parently a completed collection, " the rest of the
books " — not only regarded as of a character to be
ranked with the " Law and the Prophets," but
already current in a well-known Greek translation ;
and the language of the editor would lead us also to
infer that this book of his grandfather's stood on a
lower level. No doubt the expression is general,
" the rest of the books," for it does not specify the
number nor the names ; but, on the other hand,
in saying " the rest of the books " (ra XotTra Ttav
/Si^Xiuv), the vrriter leads us to suppose that the
compass of the collection was limited and definite,
and the collection well known. It is also to be
remembered that the third division of the Canon
has never received a more precise designation than
" writings," its contents being somewhat varied ;
and that at a period when the whole Canon was
certainly closed, this division was spoken of in
similar general terms.

86 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
Moreover, the editor, after referring to the many
things handed down to us through " the Law and
the Prophets and the others that followed them,"
immediately after says that his grandfather had
given himself " to the reading of the Law, and the
Prophets, and the other books of our fathers."
We have thus three times in the compass of the
brief prologue a reference to the Old Testament
books, which is, to say the very least, most intel
ligible on the supposition that the Canon, if not by
that time absolutely complete, was made up of three
parts, corresponding in their general description to
the three parts in which it now appears. Short of
an actual enumeration of the various books compos
ing the Canon we could not, in the circumstances,
look for more.
When we turn to the book itself, we do not find
deflnite references to the books by name. The
author magnifies the "Law" as the foundation of
wisdom, using the term apparently in the wide
sense of " Scripture," in which we flnd it employed
also in the New Testament {e.g., John x. 34, xii.
34, XV. 25 ; 1 Cor. xiv. 21). But even this vague
ness might be construed to mean that there was in
his time a well-recognised canon. In one passage
(xlix. 10), in which he enumerates the great men
of earlier times, he speaks of the " twelve prophets,"
an evidence that the "minor prophets," usually
called the twelve by the Jews, were by that time

BEN SIRACH. 87
a collected corpus, and that the author, though
speaking of men, was thinking also of books.
As to evidence of the existence of particular
psalms, Ehrt maintains that quotations are found
in Ben Sirach from all the five books of the
Psalter,^ and, among others, from psalms that are
usually spoken of as Maccabaean. He also thinks
that the language in which these psalms are quoted
in Ben Sirach indicates that the editor took them,
not directly from the Hebrew, but from the LXX.
version, — another proof, if it can be established,
that the Psalter was by his time translated into
Greek. Prof Cheyne, however, says ^ that " Ehrt's
list requires sifting," and he himself finds very few
allusions to pre-Maccabaean psalms. Dillmann also
finds no testimony in the book of Sirach itself to
the Psalter, Proverbs, and Chronicles.
As to whether we have in all this sufficient proof
that the Canon was completed and closed by the
time of Sirach, there are of course differences of
opinion. No doubt there is an absence of detailed
enumeration of the books and of clear quotations
to such an extent as would afford certainty. On
the other hand, the books, especially those in the
third division of the Canon, are spoken of in the
same general terms at a later time when certainly
the Canon was completed. Though it need not be
1 Abfassungszeit und Abschluss der Psalters, p. 126.
2 Origin of the Psalter, p. 456.

88 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
contended that in the time of Nehemiah, or soon
after it, the Canon was closed in any such formal
manner as would imply a determination to add no
more to it, yet there must have come a time after
which it was felt that the number of sacred books
was completed. And it is a circumstance of con
siderable weight that the book of Sirach itself,
though written originally in Hebrew, and altogether
unobjectionable in its contents, was never received
into the Canon ; and that both its author and
its translator refer to the canonical books in terms
of high veneration, as if these belonged to another
category. But, however that may be, the facts are sufficient
to bear out the conclusion in support of which they
are now adduced. There were, besides the Law
and the Prophets, other books ranked along with
them as well-known sacred books in the time of
Sirach : there was a third division of the Canon,
whether fully completed or not. The reference in
2 Maccabees is sufficient to prove that in this col
lection " the works of David " were included — in
other words, that a collection of psalms, reputed to
be Davidic, was then well known as one of the
sacred books.
We have now to endeavour, if possible, to reach
a still earlier time, and see whether it bears any
anterior testimony to a psalter or psalmody.

89

CHAPTER V.
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE — Continued.
We have found in the extra-canonical books, to
which we have referred, sufficient evidence that at
their date the Psalter was part of the Canon, or, at
all events, that a collection known by the name of
David was of practically canonical standing. The
next witnesses to be examined are the canonical
books other than the Psalms. And the evidence
for which we may look will be of either of two
kinds — viz., general, asserting or implying the ex
istence of a collection of psalms ; or particular, con
taining actual quotations from the Psalms. Evi
dence of the former kind, being less technical and
less susceptible of double application, deserves the
first consideration.
Let us begin with the books of Chronicles. These
books are usually dated about the commencement
of the Greek domination in Asia — i.e., B.C. 330,^
' Not earlier, but not later, in the opinion of Dillmann. Herzog-
Plitt, Realencyclopaedie, vol. iii., Art. "Chronik," p. 220 f.

90 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
and thus take us 130 years farther back than the
extra-canonical witnesses have brought us. Their
date is determined mainly by certain genealogical
lists (1 Chron. iii. 1-24). In these tables the gene
alogies of the Davidic and high -priestly families
are, we may assume, brought down to the author's
own date at the very latest. They thus furnish
a point of time before which the composition
is altogether impossible (unless, indeed, we sup
pose them to be the work of a later interpolator),
but after which the composition is extremely im
probable, as the author would, for completeness,
give the names of the living representatives of the
two lines. He reckons in all six royal genera
tions after Zerubbabel,^ and five generations of high
priests, which would cover a period of from 150 to 200
years. Now the death of Zerubbabel took place in
the reign of Darius, after 516 B.C. ; so that the ter
minus here given would be the close of the Persian
or the beginning of the Greek period. The last-
named high priest, whom we may take to be a con
temporary of the author, is named (1 Chron. iii. 24)
Jochanan, and, according to Josephus,^ his successor,
Jaddua, was still alive at the beginning of the Greek
period (say B.C. 330).

^ The kingly genealogy (enlarged by the LXX. to a few generations)
is (1 Chron. iii. 17-24) : (1) Zerubbabel, (2) Chananiah, (3) Shechaniah,
(4) Shemaiah, (5) Neariah, (6) Eljoaniah, (7) Hodajahu.
^ Josephus, Antiq., xi., ch. 7, § 2.

THE CHRONICLER. 91
Seeing, however, that it is customary, at the
present time, to question the historical accuracy of
the Chronicler as a late writer, we must consider
how far his testimony is reliable for our present
purpose. In reading the books of Chronicles it is
to be borne in mind that, by the time they were
written, the national independence of Israel had
passed away, but that the national religion, with
its outward observances, remained as a uniting
bond of the people. Accordingly a writer, com
posing the history of his nation at that period,
especially knowing as he did that the national
history had already been written from another
point of view (in the books of Samuel and Kings),
and perhaps just because it had been written in
its more political aspects, and in a more specifically
prophetic spirit, would take another attitude and
dwell upon the continuity from early times of those
features of the national life which now survived and
seemed to be the chief remaining hope of national
existence in the future.
No doubt the tone of the whole book of Chronicles
is in marked contrast with that of the books of
Kings. The history of the northern kingdom is
entirely passed over, as the record of an apostasy,
and the writer follows the fortunes of the house of
David with unconcealed partiality. Moreover, his
interest in the priestly and Levitical element is so
marked that the conjecture is not unreasonable that

92 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
he was himself of the tribe of Levi or of the family
of the priests. Indeed the whole tendency at the
time was sacerdotal, and the men who were at the
head of affairs were of the priestly caste. But we
are not on this account to conclude that the writer
is simply transporting back to earlier times the
arrangements existent in his own day. The more
closely the books of Chronicles are examined, the
more forcibly is the conclusion pressed on an un
biassed mind that the writer is honestly giving an
account of what was matter of tradition in the circle
to which he belonged. There is nothing at all
incredible in the supposition that the priestly tra
dition retained many things in memory which find
no place in the historical books of Samuel and
Kings, which were written from the prophetical
point of view ; and there are some features about
the books of Chronicles that go to confirm our
belief in the honesty of the writer and the credibility
of the matters he relates. Thus : —
{a) His introduction of lists, genealogies, &c.,
into his narrative is a presumptive proof that he
drew from available written sources, and that he
was careful, almost to punctiliousness, to be accu
rate in details. If he was so careful in matters
that are verified by his lists, we may conclude that
he had a good authority for other matters of fact
which he states. We can allow for a writer's par
tiality in the way he uses his facts and marshals

VALUE OP HIS EVIDENCE. 93
his details, without questioning the accuracy of
either. (6) In many places he gives us the narrative that
is found in the books of Kings in the very words
of that book. It is believed that both writers drew
from one common source ; but at all events, the
Chronicler, when he found details already related,
and considered them necessary for his purpose, shows
his want of bias by faithfully transferring them to
his pages. If his dominant tone is priestly, the
prophetical element also finds place.
(c) He is not an indiscriminate laudator temporis
acti. In regard to some reigns, he pronounces the
same unfavourable decision that we find in the
books of Kings ; and the good kings, whose acts
are not so fully narrated in those books, naturally
come in for his special commendation. He loves to
dwell on the personal virtues and religious services
of those kings especially who exerted themselves
to undo the ungodly work of their predecessors, and
took active measures to beautify the Temple or to
foster and adorn its worship. His veracity is thus
confirmed, as far as it can be, by the parallel nar
rative ; and for his additional details we may well
believe that he had sufficient authority, or else he
would not have entered so minutely into particulars,
and made such striking distinctions.
On the whole, we may take the narrative of the
Chronicler as a true picture of the circumstances of

94 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
his own time, when he is dealing with these ; and,
in regard to events and circumstances of the past,
his manifest simplicity and honesty guarantee the
conclusion that he is stating what was matter of
common belief in his day, and matter which was
based on the best and only evidence available at the
time. And for our present purpose this assumption
is sufficient. Even if it be asserted that the Chroni
cler transports himself to earlier times and transfers
his own local and temporary circumstances to the
past, this implies, first of all, that the circumstances
of his own time were such as he describes, and,
secondly, that he had some sufficient reason for
ascribing these things to an earlier date. It seems
to me that we must, at the very least, give him
credit for believing, and expressing the current
belief, that these things were of old standing. It is
simply incredible that arrangements fresh in the
memory of men, or whose origin was matter of re
cent tradition, should be summarily assigned to a
far distant age by a writer who expected that his
work would receive acceptance ; and those who are
ever talking of writers transporting themselves to
a past time are bound to give some intelligible
reason, in the shape of historical facts in the past,
to account for so anomalous a procedure.
Now, in turning to the books of Chronicles for
information as to psalms or psalmody, we meet with
constant references, on occasions of public cere-

NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE. 95
mony, to the singers and performers on instruments
connected with the Temple. Thus, as in the book
of Samuel, David is described as playing before the
ark (1 Chron. xiii. 8, xv. 25 ff". ; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 5 ff".),
and under his reign we find several other references
to his provision of music, and his arrangements for
the musicians who were "set over the service of
song" (1 Chron. vi. 31, xv 16). In one place we
are told he asked the chief of the Levites to appoint
singers, &c. (xv. 16); the description and arrange
ments of the singers are given more than once (ix.
33, XV. 16-22, XXV. 1 ffi) ; the number of Levites
who praised the Lord with instruments is said to
have amounted in David's old age to 4000 (xxiii. 5).
Amidst these details, we almost hear the refrain of
the songs that were sung, when mention is made
of " Heman and Jeduthun, and the rest that were
chosen, who were expressed by name, to give thanks
to the Lord, because His mercy endureth for ever "
(xvi. 41). Thus we are clearly given to understand
that the service of praise, with song and instru
ments of music, in an orderly manner, dated from
the time of David ; and this we may take, at least,
to be the general belief of the time.
So when we come to the succeeding reigns, as
dealt with in 2 Chron., the same thing is observ
able. We have praise, with David's instruments
of music, at the dedication of the Temple by Solo
mon (2 Chron. v. 11-14, viii. 14). In the reign of

96 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
Jehoshaphat we find the Kohathites singing at the
head of the army as it goes out to battle, and
playing on the return march (xx. 19 ffi, 28). There
is music and singing at the proclamation of Joash
(xxiii. 13). And at Hezekiah's cleansing of the
Temple it is related that "the song of the Lord
began also, and the trumpets, together with the
instruments of David. And all the congregation
worshipped, and the singers sang, and the trumpets
sounded : all this [continued] until the burnt offer
ing was finished" (xxix. 25 ffi, also ver. 30). So at
Hezekiah's Passover "the Levites and the priests
praised the Lord day by day, [singing] with loud
instruments unto the Lord" (xxx. 21) ; and part of
Hezekiah's reform was to arrange the work of
the priests for offerings, &c., and "to give thanks,
and to praise in the gates of the camp of the Lord "
(xxxi. 2). Finally, at the beginning of the reforma
tion under Josiah " the overseers of them were . . .
of the sons of the Kohathites, to set it forward
[marg., ' preside over it '] ; and [other of] the Levites,
all that could skill of instruments of music " (xxxiv.
12). At the great Passover in Josiah's reign "the
singers the sons of Asaph were in their place,
according to the commandment of David, and
Asaph, and Heman, and Jeduthun the king's seer "
(xxxv. 15). And at Josiah's death "Jeremiah
lamented for Josiah : and all the singing men and
singing women spake of Josiah in their lamenta-

EZRA AND NEHEMIAH. 97
tions, unto this day ; and they made them an
ordinance in Israel : and, behold, they are written
in the lamentations" (ni^ipn-^j?) (2 Chron. xxxv. 25).
It is not enough to set all this aside with the
remark that the Chronicler is " a saintly man, but
a prejudiced historian." ^ The Chronicler makes
no secret of his prejudice or prepossession in favour
of the worship ; but these notices in regard to
historical times are too varied and circumstantial
to be the work of pure invention. There can be
no doubt that there were guilds of singers, just as
there was the line of priests, in the Chronicler's day,
who traced their descent back to the early Davidic
times ; and in such guilds and families might have
been quite easily preserved the traditions of the
sacred functions in which they engaged before the
Exile, though the author of the Kings, writing from
another point of view, has not put them on record.
Coming upwards in time, we look next at the
books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In their present
form these books are by many regarded as being
of the same date as the Chronicles, and supposed to
have been reduced to their final form by the author
of those books. However that may be, both books
manifestly contain portions (written in the first
person) which must have come from the hands
of Ezra and Nehemiah respectively ; and, besides,
there are certain lists and summaries contained in
'¦ Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 101, note e.
G

98 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
both books which must have been drawn from
written sources. The books refer to the time of
the return of the exiles and the reconstitution of
the new state ; so that, even if we suppose the
author of the Chronicles to be the writer, he cannot
in this case be projecting his own circumstances
into a remote past, for the reference is to times
comparatively recent, for which there was a suffi
ciently good tradition, as well as actual memoirs of
the men concerned in the events. There is also this
to be said, that any references of the kind of which
we are in search are the more valuable because they
are, so to speak, incidental and indirect, and cannot
be ascribed to priestly prejudice or prepossession.
First of all we come upon a list, preserved both
by Ezra and Nehemiah (Ezra ii. ; Neh. vii.), of " the
children of the province, that went up out of the
captivity of those that had been carried away, whom
Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried
away, and came again to Jerusalem and Judah, every
one unto his city" — i.e., those who returned first (b.c
536) consequent upon the edict of Cyrus. In this
list are mentioned, after the Levites, who were
seventy-four in number, " the singers : the children
of Asaph, an hundred twenty and eight " (Ezra ii.
41);^ and in the enumeration of the totals at the
' The list as found in the book of Nehemiah, though giving most of
the numbers in identical terms, makes the singers of the children of
Asaph 148, and the total number of singing men and singing women
245 (Neh. vii. 44, 67). For a similar discrepancy compare 2 Kings viii.
26 with 2 Chron. xxii. 2.

SINGERS UNDER ZERUBBABEL. 99
end of the list, it is said, " they had two hundred
singing men and singing women " (Ezra ii. 65). This
notice is important, as showing, by the connection,
that these singers were not of a secular class. They
are mentioned along with priests and Levites, and
It is not as if other lists of secular guilds and
crafts were given, for there are none such ; although
even the numbers of the beasts of burden are care
fully specified. Prof Cheyne's remark, therefore,^
seems somewhat gratuitous : "Ordinary singers were
not much thought of: Neh. vii. 67 classes them
with slaves." But when he goes on to say, "Even
the Temple singers were not quite equal to the
Levites in Zerubbabel's time" (Ezra ii. 40-42;
Neh. vii. 43-45), we may set over against his remark
what we are told of the ceremony of the laying of
the foundation of the Temple in Zerubbabel's time :
" They set the priests in their apparel with trum
pets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cym
bals, to praise the Lord, after the order of David
king of Israel. And they sang one to another in
praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, [saying].
For He is good, for His mercy is for ever towards
Israel" (Ezra iii. 10, 11).
So much for the time of the first return. When
we come to Ezra's own time, we find that among
those who returned with him to Jerusalem were
"singers" (Ezra vii. 7) ; and in the decree of Artax-
erxes carried by Ezra to the governors — which we
^ Origin of the Psalter, p. 213, note n.

100 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
may assume to be an authentic document — it is
particularly mentioned " that touching any of the
priests and Levites, the singers, porters, Nethinim,
or servants of this house of God, it shall not be law
ful to impose tribute, custom, or toll upon them "
(Ezra vii. 24) — in other words, they were privileged
as sacred officials or guilds.
Turning now to the book of Nehemiah, we find
some incidental references of the same kind. Thus
he says at the conclusion of his arduous work in
building the wall, after he had " set up the doors,
and the porters and the singers and the Levites
were appointed," he handed over the charge of
Jerusalem to a governor (Neh. vii. 1); and at the
great assembly in the seventh month, when the
people solemnly separated themselves and took the
covenant, the singers as a class are mentioned
among those who "sealed" (Neh. x. 28). In the
same chapter there is a significant indication of the
official character of these singers, and of their form
ing an integral part of what we may call the staff"
of the Temple, where mention is made of " the
chambers where are the vessels of the sanctuary,
and the priests that minister, and the porters and
the singers" (Neh. x. 39).
The eleventh chapter of Nehemiah tells us how, in
order to swell the population of Jerusalem, one out
of ten was taken by lot from those dwelling outside,
and lists are given of the different families and

SINGERS IN NEHEMIAH's TIME. 101
classes brought into the city. Among the Levites
is mentioned "Mattaniah the son of Micha, the son of
Zabdi, the son of Asaph, who was the chief to begin
the thanksgiving in prayer " (xi. 17). "The Neth
inim dwelt in Ophel" (ver. 21), and "the overseer
of the Levites at Jerusalem was Uzzi, ... of the
sons of Asaph, the singers, over the business of the
house of God. For there was a commandment of
the king concerning them, and a settled provision
for [marg. A.V., 'a sure ordinance concerning'] the
singers, as every day required" (Neh. xi. 22, 23).
A great public occasion was the dedication of the
wall of Jerusalem which Nehemiah had built at
the cost of so much labour. On that occasion he
tells us (xii. 27 ffi) "they sought the Levites out of
all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem, to keep
the dedication with gladness, both with thanks
givings, and with singing, with cymbals, psalteries,
and with harps. And the sons of the singers
gathered themselves together, both out of the plain
[marg., 'circuit'] round about Jerusalem, and from
the villages of the Netophathites ; also from Beth-
gilgal, and out of the fields of Geba and Azmaveth :
for the singers had builded them villages round
about Jerusalem." And finally, when everything
was put in permanent order about the Temple,
overseers being appointed to look after the pro
visions that were brought in for the offerings and
for the ministrants, we are told that "Judah

102 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
rejoiced for the priests and for the Levites that
waited [marg., 'stood']. And they kept the ward
of their God, and the ward of the purification,
and so did the singers and the porters, according
to the commandment of David, and of Solomon
his son. For in the days of David and Asaph of
old there was a chief [another reading, ' there were
chiefs'] of the singers, and songs of praise and
thanksgiving unto God. And all Israel in the days
of Zerubbabel, and in the days of Nehemiah, gave
the portions of the singers and the porters, as every
day required : and they sanctified for the Levites ;
and the Levites sanctified for the sons of Aaron"
(Neh. xii. 44-47).
Now all this tells us little or nothing about
psalms or a psalter, but it tells us a great deal
about sacred music as part of the recognised public
worship. Here we have a class or guild of singers
mentioned in connection with the priests and Levites,
and always mentioned in connection with public
ceremonies of a liturgical kind. They come from
the Captivity, and are as well marked a class as
the priests and Levites, important enough to receive
immunities from taxation and other undefined
privileges. It is absurd to think of their having
arisen in the time of the Captivity ; they are, like
the other officials, survivals of the old Temple
worship, and they come to put into exercise their
well- understood gifts. They are engaged in anti-

THE BOOK OP JONAH. 103
phonal singing, the very words that are given as the
refrain of one of their songs agree with the refrain
of several of our psalms ; and when we turn to these
psalms we find they are well suited for the occasion,
consisting as they do of reminiscences of the whole
course of Israel's wonderful history (see esp. Ps.
cxxxvi.) ^
The canonical books at which we have looked are
all without question post-exilian ; and any evidence
which they have furnished is pretty precise in its
date, fixing, at all events, the lowest limit within
which we are confined for the existence of those
things mentioned or implied.
There is, however, one other book in the Canon
whose date is not so precisely determined, but
which must also be referred to in this connection,
— the book of Jonah. In the second chapter
(verses 2-10) there is a prayer of Jonah, which
is made up of passages from various psalms ; and
though there are differences of opinion as to the
date of this remarkable book, the fact that it
forms part of the second division of the Canon
attests its composition as anterior to the date of
the formation of the prophetical collection {i.e.,
anterior to the third century B.C.) We may pro-

1 Ehrt maintains that Nehemiah's penitential prayer (Neh. ix. 5-x. 1)
is not only after the manner of the so-called Viddui, which finds expres
sion in Ps. cvi., but that it contains echoes of the oldest songs and
actual quotations from some of the psalms (Abfass., p. 71, foot).

104

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.

visionally place the book not later than the fifth
century b.c^
In this prayer of Jonah we find an unusual num
ber of resemblances to psalms, and not to one or a
few but to a number, in different parts of the
Psalter. Compare, for example (in the original) —

nah ii.

3

with

Ps

cxx. 1.

II M

4&

ti

xiii. 8 h.

II II

5 a

n

xxxi. 23 a.

II II

8 ft

II

cxlii. 4 a.

It II

8&

II

Ixxxviii. 3 a
II II
10a
II
cxvi. 17.
M II
10&
II
cxvi. 18 a.
II i.
14&
11
cxv. 3.
II ii.
4
11
Ixxxviii. 7,
II It
6
II
Ixxxviii. 18.
11 i.
11
II
cvii. 29, 30.
It can hardly be supposed that so many psalm-
writers as are here represented should all have
borrowed from this little book of Jonah. Much
more probable is it that the writer of the book of
Jonah, wishing to exhibit the feelings of one in such
a situation as he describes, fell back upon the book
of Psalms, quoting phrases and expressions that
occurred to him — in fact, composed a prayer suit
able for the occasion out of the liturgical language
^ Ehrt, Abfass., p. 40. The date of the book is determined partly
by certain linguistic peculiarities, and partly by a consideration of the
tone of thought, a so-called universalism, as distinguished from the
older particularism, that restricted God's favourable acceptance of
persons to Israel. Here the divine love, without respect to nation
ality, is represented as the moving cause of favourable interposition.
music not ascribed to MOSES. 105
that was familiar to him. This is made the more
probable by the fact that the book of Jonah quotes
or gives reminiscences of various other Biblical
books. ^
In all the preceding references to sacred music,
one thing cannot escape notice, that at the time
of the return from captivity, and after it, the service
of praise in connection with the Temple is consist
ently and explicitly assigned in its origin to David
and his days. This, on any explanation of it, means
that the belief, at the time of the rebuilding of the
city and Temple, was universal that these musical
arrangements were not only pre-exilian, but very
old. And yet certainly we have not here a case
of transporting existing institutions to the remotest
antiquity to give them the highest sanction. For
whereas all parts of the Law were ascribed to
Mosaic days, and the desire to magnify the import
ance of every detail of the ritual would be strong,
there is never the least hint that this part of the
service came from Moses, but an unvarying assever
ation of its Davidic origin. This would be remark
able even if there were few or no references in pre-
exilian books to music in the Temple, for it would
be a proof of a tradition so persistent as to demand
1 Compare, for example, Jonah iii. 10 with Exod. xxxii. 14, Jonah
iv. 2 a with Exod. xiv. 12, and Jonah iv. 2 6 with Exod. xxxiv. 6.
Ehrt, p. 39, points out also parallels to the story of Elijah in 1 Kings
xix. 3ff. (Jonah iv. 3).

106 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
the admission of some definite fact at its foundation.
And it becomes the more remarkable when a few
unmistakable confirmations incidentally occur in
pre-exilian books. Reference has already been
made to the passage (2 Sam. vi. 5 ff.) relating how,
at the bringing up of the ark to Jerusalem, " David
and all the house of Israel played before the Lord,
with all manner of instruments made of fir-wood,
and with harps, and with psalteries, and with
timbrels, and with castanets, and with cymbals"
(R.V.) Without stopping at present to inquire
what this music was or who was its author, it is
evident that we have here the employment of music
and song (cf the parallel in 1 Chron. xiii. 8, xv.
25 ff.), and that of a rather elaborate character,
in the service of religion and in connection with
public worship.
In a quite incidental way, too, it is mentioned in
1 Kings X. 12, that King Solomon "made of the
almug- trees" (probably sandal -wood), which the
Queen of Sheba gave him in abundance, " pillars
[or railings] for the house of the Lord, and for the
king's house ; harps also and psalteries for the
singers." ^ Prof. Driver ^ gives it as his opinion
that this passage is ambiguous, because the tech
nical name used in Chronicles, &c., for the Temple
' The R.V. follows the Massoretic text in inserting the article,
which the A.V. omitted.
2 Introduction, p. 357, note. [In 6th Edition, p. 379.]

SINGERS IN Solomon's time. io7
singers is not here employed. It may be pointed
out, however, that the simple participle " singers "
(o'lf) would more naturally be employed at the early
period when the institution of song was recent,
and a more technical term (o'lr^^J) is in place in a
book confessedly written at a much later period.
Moreover, the connection in which the expression
occurs is to be noted— viz., in the midst of the
arrangements of the Temple and palace ; and the
characteristic words with which the writer con
cludes, " there came no such almug- trees, nor were
seen unto this day," have all the filavour of a
remark by a connoisseur who had seen and handled
the renowned instruments which had the reputed
fecit of King Solomon. Besides, if " the singers "
were an entirely secular class, it seems somewhat
undignified and incongruous to make Solomon pose
so ostentatiously as their patron. Professor Driver,
in confirmation of his view that sacred music is
not referred to, appeals to 2 Sam. xix. 35, where
Barzillai laments that he is too old to enjoy " the
voice of singing men and singing women." But
it is not by any means certain that even here
secular or entirely secular musicians are referred
to. They must have been, at all events, court or
palace officials. Jeremiah, in mentioning " mourn
ing women " and " cunning women " who are to
take up a lamentation (Jer. ix. 17 ff.), contem
plates a mourning of a national and religious de-

108 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
scription ; and, as we shall see by-and-by, the line
was not drawn hard and fast between secular and
sacred poetry and music. At all events, we get
in this incidental way a striking confirmation of
the belief of post -exilian times that singing men
and singing women were in their institution and
office something very different from professors of
an ordinary trade.
If it be urged that these authorities are either
too late or too ambiguous to be decisive, the
same can hardly be said of Amos, who was only
about two centuries after the date of David, and
who, quite incidentally also, confirms the tradition
that ascribes the highest place in music to the
j)oet-king. In an often-quoted passage (Amos vi.
4-6) the prophet denounces the nobles of Samaria,
who " lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch them
selves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out
of the ffock, and the calves out of the midst of the
stall ; that sing idle songs to the sound of the viol ;
that devise for themselves instruments of music, like
David ; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint them
selves with the chief ointments ; but they are
not grieved for the affiiction of Joseph." By a
strangely perverted ingenuity of exegesis this
passage has been taken to imply that David's fame
as a musician in the days of Amos rested on his
secular poetry and music, of which these luxurious
nobles are taken to be the exact copiers. A recent

MUSIC IN THE TIME OF AMOS. 109
writer,^ who has no prejudice against the methods
of modern criticism, objects to this interpretation
of the prophet's words on the ground that the
music referred to was sacred music, being per
formed in honour of Baal by these his worshippers.
Without, however, pressing this point, I maintain
that the passage gives no countenance whatever to
the inference drawn from it. It says absolutely
nothing as to the character of David's music. It
simply says that those luxurious nobles, search
ing for the best of everything to consume on
their own pleasures, made for themselves instru
ments like David's, presumably the very best of
their kind, and to the accompaniment of these
instruments sang idle songs on the viol. We
have already seen that instruments of all kinds
were used by David in connection with religious
service ; and if the nobles of Samaria employed the
choicest music on their own pleasure, this is no
condemnation of the instruments or their inventor.
That Amos himself held the " traditional" view of
David's character and standing is evident from
another passage (Amos ix. 11) which critics cannot
be allowed to excise merely because it gives too high
an estimate of the Davidic house.
The passage we have been considering— on any
view of it — shows that David's fame as a musician
was so well established in the time of Amos as
1 Beer, Individual- und Gemeinde-Psalmen, p. xxv.

110 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
to have become proverbial. And other passages
of the same prophet have a further significance.
When it is said (Amos v. 23), "Take thou away
from me the noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear
the melody of thy viols," when it is threatened
that "the songs of the Temple shall be howling"
and "lamentation" (Amos viii. 3, 10), and when
these words occur immediately in connection with
burnt - offerings and meat - offerings and peace -
offerings of fat beasts, we learn for certain that
music with singing was part of, or an accompani
ment of, the public worship of the northern king
dom. And when we know that that worship was
set up in imitation of the Jerusalem ritual, and
when we are told of David employing music at the
bringing up of the ark, we cannot have stronger
evidence that music from his time took a definite
place in the public worship of Israel.
Let us now sum up the evidence we have found.
I. The very latest point of time in the process
of collecting the Canon of which we have found
mention is the time of Judas the Maccabee (died
B.C. 161), who is said, in the letter prefixed to
2 Maccabees (2 Mapc. ii. 14), to have gathered
the books that were scattered by reason of the
war. " And they are all with us." ^
^ Prof. Cheyne, as has been already noted, gives less credit to this state
ment than to an alleged fact, for which he confesses he has no ancient
authority — viz., that Simon (who died B.C. 135) reorganised the Temple

SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE. HI
II. It cannot, however, be declared to be alto
gether impossible that Maccabaean psalms may
have found their way into the Psalter. Whether
there are such psalms, and how many they may
be, must be determined on internal grounds. All
the evidence we have yet seen, though it leads to
the conclusion that the bulk of the Psalter was
earlier, does not actually preclude the possibility
of Maccabaean psalms. The mention of Judas
may be a hint that the Canon underwent a
revision or was subjected to enlargement in his
days. And, as Delitzsch has pointed out,^ the
period of the Maccabees was one well suited, by
its patriotic spirit, to arouse the poetic activity.
The Psalter of Solomon, which belongs to about
the time of Pompey, gives evidence that during
the time of the Maccabees "the feelings of the
faithful still poured themselves forth in spiritual
songs." 2 The ancient book of Jashar seems, in a
worship and edited the Psalter. And having assumed this position
he says, " "We are bound to admit that Simon the Maccabee, as high
priest, had power to deal as he thought best with the provisionally
closed temple hymn-book " (Origin of Psalter, p. 457). A critic may
think himself at liberty to assume an important historical fact of which
he finds no record; but he ought to give us some proof that a high
priest thought himself at liberty to deal with a public hymn-book just
as he pleased.
^ Comm. on the Psalms, Introd. iii. Among opponents of Maccabaean
psalms are to be reckoned, not only Hengstenberg, Havernick, and
Keil, but also Gesenius, Hassler, Ewald, Thenius, Bottcher, Hupfeld,
Dillmann, and Ehrt.
^ Delitzsch adds that if the book of Daniel, in its present form,

112 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
similar way, to have been an open collection, for
we find references to it at earlier and later periods
(Joshua and 2 Samuel) ; and, to make another
comparison, in our modern hymnals we find the
most ancient hymns side by side with those com
posed by living authors.
III. Nevertheless, though we thus leave the
door open for Maccabaean psalms, should they
be clearly authenticated as such, the evidence we
have seen preponderates very distinctly in favour
not only of psalms, but of a definite Psalter at
an earlier period. Thus we have seen —
(l) At about B.C. 100 there is found the signi
ficant reference (in 2 Maccabees) to the "works
of David," a proof that something canonical to
which that designation was appropriate was well
known, and that what was known by this name
was believed to be ancient and Davidic.
(2) The grandson of Jesus son of Sirach, about
132 B.C., testifies to the existence, in Greek transla
tion, of sacred Scriptures enumerated under three
titles which in order and significance correspond
to the three divisions of the existing Canon. He
tells us also that his grandfather was familiar with
these.
belongs to the time of the Seleucidte (and its prophetic character
would be assured if it was issued before the reconstruction of the
Temple in B.C. 165, and before the death of Antiochus Epiphanes
in 164), we may argue from the history of the Canon in favour of,
rather than against, the existence of Maccabaean psalms.

SUMMARY OP EVIDENCE. 113
(3) The grandfather himself, Jesus son of Sirach,
about B.C. 200, quotes unquestionably from one
psalm as Scripture, proving that a psalter in which
that psalm was present was canonical Scripture in
his day.
(4) The LXX. Version (begun about 284 B.C.)
contains the completed Psalter, divided into five
books with the doxologies.
(5) The book of Jonah — not later than B.C. 300
— quotes from psalms which are now found in
different parts of the collection.
(6) The author of the Chronicles, in B.C. 330 or
thereabout, attests the Psalter as divided with the
existing doxologies ; and proceeds, throughout his
work, on the supposition that all the arrangements
for the musical sei'vice of the Temple date from
David. However far these actually go back, there
is no doubt that at this time they were esteemed
old — very old ; else they could not thus have been
spoken of
(7) Finally, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah,
though in their existing form they may belong to
the time of the Chronicles, yet must be taken as
giving an honest and fair account of what was done
by these leaders of the restored colony from the
time of Zerubbabel, B.C. 536, to Ezra- Nehemiah,
about B.C. 440. They tell us, among other things,
of singers coming back from the Captivity, and of
the rearrangement of what we are given to under-
H

114 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
stand had been an old order of worship. We find
them even engaging in sacred song before the
Second Temple was built (Ezra iii. 10, 11), there
by linking on the practice to the worship of the
First Temple, and attesting that the practice was
pre-exilian. IV. The pre-exilian books themselves, though
they contain far fewer references to the subject,
contain nothing at variance with this tradition,
but everything they say goes to confirm it. We
have Solomon's manifest regard for the improve
ment of musical appliances ; we have the account
of David and the people engaging in music and
song at the bringing up of the ark ; and we have
the undoubted fact that by the time of Amos the
most luxurious of the nobles of Samaria thought
it an ambition to have instruments like David's,
thus proving that his reputation in this respect
was established. One step more we may be per
mitted to go back, by recalling how the associa
tions of prophets in Samuel's time exercised their
vocation with psaltery and timbrel and pipe and
harp (l Sam. x. 5) ; and how closely David was
associated with Samuel and others of this fra
ternity.^ The very paucity of these references
in the earlier books would agree, as it seems to
me, with the actual course of events. Tradition
^ Binnie, The Psalms, their History, Teachings, and Use, chap, iv.,
reminds us that Heman was a grandson of Samuel.

SINGERS IN THE CAPTIVITY. 115
in the matter goes back to David and no higher;
music takes a marked place in religious worship just
in David's time ; but, once introduced, it remained,
and, in the nature of the case, its cultivators and
official guardians multiplied, and developed the art.
So that from simple " singers " there arose a guild
of professional performers or musicians, who by
the time of the destruction of the Temple had as
definite functions as the priests and Levites, and
returned from the Exile the conservators of a tradi
tional art which they were found ready to exercise.
The question now arises. What did these singers
sing, say, at the time of the first return from Baby
lon ? One would think they must have possessed a
variety both of songs and music sufficient to give
occupation to a whole guild and form their profes
sional work. We must postulate a number of psalms
brought back from the Captivity of a kind fitted for
the service of praise in the Temple ; and it is very
startling, to say the least, to hear, as we do from
Prof. Cheyne, that not a single psalm in the Psalter
— or, at most, only a portion of one — was composed
before the Exile, and even it as late as the time
of Josiah. If this be the case, then we must suppose
that other pre-exilian psalms were lost and forgotten
in the Exile, and that a new set were immediately
and rapidly produced when they were wanted at
the return ; or, at the best, that (as a law code, for
example, was drawn up in the Captivity for use at

116 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
Jerusalem) the professional singers in exile set them
selves in advance to prepare songs for the restored
Temple service. Could poetry be thus made to
order? Could the old psalms be thus completely
forgotten and lost ? Are not folk-songs the most
cherished and the most permanent of a nation's
possessions ? In regard to such possibilities. Prof
Cheyne has some very enigmatical declarations.
"It would be absurd," he says, "to maintain that
there were no psalms before the Exile. But it is
not absurd to question whether temple-hymns can
have greatly resembled those in the Psalter.
There must, indeed, have been a common element
in them," and so on.^ As to the first part of
this statement, it is to be observed that it has
not been proved (and it would be very hard to
prove) that all the psalms in the Psalter were
originally composed for Temple purposes. In con
tending for the possibility of pre-exilian psalmody,
we cannot allow the restricting assumption that
psalms were first and solely composed for that pur
pose. As to the second part of the statement, if
there was a common element in the pre-exilian
and post-exilian Temple psalmody, we should ex
pect that element to appear and to be emphasised
in the earliest post-exilian hymns, or if not, we
should be disposed to ask for some explanation of
^ Origin of the Psalter, p. 213, note o.

QUOTATIONS IN CHRONICLES. 117
its absence. On this subject we should expect the
leaders of the new post-exilian community to give
us some hint by way of information ; for they cer
tainly knew whether or not every psalm they
employed was, as Prof Cheyne asserts, " a new
song." ^
Now we happen to have, in the books of Chroni
cles, some details which, besides being interesting
from another point of view, have no little signifi
cance on this very subject. They are found in the
sixteenth chapter of the first book, itself a continu
ation of the preceding chapter, which relates the
bringing up of the ark to Jerusalem, and its deposit
in the tent which David had prepared for its recep
tion. It was a time of great rejoicing, a ceremony
of great solemnity ; mention is made of those whom
David appointed to minister before the ark ; and
the Chronicler goes on to give a specimen of the
very words which were employed as praise on the
occasion. The A.V. gives a misleading translation
of the introductory verse, " Then on that day
David delivered first [this psalm] to thank the Lord
into the hand of Asaph and his brethren." For
the meaning clearly is, as given in the R.V., " Then
in that day did David first ordain to give thanks
unto the Lord by the hand of Asaph and his breth
ren " ; and — the point we are coming to — the words
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 194.

118 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
that follow (vers. 8-26) are found to be almost ver
bally reproduced from the Psalter. Thus —

\

1 Chron. xvi. 8-22

=

Ps. cv.

1-15.

r, 23-33

=

II xcvi.

1-13.

M „ 34

=

11 cvi.

1.

>. 35, 36

=

II cvi.

47, 48,

Here, though, as has just been said, the words of
the Chronicler may not be taken to imply that
David composed the hymn on that occasion, they
certainly indicate his belief that these or similar
words of praise were employed. In other words,
the Chronicler believed, and his readers would be
lieve, that the Temple psalmody of David's days
was like the psalms in the Psalter. Of course it is
1 open to reply that this does not prove that the fact
was so. Yet when we find that Nehemiah's prayer
also (Neh. ix. 6 ff) has many resemblances in lan
guage to the very psalms quoted by the Chronicler,
and when we observe the manifest endeavour to
link on the worship of the new Temple to that of
the past, it can hardly be denied that we have
before us a historical situation which must have
behind it some solid and insuperable facts.
The passage just referred to has, however, a fur
ther significance which has often been pointed out.
It is pretty evident that the hymn here inserted
is not intended to appear as the Chronicler's own
composition. On every page of his work we can
see his labour as a compiler, and he does not hesi-

ARGUMENT PROM THE QUOTATION. 119
tate to incorporate whole chapters which are found
in the books of Kings. A comparison of the passage
with the psalms referred to ^ leads to the conclusion
that the psalms exhibit the earlier texts, and that
the variations of the Chronicler are his own modifi
cations. He is quoting, therefore, from existent
psalms ; and, having begun, he goes on fitting
pieces of different psalms together to produce an
appropriate hymn. And the remarkable thing is
that when he comes to the end of Ps. cvi., which
is now the closing portion of book iv., he quotes
also the doxology, which, it is generally agreed, is
later than the psalm itself, having been added, like
the other doxologies, at the time when the fivefold
division of the Psalter was introduced and the collec
tion finally completed. If this be so, then we shall
have to conclude that by the time of the Chronicler
— viz., about B.C. 300 — the Psalter was virtually
complete in its present form, or, at all events, that
a psalter with doxologies, such as we now possess,
extending at least to the close of the fourth book,
was in existence. And it will be hard to believe
that so much psalmody came into existence in the
short time elapsing since the Captivity.
Stade gets over the difficulty here presented in a
summary manner.^ He lays little stress, he tells us,
on this quotation, for it seems to him questionable
1 Such a comparison is made by Ehrt, Abfass., pp. 43-51.
2 Geschichte, i. p. 215, footnote 2.

120 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
whether this psalm-passage belongs to the original
text of the Chronicler, who is in the habit of merely
saying on similar occasions that there was singing,
without reproducing the words that were sung.
In short, the psalm-portion is to be cut out as an
interpolation. Prof. Cheyne's method is different.
He says ^ " it is not certain that any part of Ps. cvi.
is quoted in 1 Chron. xvi. ; verses 34-36 " (which
agree with the psalm and contain the doxology)
" consist of liturgical formulse which were no more
composed solely for use in Ps. cvi. than the doxology
attached to the Lord's Prayer was originally formu
lated solely to occupy its present position. There
is no reason why not only the doxology in verse
36 but the preceding verses should not have been
attached by the Chronicler to the psalm which he
had made up simply as liturgical formulae." But
are we then given to understand that the writer of
the psalm fell upon the same formulae, or that the
psalm itself is later than and based upon this pas
sage in the Chronicles ? The main point, at all
events, is here evaded — viz., that the Chronicler
is in general fond of quotation, and that he has
already unquestionably quoted from two other
psalms. Without doubt he thought it " absurd to
question " whether temple-hymns of early time re
sembled those now found in the Psalter.
Should any lingering doubt remain on this sub-
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 457.

"BY THE RIVERS OP BABYLON." 121
ject, it ought to be set at rest by a glance at that
touching psalm of the Captivity (Ps. cxxxvii.), a
piece so vivid in its details that it cannot be an
afterthought, but must be accepted as fresh from
the impress of a recent experience : —
" By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea, we wept.
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
We hanged up our harps.
How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a strange land 1 " &c.
The psalm is exilian or post-exilian in date, and
possibly verses 8, 9 imply that it was written before
the destruction of Babylon. The writer, at all
events, may be taken as a direct witness of the
things he describes. And, on reading the psalm,
the first thing we naturally ask is. What were the
songs of Zion which the Babylonians tauntingly
asked the captives to sing ? Not songs composed
or learned for the first time in the Captivity, for
it seemed inappropriate to sing the Lord's song in
a strange land. Nor were the harps new instru
ments they had made to solace the hours of cap
tivity, but their old instruments, which had been
used in happier days, and now seemed fit only to
be hung upon the willows. It is now no longer
wonderful— though it is not a little remarkable —
that the Chronicler should speak of the sacred

122 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
music of the Temple in the time of King Hezekiah
as the " song of the Lord " (2 Chron. xxix. 25 ff).
And it is surely not too much to infer from this
psalm that the reference of the Psalmist is to the
same sacred songs, religious and national hymns —
"songs of Jehovah" and songs relating to Zion —
such as we now find in the Psalter. It seems to
me that the burden of this plaintive song forbids
us to accept such sweeping statements as that
" the religious organisation of the people in Ezra's
time was too complete to allow any considerable
influence to archaic liturgical formulae," and that
" almost every psalm " sung in the newly reorgan
ised worship " might be appropriately styled a new
song." ^ Here, at least, we have a psalmist who
looked back fondly to the old songs — songs of Zion,
songs of the Lord of pre-exilian times. And we
can neither believe that such a fond memory would
suddenly forget, and leave in forgetfulness, all the
songs of a past time at the very moment when
every nerve was strained to revive the glories of
the past, nor admit that psalmody of an entirely
new tone and purport should suddenly spring into
existence after the Exile.
Whatever arguments, therefore, may be advanced
on critical methods and internal evidence as to the
date of the Psalter, we must give its due weight tO'
external testimony so repeated, so coherent, and
1 Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 194.

CONTINUOUS EXISTENCE OF SINGERS. 123
concurrent as this. It is inadmissible to speak here
of a vague tradition. It is unhistorical and un
scientific to speak of this as a projecting of modern
ideas into a past. For we cannot find a step in
this chain of historical reminiscence that could be
fairly described as the starting-point of something
new which needs to be projected into the past.
From the first return of Zerubbabel onwards there
was not only the arduous work of reorganisation to
be done, but all was done with a constant reference
to the national past, in the endeavour to conserve
all that was best in the antecedent history.
No doubt, internal evidence has also to be taken
into account ; and if internal evidence should prove
without doubt that such and such psalms cannot
belong to pre-exilian times, we must bow to the
evidence. But there are two things to be borne
in mind here: (l) The external evidence is so
strong in favour of pre-exilian psalmody of a very
considerable amount, that we are entitled to ask
critical writers to point out where such pre-exilian
psalms are, or to give us some credible account of
what has become of them if they have disappeared.
Conversely we should be disposed, in view of the
evidence advanced, to look carefully and without
prejudice for just such psalms as might be con
sidered pre-exilian. We are by the teaching of
facts told to look for them. We should give the
writers the consideration due to honest - minded

124 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
men, and dispose ourselves to accept pre - exilian
psalms if there are no convincing reasons for re
jecting them. And this we should do the more
when we remember (2) how very uncertain the
internal arguments are by which it is maintained
that the great bulk of the Psalter is post-exilian.
One needs only to open a few of the commentaries
on the Psalms by those who have undertaken the
task of fixing their dates. It will be found, when
the external considerations are entirely left out of
account, and the attempt is made from the contents
of individual psalms alone to assign them to their
respective dates, that the expositors differ in many
cases by centuries as to the time, and fix upon
epochs the most unlike for the occasion of these
compositions. We should therefore, I think, in fairness turn to
the Psalter, prepared to find within it psalms that
were composed in the pre - exilian period in its
widest sense, and even to find psalms which, during
the time the First Temple was standing, were fit to
be employed, and were actually employed, in its
worship.

125

CHAPTER VL
TESTIMONY OP THE PSALTER ITSELF.
We now come to look at the Psalter itself as a
whole, to see what information it supplies con
cerning its own origin.
1. The most obvious remark to be made at the
outset is that the Psalter is not the work of a day.
This collection of 150 sacred songs is like some
collection of pictures which the superficial observer
may run through in a short time, but each of which
contains material for long and patient examination.
For just as each picture has its own history and its
own theme, so every individual psalm is complete in
itself and may be made the subject of independent
study. But manifestly the whole is not some
sudden creation — the product of one mind or the
work of a generation. Even in regard to the pro
phetical books, we are prone to forget the long
periods over which the ministry of some of their
writers extended ; and the brief indications in the

126 TESTIMONY OP THE PSALTER ITSELF.
headings of the various oracles uttered regarding
Tyre, Egypt, Moab, and so forth, do not, without
some reflection, suggest the varying circumstances
in which the prophets spoke and wrote, and the
length of time through which they delivered their
testimony. Years may intervene between different
chapters of Isaiah or Jeremiah ; and so, for aught
we can say at the outset, even centuries may inter
vene between contiguous psalms. For these com
positions seem to lie together very much as the
hymns in our modern collections, in which the oldest
sacred songs find place beside the compositions of
living writers. It is not even apparent at first on
what principle they are arranged,^ or whether there
was any one guiding principle of arrangement at
all. In any case, the very number of them, and
their manifest variety, taken along with what we
know of prophetic literary composition, make it
abundantly plain that we have before us the
product of different times, and probably the de-

' Delitzsch, in his early work, 'Symbolse ad Psalmos illustrandos
isagogicse,' sufficiently established the existence of one literary nexus —
viz., the occurrence in contiguous psalms of the same or similar striking
phrases. But it is evident that such a conjunction would be made
mainly for mnemonic reasons, and, instead of helping to determine the
dates of contiguous psalms, would rather suggest that regard was not
had in the arrangement to chronological order. It has been pointed
out that in the collection of the Twelve minor prophets, something of
the same kind has been done, the closing words of one prophet sug
gesting the succession of another whose book opens with a similar
expression.

THE PSALTER AND ITS BOOKS. 127
posit of a very prolonged activity in this domain
of literature.
2. In the next place, we immediately come upon
the fact that the Psalter as it now exists is made
up of five books. And there are some features of
these several books which show conclusively that
the fivefold division was not a dividing into five
of a number of isolated productions, nor a division
made of what was in the first place one whole, but
that the whole was made up of originally smaller
collections. The books are of unequal length ; and,
in particular, the name of God varies in a remark
able way in the different books. Moreover, as we
shall see, psalms that seem to have been regarded
as coming from a common source are separated from
one another in different books in a striking manner.
There is also the well-known fact that the same
psalm is virtually repeated in different books.''
These features^ and others, are not consistent with
the supposition that 150 separate and unconnected
productions were arranged at one point of time
into five books, nor scarcely with the idea that
five separate and contemporaneous collections were
merged into one. We may not be able to infer
that there were precisely five successive and sep
arate stages of collection (for the fivefold division
seems to have been adopted to correspond to the
five books of the Pentateuch) ; but it seems matter
' Compare Ps. xiv. with liii.

128 TESTIMONY OF THE PSALTER ITSELF.
beyond doubt that different collections have been
placed together, and thus that the completed Psalter
is a composite work, whose completion was a gradual
process. Now this has a certain significance for our present
purpose. For before different collections could have
been brought together, they must have been some
time at least in existence as separate collections ;
and not only so, but before each separate collection
could come into existence as such, the individual
psahns of which it is composed must have been
there, and deemed suitable and worthy to be so
collected. All this would throw back the date of
composition of the psalms some considerable time
before the date of the completed collection, even
if the separate smaller collections were contem
poraneous. Much more, if the several smaller
collections were successive in time, which is cer
tainly on every account most probable,^ the space
between the composition of the earliest psalm in
the collection and the date of the completed Psalter
must be considerable. We must first have a time
in which psalm composition began ; at all events,
we must have a time to which the oldest psalms
in the collection belong ; we must then allow space
for the stock to grow by the rise of new composi-
1 To mention only one fact, it is not so likely that the two recensions
of one psalm, xiv. and liii., existed side by side contemporaneously, as
that one was a later modification of the other.

PROCESS OF FORMATION. 129
tions. Then we must have a time at which, for
some purpose, it occurred to some one to form the
first collection, and so on for successive collections ;
and, finally, we must allow space and occasion for
the gathering of all the existing collections, or for
incorporating the last collection with the completed
Psalter. Of course it might be maintained that the process
was very rapid. That is a matter for proof; but
in any case we must assume such a process, accord
ing to all the analogy of such compositions ; and
we must keep such a process continually in mind
if we would arrive at any reasonable and intelligible
explanation of the history of the Psalter.
It seems to me that the advocates of the late
origin of the Psalter have not given due weight to
this consideration, or else they have not produced
satisfactory evidence of such quickened activity in
literary production as would result in a completed
psalter so extensive and so multiform as the exist
ing collection. And, instead of strengthening their
position, they weaken it by maintaining that any
psalmody that may have existed before the Exile
was entirely different in character from that which
lies before us, and by refusing to accept as genuine
productions of pre-exilian times those hymnic pas
sages that are found in historical and prophetical
books. For thereby they burden themselves with
the assumption that not only the collection of the
I

130 TESTIMONY OF THE PSALTER ITSELF.
first group of psalms was posterior to the Exile, but
that even the first stimulus to this kind of com
position, or at all events the first attempts at it,
did not emerge till that late time.
3. Moreover, we find not only this arrangement
of the whole Psalter in five books, but we discover
evident traces of smaller collections underlying the
several books. The headings or titles of the psalms,
although, as we have seen, they are not to be ac
cepted as decisive of the dates and authorship of the
psalms to which they are prefixed, have a certain
positive value for us at this stage of our inquiry ;
they are evidence at least that the psalms have
passed through various hands, and that, for some
reason or other, they were not regarded as all be
longing to one category. We may or may not
believe that all or any of the psahns ascribed to
David were written by him ; but we have here
proof that some distinction was understood to sub
sist between those psalms and others differently
named, or left unnamed. It can hardly have been
a mere arbitrary work of the collectors that has
ascribed a certain number of psalms to David, an
other number of psalms to the sons of Korah, others
to Asaph, and so on. And the collocation of the
different groups is noteworthy. By far the greatest
number of so-called Davidic psalms are found towards
the beginning of the Psalter, and the Korahite and
Asaphic psalms lie closely together. Besides those

SMALLER COLLECTIONS. 131
which bear names, we find, placed closely together,
small collections of psalms beginning or ending in
the same way, as the so-called Hodu ^ and Halle
lujah psalms.^ And there is the remarkable collec
tion of fifteen psalms (Psalms cxx. -cxxxiv.), each
one of which is inscribed a " Song of Degrees " (or
more probably "Song of Ascents"), all lying in
succession. All this looks, again, as if the process of collecting
the Psalter was a gradual one. And it is to be
observed that the various groups that have been
mentioned seem to be anterior to the divisions into
books. Whether originally they were formally em
bodied into collections, or merely preserved orally
with their distinctive designations traditionally asso
ciated with them, they seem to have belonged to their
several categories before they were transferred to or
incorporated in the different books ; and it is now
generally believed that it was by a dislocation of these
groups, anterior to or on the occasion of the division
into books, that groups of psalms with a common
heading got separated. The division into books, in
fact, seems to be a more artificial and editorial
arrangement than the association which unites these
smaller groups. For several of the latter— such as
1 The Hodu psalms, beginning, "O give thanks" (ilTin), are Pss.
cv.-cvii. 2 The Hallelujah psalms begin and end with " Praise ye the Lord,"
and are found in minor groups — viz., cxi.-cxiii., cxv.-cxvii., cxlvi.-cl.

132 TESTIMONY OF THE PSALTER ITSELF.
the Hodu, Hallelujah, and "Ascent" psalms — have
certain marks of affinity in the nature of the subject
and the literary form. The Korahite and Asaphic
psalms also have well-marked characteristics of their
own ; and even the Davidic psalms — at least those
in the opening part of the Psalter — have common
features. Such a diversity implies, on any view of it, a
considerable lapse of time and variety of situation.
We can hardly suppose that one person would set
himself deliberately to compose any one set of
compositions corresponding to any one of these
collections ; much less that several individuals
would at the same time produce several such
collections. There must be individual composi
tions before there are sets or collections of kin
dred compositions ; and the natural supposition is
that it was the existence of the individual composi
tions, with a resemblance in their subject-matter,
or a similarity in their literary form, that led to
their being grouped together.
So then, underlying the completed Psalter we
have five books, which must have taken time in
their formation ; and under these books we have
groups of related psalms, which, whether in written
or in oral form, must have had some common tra
dition associated with them before the formation
of the several books ; for though grouped pretty
closely together, they do not correspond with the

HISTORY OP THE COLLECTIONS. 133
divisions of the books. These several collections
also required time for their formation. And be
hind, and underlying all, we have the individual
psalms, which must have existed before they could
be placed in groups. And seeing that they are
varied in literary form and in subject-matter, we are
necessarily brought to the conclusion that psalm-
composition was a manifold thing, practised long
and in varied circumstances. The Psalter itself
tells us plainly that it has had a long history ;
and it is hard to believe in the face of these
literary facts that the very earliest stages of that
history began with the foundation of the Second
Temple. 4. Now if we could assume that the books of
the Psalter were arranged in chronological order,
so that the successive books represented the psalm
literature existing at successive periods, and that
the smaller groups were in a similar way chrono
logically arranged, we might be able to work our
way back from the latest to the earliest collec
tion, and thus determine the dates, at least of
certain groups of psalms, within approximate limits
of time.
This, however, we are not at liberty to do. We
have no positive information as to the mode in
which the collections were brought together, or
how they were treated in the course of the final
arrangement of the Psalter. There are, moreover.

134 TESTIMONY OP THE PSALTER ITSELF.
indications of a negative kind which forbid our
concluding that the arrangement, either of books
or of groups, is chronological. Thus we find
psalms ascribed to David in all the five books of
the collection, though the preponderating number
is found in the two earliest (viz., thirty-seven out
of seventy-three in all). So also book ii. begins
with Korahite psalms and ends with Asaphic ones :
while book iii. begins with Asaphic and ends
with Korahite psalms ; the two psalms that open
the collection are anonymous, while one in the
fourth book is ascribed to Moses. Whatever
may be the precise significance of all these facts,
we can hardly, in face of them, assume that a
particular psalm in any one book determines the
date, even approximately, of the whole book. The
same remark applies to the collections ; an exam
ination of individual cases makes it probable that
psalms bearing the same title belong to very
different periods ; and the mere fact of different
psalms with a common heading ("David") stand
ing in all the five books, would of itself suggest
such a conclusion.
There is one characteristic notice at the end of
Ps. Ixxii. which at first sight promises to give
us a fixed chronological point — viz., the statement
with which, as it now stands, the psalm closes :
"The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended."
This notice, it will be observed, coincides with

CONCLUSION OP SEVENTY-SECOND PSALM. 135
the close of the second book of the Psalter ; and
the only intelligible explanation of it is, that at the
time it was appended there was a completed col
lection that could be thus described as the prayers
of David the son of Jesse. In other words, it
seems to be a colophon attached to a primitive
Davidic psalm-book. Could we be sure that no
alteration or subsequent rearrangement has taken
place, we might therefore conclude that the psalms
of the first two books at one time formed a col
lection by themselves, and then we might infer,
from the name given to the collection, that this
Davidic psalm-book was the earliest collection.
This, however, we are not entitled to do. But we
may with tolerable confidence conclude that the
earliest psalms in the collection have found their
place, for the most part, near the beginning. It
is indeed quite possible that compositions which
were early were not included in the first collection,
but were afterwards taken up (somewhere after
Ps. Ixxii.) when an enlargement took place or a
new collection was formed. So it is quite possible
that psalms which were later in origin may, in the
subsequent rearrangements that took place, have
been inserted among earlier ones. Still, it is in
every way most probable that the earliest in date
would be allowed to stand in the first portion of the
collection, if they were once in it, and that the
bulk of the first collection would be the relatively

136 TESTIMONY OF THE PSALTER ITSELF.
earlier psalms. The mere fact of the colophon
being allowed to stand at the end of Ps. Ixxii. is
an indication that there was a disposition not to
disturb the arrangement that was found existing.
It may be remarked also that the psalms in the
earlier part of the book are in literary form very
different from those at the close, being more rugged
and broken, more intense in feeling and enigmatical
in expression, contrasting with the even flow, trans
parent lucidity, and uniform tone of those towards
the end. The latter have all the marks of being
composed with a direct view to liturgical use, which
is not by any means the case with the former.
To sum up : the whole appearance of the
Psalter, with the headings of the different collec
tions, suggests the inference which many critics
draw, that there was, first of all, a limited psalter,
known by the name of " David " (of which there
remains a trace at the end of Psalm Ixxii.) ; that
there arose also collections known by the names of
"Asaph "and the "sons of Korah"; and that by
the addition of these, and similar collections, the
original book was enlarged till it grew to its pre
sent dimensions. As to the precise sense in which
the original titles of these collections were bestowed,
we are not required to maintain that they actually
denoted authorship. In regard to the psalms of
the " sons of Korah," for example, instead of sup
posing that a psalm was a joint production of a

LIMITS OP DATE. 137
family, we more naturally think of the psalms so
designated arising in the circle of the guild or
family so named, and being preserved among them.
And it may be the same with the name of David ;
the earliest psalms being his, the collection as it
grew retaining his name.
5. Proceeding a step farther, we have to consider
whether we can determine, even approximately, the
earliest and latest dates of psalm-composition. It is
only an approximation that can be expected, on this
kind of evidence ; for any collection or group that
might be selected as a starting-point has, as has
been pointed out, its own history and process of
growth, and we cannot be sure that it has remained
undisturbed during subsequent processes of collec
tion. For the precise determination of the date of
any psalm, if such a thing is possible, we must, in
the long-run, depend upon a careful exegesis and
examination of its contents. That this is a matter
of no little difficulty, however, is sufficiently attested
by the very divergent opinions that have been held
by competent critics who have relied on this kind
of proof The contents of many of the psalms are
of such a nature that it is impossible, from their
subject-matter, to infer their dates. In many of
them there are no references whatever to historical
events ; and in most of them there is no reference
to persons, such as would enable us to assign them
to any precise occasion or even definite epoch.

138 TESTIMONY OP THE PSALTER ITSELF.
Accordingly, almost all who have made the at
tempt to determine the dates of the psalms have
taken advantage of the existing minor collections
or groups as starting-points for the inquiry. There
is, however, a variety in the manner in which the
groups have been apprehended. A recent writer,^
for example, takes as his basis the first and second
books, on the presumption, reasonable in the cir
cumstances, as we have seen, that the oldest
psalms are to be found there ; and endeavours to
show that most of the psalms of these books may
reasonably be assigned to pre-exilian times. This
mode of arguing has, at least, the merit of pro
ceeding on historically attested groups, and ought
to give surer results than the method of group
ing psalms according to their tone or contents.
To this latter method the objection is obvious,
that there may be a variety of individuality in
writers who are contemporary, and that modes of
thought and expression, and even external historical
situations, are liable to recur at different periods.
There are, however, psalms in the collection
which bear unmistakable evidence of comparatively
late date, and can be assigned to a comparatively
restricted period. Thus Ps. cxxxvii., which has
been already referred to,^ bears every indication of
having been composed very soon after the return
1 Sellin, Disputatio de Origine Carminum, &c., 1892.
2 See chap. v. p. 121.

LATE PSALMS. 139
from Babylon, or perhaps before the humiliation
of that great Power had taken place.
So no doubt there are others referring to that
time of suffering, and celebrating the glorious
deliverance that followed ; although it is remark
able that so few positive references are made to
Babylon, as contrasted with the references to Egypt
and the Exodus.
Of course, as opinions now go, such a date as we
have spoken of would not be regarded as late. On
the contrary, it would be comparatively early, and
modern expositors find what they consider conclusive
references to much later times. It must, however,
be admitted as remarkable that the references are
not so obvious as, for example, those we have
alluded to. Even to the revolt of the Maccabees,
if we admit that there are Maccabaean psalms in
the Psalter, there are not many references, nor
are these so precise as we might have expected
to occur in sacred songs inspired by that memor
able struggle. There are, no doubt, a few psalms
which from a very early period have been re
garded as relating to that time ; and, as has been
already said, there is nothing in the history of the
Canon, as we now know it, to preclude the ad
mission of such psalms into the collection. The
psalms in question are : in the first rank, as bearing
marks which have led many in former and modern
times to declare them indubitably Maccabaean, Pss.

140 TESTIMONY OP THE PSALTER ITSELF.
xliv., Ixxiv., Ixxix., Ixxxiii. ; and, in a second rank,
another four that closely resemble them in subject-
matter — viz., Ix., Ixxx., Ixxxv., cxxxii.
Although in these psalms, particularly in the
four first mentioned, there are expressions and
references which all admit would well suit the
Maccabaean period, and which some maintain would
suit no other period, yet it cannot be said that
the references are of that precise, express kind
which we have seen in an immediately post-exilian
psalm ; and there have been and still are writers
who refuse to assign any of the psalms to the
Maccabaean age. It comes finally to be a matter
of detailed exegesis ; and while a great deal de
pends upon the interpretation of individual ex
pressions, or of the general tone of the psalm
under consideration, the conclusion arrived at is
also very much determined by the critic's estimate,
in advance, of the capabilities and situations of the
various historical periods to which the psalms are
assigned, the facts being liable to be controlled
by the bias of the critic.
We have seen, however, undoubted evidence of
post-exilian psalmody, and have admitted the pos
sibility of Maccabaean psalms being in the collec
tion. Can we in a similar way fix an approximate
date for its commencement ?
Here again we are confronted with the task of
exegesis of individual psalms. For there is the

EARLY PSALMS. 141
same absence, at this extremity, of such definite,
precise mention of facts, places, or persons as would
enable us to fix the actual dates. No doubt a
number of interpreters recognise in certain details
of the earlier psalms what they consider indubitable
references to the life and circumstances of David ;
and no doubt others would admit that certain
psalms might have been written by him. The mere
fact, however, that prominent critics refuse, on
internal grounds, to assign any psalms at all to
David, indicates that the alleged proofs of Davidic
authorship are not so cogent and irresistible as of
themselves to set the matter at rest.
We are compelled, therefore, to abandon the
shorter road and betake ourselves to a more
circuitous one, in order to determine, if possible,
how far back we may place the earliest composi
tions in the Psalter.
We have seen enough, at all events, to encour
age and even compel us to look to pre-exilian
times for such a commencement. For just as all
the external evidence available pointed back to pre-
exilian and even Davidic times for the beginning
of sacred song, so our rapid survey of the Psalter
itself suggests the same thing. We have seen one
undoubted post-exilian psalm; but it stands well
down in the collection, and there are good reasons
for the conclusion that the earliest compositions
will be near the beginning. Moreover, this post-

142 TESTIMONY OP THE PSALTER ITSELF.
exilian song seems to have been composed when
the misery of the Exile was still fresh in memory.
But the song, besides being far down in the collec
tion, is a finished production, giving evidence of
long practice in the art ; and it even refers to the
harps and songs of Zion as well known in exilian
times. Accordingly, as we cannot suppose the art
to have arisen in Babylon, we are shut up to the
pre-exilian time for its commencement.
Of course it is only a presumption that we have,
so far, reached, to the effect that psalmody such as
the Psalter exhibits was practised in pre-exilian
times, and that the earliest compositions will be
found in the first part of the collection. Apart
from the positive evidence on which it is based,
the strength of the presumption may be estimated
by the alternative that has to be faced — viz., that
all pre-exilian psalmody has been lost, or, if there
never was any, that the earliest attempts at a new
and special kind of literary composition were of the
most finished quality, as well as very considerable
in quantity.
As for the attempt, on grounds of internal criti
cism, to determine with precision the occasions upon
which the Psalms were composed, and to classify
them into historical periods, however fascinating
the exercise seems to be to many minds, I must
frankly confess I have so little confidence in its
success that I feel constrained to follow another

HISTORICAL REFERENCES INDECISIVE. 143
line of proof The actual historical references are
confessedly so rare or so indecisive that in a great
many cases we have to content ourselves with a
conclusion of a general or negative kind, to the
effect that such and such psalms may belong to
such and such a period, or that there is nothing "^
in the situation and contents of such and such
others to forbid our assigning them to such and
such a time. With regard to many psalms, prob- j
ably, we shall be obliged to give up the attempt
to determine their date altogether. It would
manifestly be rash to assign such psalms as give
no hint of their date to the period which, on
subjective grounds, we consider most appropriate ;
for it is to be borne in mind that a psalm may have
arisen in some period of which the historical books
tell us little, and in circumstances which they have
never mentioned. Summarily to say that a psalm
belongs to a certain time, of which we happen to
know the circumstances, is not legitimate, since it
might, for all we know, be as suitable to a time
of which we know comparatively little. Nay,
though it may seem paradoxical, it may not be
safe to assign a psalm to circumstances which it
seems to suit best. I am speaking here of psalms
which contain no indubitable positive references to
historical events which might enable us to allocate
them. There are many such in the Psalter ; and,
in dealing with compositions like these, which are

144 TESTIMONY OF THE PSALTER ITSELF.
general and germinal in their statements, we are
to remember that a general truth is always re
ceiving particular confirmation — always repeating
itself in new circumstances — that a germinal truth
is always finding fit and fitter illustrations as his
tory goes on. No doubt many of "those psalms,
like all popular lyrics, would be sung often from
time to time, and on every occasion be found suit
able to the circumstances of those using them. In
a sense it may be said that all great truths are
prophetical ; the more fundamental they are, the
more will they find recurring illustration and ex
emplification as history is unfolded. Even on a
much lower plane than that of prophecy, is it
not the case that many of the common maxims
or classical quotations which have become a world's
property receive from time to time a fuller meaning,
and more striking applicability, than attached to
them when they were first employed ?
In view, therefore, of the admitted want of posi
tive historical references in the psalms themselves,
and at the same time resting upon the presumptive
historical evidence before us, we may proceed to an
inquiry as to whether there is room in pre-exilian
history and religion for compositions such as lie
before us in the Psalter. Here will arise such
questions as, whether in that period there is
proof of such literary and poetic attainment as
would make psalm - composition possible, whether

LINE OF INQUIRY. 145
there were circumstances that would furnish a
stimulus to such composition, and whether the his
torical situations, the religious sentiments, spiritual
attainments and aspirations of the period, were likely
to find reflection or embodiment in the psalms.
The object is not to prove that all the psalms
are pre-exilian. There will not even be an attempt
to begin with a limited number of psalms for which
a pre-exilian date may be claimed. But the en
deavour will be made to discover what the early
times were capable of furnishing, in the way of lyric
poetry and of religious sentiment expressed in lyric
form. Should it be found, on this line of inquiry,
that there is room in pre-exilian times for such
compositions, especially as are contained in parts of
the Psalter that are presumably of earliest date, it
will then be open to those who feel competent to
the task to assign, on critical grounds, various
psalms to specific times and circumstances.

K

146

CHAPTER VIL
POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
We come now to consider the question whether the
pre-exilian period affords sufficient room and occasion
for the production of such compositions as the Psalms.
Let us, first of all, recall the presumption at which
we arrived on the grounds of external evidence —
viz. , that we are entitled, and even required, to look
to this period for the beginnings of the psalmody
which meets us in full operation in the early post-
exilian period. The return from the Captivity of
official "singers" in considerable numbers, the pro
vision made for their support and the grant of im
munities to them along with other sacred officials,
the express mention of solemn liturgical music at
the laying of the foundations of the Second Temple,
not to speak of the proof of its existence in full
operation at the time the Chronicler wrote, the
graphic reference to the harps on the willow-
trees in the time of the Captivity, and to the

ONLY ONE PSALTER. 147
incongruity of singing the Lord's song in a foreign
land, — all these amount to a mass of very strong
presumptive evidence, that the practice of psalmody
was well developed in pre-exilian times.
In the next place, let us consider what in the
circumstances we may expect to find. We need
not, for example, look for another psalter, or formal
collection, larger or smaller, similar to the collection
before us. Into this collection have evidently been
gathered a very varied number of sacred songs be
longing, on any reasonable hypothesis as to their
origin, to different times. So that, if we leave the
supposition, open that psalm-composition began in
pre-exilian times, it will not be surprising if the
whole, or the most of this class of literature, should
be embodied in the one collection.
There are, indeed, in some of the pre-exilian pro
phetical books, compositions of a hymnic and even
of a liturgical and musical kind. And these to
an unprejudiced mind would be evident proof that
this kind of composition was in exercise before the
Exile. Thus, for example, the 18th Psalm is found,
slightly varied, in the book of Samuel (2 Sam. xxii.),
which also contains the song of Hannah (1 Sam. ii.
1-10). In addition to which it may here suffice
to mention the song of Hezekiah (Isa. xxxviii. 9-
20), and the prayer of Habakkuk (Hab. iii.), which
have all the characteristics of psalms, to say noth
ing of other hymnic passages found up and down

148 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
the prophetical books. Unfortunately the advo
cates of the post-exilian origin of the Psalter object
to our citing such passages as evidence, maintaining
that they have been interpolated into the propheti
cal books at a later time, when psalm-composition
was in vogue. Unfortunately, I say, not for those
who believe that the prophetic writers were capable
of producing such psalms, for the exception that
is taken to them is entirely of a subjective
kind, but unfortunately for the theory of the post-
exilian origin of the Psalter, because, in addition
to the objections urged in the preceding chapter,
suspicion cannot fail to arise when, at a crucial
point of evidence, the theory of interpolation should
need to be resorted to in order to evade the force
of a very strong objection. We must therefore
allow these hymnic pieces to stand as authentic
parts of the books in which they occur, until better
proof of their interpolation is produced than the
fact that they are inconvenient for a theory.
Instead of beginning, however, with a comparison
of single pieces such as these are (although the
comparison is very interesting and very instructive),
let us fall back upon our more general line of in
vestigation. The evidential value of these pieces
will appear as we proceed.
The three main lines of inquiry suggested by all
that has preceded are these : —
I. Whether, in pre-exilian times, the poetic

QUESTIONS TO BE DISCUSSED. 149
faculty was so well cultivated that lyrics like
those of the Psalter were possible.
II. Whether the pre - exilian period furnishes
occasions sufficiently varied and sufficiently out
standing to explain national and social references
in the Psalms.
III. Whether, in pre-exilian times, the religious
consciousness had attained a development sufficient
to produce religious lyrics like the Psalms.
In the present chapter we shall confine ourselves
to the first of these questions ; and, first of all,
we would draw attention to the favourable position
in which the people of Israel were placed for
the cultivation of poetry, and the abundant evi
dence we have that the poetic faculty among
them was very strong, and that it was actively
cultivated from a very early time. *—
No country in the world presents the variety of
scenery and productions to be seen in Palestine.
The snows of Lebanon and the tropical heat of the
Jordan valley ; gushing streams in winter, parched
plains in summer ; cloudless and rainless skies for
many months, thunder, lightning, and tempest in
others — these are the normal features of its climate.
Waving fields of grain on deep alluvial soil in one
place, clinging vines on stony hillsides in another,
the cedar and the palm, the oak, the walnut, and
the pine, with the fruit-trees of the torrid zone,
all find their appropriate soil and air ; the shaggy

150 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
bear hides in the mountain fastnesses, and tropical
birds of rare plumage flit about in the groves of
Jericho ; almost every conceivable contrast, almost
endless variety, are characteristic of the country.
The very face of the land seems to spread out in
rhythmical undulations of height and hollow ; the
seasons succeed one another in marked alternation.
And yet the country is so limited in extent that
from the tops of the mountain-peaks one can see
almost to one or other extremity of its length,
and frequently from one extremity to the other
of its breadth.
What a wealth of language and of imagery must
such a country have suggested ! And, poor as its
vocabulary is in some respects, few languages show
greater variety of nomenclature for natural objects
than Hebrew. And it is evident that from the
smallness of the country, and the compression of so
many contrasts within the limits of a few degrees of
latitude, an immense variety of terms to denote
natural objects would enrich the stock of the
common language, and furnish material for the ex
uberance of metaphor which is so observable in its
poetry and even in its prose. Where the face of
nature was so diversified there was not only the most
pleasing stimulus to the imagination, but there was
every aid to the expression of mental activity in
the terms of physical phenomena. Language in its
very formative processes was suffused with poetic

STIMULUS TO POETRY IN NATURE. 151
feeling. Nowhere was there monotony in the land
scape. Every feature was confronted with its anti
thesis, so that as the imagination was kept ever on
the alert, the materials were at hand to supply forms
in which the changing mood might express itself
Every torrent as it made its wild music in the
storm harmonised with and quickened the perturbed
spirit of the poet ; every mountain and hill not only
fed the feelings of awe and wonder, but suggested
the ideas of strength, defence, security. The shadow
of a great rock in the sun-beaten expanse, the miry
clay of the alluvial plain, the bleak barren land in
which was no water, the shady ravines in the
mountain defiles, the repose of the widespreading
tree, the quiet of the homestead at evening, alter
nating so rapidly under the eye of the wayfarer,
kept pace with the rush and play of inner thoughts
and feelings, and at the same time nourished these
thoughts and feelings and formed a spiritual educa
tion. And if we should find poetry thus lying at
the very root of a language, in rich, varied, and
suitable metaphor, we may conclude that there is
a strong and true poetic instinct in the people em
ploying it, and that they have led a long course
of national life in close observance of nature's
phenomena and in loving sympathy with nature's
movements. Now this is what the Hebrew language does
exhibit. The distinction between poetry and prose

(?

^ ¦2.

152 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
here is shadowy, just because the language is poet
ical from the first ; and it is this metaphorical ele
ment that enables the language with its restricted
vocabulary to express ideas of the most varied de
scription and of the most delicate kind. Words
denoting the most ordinary acts, or phases of the
most common life, are transferred to the expression
of the variety of mood of the inner life ; so that
wherever the Bible goes, in whatever tongue, it
speaks to human hearts the same language. To
walk, to sit, to stand, to eat, to drink, to rise, to
fall, — almost every movement or gesture of the
body is made to denote, by the most patent trans
ition, a corresponding phase of the mind or fluctu
ation of the spirit ; and poetry is the handmaid of
theology. Says Isaac Taylor : ^
Those who choose to do so may employ their time in
inquiring in what other modes than those which are char
acteristic of the Hebrew Scriptures the highest truths in
theology might be embodied, and whether the principles
may not be, or might not have been, subjected to the condi
tions of abstract generalisation, and so brought into order
within the limits of a logical and scientific arrangement.
Let these philosophic divisions be pursued at leisure until
they reach a result which might be reported of and accepted.
Meantime it is enough for us to know that no such result
has hitherto ever rewarded the labour, either of Oriental
sages or of Grecian philosophers, or of the Alexandrian
teachers, or of mediaeval doctors, or of the great thinkers of

1 Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry, pp. 4, 5. Comp. p. 6 and p. 11.

POETIC INSTINCT IN HEBREW PEOPLE. 153
the sixteenth century, or of those of the times in which we
live. Metaphysic theologies, except so far as they take up
the very terms and figures of the Hebrew Scriptures, have
hitherto shown a properly religious aspect in proportion
as they have been unintelligible : when intelligible, they
become, if not atheistic, yet tending in that direction.
When this is affirmed, the inference is not — that a true
theology might not be embodied in abstract terms in an
upper world ; but this, that the terms and the modes of
human reason are and must ever be insufficient for purposes
of this kind.
There was, therefore, we may take it, a strong
and true poetic instinct in the Hebrew people, and
there was a powerful stimulus in nature around
them towards the expression of the instinct in song.
And though, for reasons that are well known, there
are comparatively few remains of what may be
called secular poetry, or the poetry of nature, yet
there are more evidences of its existence than super
ficial readers readily perceive. In the earlier his
torical books, relating to times when the people
were passing from the half-settled condition, we have
pictures here and there of the festive gatherings,
with song and dance, which evidently made up a
great part of their common life. The daughters of
Shiloh had a yearly feast at a place on the north
side of Bethel ; and it was while engaged in the
dance that they were surprised by the rude wooers
of the tribe of Benjamin (Judges xxi. 19-24). The
men of Shechem, in the time of Abimelech, went

154 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
out into the fields, and gathered the vineyards, and
trod the grapes, and made merry (Judges ix. 27) ;
and the song of the vintage (Isa. xvi. 10) and the
joy of harvest (Isa. ix. 3) were household words.
Nabal at his sheep-shearing (l Sam. xxv.), Samson
at his marriage (Judges xiv.), the shepherds and
warriors at the wells at eventide (Judges v. 11), all
sing and make merry ; and prophets speak of it as
a regular thing that the harp and the lute, the
tabret and the flute (Isa. v. 12), with other instru
ments of music (Amos vi. 5), were used at feasts.
So also naturally, poetry having found its voice in
song, any stirring event gave it fresh and larger
utterance. The finding of a well is celebrated in a
lilt in its praise (Num. xxi. 17), warlike exploits of
which we have no historical record are commemorated
in snatches of old song (Num. xxi. 27-30). Samson
sings his exploit performed with the jawbone of an
ass (Judges xv. 16). The women of Israel celebrate
David's triumph over Goliath (1 Sam. xviii. 7) ; the
victory of the ever-memorable day of Bethhoron is
embalmed in the song of which we have still a frag
ment (Josh. x. 12) ; and at full length we have, in
the song of Deborah, the recital of the great
achievement with which her name is associated
(Judges V.)
In sorrow, also, as well as in joy, did the poetic
instinct find vent for itself in song. The maidens of
Gilead lamented over Jephthah's daughter (Judges

VARIED EXERCISE OP SONG. 155
xi. 40) ; David composed an elegy on Saul and Jon
athan (2 Sam. i.), and a lament over brave Abner so
fouUy slain (2 Sam. iii. 34).
These are but instances, most of them only inciden
tally mentioned, which go to prove that the poetic
spirit found ready and habitual utterance in face of
the more ordinary and common incidents of life.
Moreover, from several of these references, and
from other indications which have been already
noticed,-^ we may perceive that the cultivation of
music as an art or profession was an early thing
in the history. Barzillai, we have seen, speaks of
singing men and singing women at David's court
(2 Sam. xix. 35), and though uttered at a late
time, Jeremiah's words (Jer. ix. 17) plainly refer
to an old - established custom, when he speaks
of the "wise women" skilled in making a lamen
tation. The funeral dirge, in fact, seems to have been
committed specially to a professional class of singers
— a custom of which there remain survivals among
the people of the East to the present day ; ^ and
the very form in which the " lament " was cast
(the Qina) is found in certain elegiac pieces incor
porated in the historical and prophetical books. It
is referred to as early as Amos (Amos v. 1) as a
1 See chap. v. p. 107.
2 Budde has a very interesting paper on this subject, entitled " Das
hebraische Klagelied," in zatw for 1882.

156 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
well-known thing among the people of his day, and
he gives us a specimen, though brief, cast in the
very form in which we find the chapters of the book
of Lamentations : —
'¦ The virgin of Israel is fallen, no more to rise ;
She is cast down upon her land, with none to raise her up."
Now if we turn to the Psalms we shall perceive
in them all the elements and characteristics of
the best Hebrew poetry. The Psalter is not, in
deed, an anthology, covering the whole field of the
manifold daily life which, as we have seen, fur
nished materials of song. Some subjects, common
in national popular lyrics, are conspicuous by their
absence. Others appear but in an incidental or
subordinate manner. The whole collection has a
specific distinctive religious tone, and of that we
shall have to speak at length by-and-by. In the
meantime the fact to be emphasised is that, as
literary and poetic compositions, the Psalms exhibit
the features, and almost exclusively the features,
which are found elsewhere and even early in Hebrew
poetic literature.
One essential feature of Hebrew poetry which has
been already referred to — the^gaetaphorical use of
language — is strikingly conspicuous in the Psalms.
Though found throughout the whole Hebrew Scrip
tures, as has been said, it is more abundant in
the Psalms, for the very simple reason that these

METAPHOR IN HEBREW. 157
compositions, being the lyrical expression of the
inner thoughts and feelings of the psalmist, make
a demand upon the resources of metaphor which
is unnecessary in the simple narratives of prose,
and is not even so imperative in many of the pro
phetical books, although it is found even in these,
as soon as the writer enters the domain of inner
experience and has to express spiritual ideas. But
so much are the psalmists occupied with just such
ideas, that we have only to open the Psalter at
any page in order to find illustrations. The very
first psalm not only presents us with the striking-
comparisons of the righteous to the tree planted by
the channels of water, and of the wicked to the
chaff before the wind ; but employs the best chosen
though simplest metaphors — walking, standing, sit
ting — to express the various grades of conformity
to evil. Throughout the Psalms it is the same :
however delicate the shade of feeling to be ex
pressed, it is swiftly and impressively brought out
in a metaphor, easy of comprehension but full of
meaning. However varied the experience, there is
a suitable figure to denote it. At one time the
psalmist stumbles and slips, his feet are almost
gone ; at another time he has his steps enlarged
under him and stands in an even place. Now he
sinks in miry clay, anon he is planted firmly on a
rock At one time his God turns His face from
him, at another He lifts the light of His counte-

158 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
nance upon him, Again, his enemies tread down
his life and lay his glory in the dust; but soon
they are smitten, ' their arm broken, their teeth
shattered. Insidious foes dig a pit or spread a
net to entangle the innocent ; but they fall into
their own ditch, or are discomfited with the slings
and snares of an avenging God. What could be
more expressive than the care of God depicted
(for it is a picture) as holding the saint by the
hand, or guiding him with His eye "? What more
pathetic than the suppliant surrounded by floods
of ungodliness, or being poured out like water ?
If oppression is brought to an end, it is bonds that
are broken ; joy is a lightening of the eyes ; and
the soul is bowed down in grief. The highest
earthly good is to eat and drink at God's table,
and final bliss is to behold His face.
Now it is to be remembered that the metaphors,
so abundant in the Psalms, are precisely of the
same kind as those employed in the other litera
ture, and that they are borrowed from nature in
all its vicissitudes, from the scenery of Palestine
in all its variety, or based upon the occupations
and experiences of a life as diversified as the
historical books show the life of pre-exilian Israel
to have been. We have but to suppose the attempt
made to remove the whole of this rich store of
metaphor from the language in order to realise
how closely it is woven into the texture of thought.

BROAD BASE OP METAPHOR. 159
and therefore how necessary it is to postulate a
long life for its development and cultivation. One
would never expect a small colony of Jews, who had
no antecedent poetic training, who were busy with
the hard task of effecting a settlement in Judsea
after the Exile, and at best absorbed in the ritual
observances of the restored Temple, suddenly to
burst into song as varied in its dress as the whole
face of the country from Dan to Beersheba, and
employing in its imagery a stock of metaphor drawn
from long observation of nature and its phenomena.
Even if it were proved that the existing psalms
as they lie before us were all composed after the
Exile, we should be forced to conclude also that
poetic language, and the metaphorical use of lan
guage for the expression of spiritual thoughts, were
long practised before they could be handled so deftly
and enter so fully into literature.
It has been already observed that this meta
phorical element, lying at the formative root of
the language, is as striking in a translation as in
the original, so that the Hebrew poetry is in its
essence poetical in any tongue. It has now to be
pointed out, moreover, that the same thing is true
also of the form in which the Hebrew poetry is
cast. It is well known that much of the ancient
poetry of other nations loses a very great part
of its beauty in passing into another tongue ; so
that some of the productions most highly prized

160 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
in the original are flatter than ordinary prose
when rendered faithfully in a translation, just
because the features on which the charm of the
original depends are peculiar to the original lan
guage and form. On the other hand, the distin
guishing feature of the Hebrew poetry is not
rhyme or assonance — which disappear in a trans
lation or can only be preserved by art and effort
— but the rhythmical balancing of parts, or paral
lelism of the thought, — a feature that only becomes
the more striking the more faithfully the words
are translated. This is the whole explanation of
the fact, which often causes an expression of sur
prise, that the Psalms, for example, though highly
poetical, exhibit their poetical character more
vividly in a prose than in a metrical translation.
It is simply because the prose version is more
faithful to the original, transferring all the charm
on which the original depended, without sacrificing
anything to the exigencies of a new language and
a strict metrical form. This feature of the poetry,
whereby one member of a verse stands over against
another by resemblance or by contrast, the paral
lelism being balanced often in minutest details,
is so outstanding that even the reader of a trans
lation can scarcely fail to notice it, and to conform
his reading to it, for it is the natural expression
of the sense. And the Revised Version, by print
ing the parallel members in separate lines, has

PARALLELISM. 161
made manifest even to the eye the fact that the
Psalms are all in poetry. E.g. —
" Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor standeth in the way of sinners,
Kor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord ;
And in his law doth he meditate day and night." — Ps. i.
Or—
" The heavens declare the glory of God ;
And the firmament sheweth His handywork," &c.
And—
" The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul :
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple," &c.
— Ps. xix.
Or—
" 0 Lord, rebuke me not in Thy wrath :
Ifeither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure," &c.
— Ps. xxxviii.
This feature is not confined to the Psalms. The
Revised Version has printed also the books of Job,
Proverbs, and Lamentations in parallel lines ; for
they are all composed in the same formal style.
Here and there also, where songs occur in the
historical books, they have been exhibited in the
same manner. Thus, e.g. —
" Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ;
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech :
For I have slain a man for wounding me,
And a young man for bruising me :
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." —Gen. iv. 23, 24.
L

162 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
And, even where it is not so represented to the eye,
it manifests itself to the ear throughout the pro
phetical Scriptures, whenever these take a loftier
flight :—
" Violence shall no more be heard in thy land.
Desolation nor destruction within thy borders ;
But thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,
And thy gates Praise.
The sun shall be no more thy light by day ;
Neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee :
But the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light.
And thy God thy glory." — Isa. Ix. 18, 19.
Even the simple prose of the Hebrew narrative
books tends to run into a balance of clauses and
a rhythmical march, as if music were engrained in
the very language. And at all events the snatches
of old song preserved, it is believed, as the very
earliest remains of Hebrew composition, show that
the form, which gives its distinguishing beauty to
the very highest specimens of literary art, was well
marked as a characteristic from the very first. ^
We have seen enough, therefore, to warrant the
conclusion that, so far as poetic spirit and poetic
expression go, there was abundant room in the very
earliest antiquity for compositions of the literary
standard of the Psalms. We find a language satu-
1 The English reader is in a position to observe these, for example,
in the books of Genesis and Numbers, as they are printed in parallel
lines in the Revised Version. See Gen. ix. 25-27, xxv. 23 xlix. 2-27 •
Num. vi. 24-26, xxi. 14, 15, 17, 18, 27-30, &c.

LYRIC POETRY IN ANTIQUITY. 163
rated with poetry, not indeed tricked out in gaudy
artificial finery, but blooming with the flowers of
artless metaphor fresh from the fields of nature,
and a rhythm as finely measured as " the rapid
stroke of alternate wings, — the heaving and sink
ing as of the troubled heart." ^ And we have a
people revelling in music and song, now shouting
in the vintage, now wailing by the bier, bursting
into singing on every occasion when the heart is
full, making the earth ring again with their piping
and dancing.
Now a most important question arises at this
point, and it is this — How came a people like this,
a people in these circumstances, to assign precisely
to David the very highest place in music and song ?
They had been singing and playing long before his
day. The water of the Red Sea was scarcely dry on
their sandals when Miriam and all the women went
out with timbrels and with dances and raised the
song, and a religious song too : —
" Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously ;
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea."
— Exod. XV. 20, 21.
They had been singing ever since, and the song of
Deborah, for instance (Judges v. ), is a highly finished
composition. Nor perhaps would any one say that
the so-called "secular" pieces, which are all that
a grudging criticism would allow to be genuine
1 Dean Stanley, Jewish Church, Lecture xxv.

164 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
Davidic poetry, his elegies on Saul and Jonathan
(2 Sam. i. 19-27) and on Abner (2 Sam. iii. 33,
34), are on a higher level than other lyrics that
have been preserved to us. Why then does David
hold this peerless place among the singers of
Israel ?
The question needs to be pressed, because there
seems to be a tendency to depreciate the position of
David to such a degree that nothing is left by which
to account for the tradition to which we are refer
ring. That David was a musician no one denies ;
but this is almost the full extent of the admission
in some quarters. Robertson Smith even goes the
length of saying ^ that though David might have
been a musician, it may appear doubtful whether
the oldest story of his life set him forth as a
psalmist at all. The Hebrew writers, however,
whether early or late, were well aware of what
their nation had achieved in the field of music
and song ; and yet, with wonderful unanimity,
they assigned to David an altogether unique posi
tion in regard to both.
The only sufficient explanation of the fact that a
musical people has given to David this distinction
is that he brought music to higher perfection and
applied it as it had not been applied before to the
highest end, the service of praise. Prof Cheyne,
who " would not for a moment disparage the truly
1 Old Testament in the Jewish Church, chap. vii.

ASCRIPTION OP PSALMODY TO DAVID. 165
noble qualities " ^ of David, cannot withhold the ad
mission that though " his posthumous fame rested
chiefly upon his secular poetry, we need not assume
that all his compositions had a non-religious char
acter." 2 But then, although he will not allow that
a single word of this religious poetry has been pre
served, so that we might be able to say what it was
like, he goes on to make a comparison of the Hebrew
tehillah or praise, to the tahlil or shouting of the
Arabs at the pilgrimage, and says of the original
"singing" in the Temple, that "only by slow
degrees did it rise from a shouting like that of the
vintage or of the bridal night " (Judges ix. 27 ; Lev.
xix. 24 ; Ps. Ixxviii. 63).^ Nay, it is not only tKe
'primitive Temple music that was so poor. Pre-
exilian song in the mass. Professor Cheyne * asserts,
was so rough that " as late as the fall of Jeru
salem, the noise of the Chaldean soldiery in the
Temple is likened to that made by the wor
shippers on a feast-day (Lam. ii. 7)." And " all
the evidence goes to show that throughout the
pre-exile period the service of religious song was
not committed to any special class, but was the
privilege of the congregation at large." The texts
which are cited in support of this statement (2
Sam. vi. 5 ; Amos v. 21-23 ; Isa. xxx. 29) certainly
go to indicate that the people as a whole took part
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 211. ^ iijid_^ p, 193
3 Ibid., p. 460. * Ibid., p. 194.

166 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
in the musical service ; but surely Professor Cheyne
would not have us suppose that when " David and
all the house of Israel played before the Lord on
all manner of instruments — -with harps and with
psalteries and with timbrels, and with castanets
and with cymbals " (2 Sam. vi. 5), each person
played his own tune, and that they did not wait
for a leader to strike up the music nor even for
the king to give out the hymn. The mere mention
of so many instruments in such a connection implies
that there was a systematic cultivation of sacred
music. Even the modern minstrelsy of the East,
whatever we may say of its quality, is not pro
duced without systematic training, and in the
rendering of the popular songs there are recog
nised professional leaders.^
As to the rudeness of the pre-exilian music, it
is doubtful whether even the music of the Second
Temple would have sounded " polished " to Western
and modern ears. In this, as in many other things,
the Oriental has a very different standard from our
own. Since we have never heard the music of the
First Temple, however, perhaps the less we say of
it the better. That it was hearty. Professor Cheyne
himself proves ; that it was the best the people of
the time had to offer there can be no doubt. If it
was at all as good as their poetry, it needs neither
1 See the interesting details, furnished by Wetzstein, in Budde's
paper, "Das hebraische Klagelied," zatw, 1882, p. 26.

QUALITY OF PRE-EXILIAN MUSIC. 167
eulogy nor apology. As to the comparison with the
Arabs, there are certain circumstances which show
how far the cases are from being parallel. We know,
for example, that they cultivated lyric poetry to a
considerable degree even in pre-Islamic times, so
that we cannot take the tahlil as a standard of
their early musical and poetical attainment. More
over, though they preserve the talbiyah in all its
primitive rudeness in connection with the pilgrim
age celebrations, they have never, to the present
day, employed music in their regular public wor
ship. All this, however, does not touch the main
point for which we are here contending — viz., that
though the people had, ever since they entered
Canaan, been singing those vintage and bridal
songs which we are told were the prototype of
the original Temple music, yet for some unaccount
able reason they have conspired to celebrate one
who was antecedent even to this rude music as
peculiarly " pleasant in the psalms of Israel "
(2 Sam. xxiii. 1).
Again, therefore, our train of reasoning brings us
back to David. There is no ascription to him of
the origin of music and song, for these go back
into the mists of antiquity. But a people nurtured
on music and song have assigned to David a unique
place in this regard. The only feasible explana
tion is that he cultivated and adapted these attain
ments in such a way as to ennoble and purify the

168 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
national life. He was a psalmist, and the first and
greatest psalmist. The suggestion is worth consider
ing, whether the services of David to his nation and
to posterity were not analogous to those of which
we have examples both in secular and sacred poetry
among ourselves. Students of Burns know that
many of the most popular songs which we all delight
to call his were adaptations by him of words to
old tunes, which either had no words associated
with them, or were wedded to words entirely unfit
for popular use. A closer parallel is afforded by
the case of the Scottish Reformers who, " grudging
the devil all the best music," rescued many of the
popular and ineradicable national melodies from
their association with profane and licentious songs
and adapted to them sacred words, thus turning
" idle songs" into psalms and hymns. ^ In claiming
for David, however, this high place in national
sacred song, it is not to be understood that by
some sudden and violent wrench a separation be
tween secular and sacred took place. The distinc
tion which we usually draw here was by no means
so clearly marked in Hebrew literature as it is in
the different classes of modern poetry. It would
seem indeed as if, among the Hebrews, all the
1 " Ane Compendious Booke, of Godly and Spirituall Songs. CoUectit
out of sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other Ballates
changed out of prophaine sanges, for avoiding of sinne and harlotrie : "
reprinted by Andro Hart, 1621, from "the first originall Copie." See
additional note at the end of this chapter, p. 173.

SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS SONGS. 169
usual channels of ordinary song had been flooded
with the waves of religious feeling, so that the
distinction of sacred and secular was almost ob
literated. Not only is there a marked absence
of grosser themes which are found so generally
in earlier popular poetry, but even the innocent
themes of social life and experience are treated
from a religious point of view, and everything that
we include in the broad designation of sentiment
is tinged with religion. An Eastern proverb has
it that "love of country is religion"; and among
the Hebrews, instead of a sharp line being drawn
between sacred and profane, the domain of the
sacred was made to extend to the whole of life.
So, too, as to form, melody, and musical accompani
ment, there would seem to be little or no dis
tinction between the songs prompted by natural
phenomena or national or social events, and those
inspired by the highest religious emotions. David
brings up the ark from the house of Obed-edom
with gladness, and dances before the Lord with all
his might ; and he justifies his conduct in words
full at once of reverence for his God, and of scorn
for his passionless wife (2 Sam. vi. 12 ff.) So in
one of the most magnificent of the Psalms — a pro
duction so overcharged with imagery that we can
scarcely follow its meaning — in connection with the
goings of God in the sanctuary, we have a repre
sentation of the singers going before, the players

170 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
on instruments following after, among them the
damsels playing with timbrels (Ps. Ixviii. 24 ff.)
So, again, the prophets set forth the joy connected
with God's manifested glory as showing itself in the
forms of festive gladness : " Ye shall have a song
as in the night when a feast is kept ; and gladness
of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come
into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One
of Israel" (Isa. xxx. 29). "Again I will build
thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel :
thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and
shalt go forth in the dances of them that make
merry " (Jer. xxxi. 4).
It is now generally believed that we can detect a
link connecting secular and sacred song in the in
scriptions to those psalms which have directions for
musical accompaniment or indications of the melody
to which they were to be sung.^ There seems no
doubt that, obscure as these headings often are,
they relate to popular airs, whose words have not
been preserved, and to modes of music which formed
the types after which the liturgical music was mod
elled. These enigmatical headings are found for the
most part towards the beginning of the Psalter, and
in the great majority of cases are attached to psalms
which are inscribed " to David." If he did no more
than originate the custom of transfiguring popular
1 See, e.g., in the R.V. the headings of Psalms ix., xxii., xiv., liii.,
Ivi., Ivii., iviii.. lix., ix., ixix., Ixxv., Ixxx.

SYRIAC POETRY CONTRASTED WITH HEBREW. 171
airs into sacred lyrics, it would be enough to account
for the fame which tradition has assigned him. For
henceforward the literature of the nation was en
riched with a new class of composition without
being robbed of the pleasure of old association
attaching to the familiar cadences of the popular
music. Here also perhaps, as in the parallel cases
that have been mentioned, we may see how the old
and the new would be blended so intimately that
their separation is now all but impossible.
It is, however, worthy of particular notice that
the religious element, though it predominated, did
not obliterate the lower elements of poetical stimulus.
Eichhorn, in writing,^ more than a century ago, on
Eastern poetry, gives as one reason for the inferior
ity of Syriac poetry to either the Hebrew or Arabic,
the constraint imposed on the poets by the themes
they treated, which were for the most part the doc
trines of the Christian religion or the aberrations of
heretics. The contrast, indeed, with the Hebrew
lyrics is here very complete. The psalmists were
not Jewish ecclesiastical versifiers. There is no
indication as yet of such a preoccupation with the
Law or the ritual as became characteristic of the
later Judaism — an argument in itself that psalmody
did not arise in the post-exilian legalistic Church.
The Hebrew poet did not cease, because of his
^ In his Preface to Sir William Jones's ' Poeseos Asiaticse commen-
tariorum libri sex.' Lipsise, 1777.

172 POETRY IN PRE-EXILIAN TIMES.
religious inspiration, to have a keen observation
and lively appreciation of natural phenomena ; nor,
because he was hfted to a higher air, did he be
come indifferent to facts on the lower plane of
daily life. His poetic instinct kept him in full
sympathy with all that poetry loves to dwell on,
and adorned his verse with the unadorned beauties
of the choicest lyric. At the same time, however,
his religious instinct kept him from losing him
self in nature or boastfully exalting his nation :
his faith never wavered in an unseen, omnipotent,
all-ruling God, the God of nature, the God of his
nation, the God of the world. So that whether the
singer looked to the starry heavens, or contemplated
the earth and its fulness, or sang of the quiet resting-
places and domestic peace of the families of Israel,
all was viewed in the light of a universal Providence,
to whose power nothing was too great to be beyond
control, to whose watchfulness nothing was too
minute for observation. That wonderful psalm of
nature (Ps. civ.), which goes the round of all the
observed processes of nature as well as the employ
ments and sufferings of men, is a psalm in praise of
God from beginning to end, although it is strictly
true in its delineations of outward phenomena, and
warmly sympathetic with human vicissitudes. In
a word, all the richness of imagery which the lan
guage had acquired, the variety of metaphor which
it had elaborated, the storehouse of poetic feeling

PREDOMINANCE OF RELIGION. 173
and expression which it had accumulated, are poured
out as an offering to God, whose character is sym
bolised in the fairest of His works. The highest
function of the sacred poet was to summon men
to " Rejoice in the Lord " : " The Lord r eigne th,
let the earth be glad." " Let every thing that
hath being praise the Lord."

The edition of the ' Compendious Bulk ' believed to have been pub
lished in 1567 is the earliest of which a copy is known to be still
extant. A reprint of it, for the Scottish Text Society, has been
recently edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Professor Mitchell
of St Andrews. In the Introduction are given most interesting
historical notices of the spiritualising of secular songs and the ap
propriation of their tunes. The practice prevailed not only in the
sixteenth but also in the two preceding centuries, to say nothing of
more modern times ; and in the ' Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret '
it is stated that Ephrem Syrus also adapted to a spiritual sense the
secular and profane songs of Harmonius.

174

CHAPTER VIIL
THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
Hitherto we have been speaking primarily of the
literary form and poetic spirit which characterise
the Psalter as a whole. We now proceed to look a
little more closely at the substance and subjects of
the Psalms, as distinct from the form ; for here,
along with the pervading poetic spirit common to
all of them, and even along with a certain agree
ment in the tone and point of view, there is found
to be a great variety of detail. Some, it is evident
at the first glance, are of a more objective character
than others, treating rather of national than of in
dividual interests, addressed, apparently, rather to
the ear of the people than sung for the delectation
or relief of the singer himself The themes, how
ever, may be said to be as varied as the experiences
of human life. Sometimes it is a picture of domestic
quiet that the psalmist sketches in miniature com
pass but in clear graphic lines (Ps. cxxvii.), at other

hupfeld's CLASSIFICATION OF PSALMS. 175
times we hear the clash of arms and the shouts of
the battle (Ixxvi.), and still again the low moaning
of a soul in secret pain (xxxviii. )
The classification of the Psalms, however, accord
ing to their subjects, has never been found satis
factory, — and this chiefly for the obvious reason that
the distinguishing quality of such lyrical composi
tions is rather internal and reflective than descrip
tive or topical. Hupfeld attempts ^ a somewhat
exhaustive, but at the same time artificial, sub
division under two main heads : —
A. Of God and divine things generally (without
reference to special personal or national
circumstances).
B. Application of the general conception of God
and His kingdom to special relations and
situations.
But. even these broad distinctions do not hold (to
say nothing of his detailed subdivisions), for in
almost all the hymns which he places in class A
{e.g., viii., ciii., civ.), the glory of God is always
presented with reference to Israel His people.
Somewhat more satisfactory is Hengstenberg's
division, which proceeds upon the varying tone of
the psalmist's mind as exhibited in different classes
of psalms. Thus : —
(l) Psalms proceeding from a joyous frame of
1 Hupfeld, Die Psalmen, Einleitende Untersuchungen, i. § 1.

176 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
mind : expressing praise of God, His
majesty, grace, and goodness. Such are
Pss. viii., xviii., xix., xxiii., xxix., xlvi., &c.
(2) Psalms proceeding from a sad or depressed
mind. Laments, confessions, supplications,
in view of persecutions, afflictions, or mis
fortunes. As vi., xxxii., xxxviii., Ii., Ixix.,
Ixxiv., Ixxix., Ixxx., Ixxxiii., cii., &c.
(3) Psalms of a reflective tone. Religious, moral,
didactic psalms. As i., xv., xlix., 1., Ixxiii.,
cxix., cxxxix., &c.
Other attempts at classification are of a more
general kind, as, e.g. —
Creation or Nature psalms ;
Historical and national psalms, including kingly
and Jerusalem psalms ;
Psalms in praise of the Law ;
Psalms in prophetical tone ;
Speculative, reflective psalms ;
Personal, experimental (often plaintive) psalms,^ —
and so forth. But the general remark may be
made that, with the best possible classification of
psalms according to their predominant elements,
the classes fade away into one another, and even
within the same psalm we find varying and
suddenly contrasted features ; the connections of
1 See Driver, Introduction, chap. vii.

CLASSIFICATION OP PSALMS. 177
thought being subtle, and the transitions sudden,
as is the case more or less in all lyrical composi
tions. Though, therefore, we cannot arrange the Psalms
into strictly defined classes, it is not difficult to
distinguish certain dominant notes in the grand
music of the whole. We may now, accordingly,
turn our attention to some of the features which
stand out prominently in certain of the psalms.
And first of all, it cannot escape notice that
there is a weU- marked national element in the
Psalms. In ancient times generally, and among
Oriental peoples in particular, the nation was more
important than the individual ; and in a certain
sense it may be said that ancient Israel exhibited
this tendency even more distinctly than others. A
wonderful history, and the mysterious bond that
united them to their God, impressed deeply on their
consciousness, and kept for ever alive in their recol
lection, the conviction that Israel was one, just as
Jehovah their God was one. This appears in all
branches of their literature ; and in the Psalms
it is not wanting. How far the individual and
his interests bulk in the Psalter we shall have
to consider more fully by-and-by. In the mean
time we draw attention to the fact that the
nation and its fate were never lost sight of, and
that at times the predominant considerations are
entirely national ; so that even though they are the
M

178 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
most subjective of the compositions of the Bible,
the Psalms may still be described as a conspicu
ous part of the national Hebrew literature.
And the national element assumes various
aspects : —
1. In some psalms the past history of the nation
is dwelt upon, and several of these are among
the longest and most elaborate compositions of the
Psalter. What may have been the exciting cause
and first occasion of these national songs we may
not be able to tell in every case. It may have been
that in a season of national misfortune the thoughts
turned fondly back to the days of old, and the
singer called to mind what God did to the fathers,
making to Himself a glorious name by planting
Israel in the possession of the heathen. Or it may
have been a signal deliverance in his own day that
suggested to the psalmist the culmination of all God's
goodness to the nation, the assurance that He was
the same God still. Nay, it may have been some
secret trouble of his own that depressed him, and
urged him to use arguments with himself and with
his God for interposing on his behalf The remark
of Goethe is often quoted, that the best poetry is
always occasional. But the term must be taken in
a wide sense, to embrace the mood of the singer
as well as his external surrounding. The harvest
comes from the seed ; but if the seed is sown at
the wrong time, or falls upon unproductive soil.

THE PAST HISTORY. 179
the harvest will fail or be poor. If the best poetry
is occasional, it is not too much to say that some of
the worst poetry is that which is made to demand.
Some of the finest lyrics whose origin we can trace
have had a very slight moving occasion, but the
occasion has found the poet in the mood. And
all this should be borne in mind, lest we should
attempt to tie down the poet to a set of circum
stances and a precise time as depicted or referred to
in the poem. In any case, the presence of these
psalms, and the obvious relative importance they
hold in the collection, show conclusively that the
national history was matter of devout contempla
tion in the circle of the psalm-singers, and inferen-
tially that it was the subject of reflection among
the people at large.
The psalms in which this is the predominant
theme are found with various headings, or without
headings, in various parts of the Psalter, — an indi
cation that the theme was not confined to one class,
nor limited to one time.-'- Moreover, a comparison
of these psalms will show how variously the past
history was treated, according to the mood of the
singer and the immediate purpose of his song. The
same facts are dwelt upon, the same episodes re
counted, but in the most contrasted tones : now
^ Isaac Taylor (' Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry,' p. 149) classes here
seventeen psalms — viz.: xliv., xlvi., Ix., Ixviii., Ixxiv., Ixxv., Ixxvi.,
Ixxviii., Ixxix., Ixxx., Ixxxi., Ixxxiii., Ixxxv., cv., cvi., cxxvi., cxxxvii.

180 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
with a background of sadness and despondency,
if the times are evil ; now in jubilant notes, if the
prospect is hopeful ; and sometimes the different
strains alternate or commingle in the same psalm.
One note, however, is never found. There is no
boasting of national greatness, no assumption of
glory to themselves or to their forefathers for all
that the past had to show of prosperity. " Not
unto us, not unto us," is the burden of the song,
whether it is joyous or sorrowful ; and even when
there is the nearest approach to a bare recital of
events, the inference evidently suggested is, " had
it not been the Lord that was on our side."
The question for us to consider is, whether there
was such a stimulus to patriotic feeling, such a va
riety and excitement in the national history in pre-
exilian times, as might have led to the production
of psalmody of this kind ; or whether we have evi
dence in the historical books of anything of the
nature of patriotic song.
Let us reflect what was the geographical and
political situation of pre-exilian Israel, and what
was the nature of the national life that was led be
fore the collapse of national independence took place.
Here assuredly there was no dearth of themes for
the poet ; for though the boundaries of Israel were
narrow and their dominion insignificant compared
with those of the great world-powers, they were
near enough to the great movements of the time

VICISSITUDES OF THE HISTORY. 181
to take notice of them, and sometimes were involved
in them — to their cost. Besides, they had in their
own domestic history such an amount of vicissitude
as to keep thought on the alert, and to sway the
susceptible mind with the alternations of hope
and despondency, confidence and fear.
The national life of Israel was not idyllic, though
their social and domestic life partook much of that
character. Like other nations whose territory is cir
cumscribed and yet varied, they had a history more
stirring than that of empires of wide extent and
world-dominion. Their earliest traditions went back
to events which had moulded their own growth and
have fashioned the course of the world's history.
The deliverance from Egypt, the wanderings in the
wilderness, the conquest of Canaan, — these never-
forgotten episodes were of a kind first of aU to con
solidate national life, and then to inspire national
song, and enkindle national faith and hope. A
nation that has great events to look back upon is
led to look forward to great events in the future ;
and these habits of retrospect and prospect give
a powerful stimulus to the poetic spirit. We
can understand, from the cases of other nations
who have had similar early histories, how, a poetic
people once finding voice in an outburst of patriotic
song, the music would sound down through the
ages and be caught up in increased volume as suc
ceeding days brought new occasions. And this is

182 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
what, in point of fact, we find in the history of
Israel. At the very beginning of their national history
stood the great deliverance from Egypt, the sojourn
in the desert, the occupation of the Promised Land.
And at that very time the historians have placed
the song of Miriam at the Red Sea : —
" Sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously :
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea."
It is a national song, a religious song ; the occasion
was one to rouse the most prosaic mind to poetry,
and it is in every respect most credible that such a
song should have arisen at such a time. And not
to speak in the meantime of the so-called song of
Moses and the blessing of Moses found in the book
of Deuteronomy (chapters xxxii., xxxiii.), we have
again the song of Deborah (Judges v.), admitted to
be fresh from the impress of the great victory which
it celebrates, breathing at once the spirit of corpor
ate national sentiment and that of exultant faith in
the nation's God.
These were events that could never be forgotten
and they never were forgotten. The recollection of
them was the very life-blood of the nation, keep
ing it alive in times of direst straits, leading it into
careless security in times of over-prosperity, — ever
nourished and purified by the salutary teaching
of the prophets. But if such events were at first

NATIONAL RECOLLECTION. 183
celebrated in song, did the music then suddenly
die away, only to be revived in post-exilian times ?
Was there no one among a people who were ever
singing on countless other themes, to sing these old
songs as the centuries rolled on ? And did the sing
ing of them, on succeeding occasions when a great
victory or a signal reverse recalled to mind the old
days, never quicken the poetic faculty to imitation
or emulation ? Are we really to believe that songs
like those which are found in the Psalter (such as
Pss. Ixxviii., cv., cvi.), which go back to those early
times, and recount God's great deeds, were never
once thought of till national independence was no
more and a little colony was struggling for exist
ence in Judsea ? What, then, becomes of " occa
sional " poetry ? Why, it is just by national songs
that the remembrance of national events is usually
kept alive ; and even if it were proved that those
psalms which recount the early episodes of the his
tory are of late composition, we should almost be
bound to assume that they had been preceded by
earlier songs of a similar kind which are now lost.
No ; if the people and the national historians loved
to revert to the " covenant " by which Israel was
made a nation, we may be pretty sure that the
poets of the nation a,lso caught inspiration from
these cherished traditions, and found themes for
their song in the unparalleled events that cluster
round the covenant.

184 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
And then comes the long period of the monarchy,
with its glorious victories, its startling deliverances,
the establishment of the Davidic house, the build
ing of the Temple, the rupture of the kingdom, the
opening up of a new world by commerce with dis
tant lands, the wars waged with Moab and Edom,
the entanglements with Damascus, the darkening
of the great cloud of Assyrian invasion, the com
pression of the decadent State between the great
contending forces of Egypt and Assyria, the collapse
of the Jewish kingdom, the smouldering ruins of City
and Temple. Was there no poet to sing on any one
of all these themes? Pre-exilian psalmody was,
forsooth, quite different from anything found in
the Psalms. Then either all this exciting history,
which roused the prophets into their grandest
oratory, never touched the heart of a poet- in
Israel — its greatest deeds and sorrows remained
unsung; or, equally incredible, while snatches of
songs sung at the digging of a well, and the boast
ful words of Samson over the slaughter of some
Philistines, have been preserved, all that was
sung of the nation's wonderful experiences has
not been thought worthy of preservation. Even
the prophets may wax as eloquent as may be, so
long • as they speak in the prophetic strain; but
they must not throw their thoughts into the form of
a psalm : the psalm-pieces which are found in their
writings having been inserted, we are asked to be-

RELIGIOUS SONGS IN PROSE BOOKS. 185
lieve, at a later period, when the love of psalms had
set in. If this be so, then the editors or redactors
who inserted these hymnic pieces have given proof
of a wonderful insight and sense of historical propor
tion. For they have placed these songs just at the
points where we should have expected the poetic
fire to blaze up : the song of Hannah at the birth
of Samuel, the father of the long line of prophets ;
the last words of David, when the Davidic house
was to enter upon its long and checkered career ;
the psalm of Hezekiah, when the might of the
Assyrian was miraculously broken at Jerusalem ;
the psalm of Habakkuk, when the Chaldean em
pire, the last of the invaders of Judsea, was exult
ing in its strength. Granting to Israel any poetic
talent at all, and looking over the wide field of the
nation's history, we could not fix upon more appro
priate times than these for the stirring of the spirit
to religious patriotic song.
From this point of view, again, we can perceive
a justification of the tradition which associates
psalmody, in its specific character of national re
ligious song, with David the King of Israel.
{a) In the first place, David appears just at the
time when the prophetic activity takes shape in
Samuel. The close connection of the last of the
judges, as he may be called, with the first of the
Davidic line, cannot be denied. And whatever
name we may give to those associations of prophets

186 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
who from Samuel's time onwards appear as a prom
inent feature in the religious history, we cannot
refuse to assign to them a strong influence in the
quickening of the national consciousness and the
cultivation of the national life. That these prophets
were enthusiasts no one denies ; indeed so marked
is their enthusiasm that it is now fashionable to
speak of them as fanatics. That their enthusiasm
found vent in music is only what might have been
expected, and is, in fact, one of their most marked
characteristics. But their enthusiasm must have
had something to fasten upon, — their music must
have been the expression of the feelings and ideas
in their mind ; and, judging by the succeeding
developments of prophecy, we can be at no loss in
determining what it was that stirred their feelings
— the past history and the future anticipations of
their nation. For the period of Samuel was un
questionably one of revived national feeling, and
the setting up of the monarchy marked a turning-
point in national history and national life.
Now when we hear over and over again of the
prophetic bands appearing with music, at such an
epoch when the heart of the nation might be said
to be glowing with national enthusiasm, it does not
seem strange that the rise of psalmody should be
placed just at this period. David's close association
with Samuel, his sojourn with the prophet, and the
particular favour shown by him to the priests and

TIME OP David's accession. 187
the manifest devotion of the priests to him, — all
these considerations, combined with his undoubted
poetic gift, make it no wonder that psalm-composi
tion should be dated from him, and that he, and no
second ideal David, should be spoken of as the sweet
singer of Israel.
(b) Further, it seems to be a matter beyond
question that with David's accession a new stage
is marked in the theocratic history of Israel. The
prophecy given to him through Nathan does not
rest upon nothing. Without assuming something
' of this kind we cannot explain the tenacity with
which the nation clung to the Davidic house, and
nourished the belief in its perpetuity till it took
shape in the Messianic hope. That this was not
a late conception is seen from the way in which
even the earliest of the writing prophets refer to
it as a matter well known and of fundamental
significance. " In that day will I raise up the
tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the
breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and
I will build it as in the days of old." These are the
terms in which Amos (ix. 11) refers to the hope
attached to the Davidic house. They afford a
proof of the character and standing of David in
the national estimation, and their force can only
be broken by the arbitrary assertion that they are
a later interpolation in the book of Amos.
Now if from David's time such a promise was

188 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
believed to attach to the Davidic line, it is not
at all incredible that this promise, or rather the
expectation of its fulfilment, should find expression
in national sacred song. If the belief that David's
house should abide, and enjoy God's special favour,
and be the means of working out God's world-pur
poses, existed down through the monarchy, there is
no need to say that late writers projected them
selves back and spoke out of the soul of David.
For David could first of all speak out of his own
soul, and succeeding poets, as the expectation took
firmer and firmer root, could expand and enlarge the
conception ; so that the kingly psalms may be the
fruit of the monarchical period, and yet give fore-
shadowings of an everlasting kingdom which was
ideal and future. And this leads us to consider
another aspect of these national psalms.
2. A very characteristic group of these national
psalms are those which "concern the king." There
are not very many in this class, but they are very
strongly marked. Isolated or occasional references
to the king occur elsewhere, but there is a small
number of psalms that may be described as ex
clusively kingly.^ These are to be found in all
parts of the Psalter ; and they exhibit a highly
ideal cast, of which we shall have to speak
presently. It is, however, here to be observed
that no king is mentioned by name except David —
^ Pss. ii., xviii., xx., xxi., xiv., Ixxii., ex. are the chief.

KINGLY PSALMS. 189
and " David and his seed " evidently stands for
the divinely constituted monarchy. This, in fact,
furnishes the key to the whole of this class of
psalms. Just as the psalms that recall the past
history have the covenant with the fathers for
their pole, so the kingly psalms have respect to
the promise given to David of* a sure house ; and as
the covenant bound the people to Jehovah as His
people, so the Davidic house was the representation
and the hope of outward national independence.
This has often been taken as a proof that the
psalms in question are much later than the time
of the monarchy, and inspired by the spirit which
is manifested, e.g., in the books of Chronicles, in
which exclusive regard is paid to the house of
David, and the northern kingdom is treated as
schismatic. It is, however, to be borne in mind
that the same view is taken in the books of Kings,
and that the prophets also regarded the house
of David as pre-eminent. Not only do we see
prophetic men appearing at the time of the schism
and emphasising the fact ; ^ but all the prophetic
writers, early and late, as they recognise a con
tinuity in God's covenant with Israel as a whole,
regard "David" as a link in the unbroken chain
of divine revelation and guidance.^ Even if it
1 1 Kings xi. 32-36.
2 Hos. iii. 5; Amos ix. 11 ; Isa. ix. 7, xi. 1-10, &c.; Jer. xvii. 25,
xxii. 1-4, xxiii. 5, &c.; Ezek. xxxvii. 24.

190 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
should be proved or conceded that these kingly
psalms are all later than David, the remarkable
fact remains that he and he only is expressly
mentioned, and that all the glory of the monarchy,
and all the expectation connected with it, are asso
ciated with his name and his line. So that it does
not seem too much to conclude that, though the
actual expression of the sentiment embodied in
these psalms may not be his, the sentiment itself
was as early as his time, and the stimulus to this
expression of it in sacred song was given by his
reign and his theocratic position. Thus, from an
other point of view, the tradition is justified which
ascribes to him the beginning of national psalmody.
3. There remains another prominent feature of
these national psalms to be alluded to — viz., the
importance assigned to Jerusalem. This comes
out in the kingly psalms ; but it is not so much
because it is the royal residence, as because it is
the " city of the great King," in whose palaces
God is known for a refuge, that Jerusalem
bulks so largely in the Psalter.^ In Salem was
the tabernacle of the national God, in Zion was
His seat. Thither the tribes of God went up for
1 Isaac Taylor ('Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry,' p. 156) singles out
twenty psalms which " declare their own intention as anthems, adapted
for that public worship which was the glory and delight of the Hebrew
people," and among which the specially Jerusalem psalms are included.
They are: xxiv., xlvii., xlviii., Ixxxvii., xcv., xcvi., xcvii., xcviii., xcix.,
c, cviii., cxiv., cxvii., cxviii., cxxii., cxxxii., cxxxiv., cxlviii., cxlix., cl.

JERUSALEM PSALMS. 191
a testimony, and from this centre, as the perfection
of beauty, shone forth the glory of Israel's God.
In some of these psalms we can see the crowding
throngs of worshippers, and hear their joyful songs
of praise. In others the holy city and its worship
are seen afar off, and the devout singer longs and
faints for the courts of the Lord.
It would be arbitrary to say of these psalms that
they reflect the times of the post-exilian church,
when Jerusalem had become all in all to the pious
Jew, and the Temple was his only remaining glory.
For the very pertinent question arises. What was
it that induced those trembling exiles to brave the
dangers of the desert, and drew them westwards
to their own land where they made it their first
care to restore the Temple and its worship ? Be
yond doubt Jerusalem was already a hallowed place
in their eyes ; and thus, in view of the prominence
given to the city and the Temple in the Psalms,
we are forced to consider what pre-exilian history
and literature have to offer as an explanation.
We may at one step go back to the oracle found
both in Isaiah and Micah, and believed by many
critics to be derived by both these prophets from
an older source : ^ " And it shall come to pass in
1 According to the newest fashion, however, even this oracle is placed
very late, about the time when the prophetical portion of the Canon was
closed, B.O. 250. See CorniU's classification of the Hebrew Literature,
at the close of his Einleitung.

192 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
the latter days, that the mountain of the Lord's
house shall be established in the top of the moun
tains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and
all nations shall flow unto it. . . . For out of Zion
shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem" (Isa. ii. 2 ff. Cf Micah iv. Iff.)
This already implies a long association of sanctity
attaching to Jerusalem, for which there must be a
sufficient occasion and definite commencement. If
it was the presence of the Temple of Solomon
that started the idea, then we must conclude that
from at least a very early period of the monarchy
Jerusalem was regarded as something far more than
the royal residence of the Davidic kings : that, in
the conceptions of the prophets, it was elevated, if
not actually, at least ideally and prophetically, into
a religious metropolis of the world.
It is customary to say that all psalms which
refer to the house of God, and the dwelling-place
of God at Jerusalem, must be at least later than
David, since the Temple was not built in his
days, and the mere presence of the Tabernacle for
the Ark could not have occasioned the employ
ment of such dignified language. However that
may be, it is worth while to inquire what it was
that led David to make Jerusalem the religious
and political capital of his kingdom, and whether
there may not be grounds for the existence of
such an ancient oracle as has been quoted, and

EARLY IMPORTANCE OP JERUSALEM. 193
for dating the ideal importance of Jerusalem from
his days.
It is noteworthy that one of the first things
David set himself to do when he became king of
all Israel was to make himself master of Jerusalem
(2 Sam. V. 6-10). Up till that time we are not told
much about the place ; but it seems not a little
remarkable that it was — though so central — one
of the last strongholds of the native princes, and
was apparently only taken with some difficulty ;
while, on the other hand, it no sooner passed into
David's hands than it assumed a noteworthy im
portance. Jerusalem was evidently a stronghold and a royal
city before the time of David. Probably it had a
very old and a very interesting history. If it is
the same as the place called Salem in the fourteenth
chapter of Genesis, as many now believe, then we
obtain a very significant hint as to the reason that
led to its being made the capital of united Israel.
That chapter of Genesis has been a great per
plexity to the critics who have undertaken the task
of determining the origin of the sources out of
which the book of Genesis is composed. It refuses
to be classed with any of the main sources of the
Pentateuch, and is explained either as a separate
composition, perhaps drawn from a native Pales
tinian source, and incorporated by one of the
authors of the book ; or, as advanced critics main-
N

194 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
tain, of later date than any of them, being a legend
contrived to explain the payment of tithes to the
Jerusalem priests, and to magnify the character of
Abraham in a new aspect as a warrior. The critics
who take this latter view, of course, place no
reliance upon it as a historical document.
In that chapter it is mentioned that Melchizedek,
King of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met
Abraham returning from the rescue of the captives
of Sodom, blessed the patriarch, and received from
him tithes of all. The writer thus evidently be
lieved that this priest-king was a man of more than
ordinary importance, a professor of a pure religion,
though not deriving his knowledge from Abraham's
family, and apparently as such worthy to receive
tithes. It is a mysterious passage, and altogether
too minute and circumstantial to be a late invention.
Besides, it were surely a most elaborate invention,
in order to justify the payment of tithes to the
priests of Jerusalem, to relate how they were paid
first of all to a non-Israelite priest.
Now we have a reference to Melchizedek in Ps. ex.,
" Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Mel
chizedek." Of course, if the story in Genesis is a
late invention, the psalm will be still later ; but it is
difficult to see any possible reference to Jerusalem-
tithes or even to Abraham in the psalm. The refer
ence is to the peculiar nature of the priesthood of
Melchizedek. And merely to say that a priest for

MELCHIZEDEK. 195
ever after the order of Melchizedek means a priest
of the Most High God, as Prof Cheyne is con
tent to do,^ seems very inadequate, since all the
priests from Aaron's time could have been so desig
nated. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
however, gives the words another turn and a wider
reference. " Without father, without mother," so
he describes Melchizedek, " without genealogy, hav
ing neither beginning of days nor end of life, . . .
abideth a priest for ever." He takes Melchizedek,
in short, to be a type of Christ, " who hath been
made [a priest], not after the law of a carnal com
mandment, but after the power of an endless life."
Very remarkable, certainly, are these three pas
sages, separated, most probably, by centuries from
one another. They do not merely echo or repeat
one another, but each adds something to the pre
ceding and whets our curiosity to know more.
"King of Salem — priest of the Most High God"
— " Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek "
— " Without father, without mother, without gene
alogy, having neither beginning of days nor end
of life." And now, excavated from the dust of
centuries, have lately been brought to light docu
ments, older than any of them, which it is believed
help to explain them all. In the first place, it
has been proved that the uncouth names in this
chapter are not inventions of Hebrew writers of
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 26 f.

196 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
legend, but that kings with the identical or closely
similar names ruled over the places mentioned ;
and although no record has been found of the
precise events related in the chapter, yet similar
raids to the country of the west, and similar
alliances of kings from the region of Elam, are
matters of history. In short, in reading this
fourteenth chapter of Genesis we are not in a
region of legend, but on the firm ground of
ancient history. The bearing of this on the
whole subject of the credibility of the Pentateuch
we need not stop to inquire.^ But, as connected
more closely with the subject in hand, we have to
refer to another set of monuments recently brought
to light. Among the tablets found at Tell -el -
Amarna are some letters, belonging to about 1400
B.C., from one 'Abd Khiba or Ebed-Tob (as his name
is variously read), prince of Jerusalem, addressed to
the King of Egypt. He calls his city Uru' Salim,
which is ^ explained to be " city of Salim " or Salem ;
and what is most remarkable, he repeats over and
over again, as a thing that was his proud dis
tinction, that neither his father nor his mother
exalted him to his dignity, but "the arm of the
mighty king." This expression does not seem to
refer to the King of Egypt who is being addressed ;
^ See Hommel, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, chap. v.
2 Records of the Past, Second Series, vol. v. p. 54 S. Hommel, loc.
cii., p. 201.

JERUSALEM AND THE MONUMENTS. 197
for though the title "mighty king" {sharru dannu)
is given to Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs in
these tablets, it is not found applied to the kings
of Egypt, and the context suggests that the prince
of Jerusalem was appealing to some ancient and
special privilege that he enjoyed over other princes.
Some suppose^ that the phrase means the oracle
of the native god. But whether this be so or not,
it is very remarkable to find the King of Jerusalem
appealing in this reiterated way to his mysterious
appointment. There is much more here than " an interesting
and valuable fact about Jerusalem," as Prof. Cheyne
grudgingly describes it.^ We have a clue to the
significance of those mysterious passages in which
the name of Melchizedek occurs. True, we have
no mention of his name nor of his meeting with
Abram. But we learn that in that remote period
there was a King of Jerusalem who ruled not
by hereditary succession, but by some mysterious
authority which he expected the King of Egypt,
his suzerain, to respect. And all this falls at a
time just such as the chapter before us depicts ;
for the details of the invasion which it contains
were not invented by the writer. The remarkable
collocation of proper names precludes this supposi
tion ; and, as for the alternative explanation that
1 See Sayce, loc. cit.
2 Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 238 f.

198 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
a Jew, writing at a late period in the Exile, and
desiring to give verisimilitude to a legend, embel
lished it with proper names procured from Baby
lonian scribes, it is very probable that by that
time the facts would have been forgotten and
their record inaccessible. The Hebrews must have
learned them long, long before the Babylonian
exile. Why could not the Israelites have preserved the
ancient traditions attaching to the city which be
came their capital ? Why, indeed, might not this
very tradition have had a special influence in the
selection of Jerusalem for the capital, and found
its way into the minstrelsy which clustered round
the hol}^ city ? If there was such a sanctity attach
ing to Jerusalem from patriarchal times, and such a
tradition of a pure religion of " the Most High
God" associated with the place, we can under
stand David's choice of the city for his capital.
For, though the Hebrews traced back their national
covenant to Abraham, they proceed upon the as
sumption that there has been but one true religion
from the beginning of the world. This is the under
lying belief in all the accounts of primeval time con
tained in the first eleven chapters of Genesis ; and
a priest of the Most High God would be a repre
sentative of this true primitive faith. Abraham's
faith is linked on to the one primeval religion,
the order of Melchizedek is an order that is in-

PSALM ex. 199
dependent of time, a priesthood of that order is
one that never passes away. And so the idealised
king-priest of the house of David, stepping into the
inheritance of the ages, taking up the honours of
an indefinite past, carries them forward to an in
definite future, " a priest for ever after the order
of Melchizedek" (Ps. ex.)
All this does not prove that Ps. ex. was written
by David, or that it referred primarily to David in
person. But it does make it quite credible that
the conception involved in such psalms should have
found expression in verse during the palmy days of
the monarchy. And let us bear in mind what is
the alternative. If psalms like this do not belong
to the pre-exilian age, then they must be brought
down to a period long subsequent to the captivity,
the time when princes of the Asmonsean family
were ruling in Jerusalem. This psalm, e.g., is
taken by Prof. Cheyne to refer to Simon Macca
bseus (b.c. 141). But why a Levitical priest at
that late period should have regarded it as an
honour to be compared with Melchizedek is any
thing but obvious. For, though Josephus relates,
as Prof. Cheyne is careful to remind us,^ that Simon
Maccabseus was made by the people their ruler
and high priest, he does not seem to have been
aware of the fact that the distinction of the Jeru
salem priest -king was that he was not appointed
^ Origin of the Psalter, p. 26 f.

200 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
by any such authority. In fine, if Gen. xiv. is
not a farrago of outlandish names put together
by a reckless story-teller, nor a legend of exilian
Judaism ingeniously interwoven with painfully
gathered archseological material, but gives a trust
worthy picture of the times to which it relates,
then the sacredness of Jerusalem was known
by the time of David ; and from David's time
onwards such a thought might' be germinating in
the national consciousness of Israel. The " ever
lasting gates" through which the ark of Jehovah
passed (Ps. xxiv.) at the beginning of David's reign
were not hyperbolical ly so named after all ; and it
is no wonder that, as Prof Cheyne reminds us,^
Jerusalem was by the time of Isaiah called a city
of righteousness (Isa. i. 21, 26), and that by all
the prophets it was spoken of in terms which are
not explicable merely on the ground of its being
the place of the king's palace and the king's court.
And the point gained is, that it is quite conceiv
able and credible that psalms concerning the king,
and psalms celebrating the glory of Jerusalem and
its worship, might have been composed and sung
from the earliest period of the monarchy.
Kindred to the idea of drawing near to God in
the worship of the Temple is that of nearness to
God or dwelling in His house. And this idea finds
expression in some of the psalms which have not
' Origin of the Psalter, p. 42.

THE GUEST-PSALMS. 201
inappropriately been termed " guest " psalms. The
chief of these are xv., xxiv. 1-6, xxvii. 1-6, and
xxiii. And the idea occurs also in brief expressions
elsewhere, as, e.g. —
" I will dwell in Thy tabernacle for ever :
I will take refuge in the covert of Thy wings." — Ixi. 4.
" Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness :
Evil shall not sojourn with Thee." — v. 4.
At first sight it might seem that it is neither more
nor less than the Temple that is thus referred to as
God's tent or house. But a closer examination
shows that the association of thought has shifted.
The idea of nearness to God, which is symbolised
by worship at the sanctuary, passes into the idea
of hospitality. From being a worshipper, the psalm
ist comes to think of himself as a guest ; and the
clothing of his ideas is now not the details of the
Temple service, but the arrangements of a hospi
table tent, or of a banquet in the house of a noble
entertainer. Perhaps, indeed, this idea of hospitality was not
suggested by the Temple service, but was more
primitive and elementary ; although the " house "
or " tent " is common to the two conceptions. The
inviolability of the hospitable tent to which a fugi
tive or wayfarer is admitted, the idea of protection,
not unconnected with that of a sacrificial meal, are
old and fundamental conceptions ; and perhaps we

202 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
may look in that direction for an explanation of the
language of the Psalms, full of confidence in security,
that is employed in this connection. Robertson
Smith seems to take some such view when he
says ^ that Israel was Jehovah's client sojourning
in a land where they have no rights of their own,
but are absolutely dependent on His bounty. It is
not easy to follow him when he goes on to say that
this is one of the most characteristic notes of the
new and more timid type of piety that distinguished
post-exilian Judaism from the religion of old Israel,
referring to Lev. xxv. 23 ; Ps. xxxix. 12 (Heb. 13) ;
Ps. cxix. 19 ; 1 Chron. xxix. 15. For we might
rather infer from the language of Hosea (ii. 8, 9,
&c.) that the idea was old ; and we are indeed
told that this was part of the ruder pre-prophetic
religion. Prof. Cheyne sees another reference, and
connects the idea of the guest -psalms with that
of forgiveness as expressed in Ps. xxxii. " Why
is forgiven Israel so joyful ? Because it is de
livered from earthly trouble ? Yes ; but chiefly
because it can once more fearlessly enter Jehovah's
house." 2 No doubt some such reference must be
assumed if these psalms are to be explained as
" Church " psalms ; but in unaffected lyric composi
tions the other reference is obvious and simple, and
certainly as intelligible as it is beautiful. Prof G.
1 Religion of the Semites, p. 78.
2 Origin of the Psalter, p. 236. Cf. pp. 387, 429.

IDEA OF HOSPITALITY EARLY. 203
A. Smith ^ has pointed out how the expressions
in Ps. xxiii. 5 might be based on the idea of
a fugitive from the avenger of blood, who finds
asylum in a friendly tent, and has a table pre
pared for him in the presence of his enemies.
And one would be disposed to expect such a
familiar and telling image to find its way early
into the figurative stock of the language of a
poetic people.
In this case, again, we need not come down to
a late period of history for an idea which gives
colour to many of the psalms. It is indeed to
be found outside the Psalter in the prose books. ^
And David, in a special manner, from his train
ing as a shepherd, and his experience as an out
law, would have had the idea brought home to
him many a time as he saw the tents of the
nomad, or was constrained to throw himself on
the protection of friendly defenders in his flight
from Saul.
On the whole it does not seem to demand a
great stretch of credulity to believe that the
pre-exilian period furnished abundant occasion for
the lyric treatment of subjects connected with the
national fortunes of Israel, or for songs in which
the city of Jerusalem and the Temple worship
1 Expositor, Fifth Series, vol. i. p. 33 ff.
2 See Gen. xviii. 2 ; Judges iv. 17 ; 2 Sam. ix. 7 ff. ; Job xxxvi. 16];
Is. xxv. 6.

204 THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN THE PSALMS.
should have a prominent place. And there are
reasons of no little weight to lead us to suppose
that some of these distinctive ideas may well
have, precisely from the time of David, become
themes of song.

205

CHAPTER IX.
SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
Before pursuing our present argument further, it
is proper to pause here and consider the situation
which has arisen. We have claimed that poetical
compositions exhibiting the characteristic features
of the existing Psalms may have arisen in the pre-
exilian period, and also that there was no lack of
occasion for them in the circumstances of the people
and in the occurrences of their history in the pre-
exilian time. But if this be so, it might be ex
pected that there would be no great difficulty in
detecting the occasions of the psalms, and so deter
mining the time and circumstances in which they
were composed. That there is such a difficulty,
however, is sufficiently proved by the great discrep
ancy that exists in the periods to which different
critics refer the same compositions. It is important
to inquire into the cause of this discrepancy. It
may be that an examination of the question will

206 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
throw some light on the validity of the methods
that have been employed. When whole centuries
intervene between the dates to which different
critics assign the same psalms, it is not inappro
priate to ask whether the critics are on the right
track, or are not undertaking an impossible task.
When each individual is so confident in his con
clusions, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the
grounds of the confidence lie more in his own mind
than in the facts of the case. When there is such
a wide range in the possibility of reference, one is
inclined to suspect that the original composers of
these songs had not in view certain precise com
binations of circumstances which they strove to
represent objectively in poetry, but rather some
general aspect of affairs such as could be treated
in a more subjective tone and handed down in a
form that would have more abiding application.
There are several considerations that assist us
to account for what may appear a vagueness and
want of precision of reference in the Psalms ; these
considerations will not only go far to explain the
variety which prevails in critical opinions, but may
guide us to a true appreciation of the character and
purpose of the Psalms themselves.
{a) In the first place, it is to be borne in mind
that our records of the period of the monarchy are
exceedingly scanty, and broad and general in their
statements. The accounts contained in the books of

SCANTINESS OP BIBLICAL RECORDS. 207
Kings are for the most part of a stereotyped form
and very limited in compass. From the close of the
reign of Solomon the deeds of successive kings are
repeated in slightly varied form, and long reigns
are passed over in a few verses ; although, when
there is an exception, and the historian dwells
upon more striking national events, we find either
that many of the psalms would suit such occasions,
or at least that vistas are opened to us of possible
and probable circumstances in which others might
have been composed.
If we contrast now with this brevity the fulness
of detail conveyed by the authors of the books of
the Maccabees or by Josephus, it will not be difficult
to understand how it is possible for modern critics
to find in these later writers a choice of national
occurrences, and a variety of situations to which in
a speculative way one might refer many of the
psalms, while, it is to be confessed, the canonical
books offer fewer such facilities for comparison.
(b) In the second place, it may be maintained
that, even with the wide choice of historical occa
sions for the Psalms which the books of Maccabees,
e.g., present, the references to those times which
critics profess to find are extremely vague and
shadowy. Hitzig's attempt to set down the Psalms
in regular sequence corresponding to the march of
events in the Maccabaean period can hardly be
characterised as successful ; and I do not know that

208 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
Prof Cheyne's attempts at precise identifications
have been received by scholars with the degree
of confidence which he himself exhibits. At all
events, if the references are so general that two
critics, so sharp-sighted, cannot agree as to details,
though agreed on the general principle, surely we
must allow that they are vague indeed. Prof
Cheyne himself, in allotting psalms to different
periods, has to confess that as to long periods we
have practically no definite historical information ;
and he has to characterise these periods by certain
assumed tendencies or phases of religious conscious
ness, and then to search for corresponding tones in-
the Psalms.
Yet when we are brought face to face with
historical periods which are crowded with events,
or characterised by such outstanding incidents as
could not but express themselves in sacred song,
if it were practised, there is as good reason for
assigning psalms to the pre-exilian period as for
relegating them to post - exilian times. Critics
usually adopt a somewhat high-handed manner in
dealing with those psalms whose headings refer
them to events in the life of David as these are
related in the books of Samuel. In these cases,
they say, the editors of the Psalter have simply
looked about for some recorded incident that would
suit the situation, and have even slavishly copied
into their headings extracts from the prose books

HISTORICAL SITUATIONS FOR PSALMS. 209
answering, in their opinion, those situations. But
is not this merely doing by anticipation what the
critics themselves do in the name of historical criti
cism? And has not the work of each successive
critic practically amounted to the setting aside
of the " headings " prefixed to the psalms by his
predecessors ? To the simple question. Do the
existing headings correctly interpret the situation,
or do the psalms thus applied suit the situation
as well as on the modern references ? — the un
prejudiced answer will be that the reference is
frequently as indecisive on the one application as
on the other.
And then, to come to later periods in the mon
archy, whenever events of an unusually exciting
kind are recorded, we find no lack of suitable
situations for psalms such as we now possess.
The reign of Hezekiah, for example, with the mar
vellous deliverance from the Assyrian invasion,
may well be celebrated in some of those jubilant
psalms which critics now delight to refer to
Maccabaean victories ; and the destruction of the
Temple by Nebuchadnezzar took place in circum
stances which were to a great extent repeated in
the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Indeed the
events of the history of Israel — as of other
nations — had a habit of repeating themselves in
slightly varying details at different periods ; and
the Hebrew psalmists, being true poets, have

210 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
seen to the heart of the events, so that their
songs are applicable to ever recurring situations,
and never die.
A history which itself was a great drama
suggests endless possibilities of poetic expression.
The whole lifetime of the prophet Jeremiah, for
example, was a period so tragic that it is no
wonder that many critics have regarded him as
the author of not a few of the more plaintive
psalms ; and we cannot but feel our emotions deeply
stirred in reading many chapters of the simplest
prose in the book that bears his name. What
an amount of pathos, again, is concentrated in
the story, so briefly told in the book of Kings,
of the destruction of Jerusalem and the burning
of the Temple ! (2 Kings xxv. 8-10). What a
wailing note sounds in the simple unadorned
phrases in which the historian passes under re
view the mournful scenes that crowded upon one
another as the Jewish State fell to ruins ! The
book of Lamentations is in itself a proof at once
how capable the poetical writers of that time
were of expressing the most tender emotion in the
fittest verse, and how deeply the national heart
was stirred by the national calamity. Both from
a literary and a religious point of view, the dirges
of which each chapter of that book is composed
are so finished and mature that we must allow
the exercise of the poetic art on such subjects

ABUNDANT OCCASIONS FOR PSALMODY. 211
during a long antecedent period. They may not
be the work of Jeremiah himself, to whom they
are traditionally ascribed ; but they are undoubt
edly the voice of the sufferers who lived through
the dreadful period of the nation's ruin, expressing
feelings which were still fresh, and delineating
scenes that were actually before the poet's eyes.
It has already been pointed out-^ that the Qina
or elegy is one of the oldest and most commonly
used forms of Hebrew song. And it would seem
as if the national muse had been nursing itself
for centuries on this plaintive melody, in order
that it might find relief to its agony under the
heart - breaking misfortune of national ruin. It
will, at all events, be hard to believe that singers
who had prepared the way for such a touching
series of dirges, never rose to the level of com
posing a few plaintive psalms.
(c) Another consideration, which cannot be too
much insisted upon, is the fact already pointed out,
that metaphor and imagery are woven into the very
texture of the language of the Psalms. The image
or metaphor is not, so to speak, a photographic
reproduction of an isolated event or situation, but
is part of the working material and literary ap
paratus of the poet, by the aid of which he strives
to give utterance to his inner feelings and mental
movements. The poets had learned to express their
^ Chap. vii. p. 155.

212 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
emotions in terms derived from external phenomena,
so that instead of some outward occurrence giving
the suggestion for a psalm, it is more likely that an
inner experience was the prior impulse, and clothed
itself in the only dress available for the purpose.
The heaping of metaphor upon metaphor, in the
attempt to attain adequate expression, is proof that
this was the case. Were we, in fact, to take the
metaphors literally, as descriptive of scenes actu
ally present to the eye of the poet, or to seek in
mere poetic figures for references to actual occur
rences, we should run the risk, in the first place,
of turning the loftiest poetry into the deepest
bathos, and, in the second place, of allowing our
selves to go astray in search of historical occa
sions for the compositions. As an instance of the
exercise of this unpoetic criticism, may be men
tioned Hitzig's reference of Ps. xl. to Jeremiah,
because the poet speaks of a "horrible pit" and
the " miry clay," and it is well known that
Jeremiah was on a memorable occasion shut up
in a dungeon. Nor is it much better when some
physical phenomenon mentioned in a psalm — as,
e.g., waterspouts, waves, and billows — is seized
upon as an indication of the spot on which the
psalm was composed. It is surely much more
consistent with all the operations of the poetic
faculty to suppose that the observant poetic eye
had long since taken in the varying phases of a

SIGNIFICANCE OF METAPHOR. 213
diversified landscape, that a poetic fancy had rocked
itself into harmony with the pulsations of the warm
life that beat in an exuberant nature, and that the
figures of speech thus suggested were so many
materials ready to hand which, in the mood, the
poet seized upon, as any writer of prose seizes the
fittest word to convey his meaning. Is it to be
supposed that the sight of a panting hart suggested
to a poet a pretty figure with which to begin a
poem ? Is it not more likely that his own in
ward thirst and longing for divine refreshing was
the moving cause, the idea to be expressed, and
that this idea found utterance by the aid of an
image which was part of the stock of the poetic
language, an image which all could understand ?
Precisely in the same way when an Arabic poet,
love-sick, declares that a bird of prey is gnawing at
his vitals, we are not to suppose that some vulture
seated on its prey before the poet's bodily eyes
suggested the figure ; but that the torturing pain
within him led him to seize upon a figure drawn
from a sight familiar to his hearers, the storehouses
of phantasy being ransacked for the fittest image.
This metaphorical element becomes more marked
the more the poet is moved by violent or conflict
ing feelings, or is at a loss to give vent to rapidly
changing and delicate emotions ; as, e.g., when, in
the same breath, he represents himself as sick,
surrounded by enemies, persecuted, and drawing

214 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
near to death. Taking his language literally, we
should be at a loss to discover whether he means
to describe external foes, or bodily ailments, or
both together ; whereas, allowance being made for
the poetic character of the phraseology, he seems
rather to be expressing his own inner spiritual
straits. Just when he seems to be labouring to
lay bare his whole case, the sudden change and
crowding agglomeration of metaphors are so strik
ing that we are positively unable to form to our
selves a picture, complete and consistent, of the
psalmist's situation ; and this feature is continu
ally recurring in all kinds of psalms. To take an
easy example, how futile would be the attempt
to throw upon one canvas, so to speak, the three
short clauses of one verse : " Thou art a shield
for me, my glory, and the lifter up of mine head."
Translated into abstract terms, the verse is terse,
striking, suggestive ; but it gives no indication of
the poet's outward circumstances. And if we look
at such psalms as vi., xxii., xxxviii., we shall find
that the complaint turns now upon subjective, now
upon objective hindrances and difficulties. At one
moment the psalmist is sick, wasted away, ready
to die, and then suddenly we hear of enemies,
oppressors, mockers, or even ravening lions, dogs,
strong bulls of Bashan. It is not one picture,
however elaborate, that is before us ; it is a rapid
succession of pictures thrown upon the field of

CHARACTER OF LYRIC POETRY. 215
vision, and fading away the one into the other.
" Hebrew diction," says Smend, " exhibits a strik
ing want of precision, which is to be explained
not merely by the incapacity of the language"
[I should prefer to say, not merely by the exuber
ance of the language] " but rather by the psycho
logical situation of the Hebrew. With the vivacity
of his feelings there goes everywhere hand in
hand a certain indefiniteness of conception." ^ All
which should be carefully borne in mind by the
interpreter of the psalmist's thoughts, for it is these
that present the difficulty more than his historical
situation. {d) Closely connected with this is to be taken
into account the whole character and nature of the
Psalms as literary compositions. However varied
are the themes, the poems have one common char
acter ; they are not primarily descriptive, but
essentially subjective and reflective. The Psalms
are usually designated lyric poems, and so they
are : songs primarily intended to be sung to the
accompaniment of the lyre. "A psalm — a song,"
we find frequently in the heading, the two words
being employed to denote the music and the sing
ing respectively. And though the Psalms may
not be so finished in form as the lyrics of Greece,
they do not fall behind them, but greatly surpass
them in one common feature of the lyric, their
1 ZATW, 1888, p. 67.

216 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
inner subjective element. Milton's three marks of
all good poetry are here : it is " simple, sensuous,
passionate." And Goethe points to the inner feel
ing as the soul of all good poetry when he says : —
" I sing, as sings the little bird
Upon the tree-top swinging ;
The song that from the throat is poured
Is rich reward for singing."
The singer seems to sing to himself, or to fondle
his lyre and address to it the outpouring of his
feelings. Hence it is that we have the abrupt
transitions and sudden breaks in the connection,
the play of alternating moods, the song at times
dying away at the end when the passion is ex
hausted, like a stream that loses itself in the sand,
or gathering itself up into one final fortissimo, in
which the whole is expressed. Not only is it a diffi
cult thing to follow the singer, his thoughts seem
even to outstrip himself; the associations of ideas
are subtle beyond detection, or he has thoughts
which he cannot express, and he thinks them while
the lyre soothes his mind to rest. The key to his
meaning is locked up in his own breast, and vainly
we look for it in some external situation or histori
cal event. No doubt his song is occasioned by
some experience he has had in his life ; in many
cases it is evidently suggested by the events of his
nation, and the situations of his time. But it may
be suggested by a thought of a time remote. More-

OCCASIONS FOR LYRIC POETRY. 217
over, we can never be sure that he keeps to the
particular theme with which he started. For it is
not an objective scene that he depicts ; it is the
universal and eternal element in the occurrence, or
the experience as a thing moving his own soul, that
comes forth in his song. The more he confines
himself to that universal element, the more intense
is the feeling to which he gives expression. The
more his poetry is divested of the temporary and
particular, the more numerous are the hearts that
are touched by it, and the more lasting his song
becomes. Delitzsch, in speaking of what he calls
typico-prophetical psalms, says : " The mystery of
these psalms is at bottom the mystery of all poetry.
The genuine lyric poet does not give a mere copy
of the impressions of his empirical Ego ; an ideal
Ego, as Vinet says somewhere, overhears, as it were,
this empirical Ego; it is this second soul that makes
the poet. The poet does not form a mere cast of
his impressions, but idealises them — that is, seizes
them by the root of their idea, and stripping off
and abstracting all that is adventitious and unim
portant, lifts them up into the region of the ideal." ^
The more closely, in fact, we can come to the
singer himself, the more we shall appreciate his
music ; we may deprive ourselves not only of the
pleasure but of the meaning of his song by im
porting into every strain a reference to something
^ Commentary on the Psalms, Introduction, x.

218 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
external to him ; and in any case, even if external
things are before his mind, we should strive to see
them in the light in which they appear to him.
It is this element, no doubt, that explains the
absence of detailed description and of precise his
torical reference which is so striking in the Psalms.
This poetry is not of the nature of the epic which
evolves some connected story or celebrates the ex
ploits of heroes. Nor is it dramatic, except occa
sionally and on a small scale, when its own vivacity
leads it into sudden transitions, with rapid repre
sentation of different thoughts and alternate words
of different speakers. It is the singer himself that
is embodied in the song. " Though we may not
know the precise circumstances under which the
poet composed his song, yet he himself knew them.
But he composes, in the first instance, under an
inner necessity. He does not need, for his own
information, to expound or detail his own situation,
and he has no cause to entertain his hearers, for
whose edification he sings, with a statement as to
whether the feelings he expresses were experienced
by him while sitting or lying, at home or abroad,
at work or at leisure." ^ And this, which is
true of all lyric poetry, is very characteristic of
Semitic poems. The famous Mu'allaqdt all start
with the simple occasion — which, however, is an
assumed one — of the poet's coming upon the traces
^ Beer, Individual- und Gemeinde-Psalmen, p. xci.

THE GEM AND ITS SETTING. 219
of the deserted camp of the people of his beloved
one, at sight of which he goes off in freest fancy
over the fields of memory, the original starting-
point being soon forgotten, while the poet's actual
situation is never revealed. And so, frequently in
the Arabic literature relating to the times of the
caliphs, some striking occurrence takes place, or
some clever remark is made, and the caliph asks
the court poet who is present to take the lute
and recite it in verse. Whereupon the poet sings,
but his chief care seems to be to eliminate the per
sonal and primary details ; and it is only the con
text of the narrative that enables us to find in his
song a reference to the occasion that called it forth.
And so the song remains, a little gem in itself, when
the manufacture of the setting has been long for
gotten. We may perceive the same thing also in
the Hebrew prophets, who in spirit and in tone are
at one with the poets. " For the real thing," it
has been well said,^ " in the prophets is their faith,
not the particular events predicted or projected, in
which they give their faith embodiment. These
events are always the events occurring immedi
ately around them in their day, which they fill
out and animate with the meaning of their own
universal conceptions." Therefore it may quite
well be that many of our psalms had a far humbler
occasion and a far more limited starting-point than
' A. B. Davidson in ' Expository Times,' August 1894, p. 492a.

220 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
learned critics ascribe to them. It is the inner
impulse moving the genius of the singer that not
only gives them their charm, but is indeed the thing
to be studied and explained. Anything that in
spired the writer for the time would suggest his
song. The clothing of his thoughts might be most
variegated, for he had a rich stock of poetic imagery
to draw from ; and he played with his idea and
set it in various lights according to his varying
mood. So does the lark start from the sod and
begin its carol ; but who would seek to explain the
lark's song by a reference to the clod of earth from
which it sprang upward ?
No doubt it may seem at first sight disappoint
ing that we cannot fix positively the actual occasion
of each psalm, and it may be thought we lose
so much the more in our endeavour to understand
it. We may, however, console ourselves with the
reflection that the lack of objective precision is
more than compensated for by the intensity of
subjective effectiveness. If we see the thing in
distinctly, it is because the life-breath of the man
is so closely about us. The very fact that the
psalmists have given us so little help in this
direction should teach us that the outward occasion
was not the principal thing to the writer himself;
and so the principal and important thing to be
reached by us is not the day or hour at which a
psalm was composed, or the spot on which the

FAR-FETCHED REFERENCES. 221
psalmist's feet rested at the moment, but the kind
of inner experience which made such composition
possible ; — to know, not how accurately he has de
picted passing events, so much as how true an in
terpreter he is of all events. In short, it is of the
utmost importance to understand the spirit of the
psalms and the views of the psalmists, and these
we can learn from their own words, in most cases,
if we consent to read them in their own light, and
refrain from forcing into them far-fetched references.
The occasion of a psalm is one thing, and it may
be very accidental ; the situation of a psalm is
another, it is given in the psalm itself, and is
essential. The sighing of the wind in the waving
trees, the murmuring of the gurgling brook, are
more to the poet than an accurate delineation of
the landscape ; and if we can catch these sounds
in his verse we gain more than if we had a photo
graph of the scene which lay before his dreaming
eyes. And many of the psalms, if I mistake not,
only yield their secret and their sweetness when we
cease to look for the occasion and resign ourselves to
the situation. Take such a psalm as the cxxvii. : —
" Except the Lord build the house,
They labour in vain that build it ;
Except the Lord keep the city,
The watchman waketh but in vain.
It is vain for you that ye rise up early and so late take rest.
And eat the bread of toil ;
For so He giveth His beloved sleep," &c.

222 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
I call it the Hebrew " Cotter's Saturday Night." ^
If read as a simple lyric of domestic peace and pious
contentment, it moves from beginning to end with
the delicate grace of artless life. If interpreted as
a "Church" psalm of the building of the Temple
and the re-peopling of Jerusalem, it has the stiff
ness of some creaking piece of dead mechanism. Or
take the 8th Psalm : —
" 0 Lord our Lord,
How excellent is Thy name in all the earth !
Who hast set Thy glory upon the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou established
strength," &c.
If we suppose a poet, with perhaps a little child in
his arms, contemplating the starry heavens from
a flat house-top, we obtain sufficient occasion and
suitable situation for such a perfect lyric.
This idealising tendency is particularly manifest
in the psalms which treat of the national history,
the hope of the house of David, and the glory of
the city and temple of Jerusalem. Here there were
certain familiar themes which might be suggested
to the poet at any moment and by any occasion,
themes on which poet and prophet delighted to en
large ; and however they may have been suggested,
the immediate occasion would be presently for
gotten, and the fancy would take its full freedom
of treatment. And just as in personal psalms there
1 See Expositor, June 1898, p. 414.

STANDING OCCASIONS FOR LYRICS. 223
is an alternation of hope and joy with sadness and
grief, so in these national songs entreaty is mingled
with thanksgiving, prayer with praise, and it is
not very clear which feeling is uppermost in the
poet's mind. Some of them give no indication
that there was any exciting cause in the public
history of the time to call them forth. They
may have been indited in times of peace, by
a writer who in calm reflection turned his mind
back upon past history, as was common with both
prophet and poet. Such a psalm might be one of
the longest of them, Ps. Ixxviii. : —
" Give ear, 0 my people, to my teaching :
Incline your ear to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable ;
I wiU utter dark sayings of old :
Which we have heard and known,
And our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children.
Telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord."
Here the psalmist apparently sits down on purpose
to recount the great things of the past for the
benefit of the younger generation ; and only the
keen eyes of criticism undertake, from incidental
hints or from turns of expressions, to discover
the date at which such a song was composed.
Thus, e.g. , some ^ would have it that, because the
psalm ends with David and makes no mention of
1 Hengstenberg, and similarly Delitzsch. See also M. de Harlez, in
' Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology,' ix. 372.

224 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
Solomon, it must have been composed in David's
time. Others, from Calvin downwards, maintain
that the terms in which David is referred to imply a
period long subsequent to his reign. Prof Cheyne,^
seeing that its " view of the Davidic kingdom re
sembles that of the Chronicler," says it must be
classed with Pss. cv.-cvii., as expressing "the
Pan - Israelitish sentiment of the Persian period."
Hitzig would bring it still farther down, to the
Grecian period. Hupfeld says the salient point
in the psalm is the choice of Jerusalem and Zion,
and by implication the rejection of Shiloh, which
lay in the northern Ephraim (vers. 67-70) ; but
that the didactic treatment of the history in
dicates a late reflective tendency. The references
to the tribe of Ephraim are taken by one set of
expositors ^ to point to the revolt of the ten tribes
from Rehoboam ; by another ^ to the final schism
that took place between the Jews and the Samari
tans in the post - exilian period. This is but a
specimen of the diversity of opinion that prevails
as to the historical allusions in the Psalms, and
only one example of the manner in which the same
facts may be made to support the most different
conclusions. From all which it is safe to infer
that the conclusions come to by critics reflect their
own estimates of the literary and religious capa-
^ Origin of the Psalter, p. 147.
2 Rosenmiiller, De Wette, &c. 3 Ewald.

IDEALISING IN KINGLY PSALMS. 225
bilities of various periods ; but that the original
writer of the psalm did not keep himself so ex
clusively and intentionally to any historical occur
rence as to enable us to say with confidence what
was the first moving cause of the psalm.
In the kingly psalms the idealising tendency of
the psalmists attains freest scope. These are no
secular odes, celebrating the prowess of heroes or
the magnificence of courts. It is in the books of
Kings that we find mention of the wars which the
kings waged, the might which they showed, the
palaces they built, the splendour in which they
lived. Even there the writers content themselves
with allusions to such things, and refer the reader
for fuller information to records which have long
since perished. And much less do the psalmists
dwell on these things. No court poets are they to
flatter their patrons with high - sounding compli
ments. As far as East is from the West are the
kingly psalms removed from the poems in which
the great monarchs of Assyria and Egypt are
celebrated by their minstrels. And yet they are
still more exalted in strain than even such songs.
The qualities which the psalmists ascribe to their'
king are indeed so high, the anticipations they
express for him and his dominion are so far-reach
ing, that we must either give them credit for
idealising in the fullest extent, or (if we restrict
their words to some actual king, and to definite
P

226 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
historical events) we must treat their words as
exaggeration to the highest degree. The psalms
of this class that stand out most strikingly are
ii., xiv., Ixxii., ex. ; and it is impossible to read
these and think that their meaning is exhausted
by reference to a mere individual occupant of
David's throne, much less to a monarch of any
other line. The tone of the psalms as a whole
forbids such a supposition, for there is nothing
more exalted in the loftiest utterances of prophecy.
Professor Cheyne, however, stoutly maintains ^
that against such a conclusion as this the young
sciences of language and religion enter a protest.
" The poetic glorifications," he says, " of Egyptian
and Babylonian kings, which have been disinterred
from the dust of ages, glisten to us of this genera
tion with a strange and pathetic beauty. The high
hopes attached to Rameses, to Nebuchadnezzar, to
the early Ptolemies, may have been bathed in illu
sion, but were ' too fair to turn out ' wholly ' false.' "
And then he proceeds to refer the most exalted of
the kingly psalms — not to any king of the line
of David, or even to an idealised son of David,
but to Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt. But to
this large liberality it is to be objected that the
"young sciences" referred to were not so much
as dreamed of in the days when these psalms
were composed, and it is not the tolerant wide-
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 141 ff.

PSALMS REFERRED TO PTOLEMY. 227
ness of critical views we have to consider, but
the standpoint and outlook of the psalm -writers.
It may be very fine to recognise a pathetic
beauty in the poetic glorifications of Egyptian
and Babylonian kings by the singers of their
own nation ; but surely it would be no undue
stretch of generosity to allow Hebrew poets also
to glorify their kings, especially when we con
sider the very different foundations on which the
thrones were established.
One of the most beautiful of the kingly psalms is
the seventy-second ; and if anything could show the
absurdity of the attempt to explain every phrase by
a historical reference, it is Hitzig's interpretation of
this psalm, in which he finds a consecutive series of
allusions to events in the reign of Ptolemy Phila
delphus. Prof. Cheyne, while not agreeing with
the German critic in details, assigns the psalm to
the same period. Nor can his own explanation of
the 45th Psalm, which he refers also ^ to Ptolemy,
be characterised as fortunate. He admits that the
character of this king was not such as a Hebrew
writer could admire, and also that the Hebrew poet
in his good wishes for the king far surpasses the
tone of Theocritus, who wrote odes in honour of
Ptolemy ; yet he thinks it possible and credible that
a high priest at Jerusalem sent this congratulatory
poem to the young king on the occasion of his mar-
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 166 ff.

228 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
riage, believing in aU good faith that the new king
was in reality what his father was, for the first time
in history called, a Saviour. " He wrote it, of
course, in Jerusalem, in surroundings happily very
different from those in which Theocritus in Alex
andria was inditing idylls, to a Jew necessarily so
profane."^ No doubt they "did not know every
thing down in Judee " ; but probably they knew
even at that date what their national religion and
their national hope were. The book of Chronicles
shows the growing regard for and higher idealising
of the house of David as time went on ; and it
would be difficult to prove either that the Jews of
Jerusalem were so blissfully ignorant of the state of
matters at Alexandria as is here assumed, or that
their writers allowed themselves to apply to any
Gentile monarch, however exalted and beneficent,
the language which the psalmists apply to the per
sonage celebrated in these psalms.
For, even if they were composed with such a
reference, a serious difficulty remains, which Prof
Cheyne labours hard to remove. ^ How did such
psalms gain admission into the Hebrew Canon ?
They were written, it is said, at the commence
ment of Ptolemy's reign, say about B.C. 287, "too
soon for the faults of the young prince to have cast
a shadow upon his name," ^ and even before the
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 171.
2 Ibid., p. 172 f. 3 Ibid., p. 143.

OBJECTIONS TO SUCH REFERENCE. 229
LXX. translation of the Law was thought o£^ It
was therefore long before the translation of the
Psalter into Greek, for even the Hebrew Psalter
was still in process of formation. Everybody knew
in whose honour they were composed. Prof. Cheyne
thinks that Psalm xiv. at least was sent direct as
a complimentary ode to Ptolemy, and that " there
can have been no difficulty in getting it rendered
into Greek, for some of the psalms may already
have been translated in some shape for private use
among the Egyptian Jews." ^ But what became of
the Hebrew originals ? For the psalms are in the
Palestinian collection, from which, and not from
the autographs, they were translated into the
Septuagint. It must have become apparent before
long that the expectations in regard to Ptolemy
had been mistaken. Certainly before the Mac
cabaean rising a " Church " psalm in the form of a
panegyric on a heathen king would have been the
last thing to be thought of ; and Prof Cheyne says
distinctly that " an eulogy on Ptolemy as such
would not have been adopted into the permanent
Psalter by Simon the Maccabee." ^ Why, then,
was it not suppressed or excluded from the still
unformed Psalter as soon as the mistake was dis
covered ? Prof. Cheyne's own argument against
the ascription of Psalm Ixxii. to Solomon applies
here with greater force : " Even supposing that a
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 172 f.

230 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
temple hymn-book existed in Solomon's days, how
can one suppose that a psalm which would read
like bitter irony would find or at least keep a place
within it ? " ^ For we have already been told ^ that
Simon " as high priest had power to deal as he
thought best with the provisionally closed temple
hymn-book," even to the extent of inserting in it a
highly idealised description of himself in Psalm cx.^
Instead, however, of likewise appropriating the two
psalms in question, or even accepting them with a
Messianic reference, it is far more probable, we are
told, that both were " explained by Simon (uncriti
cally no doubt) of Solomon." * This, however, only
increases the difficulty, although supported by the
gratuitous assertion that "doubtless in his time the
original occasion of the psalm had been forgotten."
For a long time had elapsed between the composi
tion of the psalms and the editorial work of Simon,
during which they were preserved and used just,
like the rest of the Hebrew psalms. If the original
occasion was forgotten by Simon's time, one would
like to know what occasion tvas assigned and what
meaning was attached to the psalms by those who
in the meantime said or sang them. Is it not clear
that, if it was so easy a matter to refer these psalms
to Solomon, the general feeling of Palestinian Juda
ism was already prepared, long before Simon's day,
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 142. 2 See above, chap. v. p. ill.
3 See above, chap. viii. p. 199. « Origin of the Psalter, p. 173.

THE NATIONAL HOPE OP ISRAEL. 231
to recognise a reference to the Davidic King as a
matter of course ? And does not the careful pre
servation of such psalms point in the same direction?
In fact there is no proof that the consciousness of
the nation ever took this strange and temporary
aberration of exalting a heathen king to the pinnacle
of national hope. The cases of Nebuchadnezzar and
Cyrus are quite difi'erent. It is one thing to be
nursing-fathers to Israel, the Lord's "servants" to
bring about the fulfilment of His purposes to His
own people ; but it is a different thing for a heathen
king to be identified with the fortunes of Israel, and
celebrated almost as divine. What we do know is
that the highest hopes attached to the house of
David immediately before these psalms are said to
have been composed, that these hopes sustained a
succeeding generation in the most arduous struggle
in which they ever engaged, and that they blazed
up into a bright flame at the Advent in the song of
Zechariah : —
" Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ;
For He hath visited and redeemed His people.
And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us
In the house of His servant David ;
As he spake by the mouth of His holy prophets
Which have been since the world began." —Luke i. 68-70.
The probability therefore is that these hopes had
never died out.
The important thing to be observed is that, in

232 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
any reference of these psalms, a process of ideal
ising on the part of the poet has to be assumed. If
that is so, then it is surely most natural to think
that the idealising would be done with the legiti
mate reference (and what other could be legitimate
to a pious Palestinian Jew ?) to the line of David.
Such psalms manifestly celebrate some king, actual
or ideal, and, even if actual, idealised, who stood in
no equivocal relation to the very finest sentiments
and highest aspirations of the national consciousness ;
and if, as the vividness of the description indicates,
they were composed when some individual repre
sentative of the line was on the throne, they must
belong to the time of the monarchy. Seeing that
the only choice is between the ideal of one sitting
on David's throne, an ideal dating from David's time
and never fading from view till the era of the New
Testament, and some idealised pagan king, whose
character was unknown to the poet or glossed over
in his flattering verse, it is not very probable that
ordinary common-sense, or sane criticism of Hebrew
national literature, will hesitate long as to the
alternative. And no one will grudge it to Prof
Cheyne that, by thus exhibiting the insuperable
difficulties of his own position, he has demonstrated
that the loftiest psalms in the Psalter must be
placed in the pre-exilian age.
Finally, the psalms which refer to the worship
of the Temple, and the cognate " guest - psalms,"

PATRIOTISM OF THE PSALMISTS. 233
exhibit the same idealising tone, and lose their
force when explained of the mere ceremonial of
the Temple worship, or referred to the dwelling
under God's special protection in the sacred terri
tory of Palestine. No doubt the psalmists took
pride in the palaces and bulwarks of the capital ;
they would have been poor patriots had they not.
No doubt the moving throng and the swelling
chorus of praise thrilled them with emotion ; and
no one who has felt such influence in the great
congregation will find fault with them for being
so moved. But that the writers of these psalms
were strangers to true heart -devotion, no one who
fairly weighs their language will for a moment
doubt. Though in the crowded courts, their hearts
were lifted up to God's presence, the earthly taber
nacle was but an image of a heavenly abode ; the
same psalm that declares Salem to be Jehovah's
dwelling-place a few verses farther on says, " Thou
didst cause sentence to be heard from heaven : the
earth feared and was still" (Ps. Ixxvi. 2, 8). We
cannot, in fact, tie down the psalmists' words to
external circumstances without restraining their
poetic flight and emptying their words of their
significance. Whether through the Temple ritual
or not, the psalmists had attained to the idea of
true spiritual worship, and the external forms were
only aids to devotion, and found to be the fittest
medium for expressing it.

234 SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
In conclusion, the Psalms, though a most distinc
tive element in the national literature, should not
be treated primarily as historical documents, or
even as " disguised history." Instead of beginning
with historical criticism, we should approach them
with a sympathetic interest, endeavouring to fol
low the poet in his progress, without interrupting
him at every turn to ask what induced him to say
this or that. By following him to the end, and
allowing his words to tell their own tale, we shall,
at all events, come to occupy his situation ; and
through that, if by any means at all, shall we
succeed in understanding the circumstances by
which he was surrounded.

235

CHAPTER X.
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
There is one fundamental and pre-eminent char
acteristic common to all the Psalms, of which all
the others that have yet been considered may be
said to be only varying phases. They are religious
songs, else they would not have found a place in
the Canon ; but they are religious in a higher sense
than other songs which are also found incorporated
in the canonical historical books. Whereas the
latter hold a somewhat secondary place, subsidiary
to the history, which as a whole is regarded as
sacred, these are not incidental but primarily in
spired by the religious instinct or emotion. In
looking at the purely poetic characteristics of the
Psalms we cannot have failed to perceive that this
is no poetry composed for mere aesthetic purposes,
or on ordinary literary themes : the deeper feelings
of religion stir the mind of the poet, and find ex
pression in the best forms that the poet's art can

236 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
provide. So, though pre-eminently national, we
have seen how the national interest is mainly the
J religious one : the king is celebrated because he
is the Lord's anointed; Jerusalem is glorious be
cause it is the city of the great King, to whom
the tribes go up to pay homage ; the history is
dwelt upon because it is the record of God's won
derful works towards Israel ; and the individual
comes into significance chiefly and primarily because
he is a member of the theocratic nation. When,
however, we look more closely at the Psalms, we
find a still more distinctively religious element
running through them. For, whereas in all of
them, even when the immediate occasion can be
plainly traced, the theme is treated from a religious
point of view, in many of them the theme is so
exclusively religious that we cannot trace the oc
casion at all. For all that the psalm tells us, the
singer may be oblivious of the world around him ^
and its affairs, unconscious of aU but the feelings of
his own heart and the presence of his God.
No writer in the Old Testament, indeed, for any
length of time, treats any subject he may have in
hand apart from its religious aspect. If it is the
history of the chosen people, it is their relation to
God that constitutes history ; if it is the movements
of nations, these are controlled by the Supreme
Ruler for His wise purposes. And so in all the
other Scriptures : God is everywhere, and every-

SEMITIC RELIGION. 237
thing is viewed in its relation to Him. And yet
there is little or nothing of theology ; no reasoning y
about God, no argument for His being, no proof of
His attributes. The Old Testament writers start
with the assumption that God is there ; and any
one that denies or doubts His existence is a fool,
any one that is indifferent to His providence or
blind to His glory is brutish. " The fundamental
thought of all Semitic religions," says Kuenen, " is
the recognition of the Lord and Ruler of Nature
and all her phenomena ; the keynote of Semitic
piety is submission to the divine power, bowing
itself in awe to the very dust. In the one no less
than the other lies the germ of a protest against
the multiplicity of gods, which is necessarily accom
panied by a limitation of the dominion of each,
and which divides and therefore weakens the dread
they inspire." ^
Now this being the religious attitude of the Old
Testament writers generally, we most naturally
expect to find it assumed and maintained by the
vsriters of the Psalms. And in fact we may sum
up the religious contents of these compositions
under two great heads, corresponding in the main
to Hupfeld's broad classification,^ though subject
1 National Religions and Universal Religions, p. 24. Cf. Tholuck,
Importance of the Study of the Old Testament, in Biblical Cabinet,
vol. ii. p. 214 ff.
^ See chap. viii. p. 175.

238 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
to the qualification that the two continually meet
and interpenetrate each other : (l) What they say
or imply as to God Himself, in His character. His
working. His attitude towards His creatures ; and
(2) what view they give of nature and the world
as related to God, especially the relation in which
men stand to Him, whether friendly or hostile,
implying, of course, the relation in which they
stand to one another in the light of their attitude
to God. It will be convenient to consider the reli
gion of the Psalms under these aspects.
The psalm-writers never tell us how or whence
they have derived their knowledge of God. They
take for evident and for granted not only His being
but the character He bears. We cannot even trace
an advance in their knowledge in one part of the
Psalter compared with another. He may be repre
sented in different attitudes, now favourable and
near, at other times standing afar off, hiding His
face, or shutting up His compassions ; but He is the
same God still in all his essential character. As a
recent writer ^ has well said : —
The modern philosophy of the Unconscious, and the
fundamental scepticism of the agnostic, v^ould alike have
been unintelligible to the Psalmist, who furnishes in popular
language arguments which are philosophically impregnable,
and vrhich anticipate the doctrines of despair that have
gained such strange currency in the nineteenth century.

^ W. T. Davison, The Praises of Israel, p. 107.

HEBREW THEOLOGY. 239
In the 94th Psalm they are destroyed before they are
born. Teleological arguments, cosmological, anthropological,
historical — all lie wrapped up in these cogent questionings,
as the oak in the acorn.
" And they say. The Lord shall not see.
Neither shall the God of Jacob consider.
Consider, ye brutish among the people :
And ye fools, when will ye be wise ?
He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ?
He that formed the eye, shall He not see ?
He that chastiseth the nations, shall not He correct.
Even He that teacheth man knowledge 1
The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man.
That they are vanity." — Ps. xciv. 7-11.
Josephus, writing at a late time in his nation's
history, interprets correctly the spirit of the old
Hebrew writings when he gives as the reason of
the superiority of the Mosaic system over all
other legislations that Moses regarded all the
virtues as subordinate parts of religion, and not
religion as a mere subdivision of virtue : in his
legislation he recognises all our actions as having
dvacfiopav irpos ®eov, a relation towards God.-^
Diodorus Siculus calls the true historian " the
minister of Providence " ; and Plato says " the
Deity metes out all things " ('O @eos TrdvTa yeafj^iTpeu).
But nowhere do we see these principles so con
sistently acted upon and carried out in the treat
ment of history as in the Hebrew records. They
do not lose sight of the Creator in the creature, nor
1 Contra Apion,, ii. 16.

240 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
forget that the God who metes out all things is in
and above the world. He is Possessor of heaven >
and earth, but reveals Himself to His chosen ones,'^
and exercises a paternal care over the steps of the
individual. This mode of viewing God is apparently deep
rooted in the Hebrew mind : and, though attempts
have been made to exhibit a growth in the know
ledge or conception of the Deity, it has to be
confessed that it is not easy to distinguish early
and late in the views of the different writers, or
to limit the recognition of the various divine
attributes to certain times or to successive indi
viduals. If we go back to the representation of the
Divine Being which is found in the earliest Hebrew
writings, we find the fundamental conception to be
that of a Person endowed with qualities to which
the human faculties are allied. We speak of the
strongly marked anthropomorphism of the Hebrew
writers, and some have taken this mode of expres
sion to be an evidence of the low grade from which
the Hebrews slowly rose to a more ethical concep
tion. But we find that here in the Psalms, when
religious experience and conception have reached
the highest point attained by Israel, this anthropo
morphism is as strongly marked as in any writings
which can be supposed to represent a primitive view.
The same faculties are attributed to the Deity, the
same human mode of representation is employed

ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 241
as anywhere else — nay, the varying moods and
tempers which might be predicated of a human
being are ascribed to the Divine. And yet there
is no proof that this mode of speech was attended
with any degrading or derogatory conceptions of
God ; nor, we may add, has any better phraseology
ever been devised to express the worthiest and most
exalted feelings that the most spiritually minded in
any age have entertained. Says Prof Cheyne : ^
" The freedom with which the psalmists use an
thropomorphic expressions is a consequence of the
sense of religious security which animates them.
They have no expectation of being taken literally."
And he quotes as true of Scripture generally what
the Talmud says of the Torah, " They spoke the
tongue of the children of men." And, to quote
again from Prof. Davison : —
Personal religion depends upon belief in a personal God.
It is common, in these days, to raise metaphysical difficulties
over the question of divine personality, whether a character
istic which implies limitation can be asserted of the Supreme
Being, and the like ; but in the Psalms such questions are
never raised. The Psalmist cannot conceive of a God with- ^
out consciousness, intelligence, and will. His is a God who
thinks, knows, feels, and loves, who wills and acts — a God
who speaks to men and to whom men can speak, who reveals
Himself to mankind as the eternal " I Am," and with whom
men may humbly but truly hold communion, echoing an
eternal "Thou Art." This feature must not too readily be

Original of the Psalter, p. 286.
Q

242 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
taken as a matter of course ; for, strange though it may seem,
in the history of religions, man has been unable, apart from
the Scriptures, to preserve in its purity belief in a personal
God, and to hold the balance between Polytheism and the
errors of earlier times on the one hand, and Materialism and
Pantheism, with the errors of later times, on the other.
The Bible — and pre-eminent among the books of the old
Testament, ' the Psalter — is the stronghold of those who
believe in a personal God.^
This so-called anthropomorphism is in fact noth
ing but man's ascribing to the Supreme Being the
qualities which his own better consciousness de
clares to be the best and most fitting in one who
is the Best and Highest. So that, from what the
psalmists say of God, we may infer their opinions ; /
of what was best and worthiest in man ; as we may, !
conversely, conclude how thoroughly the Hebrews
ascribed an ethical character to God from the high :
ethical standard of duty which they recognised as '
binding upon man. No vice could be sanctioned
under the example' of deities such as the Greeks
worshipped ; nor could there be uncertainty as to
the result and reward of action when one God
was supreme, such as might tend to occur under a
rule of gods many, each one contending with the
other. Tholuck calls attention ^ to the idea of guilt
produced in the Hebrews by the sense of divine
holiness. Even Socrates, he says, was rich in his
> W. T. Davison, The Praises of Israel, p. 113 f.
^ Biblical Cabinet, vol. ii. p. 214 ff.

CONCEPTION OP GOD. 243
poverty, but was proud of his humility. "And if
David had been a tenfold greater sinner than he
was, his sins had all been obliterated by that, his
simple-hearted humility and penitence, which was,
and is, and will continue to be, a folly to all the
heathen : ' In my prosperity I said, I shall not be
moved : Thou didst hide Thy face, and I was
troubled.' ' Before I was afflicted, I went astray,
but now have I kept Thy word.' "
The God whom the Hebrew writers know, there
fore, and speak of although the absolute Lord of
all, is not conceived of as withdrawn from all re
lation to His works. On the contrary, it is only
in this delation that He is thought of continually.
We find very little here of the tendency observ
able in later Hebrew literature (such as in some
parts of the Jewish Prayer-Book ^) to enlarge on
the uniqueness and incomprehensibility of the
Divine character. The uniqueness of Jehovah to
the Old Testament writers was His incomparable
glory manifested in His great works done for His
1 Thus, for example, in the so-called '?^y in the Morning Prayer : —
"1. Magnified and praised be the living God ; He is, and there is no
limit in time to His being.
2. He is one, and there is no unity like unto His unity ; incon
ceivable is He, and unending is His unity.
3. He hath neither bodily form nor substance ; we can compare
nought unto Him in His holiness.
4. He was before anything that hath been created — even the first ;
but His existence had no beginning," &c., &c. — Singei''s
Authorised Daily Prayer-Book, p. 2 f.

244 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
people. And if at times for a space they reflect
upon His surpassing character, and the mysteries
of His essence, it is only for a brief space, and
they return to His "glory," which is the mani
festation of His power and majesty in nature and
in history. Even His holiness, which separates
Him from all that is imperfect or evil, is repre
sented as related to the world and to mankind ;
and, in a word, the Hebrew writers do not trouble
themselves with metaphysical speculation as to the
Divine Being, but think ever of Him as One having ,
the closest relation to the world, and exercising on \
it a constant and righteous rule. From heaven God
looks down. He delights in His works. His throne
is in heaven ; but His eyes behold. His eyelids try
the children of men ; and whether to rebuke the
proud, or to plead the cause of the oppressed, or to
heal the broken in heart. He is ever at hand to con
trol, direct, and guide.
Accordingly, there is in the Psalter little or noth
ing of that element which we habitually regard as
of the very essence of poetry : the " love of nature,"
as we usually express it, is hardly traceable. Sym
pathy with nature is more apparent — just because
nature and man are both regarded as creatures of
God's hands, and both suffer His wrath or receive
refreshing from His presence. He visits the earth
and waters it : He provides them corn when he has
so prepared the earth ; He maketh it soft with

GOD AND HIS WORKS. 245
showers, and blesseth the springing thereof (Ps. Ixv.)
On the other hand. He looketh on the earth, and it
trembleth ; He toucheth the mountains, and they
smoke. And so of animate creation : He opens
His hand, they are satisfied with good ; He hides
His face, and they are troubled (Ps. civ.) But there
is nothing of that revelling in nature, and delight
in nature for itself, which is so common in other
lyric poetry. There is not, for example, to be
found a poetical description of sunrise or sunset ;
but the sun knoweth his going down, and then all
the beasts of the forest creep forth ; the young lions
roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God
(Ps. civ.) The Hebrew did not, in fact, know of
that personification of nature which is so familiar
to us. He could not think of the visible universe
and the phenomena of the world apart from the
direct guidance of the divine hand ; he saw no
beauty that was not the manifestation of the
divine glory. He knew no Nature with a capital
letter. The heavens are the work of God's fingers ;
the earth is full of His riches. Hence, though
there is no love of nature, there is the keenest
appreciation of its beauty, there is the ready eye
to trace all that is fair, orderly, beneficent — for all
those things God's hands have made, — and there is
the true instinct of poetry to interpret these in the
most sympathetic spirit ; for man, crowned with
glory and honour, is made to have dominion over

246 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
the work of His hands. Not less ready is the poet
to see in the more awful phenomena of nature the
working of the Deity whose chariot-wheels roll in
the thunder, and whose darts are the lightning.
This is strikingly illustrated in that short but ex
pressive psalm (xxix.), which makes us almost hear
the crash of the storm and the rush of the tempest : —
" The voice of the Lord is upon the waters :
The God of glory thundereth,"
rising to the climax : —
" The voice of the Lord strippeth the forests bare :
And in His temple every thing saith. Glory ! "
And then the poet having found a resting-place for
his soul, the storm dies away into a calm : —
" The Lord will give strength unto His people ;
The Lord will bless His people with peace."
The psalm from which we have just quoted re
minds us, however, of the one aspect of God which
ever recurs to the psalmist's thoughts — His attitude
towards man and man's world. And the remark
that was made a little while ago finds here its illus
tration, that the noblest qualities of which man is j
conscious in himself are ascribed by the psalmists
to God. Whether in His dealings with the right
eous or the wicked, the Lord is righteous in all
His ways and holy in all His works. However
much the psalmist may lament God's distance from

GOD AND THE WORLD. 247
him in distress, however heavily the chastening
hand may lie upon him, he never suggests that im
perfection, or want of power, or unrighteousness on
God's part may be the cause of his sufferings.
" The theory," says Prof. Cheyne,-^ "which underlies
the prayers of the Psalter is that men should pour
out their whole complaint to Jehovah (Ps. cxlii. 3 ;
comp. Ixii. 8), but should not rest content till they
have emerged from the ' straits ' of anguish into the
'wealthy place' of full trust in God (Ps. cxviii. 5).
Then they can look out (Ps. v. 3) in the full assur
ance of faith, and the Divine Spirit conveys to them
an answer of peace (Ps. Ixxxv. 8)." On the other
hand, it is not in caprice or in arbitrary cruelty that
God manifests His anger against the wicked. No
doubt He is a sovereign God, and man may not
question His doing — He fashioneth their hearts
alike — -yet to the upright He shows Himself up
right, and only to the perverse, because they are
perverse. He shows Himself froward (Ps. xviii. 26).
In connection with this thought of God's relation
to man and the world, we should not overlook those
psalms which describe the glorious theophanies,
whether these are placed in the remote past or
looked forward to in the distant future. Closely
regarded, we shall see in them more than a mere
poetic representation of God's control of physical
phenomena. The theophany is, no doubt, dressed up
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 287.

248 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
in language borrowed from nature's operations, but
it will be perceived that the purpose of the theo
phany is God's revelation of Himself for the ad
vancement of His gracious designs toward His
people. So the theophanies of the past time have
particular and close reference to the Exodus and
the journey through the desert ; and all down
through the literature these glorious displays are
dwelt upon. But not less so is it in the future
reference. The burden of the expectation is, " Oh
that Thou wouldest bend down the heavens and
come down." It is the earnest expectation of the
creation for the manifestation of the sons of God.
As God was first, so He would be last : deliverance
began with Him, from Him alone could come its
final achievement. The apocalyptic passages in
some of the prophets, such as Zechariah and Joel,
exhibit this same expectation in only a varied
form, and the fact should not be overlooked in
any attempt to set forth the views of the Hebrew
writers. Whatever may be the significance, from
an eschatological point of view, of the ideal servant
of the Lord who is to bring deliverance, this other
aspect of the matter must ever be kept in view,
that deliverance can only come from God Himself
The combination of the two is worthy of notice, as
an adumbration of God and man meeting together
in the grand consummation to which the Hebrew
seers looked forward.

ABSENCE OP PARTICULARISM. 249
It is remarkable that we find in these religious
songs of Israel so little of that so-called particu
larism, or exclusiveness of spirit, which limited y
God's favour to one chosen people. There are,
no doubt, as we have seen, specifically national
psalms which recount God's great deeds for His
people, or recall His judgments inflicted on their
enemies, to show that He hath not dealt so with
any nation. In some also, no doubt, the national
feeling becomes intensified to the degree of bitter
ness, as in the so-called imprecatory psalms. More
over, many expositors now explain even the psalms
which speak in a general way of the righteous and
the wicked, as having also a national reference.
But what I desire to point out in the meantime is,
that even if this is the case, God's dealings with
men are not represented as arbitrary, but as
regulated by the moral character of those with
whom He deals.
And we shall see this more clearly if we
turn now to the other side, and consider how the
psalmists represent man as related to God, and, by
implication, how different classes of men are related
to one another in the light of God's righteous
character. Men are broadly divided by the psalmists into
two great classes, variously designated, but capable
of description as either the good or the bad. The
respective names by which the two classes are

250 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
known are significant either of the relation in which
they stand in God's view, or of the qualities which
they manifest towards God and to one another.
But various as the names are, they do not seem to
indicate different subclasses or subdivisions, but
simply various aspects of their standing and char
acter. And just as the qualities of God's character
are expressed in various ways according to the
moral attitude of these two classes, so the disposi
tions of men towards each other are expressed ac
cording to their moral and religious relations to one
another in God's sight.
Thus on the one hand the good are represented
as righteous, upright, perfect, holy — and this too
not only in comparison with other men, but in their
standing towards God. It is, however, evident that
the psalmists, in using such expressions of them
selves or of their fellow-saints, do not employ them
as exclusive of imperfection or sin ; for in the very
connections in which the words stand the writers
confess their sins and ask for mercy. ^ When a
psalmist says he has walked in his integrity, we
are bound to take his words as he employs them
and in consistency with what he says in the same
breath ; just as we interpret St Paul's words, " I have
lived in all good conscience to this day," in the light
of what he elsewhere says of his own sinfulness.
The psalmists, in speaking as they do, claim for
1 See on this subject Delitzsch, Comm. on the Psalms, Introd., x.

THE GODLY. 251
themselves an honesty of purpose and a sincerity of
devotion to God and to His cause. They are on the
side of the righteous Lord who loveth righteousness.
And so, taking the other aspect of their position,
they are God's beloved ones, His godly ones. His
flock. His faithful ones. They are even described,
especially in Asaphic psalms, in more endearing
terms, as His turtle-dove (Ps. Ixxiv. 19 ; cf Ixviii.
13), the generation of His children, the man of
His right hand (Ps. Ixxx. 17).
But there is still another side to the character
of the godly. In sharp and sudden contrast at
times to these high claims to uprightness, and the
touching pleading with God of the favour which
He bears to His own, we find the inner moral
qualities of the suppliants depicted in another set
of expressive metaphors. They are poor and '^
needy ; they are meek, weak, broken in heart ;
they go mourning, for inward grief consumes them ;
they sigh, wake in the night season, and take
no rest. Or they pine away with wasting sickness,
or decay under loathsome incurable disease, and
draw near to the very gates of death. It is not
always clear whether the troubles expressed in such
terms arise from external enemies or from inward
weakness ; but undoubtedly in many cases there
is no reference to the persecutions of enemies,
and such expressions as the poor, the needy,
and the weak are used to denote the thirst of

252 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
the soul for God, and the humiliation of the spirit
before Him. For there is the confession of guilt,
guilt sometimes long borne because long uncon-
fessed ; and the terms in which confession is
uttered leave no room for doubt that it was
sin against God, and not merely injury done to
fellow-men. If we turn now to the other class of men we
shall find the opposite characters ascribed to them.
They are the wicked, sinners, foolish, proud, and
"^ that not merely towards their fellow-men, for they
set their mouth even against heaven. They are
stiff-necked, scornful, boasters ; and, in contrast to
the poor and needy, they are the rich, who are not
in trouble as other men nor plagued like the rest
of mortals.
And seeing that the psalmists are not cool ethical
philosophers, surveying the moral world and de
scribing it, but lyrical poets expressing their own
feelings, they do not calmly contemplate the pres
ence of these ungodly ones in the world. " Do not
I hate them that hate Thee ? " is the sentiment of
the singer as he describes the proud boasters and
their doings. God's enemies are his enemies, and
indeed, being God's enemies, they actually show
their enmity to God's people. From this point of
view a light is cast upon the imprecatory psalms,
which jar so harshly on the feelings of those who
have been taught in the Gospel to bless and curse

THE WICKED. 253
not. We must not here lose sight of the fact that
the Old Testament morality is on a lower standard
than that of the New ; at the same time, we should
not fail to note that the persons whom the psalmists
execrate, apparently for personal wrongs, are de
scribed as the enemies of God and good, and so we
can recognise, even in these denunciations of evil
doers, an underlying love of righteousness.
These two classes of men thrown together in the
world produce naturally that conflict, jarring, and
enmity, the description of which bulks so largely
in the Psalms. The wicked plot against the just,
they slander them with their tongues — nay, their
tongues are as sharp swords, their words like
arrows ; and the righteous are made continually
their reproach, for apparently their poverty is cast
in their teeth, their confidence in God, especially in
times when God seems far off, is made the bitterest
taunt they have to endure. Not only in words,
however, but in cruel deeds the righteous are made
to suffer. For the proud ones are oppressors, who
plunder the innocent, pervert justice to the injury
of the undefended, sit in the high places, neither
fearing God nor regarding man. In such circum
stances the weak man who has no helper, unable
to cope with his foe, invokes an unseen Helper, an
all-powerful Avenger. God's benison on himself,
God's wrath and fury on his enemies, are in turn
implored ; but whether by the one means or the

/

254 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
other, it is the justification and deliverance of the
righteous that is asked and expected.
This, then, is the moral world in which the
psalmists move. They are on the side of God,
they have cast in their lot with God's saints, who
are also God's poor ; and over against this world of
right is the league of evil men, seeking their own
g-ain and advancement, but all united in one com-
mon antipathy to God's cause, one common aver
sion to God's people. There are thus two camps,
or opposite parties, into which, according to the
psalmists, the world of man is divided. They are
opposite, even when not antagonistic — i.e., even
when no conflict between them is in question ;
they are characterised by different dispositions,
are known by different external conditions or
situations, and in the view of God stand on dif
ferent grounds. But, as a rule, they are in con
flict ; and the psalmist himself speaks as if he
were a party, or indeed often the only party, on
the one side of the strife. And the strife is a
never-ending one. If it does not always come to
open hostilities, the enemy is ever on the watch ;
the psalmist may lie down in peace under God's
protecting care, but on the morrow he has to stand
to his arms, or at least to be on the watch. And
it must be confessed that sometimes the battle is
described in so highly figurative a manner that it
is almost or altogether impossible to form a bar-

THE WORLD OP MAN. 255
monious or connected picture of the scene. In one
and the same psalm the psalmist may describe him
self as assailed by wild beasts, attacked by fierce
enemies, and wasted by long -continued sickness
and ready to perish. Nay, he contemplates the
near approach of death, and sometimes laments
that he is going down to Sheol, where he can no
longer praise God ; while at other times, with a
miracle of faith, he refuses to admit that even
Sheol will separate him from his God, and com
forts himself with a thought of the beatific vision
beyond. When he attains such lofty utterances, it is plain
that the psalmist is again idealising; and just because
he is now in the region of the most delicate and spir
itual experiences, and endeavouring to depict the
most intense feelings of the soul, his metaphors are
the more bold, more complicated in their colloca
tion, more rapid in their transition.
This heaping together of metaphors to express
spiritual feelings is an evidence of an acquired
habit of religious language. Each figure is not a
photograph of an isolated incident or a line in
a stated delineation of a historical experience ; ^
for the pieces do not so harmonise as to enable
us to grasp the whole in one picture. And such
a habit could only supervene on a long discipline of
personal experience and education in the spiritual
^ See chap. ix. p. 213 f.

256 RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE PSALTER.
life. How far such an experience was attained or
attainable in the pre-exilian period we shall have to
consider in the sequel. In the meantime, it may be
pointed out that, in its main features, the view that
is given in the Psalms of man's relation to God, and
of the moral distinctions of human society, is one
that would occur to reflective minds in a very simple
and even primitive condition of things. Given a
conception of the Deity as essentially righteous in
all His ways and holy in all His works, the moral
sense would of natural consequence infer the rest.
And the spectacle presented in the Psalms, of the
wicked plotting against the just, of the rich oppres
sing the poor, of the proud lording it over those
who have no support, is the spectacle exhibited in
the social condition of the East apparently from
of old — a condition in which the feelings of indi
vidual freedom and individual responsibility have
not been cultivated, where the rulers and wealthy
have it in their power, if they choose, to abuse
their influence, and the oppressed have no redress.
The hardships of life must have impressed them
selves upon the minds of even ordinary men from
an early time and in many Eastern lands, though
the feeling has not found voice in literature. It
is not to be supposed that the millions who toiled
and fought to build up the great empires that rose
and fell in the East never gave a thought to the
arbitrary doings of their masters, nor felt the pain

man's INHUMANITY TO MAN. 257
of oppression. Their cry and their groaning went
up to heaven, though only the boastful words of
their lords and kings have survived on the monu
ments reared by their pride to commemorate their
victories. But it would not be wonderful if in
Israel, where, as all allow, a higher ethical con
ception was earlier attained than elsewhere, and
where there was at least, as it cannot be denied,
some general consciousness of a righteous law, and
a common conviction of the existence of a righteous
Ruler, the lyre of a musical people was early tuned
to the strains of pious reflection and humble com
plaint, and the spirits of the singers were quieted,
and their troubles eased as they poured out their
simple prayers and cast their burden upon the Lord.

R.

258

CHAPTER XL
THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
The specifically religious element in the Psalms, of
which we have been speaking, is by far the most
important feature of these sacred songs. The
psalms in which it comes most prominently into
expression are consecrated by usage in the Christ
ian Church as vehicles of the deepest feelings of
the heart. The devout Christian in these last days
finds no words more suitable than the words of the
old psalms to express his penitence, his submission
to God's will, his utter helplessness apart from
divine aid. The Saviour Himself poured out His
last breath with their words on His lips. And none
of His followers, who in the centuries have borne
their crosses after Him, whether on the road to
martyrdom or on the via dolorosa of a painful life,
have ever found themselves in a situation in which
some word from a psalm failed to describe their
case or to give relief under their burden. Un-

IMPORTANCE OP THE QUESTION. 259
questionably in the Psalms we reach the high-
water mark of Old Testament practical piety, the
best that the Old Testament can exhibit of heart-
religion. If they are early, so much the more will
our estimate of the pre-exilian religion of Israel, at
least in certain circles of the people, be enhanced.
If they are late, then we shall give full acknow
ledgment to the final and pure development of
religious experience which they represent, as we
feel bound in a common brotherhood to the pious
singers who composed them. For, whether early
or late, it is this personal and experimental aspect of
religion which has always been specially recognised
in the Psalms, and gained for them a place not only
in the public praise of the Church but in the private
devotions of its members. It has wonderfully
helped many a penitent, to discover that sinners as
great as himself have found mercy. And many a
perplexed heart, doubting even the reality of its
own experiences, has received a new access of faith
by finding that all who have sought God have been
led to Him in the same way, and that the whole
course of divine guidance has followed one con
sistent method, leading plainly forward to full
redemption in the Gospel.
We have, however, already seen incidentally that
another voice than that of an individual is now by
many heard in the Psalms. Accordingly we are
confronted with the question. Who is the speaker

260 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
in the Psalms, whether an individual or the Church
collectively? And to this question the present
chapter must be devoted.
There are about eighty psalms, or more than
one-half of the whole Psalter, in which the Psalmist
speaks in the singular number, and the experiences,
hopes, fears, difficulties expressed seem at the first
sight to be those of an individual. Now it is
contended by many modern critics that in the
great majority of these, or indeed in all of them,^
it is not an individual that speaks for himself,
but that the speaker is the personified Jewish
Church, whose vicissitudes are described ; and that
it is only on this supposition that the Psalms
yield a consistent and reasonable meaning, being
explicable by the historical situation of the times
in which they were composed. Closely connected
with this view of the speaker, and in fact implied
in it, is the supposition that the " wicked," the
" enemy," and so on, who is spoken of, is no indi
vidual nor a number of separate individuals, but
a corporate or collective adversary, either a heathen
foe or a hostile party within the nation. On this
view, in short, the struggle is not between the
^ A full exposition and defence of the view is given by Smend, in an
article "Ueber das Ich der Psalmen,'' in zatw, 1888, pp. 49-147, in
which all the " I-Psalms," with three or four exceptions, are explained
as uttered by the Church. Afterwards, in a review of Nowack's
edition of Hupfeld's ' Psalmen,' in the ' Theologische Literaturzeitung,'
Nov. 2, 1889, he explained even these exceptions in the same sense.

PERSONIFICATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 261
Psalmist individually and his personal or social
adversary, the arena of the strife is not the soul
itself or the sphere of personal experience ; but the
struggle is between two embodied parties, and the
arena is the open field of national history or
political life.
Now it is to be conceded at the outset that
personification is largely made use of in the Old
Testament. Not only Israel, but other nations,
either speak or are addressed in the singular.
" Perhaps thou dwellest in the midst of me," says
Israel to the Gibeonites (Josh. ix. 7, Heb.) ; " Thou
shalt not pass through me," says Edom to Israel
(Num. XX. 18: comp. vers. 14-21, xxi. 22; Deut.
ii. 27-29; Judges xi. 19); "I will flee before
Israel," says the Egyptian (Exod. xiv. 25, Heb.).
So the house of Joseph speaks to Joshua (Josh.
xvii. 14 ff.), the tribe of Judah to Simeon (Judges
i. 3), the city of Ekron (1 Sam. v. 10, Heb.), the
Jews of Bethel (Zech. vii. 3), and the heathen of the
same city (Zech. viii. 21). These and innumerable
other examples, to say nothing of the way in which
Israel is addressed as " Thou " both in the Law
and the Prophets, show that the figure of per
sonification was common from the earliest times.
It is therefore neither new nor strange that Israel
is often represented collectively in the Psalms, and
that in some of them we have undoubtedly a per
sonification and a corporate reference. There is.

262 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
for example, the alternate use of " I " and " we "
in many psalms, showing that even if there is
one speaker, he speaks along with or in the name
of others. We could not have a better instance of
personification than in Ps. cxxix. : —
" Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth up.
Let Israel now say ;
Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth up :
Yet they have not prevailed against me.
The plowers plowed upon my back ;
They made long their furrows.
The Lord is righteous :
He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.
Let them be ashamed and turned backward.
All they that hate Zion," &c.
In the same manner in Ps. cxxiv. : —
" If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
Let Israel now say ;
If it had not been the Lord who was on our side.
When men rose uj) against us :
Then they had swallowed us up alive,
When their wrath was kindled against us," &c.
In this latter psalm Israel is represented as the
speaker, though the pronoun throughout is in the
plural ; and in the former, though the "I " is em
ployed, there is no doubt of the sense in which it is
used. The psalmist has indeed taken the trouble to
tell us that he is uttering what might be the lan
guage of Israel as a whole ; and, be it observed, the
personification is so well maintained that the most
superficial reader is not misled by it. It is different.

PERSONIFICATION IN THE PSALMS. 263
however, with other psalms, in which it is only by
the most laboured exegesis that it can be made to
appear possible that the speaker is Israel or the
Israelite Church.
This theory of personification in the Psalms
has been so warmly taken up by the most recent
writers, and is so fully carried out by some, that
we must understand clearly what it amounts to.
It is not merely meant that a psalm, written
in words that express the inner experiences of an
individual, may be said or sung by a whole con
gregation. We are familiar with that in our
modern hymns ; and most people believe that the
same is the case with many of our most cherished
psalms. These are supposed to have been first
the outpouring of one pious soul, and because they
came from one true heart they are appropriated
by the many, the whole congregation singing as
one, while each individual appropriates the senti
ments to himself. So far from objecting to such
a general reference in the Psalms, we have already
argued ^ that this is a characteristic of a genuine
lyric that it passes lightly over what is temporary
or special, and seizes upon the abiding and uni
versal, so as to enlist the sympathies and interest
of a greater number of hearers.
Nor is it merely asserted that a psalm originally
composed with a reference to some definite situation
'¦ See above, chap. ix.

264 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
in the life of an individual may be taken as ap
plicable to a corporate body — to the Church, m
fact, either of the Old Testament or of the New.
In this way the ancient Rabbis explained many
of the psalms as descriptive of the fortunes of
"Israel" as a body, though they regarded them
as having been first composed by David at critical
periods in his history. And so Christian com
mentators have explained many of the psalms as
referring to the Church, making the speaker some
times the Church itself, sometimes Christ the head
of the Church. This mode of "applying" the
Psalms — whatever may be said of it as a mode of
interpretation — is not what is meant when it is
said that the "I" of the Psalms is the Church
personified.-^ What, in fact, these critics claim as demonstrable
and proved is, that psalms in which " I " alone is
found, and which could be read from beginning to
end and give a fairly coherent sense if taken as the
utterance of an individual, were yet from the first
1 It is somewhat unusual to find modern writers appealing for
support of critical views to the Rabbis and Church Fathers. Yet
Smend {loo. cit., p. 56 f.) buttresses his corporate reference of the Psalms
by the exposition of these venerable authorities. No doubt the Rabbis
were always looking for Israel, and the early Church Fathers for the
Church, in the Bible, and so they naturally found the Psalms capable
of application in their favourite sense. But was it not just because
they were uncritical that they so proceeded ; in other words, because
with a theory of prophetic inspiration in their minds, they took no
account of the primary historical situation of the psalm-writers ?

THEORY OP PERSONIFICATION. 265
composed, so to speak, in the name of the people or
the Church of Israel, and intended to express the
situation not of one person but of the people as a
whole. It is evident that the difference of view which thus
arises implies a very wide divergence in the estimate
of the history and the value of Old Testament
religion generally. For example, it will make all
the difference in the world if we ascribe the confident
expectation of immortality in Ps. xvi. 8 ff. to an
individual or merely see a reference to the perpetuity
of the nation ; and the confession of sin in Ps. xxxii.
will have a very different significance when regarded
as merely the acknowledgment of national back
sliding, and when taken as the utterance of a heart
broken by remorse. The greater the extension, the
less the intensity.
In order to observe how the theory is carried out,
and with what results, let us select such a familiar
psalm as the twenty -third, and observe its treat
ment by Smend, a leading advocate of the theory
of personification.^ There is no doubt that an
ordinary reader takes this psalm as the expres
sion of individual experience ; and, though a
whole congregation sings it together, each singer
appropriates it as his own. But let us hear
1 It is but right to mention that Prof. Che)Tie (Origin of the Psalter,
p. 319) admits this and other psalms to have an individual reference,
although he adopts largely the theory of personification.

266 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
how Smend, carrying out Olshausen's hint, ex
pounds it : —
" The Lord is my Shepherd." But the shepherd,
says the critic, does not tend a single sheep but a
flock, and Jehovah is always called Israel's shepherd.
It is true, no doubt, that Jacob is represented as
saying that Jehovah had tended him all his life
long (Gen. xlviii. 15), but then Jacob was not an
individual ; he stands for the people as a whole —
he is the people in germ. Moreover, Jehovah is to
lead the speaker in paths of righteousness for His
name's sake. But Jehovah's honour attached to
the people as a whole ; it was in the fortunes of
Israel that His sole divinity was manifested, and
not in the daily walk of individuals. So also the
expressions — " Thou preparest a table before me,"
" Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me " — can
only be rightly understood if the Church is the
speaker. The Church knows itself to be Jehovah's
guest, client, and house-inmate, so long as it dwells
in His land and has access to the Temple. Herein
not only has it the pledge of divine grace, but all
the grace of Jehovah is seen to be herein included.
The dwelling in the holy land and in the vicinity
of the Temple signifies for the Church salvation in
the fullest extent, — to be driven out from which
amounts to the rejection and destruction of the
Church. Once did it so happen, but never shall it
occur again. The Temple was indeed, as for the

THE TWENTY- THIRD PSALM. 267
Church SO for the individual, of the highest signifi
cance (Ps. cxxii.), but scarcely could the individual
so regard himself as Jehovah's guest and house-
associate. This confidence belonged only to the
people as a whole. Further, the individual might
live far from the Temple, and his nearness to it
did not shield him from distress. But the driving
of the Church from the holy ground would have
made an end of the religion.
This summary of Smend's treatment of the 23rd
Psalm has been given, not for the purpose of entering
into a detailed criticism of this particular applica
tion of the theory, but in order to exhibit the
ground-principles on which he proceeds, and which
to a greater or less extent are adopted by others
who, like him, carry out this theory of personifica
tion with rigour. It will be observed that it is
not for constraining reasons in the language of the
Psalms themselves that Smend gives them this
corporate reference. He has to take pains to make
apparent to us how this reference inheres in the
words, and at most he barely succeeds in showing
how it may be read into them. The constraining
reasons lie behind, in certain postulates, expressed
or implied in his whole mode of argumentation.
One of these assumptions, deemed of such import
ance that it is declared to be the starting-point of
the whole subject of psalm - criticism, is that the
Psalter was the praise-book of the Second Temple.

268 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
This assertion proves nothing, as has already been
pointed out,^ as to the date and first occasion
of individual psalms, nor does it warrant the
inference that all the psalms are " Church psalms."
Even if it could be shown by an examination of
their contents that the Psalms were composed for
common or public worship, that would not prove
their post-exilian origin, for the corporate feeling
was as strong in early as in late times ; and it
is quite possible that psalms may be of pre-exilian
date and yet have been composed for the use either
of the Temple worshippers or for assemblies larger
or smaller of a more private kind.
No doubt, if Smend's contention were established
— i.e., if it were certain that the Psalms were origin
ally composed primarily and directly for Temple
use — it would go so far to prepare for the accept
ance of the other position, that they were composed
in the name of the Church. For the poet, writing
what was to be recited and engaged in by the
assembled congregation, would naturally adapt his
words for the destined use. But it is by no means
to be admitted without question that the Psalms
were thus composed. On the contrary, a close
examination of them shows such a diversity of
situation, such a variety of conception and expres
sion, that it is only by the most violent straining, or
by obstinate adherence to a theory, that they can be
^ See chap. iii. p. 57 ff.

"CHURCH PSALMS. 269
viewed as having this primary reference. There is,
for example, a very marked contrast between psalms
found toward the end of the Psalter, in which public
praise is the avowed theme, and many of the com
positions in earlier books, where the themes are
most diverse, and the appropriateness to common
worship is far from evident.
Having the courage of his convictions, however,
Smend carries out his principle with a rigour that
gives a most constrained and unnatural tone to
many of the simplest and sweetest of the Psalms,
as we have just seen in his treatment of the 23rd.
The 1st Psalm also, he says, is generally misunder
stood. For here it is not the pious and the godless
individual that are opposed, but in both cases it is
collective bodies that are spoken of. The godless
are to come to nought in Messianic times because
they want the inner quality of continuance. But
since the closing verses speak of the godless, we
must understand the earlier verses to speak simi
larly of the godly collectively. The " man " who
in verse 1 is pronounced " blessed " is just the
Church. So, he maintains, in the passage Jer.
xvii. 5 ff, which is so strikingly parallel to the
1st Psalm, it is the totality of the people that is
spoken of
A few other passages on which he greatly relies
may be quoted, to familiarise the reader with what
at first sounds strange. E.g. —

270 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
" But as for me, I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God :
I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.
I wUl give Thee thanks for ever, because Thou hast done it :
And I will wait on Thy name, for it is good, in the presence of
Thy saints." — Ps. Iii. 8, 9.
" The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree :
He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They that are planted in the house of the Lord
Shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall still bring forth fruit in old age ;
They shall be full of sap and green." — Ps. xcii. 12, 13.
" Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust.
And respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies."
— Ps. xl. 4.
" Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, 0 Lord,
And teachest out of Thy law." — Ps. xciv. 12.
And even Ps. cxxviii. : —
" Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord,
That walketh in His ways.
For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands :
Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.
Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of
thine house :
Thy children like olive plants, round about thy table.
Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed
That feareth the Lord.
The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion :
And thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy
life.
Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children.
Peace be upon Israel."
He admits that this psalm is " somewhat different "
from Ps. i., referring as it does to the present, while

"CHURCH PSALMS." 271
Ps. i. refers to the future ; but he maintains that
since the first verse pronounces happy all pious
Jews, and the last verse mentions Israel, the
whole psalm must refer to the collective Church
personified. Even if we admitted that such psalms as these
were made for the public service of the Temple, it
would be difficult to imagine the mental attitude of
the poet, if poet he might be called, who composed
such a psalm as the one last quoted in the name of
the Church, or even with reference to the Church
as a whole. And if we reject the idea that the
Psalms were all composed primarily for public wor
ship, the corporate reference seems quite out of
place. Now, as has been said, there is absolutely
no proof that the Psalms were thus composed for
public use. To assume it is to beg the whole ques
tion as to the origin of psalmody. The only proof
worthy of the name must be drawn from the Psalms
themselves ; and any one can see from Smend's own
examples how weak the proof is. On the other
hand, it would be easy to produce expressions from
the psalms in question in which it would be alto
gether inappropriate to regard the Church as the
speaker,^ e.g. —
" I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an
^ Schuurmans Stekhoven has done this in reply to Smend in zatw,
1889, p. 131 f. Cf. also Sellin, Disputatio de Origine Carminum, &c.,
p. 36 f. The few passages quoted, which might be indefinitely in
creased, may be allowed to speak for themselves.

272 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
alien to my mother's children " (Ps. Ixix. 8). " Then
I restored what I took not away " (Ixix. 4). Indeed
this whole psalm is personal.
" Unrighteous witnesses rise up ; they ask me of
things that I know not" (Ps. xxxv. 11), which
Smend says may be a proverbial expression.
" Cast me not off in the time of old age ; forsake
me not when my strength faileth " (Ps. Ixxi. 9) ;
which he explains : " May God show Himself in the
later history as He has done in the past."
" Oh, turn unto me, and have mercy upon me :
give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and save
the son of thine handmaid" (Ps. Ixxxvi. 16) ; the
latter expression is never used of Israel, and is quite
inappropriate. " When my father and my mother forsake me,
then the Lord will take me up" (Ps. xxvii. 10).
" Behold, Thou hast made my days as an hand-
breadth ; and mine age is as nothing before Thee "
(Ps. xxxix. 5).
" The Lord will support him on the couch of lan
guishing : Thou makest all his bed in his sickness "
(Ps. xii. 3).
" Behold, I was shapen in iniquity ; and in sin did
my mother conceive me" (Ps. Ii. 5).
" For it was not an enemy that reproached me ;
. . . but it was thou, a man mine equal, and my
familiar friend," &c. (Ps. Iv. 12-14).
" Thou tellest my wanderings : put Thou my tears

CRITICISM OP THE THEORY. 273
into Thy bottle ; are they not in Thy book," &c.
(Ps. Ivi. 8).
"At midnight I will arise to give Thee thanks"
(Ps. cxix. 62).
It seems almost superfluous to argue seriously
against such a rigorous pushing of the theory of
personification as would give a corporate reference
to words like these. It is necessary, however, to
point out some of the stronger objections to the
theory as a whole, in order that the basis on
which it is rested may be made the more evident.
In the first place, it is difficult to see what is
gained by it. All the objections that have any
force against an individual reference of the
psalms in question are just as valid against the
corporate reference. There is the same heaping
of metaphor upon metaphor and sudden transition
from one figure to another, leading to a vagueness
of presentation on either supposition, as Smend
himself is forced to admit. ^ And then the brave
assertion that all the Psalms are Temple songs,
which was to solve all difficulties, breaks down
in the actual exposition ; for the " I " which ought
consistently to be always the assembled congrega
tion, is explained sometimes as the whole ideal
Israel, sometimes as the Palestinian Jewish
Church as distinct from the Jews of the Disper
sion, and sometimes even as the Church of the
1 ZATW, loc. cit, p. 66 f., 79. Cf. Sellin, p. 27 f.
S

274 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
Exile. And so, when enemies are referred to,
Smend is uncertain at times whether it is hostile
nations or renegade, apostate, and time-serving
Jews, parties, in fact, within the nation, that are
in question.^ Equally insufficient is the theory to
explain a feature which is very common in the
psalms referred to— viz., that the speaker draws
a distinction between himself and God's saints or
the congregation. Thus : —
" I will declare Thy name unto my brethren :
In the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee."
" Of Thee cometh my praise in the great congregation :
I will pay my vows before them that fear Him."
— Ps. xxii. 22, 25.
" I will wait on Thy name, for it is good, in the presence of Thy
saints." — Ps. Iii. 9.^
All that Smend can do by way of explaining such
language is to keep repeating that Israel may be
distinguished from the Israelites (Hos. i., ii.) and
Rachel from her children (Jer. xxxi. 15 ff.), and
so the Church of Jerusalem may in its own name
speak of the whole Church of the Dispersion. The
22nd Psalm, he says, is evidently post-exilian ;
and though, in the time of the Dispersion, distress
primarily fell on the Church in Judaea, it affected
also the Judaism of the whole world, which, in
1 See, e.g., his remarks on Ps. viii., loc. cit., p. 90 f.
^ Such passages are numerous. See, e.g., Pss. iv. 4-6, xxxv. 18,
Ixii. 8, cxvi. 14. Comp. Sellin, p. 37.

ARTIFICIAL. 275
this connection, would be the "congregation."^
But he does not tell us, for example, what Church
vows were, nor does he make clearer the idea of
the Church celebrating God's praise in the midst of
the Church. Even could we maintain in our minds
these nice distinctions between the Church and its
parts, what, we ask in the name of common- sense,
are we to understand by the father and the mother
of the Church, or the wife of the Church in the
innermost parts of the house, and similar incon
gruities ? Such exposition only tends to make the
Psalms unintelligible ; and I take it that the psalm
ists were too good poets, and too sober and earnest
thinkers, to give way to such conceits. And this
suggests A second objection, of a more positive kind — viz.,
that this carrying out of the personification theory
does violence to the lyric character of these psalms,
which, on this view, cease to be the spontaneous
outflow of the poet's reflective spirit, and become
highly artistic, or rather highly artificial composi
tions. For the poet is not giving vent to his own
thoughts and feelings, but is continually thinking
for some one else, putting himself in the place of
some imaginary David or some idealised Church
or community, and systematically proceeding upon
intricate distinctions and elaborate personifications,
which are in the highest degree forced and un-
^ ZATW, 1888, p. 80 ; also Theol. Literaturzeitung, loc. cit.

276 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
natural in lyric poems. Thus, instead of coming
warm from a glowing heart and expressing the
rapidly changing feeling of the poet, the psalms
are turned into descriptive sketches of the fluctu
ating fortunes of the Church as a whole, as the
speaker is now execrating foreign enemies or cen
suring lukewarm kinsmen and apostate Israelites,
or again appealing for divine favour on the plea
of a worship faithfully performed at the Temple, and
a tie indissolubly connecting Jehovah with the Holy
Land. In short, to empty the Psalms of all per
sonal reference is, as has been said,-^ to make these
lyrics a species of poetry entirely unparalleled in the
world. Whereas, in contending for an individual
and personal significance, we do not exclude a
wider collective reference, just because it is the
property of a good lyric to express what is deep
est in the poet's own feelings, and what appeals to
the hearts of the largest number of readers. Hence,
on this view, the rapid interchange of the " I " and
the "we," which to the personifying theorists is so
difficult of explanation, is really the best mark of
the genuine lyric.
In the third place, the theory, in the unsparing
way in which it is carried out, not only fails to do
justice to the literary character of the Psalms, but
does violence to their religious spirit ; for it implies
a movement of a retrograde kind, and is inconsistent
^ Beer, Individual- und Gemeinde-Psalmen, p. xciv.

RETROGRADE. 277
with the very position from which the critics them
selves start. One of the reasons most strenuously
insisted upon for the post-exilian origin of the Psal
ter is that the tone of religion in the Psalms is far
too high for pre-exilian times. It needed, we are told,
a long time for the teaching of the prophets to sink
down into the general consciousness and come forth
purified in the spiritual songs of the post - exilian
Church. Yet, though the critics are continually
repeating that the tone of the Psalms is too high
for pre-exilian times, when they apply this theory
of personification, they are ever attributing to the
psalmists the very same circumscribed views and
narrow local considerations which they are in the
habit of describing as the pre-exilian or even pre-
prophetic religion. What could be balder than
Smend's explaining^ those passages of the Psalms
which speak of delight in nearness to God and dwell
ing in His house as the expression of the Church's
confidence of safety because the Temple was stand
ing, and of its belief that the celebration of worship
was the pledge and assurance of His presence ?
Or what shall we say of his estimate of the post-
prophetic religion and of the " Church "-conscious
ness of post-exilian times, when he writes : ^ " The
prayers [of the Jewish Church] referred to concrete
ends, the support of the Church against the ungodly
and the heathen, their deliverance from immediate
1 ZATW, 1888, p. 115. 2 Ibid., p. 55.

278 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
danger; and they importunately demanded an an
swer by visible facts, for on such an answer the
truth of the religion and the existence of God de
pended." Was it then for this that the teaching of
the prophets required so long a time to sink into
the general consciousness — to come forth again in
corporate national religion ? Why, these were the
very things for which all the prophets, early and
late, reproved their formalist contemporaries. And
one would rather expect Smend's elaborate toning
down of the spiritual meaning and his careful elim
ination of the individual reference of the Psalms,
in order to make them the suitable expression of
the religion of a Church -nation, to lead up to the
conclusion that compositions of so narrow a spirit
must be taken as products of the pre - prophetic
religion. In fact, the expressions "Church," and "Church-
religion," as used in these discussions on the
Psalms, are misleading. For the Church that is
indicated is not an invisible body of believing
souls, but a visible community, constituted, no
doubt, on a basis of common religious belief and
worship, but existing for " concrete ends," and
exercised to a great extent with the very secular
and material measures necessary for self-defence
and self-government. The Church of Jerusalem,
in whose mouth Smend puts some of the loftiest
Psalms, was, after all, but the municipahty — at

" CHURCH-RELIGION." 279
best, all that survived, or all that could be revived,
of the old national order. If it deserves the name
of a Church, it is a very broad one, for all were
members of it as a matter of course ; and however
passive or indifferent they might be, so long as
they formed no party hostile to the general good,
they were of the "saints" or "godly ones" who
made up the collective "I" that speaks in the
Psalms. Of necessity, therefore, if the Psalms are
to be explained as the utterance of a body like
this, their language must be restricted in its
application to relations that could be predicated
of such a body. And it is here that the incon
gruity appears ; for the language itself, being
derived from inward spiritual experience, is so
strikingly expressive of spiritual relations, that
we feel it to be no advance, but a retrogression,
to give it a lower application. When, for example,
a psalmist (and he may have been David himself)
sets divine gladness in the heart above the increase
of corn and wine (Ps. iv. 7), and can sleep in quiet
ness though surrounded by myriads armed against
him (Ps. iii. 5, 6), it is doing violence to his words
to assert that his faith and his religion depended
upon such " concrete ends " as plentiful harvests
and signal victories.
Let us, however, look into the matter a little
more closely, in order to discover if possible — what
is the essential point to be settled — not how the

280 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
Psalms might be sung or applied, but how they
came first from the hand of the composers. From
a merely literary point of view it must be con
fessed that there is a certain want of lucidity
in the view we have been considering ; and it is
worth while to examine the question from this point
of view, in order to try to represent to ourselves
what the position and literary situation of the
first authors of the psalms in question must have
been. First of all, it is undeniable that, not only in
the so-called " I " psalms, but in every psalm, the
primary speaker was one person. It was no com
pany that sat down, each to contribute a line, or aU
together to concoct a poem ; but the person from
whose pen or whose mouth the song first came,
whatever were his thoughts, thought them himself
as an individual. Be it picture or experience, he
saw the picture before him ; he imagined, conceived,
or felt the experience. It came first of all from his
mind. If he recounts facts that are known to all,
yet it is he that supplies the words and provides
the poetical setting. If he says "we," thereby
associating himself with others, he has something
in common with others, yet he speaks primarily
and directly of and for himself And if, speaking
for all, he uses the simple "I," he may be using
a personification ; but, if it is a matter of experi
ence he is relating, one would expect him not to

THE LITERARY PROCESS. 281
say " I " unless he had made experience of what
all feel.
Let us now suppose that a poet sets himself
deliberately to employ personification. It is an
art, and it will have to be artistically worked out.
A certain collective body, whether all Israel, or
the true Israel, the nation or the Church, is to
be represented as a person, — clothed upon, so to
speak, with the dress of an individual. A nation
or Church has not, e.g., a face, hands, feet, bones,
soul, spirit, and so forth. All these are attributes
of the individual, and they are to be predicated
of a Church or community. Our artist must get
his materials somewhere before he can effect the
personification ; and if he has the true artistic
taste, he must choose the suitable materials for
the case. Just as the panting hart, the rushing
torrents, the rapid lightning, the thirsty ground,
and the hundred other figures by which mental
states and attitudes are described, had been seen
by the poet's eye and taken possession of by his
fancy, forming the poetic stuff with which he
worked, — so every touch that he is to give in his
process of personification must have been suggested
by his observation or his experience ; and his ob
servation must have been accurate, his experience
wide, if he is to portray the Church in a personi
fication that shall answer to the life.
Now if we look closely at what we may

282 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
call the material with which the poet produced
the alleged personification, we shall see that a
very great part of it is drawn, and could only
be drawn, from personal experience. The very
idea of personification implies the attributing to
the collective what is properly the quality of the
individual ; and even when the psalmist employs
such objective figures as holding by the hand,
entertaining as a guest, and so forth, he must
first of all have formed an image of the individual
in his mind. But when he goes farther and
speaks of purely moral and spiritual relations, he
must have formed a conception of these relations
in an individual sense, before he could apply them
artistically to the whole body or to the people.
How could he employ such expressions as a
broken spirit, a contrite heart, a clean heart, de
light in God (or in His law), communing with one's
heart, unless he had first experienced what the
expressions imply ? Smend himself admits ^ that
in such a psalm as the Ixxiii., in which the poet
describes his victory over doubt, the subjective
experience of the individual may be of special
interest for the whole, if each saint has had to
pass through it. But if this be so, then such a
psalm would be intelligible as a Church - psalm
only on the supposition that individuals had made
experience of what the psalm describes — in other
1 Loc. cit., p. 51. Comp. p. 124 f., also p. 70 f.

MATERIALS FOR PERSONIFICATION. 283
words, on the presupposition of a pretty general
experience of religion on the part of individuals.
So Prof Cheyne says : ^ " Granting that David,
like other poets, might idealise himself, how could
he work into his poetry thoughts and experiences
which had no root in his inner and outer life ? "
But this is only the statement in regard to particu
lar cases, of a truth of general application, that
personal experience is anterior to, and the founda
tion of, religious personification.
Both Smend and Cheyne appeal ^ for confirmation
of the personification theory to the choruses in the
Greek plays, in which the collective chorus speaks
as one person. Be it so. Yet it is the writer of
the play who is the first concipient of the idea
that is expressed, and the Greek tragedians, in
fact, especially Euripides, are fond of putting into
the mouth of the chorus their own conceptions as
a kind of commentary or reflection on the course
of the play. So that the poet himself speaks, as
it were, from under the mask of the chorus, and,
in any case, the thoughts are first of all those of
an individual.
It would not be difficult, I think, to prove that
even the prophets learned in this way by private
experience the great truths they were called on
to impress upon the people in their corporate
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 260 f .
2 ZATW for 1888, p. 60, Anm. 2 ; Origin of the Psalter, p. 262.

284 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
capacity. The comparison of Israel to an unfaith
ful wife is one of the most striking figures of
prophetic diction. But we cannot forget that
Hosea, who employs this figure with most touch
ing effect, is believed to have been taught the
fulness of its meaning in his own bitter personal
experience. We see also how Isaiah, whose duty
it was to impress upon the Israel of his day the
holiness and greatness of Jehovah, was set apart
for his ministry by that vision in the Temple,
when a live coal from the altar was taken and
put upon his lips in token that — unclean as he
felt himself to be— his iniquity was taken away.
It was the same with the prophets Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, as they expressly tell us : they had first
to be taught themselves before they were sent to
teach others.
If the prophets were thus taught by experience
the spiritual truths they were to declare, much
more must the psalmists, who, as it is alleged,
ascribe to the Church the feelings and experiences
of the individual, have made trial of these in their
own souls before they could apply them to the
body as a whole, so aptly and unerringly that
the most deeply experienced and spiritually minded
even under the Christian dispensation acknowledge
their fitness and force.
The conclusion, I think, is inevitable, that if we
have personification in these psalms, then we must

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 285
postulate the existence, at an earlier stage, of a
heart-religion, an experimental religion as the pos
session of the Israelite poets. It is surely an ex
traordinary position to maintain, that it was only
after and through the use of a personification so
very appropriate and striking that susceptible souls
came to know what personal experimental religion
was. For when Smend asks incredulously,^ " How
came it that the Jewish consciousness drew so
enormously from religious individualism ? " I would
simply ask. What else could it draw from in the
nature of the case ? And what he declares to
be " quite natural and self-evident " 2 I think
is quite unnatural and absurd — viz., "that indi
vidual piety would borrow from the common con
sciousness and not the reverse," — for religious ex
perience, in any proper sense, must first be an
experience of one, and the common consciousness
in such a matter could only be the aggregate con
sciousness of separate individuals. Smend himself in
his more recent work ^ expresses himself with more
moderation : " The religion was primarily repre
sented by the totality of the pious, but the party
of the pious rested ever on the personality of its
leaders, who furnished with their trust in God a
support to the totality of the pious." Prof Cheyne
more adequately represents the true position,
1 ZATW, loc. cit., p. 53. ^ Ibid., p. 143.
3 Lehrbuch der Alttest. Relig., p. 475.

286 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
though in somewhat hazy language, when, con
tending that the speaker in Ps. xxii. is the Church,
he says^ the writers "spoke for the community,
having absorbed that passionate love of God and
country which glowed in each of its members."
With more lucidity in another connection, when
speaking of certain "mystical" psalms, he says:^
" I know that, according to some critics, the speaker
in these passages is only the nation personified.
For my own part I do not think so ; but even if
they be right, such expressions could not have
been assigned to the nation if they had not first
been uttered by individuals."
Instead of admitting, therefore, that these psalms
were merely the expression of the national vicissi
tudes or social movements of the post-exilian com
munity, the very use of the language which they
embody could not have failed to keep before the
minds of the pious singers who composed them
the personal feelings which they so aptly express.
Since the metaphors and images employed are such
as could only be drawn from personal experience,
there must have been in the minds at least of the
poets themselves, and probably these were not few,
such a stage of spiritual experience as made that
phraseology natural to them and adequate in the
circumstances. So much for the poets who first
composed the Psalms.
' Origin of the Psalter, p. 264 f. 2 ihid., p. 385.

THE PSALMS AS SAID OR SUNG. 287
But we must go further. When these Psalms
came to be sung by the congregations of Israel,
what, we ask, was the consciousness of each indi
vidual worshipper who joined in the words ? I think
any reader at the present day, trained though he be
in abstract thinking, requires to make an effort to
keep up the feeling of personification which is said
to be expressed in the Psalms ; and I take it that
the Jewish worshipper, who came the nearest to
occupy the alleged standpoint of the poet, would
retain this consciousness also only by a constant
effort. If he was one who also was in sympathy
with the poet's religious experience (which I main
tain must have furnished this clothing for the per
sonification), then he was construing continually his
own inner feelings into an image of the Church.
And as for the ordinary Jewish worshipper, it will
be hard to believe that he did not, as we know
an ordinary worshipper at the present day who is
not trained in abstract reasoning and nice distinc
tions does spontaneously, take personal language
in a personal sense. So that, in fine, the worship
per who already had the personal experience would
have it fostered and cherished, and the man who
had little of it would be educated into it. The con
ceptions of the Psalms are coined in a personal mint,
in the chamber of the individual soul ; and whatever
they did to foster national or corporate religion,
they would also infallibly foster personal religion.

288 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
It seems to me, therefore, beyond question that,
just as each individual psalm must have been indi
vidually composed, after being individually con
ceived in one poet's mind, before they could be
collectively used as a Church liturgy, so the ex
perience of sin, penitence, pardon, peace, was made
in the individual heart before the expression of it
could be put into the mouth of a personified
Church. And that, after all, is the point we wish
to reach — viz., the ultimate source of psalm-religion.
It came from the one heart and appealed to the
hearts of many. It did not first express itself as
the attribute of people in the mass, who then
discovered that this was a fit expression for private
religion. The feeling of the Christian consciousness, and
of the religious heart generally, should count for
something here. For what is internal, subjective
criticism but the bringing of the matter to the test
of our best faculties of discriminating? And the
religious sense can be trusted as a good judge of
what is religiously conceived. The readiness with
which the individual consciousness has in all ages ap
propriated the Hebrew psalms as the expression of
its best moods and feelings is a proof of this at least,
that in these songs the Hebrew poets have come the
nearest to the deepest instincts and the most sacred
experiences of religious man. The Christian Church
— having Christ for its head— furnishes a far higher

THE PSALMS IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 289
and more perfect subject of personification than the
Jewish Church was fitted to be. And Christian
expositors have, just as Jewish expositors in their
field, applied these psalms, or many of them, to the
Christian Church. Yet beyond that, and in a more
special sense, have the Psalms been felt to be Christ
ian hymns, expressing the feelings, attitudes, and
relations of soul which are cardinal to Christianity.
Whatever may be said of the religious basis of the
Jewish consciousness in matters of religion, there
can be no doubt that in Christianity religion begins
in the individual heart, the essential soul-relations
are those of the individual, each believer being a
"lively stone" in the great living temple of the
Church. And it would seem strange, therefore,
that the Psalms — the closest approximation to
Christian truth — should furnish as their highest
type of religion a mere national attitude of Israel
to Israel's God, surrounded by enemies, not even
of a spiritual kind, but merely of a political or at
most a social description.
We cannot take these highly metaphorical de
scriptions as war-bulletins, detailing the progress of
campaigns ; we cannot form out of them a con
nected picture of national and social situations.
Whether the psalmist is speaking of himself alone
as beset by enemies, or is describing the situation
of his nation at any given time, we cannot construe
a hard historical counterpart of fact out of every

290 THE SPEAKER IN THE PSALMS.
detail, every figure, every metaphor of the psalms
in question. We shall have to admit here again,
as in regard to the kingly psalms, for example, that
the singer takes an upward flight into " an ampler
ether, a diviner air." Instead of forcing into or
out of every detail a reproduction merely of an
event or an experience in the outward life of the
individual or the nation, we should simply confess
that the poet is thus, by the aid of his poetical
symbolism, doing what a modern thinker would
do by the aid of his abstract terms ; that he is
moving in a spiritual and supersensible world, and
describing — as one who has been engaged in it —
the eternal struggle between the opposing forces
of good and evil. Thus and thus only, it would
appear, can we obtain a clue to the meaning of
those deeper, mysterious psalms, which seem to be
written under the very shadow of the cross of
Christ, and in which the psalmist seems to catch
a glimpse of the evangelical truth that through
death lies the path to eternal life.

291

CHAPTER XIL
PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
At every successive step in this inquiry it becomes
more and more apparent that a broader and deeper
question is involved than the mere dates of the com
position of the Psalms. Expressly or by implica
tion there is the underlying question as to the
character of the religion of Israel in pre-exilian
times ; and it becomes more and more evident that
upon the varying conclusions reached, or the presup
positions held, on that subject depend mainly the
conclusions or attitudes of different inquirers into
the subject of the Psalms. When, for example,
one critic-^ says of a certain psalm (Ps. viii.) that
he cannot understand how the " eminently spiritual
tone" of its words can be attributed to Israelite
antiquity, and even to the time of David ; and
when another ^ is continually dropping such remarks
1 Smend, zatw, 1888, p. 55.
¦ Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, pp. 99, 231, 237.

292 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
as that "such highly spiritual hymns" (as Psalms
Ixi. and Ixiii., for example) obviously cannot be pre-
Jeremian, and that "such ripe fruits of spiritual
religion" (as Ps. xxii.) could not have been pro
duced before the period which preceded Nehemiah's
first journey to Jerusalem ; and, again, that " such
sweet expressions of resting faith " as are found in
Ps. xxiii. and others cannot be pre-exilic ; it is
obvious that the writers employing such language
have an anterior controlling view of the history of
Israelite religion which excludes the psalms in
question from pre-exilian time, and that the sub
sequent work of the critic is merely the detail of
determining hoiv late the compositions are to be
placed. We are, accordingly, now brought face to face
with this fundamental question. Whether there
was room in pre-exilian time for such a religion
as is expressed in the Psalms ? - For greater clear
ness, however, we must consider a little more
closely what those critical writers mean when they
assert for the Psalms a tone so spiritually high
that it is inconceivable before the Exile. In the
preceding chapter the opinion has been expressed
that the critics here take a retrograde view of the
religion, and that their exposition is neither con
sistent with their own theory of development nor
adequate to account for the language of the Psalms.
And it behoves us to inquire what they understand

POST-EXILIAN JUDAISM. 293
by j305^-exilian spiritual religion in order to perceive
what they expect ^re-exilian religion to be.
It is plain enough that on the personification
theory, which resolves the speaker in the Psaljus
in all or most cases into the collective Church, the
religion which is described as so eminently spiritual
and high-toned is not regarded, primarily at least,
as the experience and sentiment of individuals — is
not, in short, personal piety and "heart-religion" as
we usually understand that expression, and in the
sense in which we nowadays read and appropriate
the Psalms. Critics like Smend tell us that in no
single instance does the " I " of the Psalms stand
for an individual ; and others who would not go so
far, even while they admit a sporadic and occa
sional personal reference, yet find the experiences
and situations of the post-exilian Church in the
great majority of places where the words appear to
read as the experiences of an individual psalmist.
It is plain, therefore, that the " spirituality " and
"high tone" are to be understood on this interpre
tation. So Smend has told us that the 8th Psalm
refers without doubt to " the discomfiture of Jeho
vah's enemies by common prayer," whereas in early
pre-exilian times "Jehovah manifested His power in
quite a different way." Prof Cheyne also speaks ^
of the individual consciousness being all but lost
in the corporate, and gives it as his opinion that
' Origin of the Psalter, pp. 265, 277.

294 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
"in most cases the supposition that the original
psalmist sometimes speaks as any pious Israelite,
who shares the joys and sorrows of his nation, would
speak, is sufficient." "Rarely," he says, "do the
Hebrew psalmists disclose their personality. They
had indeed their private joys and sorrows, but they
did not make them the theme of song. The indi
vidual consciousness was not sufficiently developed
for this, and so an unselfish religion was easier for
them than it is for us." Smend, while confessing
that the disappearance of the individual in the
mass, which is characteristic of ancient Israel, is to
our psychological understanding incomprehensible,
says that it comes in fine to be a question whether
the religious individualism, which people are wont to
get out of the Psalms, existed at all in pre-Christ
ian Judaism.^ And Prof. Cheyne indicates what
he means by high spiritual tone when he says of
Ps. xvi. : " Certainly no one who thinks that, upon
the whole, history is marked by progress rather
than degeneration, can, without inconsistency, affirm
this psalm to be Davidic. It cannot even be pre-
exilic at all, but is the fruit of that long weaning
from the world, begun in Babylonia, and perfected
under another foreign yoke in Israel's recovered
home. It is, in fact, one of the finest Church-songs.
The " excellent " and the " holy ones " can be no
^ Review of Nowack's edition of Hupfeld's Psalms, Theol. Litera
turzeitung, 2nd November 1889.

CORPORATE RELIGION. 295
other than the priests, who, as represented by the
" high (literally, great) priest," were more and more
found to be Israel's firmest support against heathen
aggression." ^
We gather, then, from statements like these,
that the eminently spiritual religion of post-exilian
Judaism, which finds its brightest expression in the
Psalter, was a corporate religion, in which the wants
and feelings of the individuals as such were subor
dinated to or swallowed up in the necessities and
situations of the Church as a whole. It is the
heathen world - Powers who in turn held God's
people in subjection that are especially His enemies,
and this because their rule over the Holy Land and
the chosen people was sacrilege ; and those words
in the Psalter denoting enmity to God — such as
the wicked, the impious, or even Tnan generally —
are so many designations of these heathen Powers. ^
Sometimes, however, these heathen Powers assumed
a fi^iendly or actively favourable attitude to Israel,
as in the times of Ezra and Nehemiah and the
Ptolemies, and in such times psalms like the
seventy-second and the forty-fifth could be indited
in their praise. On the other hand, not only
outside the chosen nation, but within its bosom,
there might be and actually were enemies of God,
a hostile party, opposed to His law, — not, indeed,
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 197 f. Compare p. 163 and related note.
2 Smend, Lehrbuch der Alttest. Relig., p. 379 ff.

296 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
openly taking part with the nation's enemies, but
yet treading down and oppressing their poorer
brethren, — a condition of things which finds ex
pression in the sighing of the poor and the cry
of the needy which are heard so often in the
Psalms.-^ Meantime, till God's power shall be revealed in
the discomfiture of His enemies, it is the duty and
privilege of the Jewish Church to celebrate His
glory and testify to His greatness. He sits en
throned on the praises of Israel (Ps. xxii. 3) ; the
Jewish Diaspora in its widest extent makes His
name known to the ends of the earth (xlviii. 10,
Ixv. 5, 8), and the Jews were even prepared for
the idea that the homage of the heathen would
also be ultimately offered to their God (Mai. i. 11,
14). But meanwhile the existence of the religion
depended on them alone. The nation must not
disappear, else God's praise would cease from the
earth (Ps. vi. 5, xxx. 9, Ixxxviii. 10 ff., cxv. 13 ff.,
cxviii. 17).^ It is, in fact, on the language of many
of the psalms in this connection that Smend bases
one of his strongest arguments for the theory of
personification. The speaker, he says, applies to
himself terms, and claims for himself an import
ance altogether unbecoming in an individual Israel
ite, and therefore these psalms must be understood
^ Smend, Lehrbuch der Alttest. Relig., p. 387 ff.
2 Ibid., p. 386 f.

CHURCH AND INDIVIDUAL. 297
of the Church as a whole. He speaks, for example,
as if God's cause depended on the issue of his own
private case, so that the deliverance of the psalmist
would amount to the justification of God, and his
desertion or downfall would be an occasion for re
proach to God's enemies, for it would be tantamount
to the annihilation of pure religion.
The Church, says Smend,^ stood in quite a differ
ent attitude towards God and the world from the
individual. It had greater sins and sufferings,
greater responsibilities and hopes. In relation to
God it felt itself under wrath, because the enor
mous collective guilt of the past rested upon it.
Its sufferings also were the greatest conceivable
contradiction between the ideal and the reality ;
the whole of mankind must have been viewed by
it as its embittered enemy. . . . The religious con
sciousness of the individual, on the other hand,
rested always in Judaism on the general conscious
ness, the individual in the last resort must always
fall back on his relation to the whole, when he
wished to conceive of his belonging to Jehovah.
To many readers all this will appear to fall very
far short of the spiritual religion which they have
been accustomed to find in the Psalms, and to be
but a little advance, if an advance at all, upon the
religion of pre-exilian Israel. And the statement
of it will prepare us for the conception of pre-
^ ZATW, 1888, p. 54 f. Cf. pp. 79, 90, 96.

298 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
exilian religion as it is represented by writers of
this school. These writers are in the habit of
repeating that after the Exile Israel was no longer
a nation but a Church. Old Israel was destroyed, as
the prophets had threatened, and prophetic men like
the authors of the Deutero-Isaiah had laid the foun
dation of the post-exilian Church in a truer sense
than Ezekiel and the authors of the Priestly Code.
The latter merely drew a practical inference from the
situation of things, but the former made the per
sonal faith of the prophets the faith of the whole
Church. Their ideas, however, got modified by
altered circumstances as time went on, as is always
the case with the ideas of pioneers. The Church,
in fact, became more and more legalistic, and its
relations to the world, which these great theolo
gians had regarded as temporary, proved in the
end to be abiding. Israel found itself to be no
longer one nation among many, but one nation
against all the world ; the honour of Israel's God
was enlarged into the honour of the Lord of the
whole earth. And this is the situation depicted in
the Psalms.
Now, even admitting this to be in the main a true
statement of the position in the world of the post-
exilian Judaism, it might be argued that it does
not differ essentially from the situation in pre-
exilian times ; and also that it is inadequate to
account for the remarkably spiritual tone of the

smend's VIEW. 299
Psalms. It could be shown that the absence of
national independence in the post-exilian time was
always regarded as accidental and temporary, and
that the expectation of a restored monarchy was
never absent, blending with and fading into the more
spiritualised Messianic hope. And, on the other
hand, it might be shown that in the pre-exilian
period the God of Israel was distinctly recognised
as the Lord of the whole earth, and that Israel's
cause was sacred just because it was His cause.
But the point chiefly insisted on now is that what
is described as the highest spiritual religion of the
Old Testament is still regarded as merely a refined
national feeling, and that what, on the simplest con
struction of the language, is a spiritual warfare, is
ever being explained as contests waged with carnal
weapons. One would certainly have expected to
find more than this as the effiorescence of Old
Testament religion. And if this is the highest
that is to be found after all the teaching of the
prophets and the discipline of experience, we need
not be surprised at the poor account that is given
of pre-exilian and of pre-prophetic religion.
We must, therefore, consider whether there is
not proof that the individual counted for more,
and personal piety was not a more general experi
ence, than this view implies. It is a question not
merely of comparative date, but of comparative
standard, a question not of lateness but of low-

300 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
ness — the question, namely, as to whether, early
or late, we are not justified in reading these
Psalms as the expression primarily of the thoughts
and feelings of the individual soul.
We must, however, here recognise a distinction
between the old and the new dispensations. When
Smend says it is a question whether individualism,
as we understand it in the Psalms, existed at all
in pre-Christian Judaism, we must concede his con
tention to this extent, that a conception of personal
religion in the absolute sense of there being no
difference between Jew and Gentile was entirely
foreign to Judaism. The history of the Christian
Church in the New Testament age shows plainly
that even the apostles of Jesus had not surmounted
the position of national religion so far as to appre
hend that in God's sight, and in the new order of
things, there was no difference. The question put
by the disciples (Acts i. 6), "Wilt Thou at this
time restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " shows
the standpoint occupied by them after the Ascen
sion ; and the reluctance of St Peter to hold inter
course with the Roman Cornelius (Acts x.) was
only overcome by a special vision making known
to him the truth that " God is no respecter of
persons ; but in every nation he that feareth Him
and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him"
(Acts X. 34, 35). It was not without an effort that
the Church of apostolic days allowed Gentiles to

OLD AND NEW DISPENSATIONS. 301
enter its precincts without passing through the
porch of the Law ; and St Paul speaks of the
mystery which, in other generations, was not made
known unto the sons of men, that the Gentiles are
fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the body, and
fellow-partakers of the promise (Eph. iii. 4-6).
Individualism of this kind is not to be looked for
in the Old Testament, in which even the most glow
ing passages of the prophets anticipate an expansion
of Judaism and a glorification of their nation, not a
breaking down of the high privilege which had been
bestowed in ancient promise. Yet the corporate
religion of the Old Testament leaves room for an
individual and personal religion, just as the indi
vidualism of the New Testament is in nowise incon
sistent with a Church -religion. Not only within
the pale of the post-exilian Jewish Church but in
the sphere of pre-exilian Israel there are so many
proofs that the thing was understood as a matter of
course, and was an active influence in life, that it
seems strange that it should be denied. When
Smend goes the length of saying ^ that even in the
book of Jeremiah the " I " who speaks is sometimes
Israel, sometimes the prophet, who in his person
represents the true Israel, and that no later indi
vidual found himself in Jeremiah's situation, and so
on, one feels that there is here a case of pushing a
theory in the face of all obstacles ; and, in general,
1 Theol. Literaturzeitung, 2nd November 1889.

302 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
the account which he gives of the pre-exilian reli
gion proceeds upon an exegesis of the historical and
prophetical writings which is open to the same
objection. It is to the pre-exilian writings that we must
turn for proofs on this subject ; and the inquiries
we have to make are such as these : Did individ
uals in early Israel, apart from or within the cor
porate relationship in which they stood to the nation,
feel that they stood in direct religious relationship
to God, in such a way that they were responsible for
their individual actions, and acknowledged the divine
control of their daily lives ? Were these relations
of such a kind as to imply a moral and spiritual
consciousness, which would lead individuals to ex
press such feelings and to look to God for such
blessings as we find in the language of the Psalms ?
Was there, in short, within the bosom of collective
Israel, the recognition of the individual as an ethical
quantity, standing in immediate spiritual relation
ship to God, and of the requirements of the religion
which all professed as binding upon individuals as
well as on the nation ?
(l) Now, in the first place, it may be argued that
the very existence of law in ancient Israel implies
the recognition of individual responsibility, and
was calculated to educate the individual moral sense.
This argument is not based upon any assumption of
the Mosaic antiquity of the legal code or codes as

LAW AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 303
such ; indeed it will gain in strength on the modern
critical hypothesis of the origin of these codes. The
coming of the individual Israelite to the priest for
torah or instruction, whether that was embodied
in formal enactment or merely given orally as
occasion demanded, implied the need of individual
guidance, the confession by the worshipper of some
defilement or trespass, or the acknowledgment of
some personal or family blessing. Every basket of
fruit that was brought to the sanctuary, every
firstling of the flock that was redeemed, impressed
upon the individual the fact that the requirement of
the general law reached to his particular case ; and
that Law being regarded as of divine origin, the
individual as subject to it was brought into direct
relation to the divine will. " Thou shalt do no
murder," or any of the most fundamental moral
obligations, though addressed to the nation as a
whole, could be kept or broken only by particular
personal act ; and as often as a case of judging
between man and man, between stroke and stroke,
had to be decided, so often was there a case of
moral and individual discipline, a step in the educa
tion of the conscience, and a recognition of individual
responsibility before God.
(2) In the second place, the books of the writing
prophets, with their reproof of sins and commenda
tion of virtues, draw a clear distinction between
good and bad individuals in the nation, and proceed

304 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
upon the recognition of personal responsibility and
upon the existence of a personal judging moral
faculty. The very function of the prophet as a
reprover implied this. We may turn to almost
any page of the very earliest of these witnesses
and we meet with catalogues of virtues and vices
which could only be exemplified in individual acts.
When Amos denounces as transgressions of Israel
the land-grabbing and oppression of the poor by the
rich (Amos iii. 10, iv. 1, v. 11, 12), are not these in
dividual sins, and does he not imply a discerning
conscience in his hearers ? We hear the very plaint
of the poor and needy that is directed to God in
many of the psalms, though it is uttered in the
sterner tones of the prophet as addressed to the
oppressors themselves. So the prophet Hosea de
picts a social and not merely a national condition
of things when he says : " The Lord hath a contro
versy with the inhabitants of the land, because
there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of
God in the land. There is nought but swearing
and breaking faith, and killing, and stealing, and
committing adultery ; they break out, and blood
toucheth blood" (Hos. iv. 1, 2). And what these
earliest prophets say is repeated by Isaiah in the
bloom-period of prophecy, and echoed on to Jere
miah at the close of the national history. " Run
ye to and fro through the streets of .lerusalem, and
see now, and know, and seek in the broad places

INDIVIDUALISM IN THE PROPHETS. 305
thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that
doeth justly, that seeketh truth" (Jer. v. 1). "As
a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of
deceit : therefore they are become great, and waxen
rich. They are waxen fat, they shine : yea, they
overpass in deeds of wickedness : they plead not
the cause, the cause of the fatherless, that they
should prosper ; and the right of the needy do they
not judge" (Jer. v. 27 f.) Here and elsewhere we
have the very words and phrases that occur so often
in the Psalms, and there can be no doubt of their
individual personal reference. Moreover, it is par
ticularly to be observed that, though the offences
specified are mainly injuries done by man to man,
yet the Lord proclaims Himself the avenger of all
such; it is He that "hath a controversy with the
inhabitants of the land." In other words, the whole
prophetic work was directed to the quickening of
that feeling of individual responsibility which finds
expression in the Psalms: "Against Thee, Thee
only have I sinned."
It would be easy from almost any of the prophets
to bring forward passages which, if translated from
prophetic language into that of the Psalms, would
exactly depict the condition of things set forth in
many of these plaintive prayers. That is to say,
if instead of the prophet addressing his words of
rebuke to the rich, the proud, the unjust, and so
forth, we represent the poor, the meek, the op-
u

306 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
pressed directing their complaint to God, we have
only another aspect of the same situation. The
poor they had always with them; and though it
has been objected that there is more frequent men
tion of the " wicked " under various epithets in the
Psalms than in the prophetical books, this can easily
be explained by the fact that the prophets speak
directly to the wicked, and do not require to name
them (every prophetic rebuke implies their presence),
while the psalmists speak of the wicked in their
plaintive appeals to the righteous Judge of all.^
But, indeed, we can hardly suppose any condi
tion of society existing in ancient Israel in which
such a distinction did not prevail as is implied in
language like this. On however low a plane we
may suppose their ideas to have moved, they were
a peojjle with the ordinary institutions of an organ
ised society, possessing property, living under laws
written or consuetudinary, subject to the variations
of fortune incident to such a life, and, like other
ancient Eastern peoples, having no defined middle
class between rich and poor. No doubt many
countries in the East at the present day present
a fair parallel to the social condition of Palestine
during long periods of the monarchy. The social
inequalities are just such as are reflected in the
Psalms. The evils under which the individual in
modern times complains are not mainly or not
^ Sellin, Disputatio, &c., p. 51.

INDIVIDUALISM IN EARLY SOCIETY. 307
primarily of a political kind, as, e.g., that the
rulers are of foreign blood or different faith, but
that the ruling class as a whole is unjust. And
the injustice, which is sometimes most severe
when the superior is nearest in social station or
kindred to the oppressed, poisons the whole social
life, producing want of truth and fidelity between
man and man, the circumventing and slandering
of the poor man by another who is but little
above him in the scale, and, in general, the
oppression of the man who has no "back," as
the phrase goes. In such a state of society, where
justice — in the sense of legal decisions — can be
bought and sold, the oppressed man is very liter
ally and truly the "poor" man, having nothing
wherewith to buy ; and the case of the orphan,
the widow, and the stranger — the man who has
no kindred to intercede for him or to sustain his
cause — is as pitiful as it is anywhere depicted in
the pages of the Prophets or the plaints of the
Psalms. It is to be added, that such a condition
of things induces, as might be expected, a religious
tone very similar to that of the psalmists — a spirit
of prostration and helplessness, reacting now into
passionate appeals to heaven for deliverance, again
into lurid imprecations upon the oppressor ; or, in
stronger and more pious souls, expressing itself in
dumb unquestioning submission or struggling hope.
It may, indeed, be partly owing to the imperfec-

308 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
tions of the social order in such countries, the
weakness of human law and the uncertainties of
moral issues between man and man, that Oriental
peoples have acquired the religious habit, as we
may describe it, of referring things more directly
to God than people do who can count upon the
even working of the principles of justice. Ac
cordingly, a type of faith which is pre-eminently
submissive comes readily as a relief and support,
and the religious attitude towards unavoidable
trouble or distress is summed up in such a for
mula as that so often on the lips, "There is no
strength nor power but in God." We are accus
tomed to regard this as a product of Mohammedan
ism ; but it is, in fact, deeper than any formulated
creed, and no doubt it has made the reception of
Mohammedanism easier in those countries where
that religion chiefly prevails. There is more truth
than we usually think in Mohammed's claim that
Islam (which simply means resignation) is as old at
least as Abraham.
(3) In the third place, the very oldest of the
historical writings show that the individual was
reckoned as the moral unit, and that personal piety
as well as individual transgression were weU under
stood. If we turn to those parts of the book of
Genesis which modern critics declare to be among
the earliest attempts at written history, we find
that that history is indeed mainly a record of indi-

INDIVIDUALISM IN HISTORY. 309
vidual lives and characters, and that, like all the
Old Testament history, it is set in a religious light.
When the writers proceed to set down the origin
of the nation and the source of their religious be
liefs, they trace all from the individual, through the
family, to the nation. In the period up to the
Deluge we find a righteous Abel, a translated Enoch,
who had walked with God, a just Noah, upright in
his generation, — all sharply distinguished from their
godless neighbours, and even from members of their
own families. And it is the same in the patriarchal
history. Where shall we find a better picture of the
pious individual than that of Abraham, who believed
in God, and it was counted to him for righteousness ?
And with him as an individual was the covenant
made. It had reference to a nation, no doubt — nay,
it was to be world-wide in its range of consequence —
but it was with Abraham, the friend of God, that
it was in the first instance concluded. And there is
no need to go in detail into the subsequent patri
archal history, which is all conceived on the same
plan of selecting one and rejecting another, and the
gradual enlargement of the family into the nation.
National religion, in a word, at whatever rate it
may be appraised in ancient Israel, is based on, and
grows out of, individual religion.
No doubt critics interpret these patriarchal stories
as legends, and Smend, as we have already seen,^
1 See above, p. 266.

310 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
explains away Jacob's words that Jehovah had
tended him as a shepherd all his life long by say
ing that Jacob is personified Israel. But the writers
of these patriarchal stories did not write as modern
critics ; to them each patriarch was most evidently a
distinct individual. In other words, the popular con
ception, at the time at which these narratives were
told, was that individuals stood in direct religious
relationship to God, and that the distinction of good
and bad individuals was universally recognised.
The whole story of Abraham's intercession for Sodom
(Gen. xviii. 23-33) turns upon this : " Wilt Thou
consume the righteous with the wicked ? " " That
be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay
the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous
should be as the wicked : that be far from Thee :
shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " (ver.
25). And the narrative makes it plain enough
what the wickedness of the men of Sodom was.
It was not because they were heathens, or because
they oppressed Lot and others like - minded, but
because of wickedness in their lives, that divine
judgment was executed upon them. And it is par
ticularly to be noted, in view of what Smend is
continually saying of the undue importance of the
individual, how in the end it came to this, that if
even ten righteous persons could have been found in
Sodom, the whole place would have been spared for
their sake. Indeed, Smend cannot but perceive that

Abraham's intercession for sodom. 311
this whole narrative is dead in the teeth of his theory.
And he makes no attempt to reconcile it with his
vi~ew, but simply says ^ that the whole passage, vers.
22 6-33 a, is an insertion by a later hand. But the
thing is too deeply engrained in the whole mode of
thought of these early historians to be excised in
this way. The Hebrew writers show beyond ques
tion that it was the common belief that the know
ledge of good was communicated first to individ
uals : " Enoch walked with God," " God spake to
Abraham"; and the distinction between a pious
man and a wicked man was clearly enough appre
hended apart from any relation in which they stood
to the nation.
When we come down to the period when the
nation had taken more corporate shape — the time in
which this " national religion," as it is regarded, was
in full exercise — we find that the individual is not
lost in the mass, as Smend would make us believe.
For instance, we have the account of the man who
gathered sticks on the Sabbath-day when Israel was
in the wilderness (Num. xv. 32-36) ; and the nar
rative told in minutest detail of the sin of Achan in
taking of the spoil of Jericho (Josh. vii. 10-26).
We have also the record of the rebellion of Korah
and his company (Num. xvi. ) ; and it is to be ob
served that, though sins committed by individuals
entailed suffering upon the community, yet the
^ Alttest. Relig., p. 474.

312 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
individuals are singled out for punishment. And
we could not have a clearer proof of the fact that
there was a recognised individual consciousness in
the matter of sin than in the simple words put
into the mouth of the poor woman of Sarepta with
whom the prophet Elijah went to live during the
famine: "Art thou come unto me," she says, "to
bring my sin to remembrance ? " (1 Kings xvii. 18).
The same sense of individual responsibility and
direct relationship to God is exemplified in all the
instances — and they are numerous — in which we
find individuals offering up prayers for themselves
or for others. Thus Abraham, as we have seen,
prays for Sodom (Gen. xviii. 23-33), and entreats
God on behalf of Abimelech (Gen. xx. 17). His
servant Eliezer, recognising God's guidance in his
journey to Padan-aram, prays at the well for a
token of assurance (Gen. xxiv. 12-14). We read
frequently of Moses interceding for the people, and
praying for himself The people also entreat Samuel
to pray for them, and he declares that it was his
constant work to do so (1 Sam. xii. 23). David's
prayers are frequently mentioned, as on the occa
sion of the promise given to him of a sure house
(2 Sam. vii. 27) ; and in that sorrowful night when
his child was stricken with sickness (2 Sam. xii. 16).
There cannot be either a virtuous or a vicious
nation without virtuous or vicious individuals ; and
as personal relationships are the nearest to men, the

THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE NATION. 313
virtues or vices of individuals in a mixed community
impress themselves upon the most unobservant at
tention. Nor should it be forgotten that ancient
Israel was differently constituted from some of the
great Eastern monarchies, in which the people as
a mass were subjects of one despotic ruler. The
blood-kindred that united the tribes, the tribal and
family divisions and autonomies, and the limited
power of the king, were all of a character to
educate the feeling of individuality both in social
and religious matters.
Many prominent critical writers on the religion
of the Old Testament, from the time of Vatke,
have a short and sharp method of dealing with
the subject of individual religion : they simply
deny its existence. " Not the individual Israelite,"
says Stade,^ " but the whole people of Israel, was
a religious quantity. It was the national mis
fortunes that first raised the question, of which
even the prophets had never once thought, how
the fate of the individual stood related to his
own actions on the one hand and to the fate of
the people on the other." " The popular religion,"
says Marti,^ " as well as the pre-exilian prophets,
knew nothing of individual retribution; the in
dividual was involved in the fate of the people,
1 Geschichte, i. pp. 507, 513, ii. p. 24.
2 August Kayser's Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2te Auflage, von
Marti, p. 185.

314 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
and had to endure with the people its punishment
as he participated in its blessings." And other
writers repeat the same thing in similar terms,^
overlooking or ignoring the fact that, though
undoubtedly the ancient view was that the nation
was the religious universe, so to speak, beyond
which was a world lying in wickedness, yet within
that pale there was free play for individual action,
and a clear enough conception of individual respon
sibility. Smend has, in his recent History of the
Old Testament religion, relaxed the rigidity of
former writers, and admits that there is such a
thing as individual religion in the Old Testament.
But he maintains ^ that the relationship of the
individual to God was altogether arbitrary, and not
governed by ethical considerations. Some were fav
ourites of heaven, others without assignable reason
were not ; sons might be favoured for their fathers'
sakes, and yet even from His own favourites God
might without reason withdraw His kindness. The
most that one could do was to submit patiently,
taking what Heaven sent, or perhaps get into the
good graces of those who were observed to be
prosperous and so share in their good luck. At best
the individual could hope in God, but could not
have confidence in Him. The examples, however,
which he adduces fall short of establishing such a
sweeping conclusion. No doubt thej^ exhibit a some-
' See Sellin, Beitrage, i. p. 140 f. ^ Alttest. Relig., § 7, p. 99 ff.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 315
what primitive conception of the divine operation —
and ancient Israel could hardly be expected to have
attained a firm persuasion of the unerring working
to minutest detail of moral principles. As Smend
himself says, God was regarded as a living person,
not an impersonal Law ; and we can observe the
tendency in Israel, as among Orientals generally, to
magnify the divine sovereignty almost into fatalism.
Yet Smend's own examples prove that the God of
Israel concerned Himself with the smallest affairs of
the individual, and though He gave no reason for
His actions. He never relaxed His control. More
over, He was the unquestioned Judge of the widows
and the fatherless, the avenger of right and wrong ;
and even if the sufferer could not trace the con
nection between sin and punishment, he firmly
believed there was a connection, and was willing
to own his personal guilt even though his conscience
was not quick enough to bring it home to him. As
Sellin has pointed out,^ the belief in a personal
retribution underlies all the forms of oaths and
imprecations, which play an important part in the
early religious life ; and we find the principle
formulated in the most general terms : " Whosoever
sins against Me, him will I blot out of My book "
(Exod. xxxii. 33) ; " Them that honour Me I will
honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly
esteemed" (1 Sam. ii. 30) ; "The Lord shall render
1 Beitrage, Heft i., p. 149.

316 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness"
(1 Sam. xxvi. 23).
There does not, therefore, appear sufficient reason
for drawing so broad a distinction as is made be
tween national religion before the Exile and Church-
religion after it. In both periods the mass bulks
largely, but not so largely as to exclude the free
play of individual responsible action. In the earlier
period as in the later the individual had his desires,
his hopes, his sins, his sufferings ; in the later, no
doubt, all these were accentuated, and, as the wall
of nationality was more and more broken down, the
individual felt himself more intimately face to face
with a moral law and a spiritual requirement that
were broad as the world. Nevertheless, in the
earlier period also the individual was accounted a
" moral quantity" in the sight of God ; and it seems
to me that the refusal to admit this fact not only
leaves the later and more spiritual religion without
adequate explanation, but tends to lower the level
of that religion itself, till there is found scarcely
anything worthy of the name of individual religion
in the Old Testament at all.
In contending, however, that we have in the
Psalms what may have been the expression of
individual piety in times before the Exile, we do
not necessarily imply that the persons who com
posed these songs occupied, say, the same level of
spiritual apprehension and experience as persons in

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE CHURCH. 317
these days who use the Psalms as vehicles of devo
tion. The remarkable thing is — and surely it is
very remarkable — that we may put into the lan
guage of the Psalms as much spiritual meaning as we
please with a full sense of their fitness to our own
experience, and this itself is a strong presumption
that their primary meaning and reference was of
an individual kind. Robertson Smith, in speaking ^
of individual and collective psalms, says that the
poets in many of these compositions give expression
to their own religious experiences, but they pur
posely do so in such a general manner that any
other pious man may straightway appropriate those
feelings to himself. And Tholuck finely remarks^
that it partakes to a certain degree of morbid reli
giousness when the pious poet cannot break away
from his own individual relations, whereas it is a
sign of power when he can sing his own feelings in
such a way as to touch the universal feelings of
humanity. The more a Christian advances in piety,
he says, the more does he find, even in special
necessities, an appropriate expression of his wants
in the simple and familiar Lord's Prayer. We may
compare the religious phraseology of the Psalms to
the picture thrown upon a screen before the exact
focus of the lens has been found. The image is
there, though dim in outline and vague in expres-
1 Old Testament in the Jewish Church, second edition, p. 189.
2 Uebersetzung und Auslegung der Psalmen (1843), p. xxvi.

318 PERSONAL RELIGION IN PRE-EXILIAN TIME.
sion. It is the same picture that grows in clearness
as the light is concentrated into true focus. The
experience is true from the beginning, though it
may be weak and vague ; and the phraseology has
been so well chosen and controlled that it is capable
of ever new applications, and will never become
inadequate nor antiquated while human nature
lasts.

319

CHAPTER XIII.

DAVID THE PSALMIST.

In the preceding chapter, though we have proved
little directly as to the authorship of the Psalms,
yet the discussion of the inevitable previous question
as to the possibility of psalm-religion in pre-exilian
times has given us good reason for maintaining
that personal piety was a thing not unknown but
actively in exercise and generally presupposed.
We can now advance farther and consider
whether we know of individuals in that period
whose piety was of the type expressed in the
Psalms, and whether their circumstances and situ
ations were similar to those of the psalmists.
1. And, first of all, let us look at the individual
prophets. In them, if anywhere, and in them with
out question, we have instances of good men. The
very calling of each prophet implies an individual
relationship to God, and implies also an antithesis
between him and others. No doubt we are here

320 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
still within the sphere of the nation ; it was the
God of Israel that called the prophet, and the
prophet was sent with a message to the people.
Early or late in the history of Israel, we cannot
get away from this national reference. Yet the
singling out of one from his contemporaries, the
sending of one on a mission to the many, the
assurances of help for his work, the distinction
of the true prophet from the false, the universal
belief that a prophet must be specially called
and sent, — all these are so many different aspects
of the individual standing of the man. Look
at Amos, as depicted in his book. He stands
sharply and clearly alone, — taken from his herds
and his sycomores, hurried away from his native
town and country, confronted with the power and
opposition of the northern kingdom, avowing no
connection with prophetic guild or class. " The
Lord took me," he says ; and we could not conceive
a better example of a direct relationship to God.
And before him we have Elijah, towering in solitary
grandeur over king, people, and powerful prophetic
opposition — not indeed so solitary as he supposed,
but yet testifying all the more by his conviction of
loneliness that one man might be the mouthpiece
of God, and receive in his own soul all the strength
and comfort needed for the religious life. And
before him we have Samuel, the great Scripture
pattern of youthful piety, communing often with

THE GODLY INDIVIDUAL. 321
God, and mediating in intercessory prayer for the
people. Moses himself, to whom the Old Testament
writers trace back prophecy, is delineated so plainly
as a type of personal religion that nothing but the
existence of such a piety could have made the de
lineation so exact. Any one of all these is a fit
character to be assumed as the speaking subject of
a psalm, understanding by such a composition the
outpouring of the soul's fulness to God. And in
every one of the cases mentioned we have the very
situation implied in so many of the most spiritual of
these songs. We have the one faithful individual
against a multitude of gainsaying, perverse, unbe
lieving people, — a "godless people," in the sense
that they refused God's ways. The cause of each
one of them becomes at the crisis the cause of God
against the world, the world being then, before
political events had broken down national barriers,
the commonwealth of Israel. And, finally, we are
allowed to penetrate so deeply into the conscious
ness of these men, that we can detect the pain
and anguish caused by this isolation, the helpless
ness of the man apart from divine aid, with the
struggling faith in the divine righteousness and
goodness, or the submissive resignation to the mys
tery of the divine will, exactly as these are seen
fluctuating in the Psalms.^
1 See, e.g., Exod. xxxii. 11, xxxiii. 12, Num. xi. 11-15 ; and compare
1 Sam. XX. 3, xxvii. 1, 2 Sam. iii. 39. X

322 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
It is no wonder that critics like Hitzig have
attributed so many psalms to Jeremiah. This
prophet more than others gives us full details of
his outer and inner experience ; he is by nature
peculiarly sensitive and prone to give full expres
sion to his sensitiveness. Whether or not we have
in the Psalter productions of his pen, there are
certainly not a few psalms which, in respect of
experience, language, and situation are entirely and
eminently in keeping with his life and character, so
that no fair-minded critic, on a comparison of them
with Jeremiah's known work and place, would say
that they were above or beyond his range. Now,
though no doubt Jeremiah stands well down in the
prophetic roll, and the events through which he lived
were of a nature to sadden even a bolder spirit, yet
from the nature of the case there is to a great
extent an essential similarity in the personal ex
perience of all the line of prophets, just because the
duty laid upon all was essentially the same, and the
situation involved in the national environment was
essentially unchanged.
These considerations, of course, are so general
that they do not entitle us to say of any particular
psalm that it was written by any particular prophet ;
yet they are of such force that we may affirm that
any one of the prophets was quite capable of com
posing some psalm. We have already ^ put the
1 Above, chap. xii. p. 305.

PSALMS IN PROPHETIC BOOKS. 323
matter in this way, that many of the Psalms, if
turned into prophetic style, might read as passages
from the prophets. And we may now say conversely
that there are many passages in the prophets that
embody all the essential elements of the Psalms ;
and, what is more, there are not a few passages
which, even in the unessential features of style and
form, might be taken from the context and read as
psalms. The book of Isaiah contains several such
pieces ; the greater part of the seventh chapter of
Micah is quite psalmic in thought and expression ;
Jeremiah is particularly prone to lyric meditation
in the style of the Psalms ; and the books of Nahum
and Habakkuk have each a chapter entirely psalm-
odic in construction (Nah. i. ; Hab. iii.) There is
also the psalm, already spoken of, in the book of
Jonah (chap, ii.) And then we find in some of
the historical books specimens of psalms ascribed to
prophets or to persons under immediate prophetic
influence, as the song of Hannah (1 Sam. ii. 1-10)
and the prayer of Hezekiah (Isa. xxxviii. 9-20), to
say nothing of pieces ascribed to David, whether or
not included in the Psalter (2 Sam. xxii., xxiii. 1-7).
In point of fact, as Prof Cheyne reminds us, pro
phetic and poetic inspiration were closely connected
in primitive times, both Miriam and Deborah being
called prophetesses.^
This being the case, it is far from admissible simply
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 15 and note.

324 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
to set aside all these lyrical pieces found outside the
Psalter as insertions in the historical and prophet
ical books belonging to a later age when psalm-
composition had become prevalent. It is true, no
doubt, that the critics who would reject these
pieces support their decision on the ground that
there are no such precise references in the pieces as
would warrant their being assigned to the occasions
to which they are referred by the Biblical writers.
But this is just because the critics insist on finding
in a lyric what is in reality a drawback to its excel
lence ; for, as we have already argued, the less
particular and precise such a song is, the more it
appeals to the common heart, and gains in universal
application and esteem.^
To the question. Why we do not find a greater
number of sacred lyrics outside the Psalter, and to
the other question, Why the pieces existing outside
the Psalter have not been embodied in the collection,
we may not be able to return satisfactory answers.
It would be equally difficult, I suppose, to answer
the question, Why so few pieces have been preserved
from the Book of Jashar or the Book of the Wars of
Jehovah, both of which seem to have been collec
tions of valuable national songs. It is possible that
from a comparatively early period a collection or
collections of this special kind of composition were
1 So Beer argues in regard to the songs in question (Individual- und
Gemeinde-Psalmen, p. Ixxxii. ff.)

PSALM- WRITERS. 325
formed, so that, finally, all religious lyrics, not al
ready embedded in other books, were brought to
gether into one Psalter. We need not expect to
find more than one Psalter. But the existence of
psalms in the historical and prophetical books
proves, at the very least, that the authors or
editors of those books believed that psalm -com
position was not restricted to a particular class
of psalm-composers. And there is this to be said
in favour of the early inclusion of these pieces in
the books where they are now found, that the later
we come down, there is the more probability of the
separate existence of a specific collection of sacred
songs in which they could have readily found a
place, without being thrust, as the critics say they
are, into books whose connection they disturb. So
that, on the whole, it seems there is sufficient pre
sumption that the composition of psalms or lyrics of
a religious character was not a late achievement, as
certainly there is sufficient proof that there were
men adequate to this class of composition.
2. Hitherto we have spoken mainly of single
prophets or prophetic men, and their fitness to
become psalm-writers. It is now, however, to be
observed that each prophet did not stand isolated
and alone in his generation. We have positive
proof in the case of Jeremiah that he had a certain
number, at all events, of faithful adherents like-
minded with himself. Isaiah also makes mention

326 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
of his disciples. Indeed to represent, as is too often
done, each prophet as standing utterly and abso
lutely alone, giving expression to some truth that
no one had ever before heard and no one but the
speaker accepted, is a supposition scarcely conceiv
able, and probably entirely opposed to all that we
know of the history of reformers and the growth of
religious ideas. If in Elijah's dark days there were
seven thousand, unknoivn to him, who had not
bowed the knee to Baal, we get a glimpse also of
a faithful Obadiah, whom the prophet did know
(1 Kings xviii. 3-13); and we may — nay, we must
— assume all along the existence of a certain num
ber of faithful ones, who followed the preaching of
the prophets and who trembled at their words, and
were thus the representatives and continuators of
the better faith of the nation. Let us for a moment
consider the prophetic work of such a man as Isaiah
or Jeremiah. Is it conceivable that, having de
livered some discourse in the court of the Temple
or in some place of public concourse, the prophet
was silent till his next public appearance, and his
hearers departed, one to his farm and another to his
merchandise, giving no more thought to his words ?
We learn from Jeremiah himself, what we might
safely infer from what we know of his temperament,
that, having publicly warned and rebuked the people
of his day, he was in the habit of interceding for
them in prayer (Jer. vii. 16, xi. 14). And what a

PROPHETIC CIRCLES. 327
later prophet has mentioned as customary in his
time (Mai. iii. 16), would most naturally occur at
other times : " They that feared the Lord spake one
with another." The prophets' addresses would form
the themes of meditation in lonely chambers or in
small circles of the pious — translated, so to speak,
into prayer and attuned to song on the lyre. The
very secrecy and isolation of these little bands would
furnish the plaintive key in which their meditations
were composed, and so the poor and the meek never
failed from the land.
In this connection we may refer again to those
psalms found outside the Psalter — the song of
Hannah, the prayer of Hezekiah, and the prayer
of Jonah, along with which may be taken the
Apocryphal prayer of Manasseh, and that of Ben
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus Ii. Iff.) Whether these, criti
cally examined, are considered to suit the occasions
to which they are referred or not, is another ques
tion ; but in the meantime it is plain that they are
by the writers assigned to the individuals named,
which in itself is a proof that in the writers' esti
mation psahns expressing the experiences of an
individual were possible — in other words, that
individual religion was well recognised. Smend's
contention,^ that these personages are types of the
true Israel, needs no refutation.
3. The preceding argument goes to prove that
1 ZATW, 1888, p. 145.

328 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
there is nothing in the essential character of the
Psalms that places them above and beyond the
reach of prophetic circles in pre-exilian times. No
doubt some are loftier in tone than others, deeper
in insight, wider and firmer in faith and hope. But
similar variations are seen in the Prophets, and
these variations are not dependent on chronology.
After all has been said, the difference between
prophetic and hymnic religion is a difference in
form of expression, a difference at most of audience
and of speaker, not of substance. The prophet
declares the truth to others, the poet repeats the
same truth in other words to himself or tells it in
prayer to God. And who knows how often the
prophet may have been nerved for his public min
istrations by such private exercises of prayer and
meditation ministered either by himself or by
others ? For we need not look always for a pro
phet or a king or a prominent official of State as
the composer of a psalm. "Bring me a minstrel"
(2 Kings iii. 15) may have been a common formula
in the gatherings of the pious ; and the gift of song,
like the gift of prophecy, was no doubt given in
richer measure to some than to others, and to
individuals who were by nature more receptive.
Persons who could freely and readily express their
own and others' feelings in song may have been
little fitted for taking up the utterance of the Lord
in a great and gainsaying concourse.

CONVERGENCE OP TESTIMONY TO DAVID. 329
This line of argument converges with another
which has been already pursued,^ to the effect
that the practice of lyric poetry was common in
ancient time — that, in fact, poetry was engrained
in the Hebrew temperament. And it meets the
objection that occurs at this point, that the speci
mens of lyrics found outside the Psalter are all
of a secular character, and therefore that psalmody
was a later and special acquirement. We have
already said that we cannot expect to find tivo
psalters ; and the objection in hand can only be
maintained by excising from the prophetic and
historical books any specimens of sacred lyrics
that occur. But if it has been shown that psalm-
religion could exist, and did exist, in prophetic
times, and also that lyric composition was prac
tised from the earliest times, there seems nothing
to hinder us from believing that psalms, whether
many or few, now found in the collected Psalter,
may be the work of pre-exilian authors.
And thus we are brought again to the question
of Davidic psalmody by a new route. The ques
tion at the present day is, Have we sufficient
reason for ascribing to David any of the psalms
included in our existing Psalter? for to this
question the advanced critics give a decidedly
negative reply. Admitting that David was both
a musician and a poet, they say that the music
^ See chap. vii. p. 153.

330 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
was much too rude for use in divine worship or
altogether worldly, and that his poetry was secu
lar. Moreover, the Psalms, it is alleged, are of
such a spiritual tone as to be inconsistent with
the character of the historical David. His lament
over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i. 19-27), and
his lament for Abner (2 Sam. iii. 33, 34), it is
maintained, though creditable to him as a poet
and a man of tender feelings, do not warrant us
in regarding him as a man of such religious ex
perience as would find utterance in the Psalms.
So we are told that " if we wish to know David
as he really was, we must put the contents of aU
these songs completely on one side, and rely exclu
sively upon the narratives of the books of Samuel
and Kings " ; ^ and the account of his life and
character contained in the books of Samuel, when
critically sifted, reveals to us, it is maintained,
quite a different man from the David of tradi
tion. There are here two things, the estimate of
David's poetry and the estimate of his character.
As to his poetry. Prof. Cheyne himself expresses^
astonishment that although dancing with song — joy
ous music, in fact — was so characteristic of ancient
times, — and David appears himself in this attitude,
—yet the specimens of poetry ascribed to him in the
' Bible for Young People, vol. iii. p. 83.
2 Origin of the Psalter, p. 192.

DAVIDS POETRY AND CHARACTER. 331
historical books are of an elegiac or mournful charac
ter. The astonishing thing here, however, is that
Prof Cheyne, with his broad literary sympathies,
takes such a narrow view of the poetical faculty.
When the same poet, Cowper, has left us the poem
of " John Gilpin" and the eminently spiritual hymn
" God moves in a mysterious way," to take but one
instance out of an indefinite number that will occur
to the reader, we should make some allowance for
the versatility of the ancient muse, and admit the
possibility of David, who could pen these elegies
which are exquisite in their pathos and delicacy
of sentiment, being able also to indite a poem
expressing faith in God.
So also we may hesitate before accepting the
estimate of David's character presented by many
critical writers. Here, for example, is the estimate
given by one very outspoken writer,^ already
quoted : " It is easy to understand how David
came to be regarded as the chief psalmist of Israel.
In the third century before Christ, when the book
of Chronicles was written, the time of David was
looked upon as the golden age of Israel, and David
himself as a model king. Hence the writer of this
book gives him as much as possible of the honour
of having built the Temple. Now, since the ancient
tradition represented David as a great singer and
player on the harp, and the Jews of this later period
^ Bible for Young People, vol. iii. p. 81.

332 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
could not conceive of a model king composing any
but religious music, they imagined David to have
been the father of psalmody." The only thing that
is "easy" here is the entire ignoring of the diffi
culty. Where did these traditions come from, and
why was it that, at the late period referred to, the
age of David was looked upon as the golden age of
Israel ? This habit of explaining the early as the
backward projection of the late is always liable to
the objection that it leaves the late itself without
explanation. Moreover, this habit of refusing to
admit complexity in the capacities of Biblical char
acters is exceedingly hazardous and unsafe, when
history is so full of instances of the combination in
one person of qualities the most diverse. We have
not only poets who can harp upon more than one
string, but we have religious leaders who have
united the most fervent piety with the exercise of
poorly developed virtue, or the practice of very ques
tionable policy.^ A critic, if he has not a single
measure of large enough capacity for a historical
character, should not think himself at liberty to
measure him out in two half- bushels, making one
man of each.
Reuss too, in his Introduction to the Psalter,^
' Macduff, in his 'Tales of the Warrior King' (p. 345), compares
David with Constantine the Great, "who was by turns the docile
believer and the cruel despot, devotee and murderer, patron saint and
avenging demon."
^ Das Alte Testament, vol. v. p. 47 ff.

HISTORICAL AND IDEALISED DAVID. 333
makes a great deal of the disparity between the
historical David, as described in 1 Sam. xvi.,
2 Kings ii., and the sweet singer of Israel as he has
been idealised out of the Psalms. It is not, how
ever, the case, as he asserts, that people in modern
times have formed their conception of David's char
acter by overlooking the historical picture. Rightly
or wrongly, the popular idea of David, has been
formed by persons who have their eyes quite open
to David's personal moral faults ; and perhaps it is
because the ordinary conscience is aware of the
possibility of coexisting contradictory elements of
good and evil in one heart, that it is not staggered
at the disparity. However creditable it may be to
the Christian consciousness of the critics to deny
this possibility, it is to be feared that such a sancta
simplicitas is far from common. Unfortunately
history has found room for moral contradictions as
great as any that can possibly be found in David.
We have our own Robert Burns, whose irrepres
sible poetic energy impelled him to disclose himself
in both aspects of his moral character. We have
also the secret communings of men with themselves
in their private diaries and meditations,^ which
come to light after they are gone; and in many
more instances the secrets of the heart go down
to the grave with men who have been tempted, and
good men who have fallen.
1 For example, Samuel Johnson's Prayers and Meditations.

334 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
" Then at the balance let's be mute,
We never can adjust it ;
What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted." ^
The "tradition" of David is not to be so sum
marily set aside as some critical writers would
have it. That is but saying in other words that
the son of Jesse must have combined in one
person such qualities and such a variety of quali
ties as to seize strongly the national consciousness
of Israel and to mould materially the subsequent
history. It is not sufficient to say that at a late
period his reign was looked back upon as a
golden age, and that he was invested with this
and that quality. People do not at late periods
first begin to look about for some name to which to
attach their national associations and convictions.
And we must remember that, on the lowest
estimate of David's character, he did consolidate his
nation and raise it to eminence as no one before
him had done, and that his successors, so far as
they were successful, followed in the lines he had
laid down. It must have been a character of no
ordinary breadth and force that could thus make
its influence felt down through the centuries of
the monarchy ; and since the most exacting of
critics cannot deny to him the two attributes of
patriotism and poetry, it will be hard to exclude
^ Burns, Address to the Unco Guid.

David's personal qualities. 335
the other strand that makes up the threefold
cord of permanent national influence — religion.
" The spirit of Poetry is akin to that of Re
ligion " ; ^ and as poetry was inborn in the Hebrew
race, so it was in the name and by the power
of religion that the nation achieved all the great
ness which has made their history imperishable.
In the wonderful Providence that guided that
nation, the man was raised up at the fit time
with all the strength — and with all the weak
nesses — of a national poet, a man after God's own
heart in the place which he gave to the national
religion in his "policy." The personal qualities
which drew to him the best of the nation in the
days when he was an outlaw were just those that
a people like Israel would regard as strength of
character ; and if we may judge by the devotion
of these adherents to his person, we may say that
his character was as highly " idealised " in his
lifetime as it could possibly have been in any
subsequent age. It may have been flattering
Oriental rhetoric that prompted the words of
Abigail (1 Sam. xxv. 28-31) and the wise woman
of Tekoah (2 Sam. xiv. 17-19): "The Lord will
certainly make my lord a sure house, because my
lord fighteth the battles of the Lord, and evil
shall not be found in thee all thy days " ; " As
^ William Scott Douglas, in introductory note to the "Cotter's
Saturday Night" in his edition of Burns.

336 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
an angel of God so is my lord the king to dis
cern good and bad, and the Lord thy God be
with thee." But brave men would not put their
lives in danger to humour a passing longing, as
did the heroes who broke through to the well at
Bethlehem (2 Sam. xxiii. 13-17), nor would the
best of all classes of the nation have thrown
in their lot with a persecuted man and adhered
to his cause when it was at the lowest ebb, un
less he had captivated their hearts by more than
appeals to their own selfishness. Struggles like
those that issue in the birth of national indepen
dence and greatness are not to be explained on the
worst but on the best aspect of the qualities of
human nature. The " tradition," in a word, is
just the continued throb in the national pulse of
the life that was quickened to intensity under a
unique leader, and the age of David was looked
back to as a golden age, because every recurring
crisis that stirred that life freshened the memories
that were never forgotten.
Prof Cheyne, if I understand him rightly, feels
the force of the tradition attachins' to the name
of David ; but it is not easy to follow him in
his attempt to explain the persistency of the tra
dition. He feels bound, he says,^ to assume the
existence of a " David " (using the name in a
symbolic sense) subsequently to the poet-king, to
¦^ Origin of the Psalter, p. 194.

A SERIES OP DAVIDS. 337
account for the literary character of the book of
Amos. " He cannot indeed have been alone ; he
must have had able followers, by whose help he
influenced his age, and left a deeper impress than
the historical David, not only upon Amos, but
after Amos upon the authors of the earliest extant
psalms (Deut. xxxii. ; Ps. xviii. ?)." For, he says
in the same connection,^ " as critics, we cannot con
sistently suppose that the religious songs of David
(if there were any) were as much above the spiritual
capacities of the people as the psalms which, I will
not say the later Jews, but which Ewald or Hitzig
or Delitzsch would assign to him."
The uncritical reader may be disposed to dismiss
all this with the scoff that it merely amounts to
saying that the Psalms were not written by David
but by another man of the same name. But we
must make the best attempt we can to discover
what is precisely the position assumed, and it seems
to be this. The historical David, "the hero of the
transition from rudeness to culture," ^ " the ver
satile condottiere, chieftain, and king," ^ whose
"posthumous fame rested chiefly upon his secular
poetry,"* may indeed have composed songs of a
religious character, but of these none remain. Yet
the literary character of the book of Amos is such
that the space between him and the historical
1 Origin of the Psalter, p. 192 f. ' Ibid., p. 194.
3 Ibid., p. 211. 4 Ibid., p. 192.
Y

338 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
David must be filled up not merely by one poet,
greater in spiritual and lyrical gifts than the
poet-king, but by a succession of such men —
whose works in like manner have all been lost,
but whose influence we must postulate to account
for the earliest extant psalms, belonging at the
earliest (Ps. xviii.) to the age of Josiah.
It is certainly a large assumption that is here
made ; and if it is necessary in the interests of a
general hypothesis in regard to the Psalter, one
is disposed to say. So much the worse for the
hypothesis. It will occur to the reader as remark
able that not a word should have been preserved
of the sacred songs of David, while so great care
has been observed in preserving his secular com
positions. Equally remarkable is it that all the
glory of these imaginary Davids has been trans
ferred to the one of them who least of all deserved
it. Confining ourselves, however, to facts, it is un
doubted that the Biblical writers tell us nothing
about such symbolic Davids, and know only one
poet of that name. There is no concealment of
the fact that David had contemporaries and suc
cessors in the lyric art ; an Asaph, a Heman, and
sons of Korah, whoever these were, have their
names preserved in this connection. And whatever
Prof Cheyne may say of the "elder orthodoxy"
making the great mista,ke of confounding the two
Davids, that mistake is as old as Amos at least.

TESTIMONY OF AMOS. 339
That is to say, in Amos' day, two centuries after
David, the "tradition" of David is put so strongly
in words that, had it occurred in the books of
Chronicles, it would have been contemptuously
rejected as the dream of a later age. In plain
terms, the impress made by David, the poet-king,
— for Amos recognises his pre-eminence in both
capacities (see Amos vi. 5, ix. 11), — was so deep
and lasting that it required no late imagination to
magnify it. It is most arbitrary and unwarranted
to explain the former of these references of Amos
to David as implying that his poetry was entirely
secular and his music sensuous ; and it is equally
unwarrantable to reject the latter reference merely
on the ground of its giving too high an estimate
of the Davidic house. An unbiassed criticism will
see in the former an indication that the sin of the
nobles whom the prophet rebuked consisted in their
employing upon their own selfish pleasures the best
of everything they could lay hands on or contrive,
even to making instruments like David's for their
luxurious feasts ; and in the latter reference the
promise given through Nathan of the divine choice
and perpetuity of the Davidic house is clearly im
plied. So that in Amos' time David was looked
back upon as the great poet-king, as he is described
in the historical books and as all subsequent tradi
tion regarded him.
That "the man of whom we are speaking was

340 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
no isolated student poet," ^ may be freely conceded.
The Biblical writers who mention the prophetic
companies of Samuel's time, and record the names
of distinguished men who aided David in the musi
cal accomplishments with which his name is associ
ated, leave us free to infer as much. And to the
question, " Why may not successors of David have
been his equals in natural and his superiors in
spiritual capacities ? " ^ we can only answer. Why
not ? If by a succession of Davids is merely meant
a series beginning with him who carried on the
exercise of psalmody, this is but the contention
of the preceding pages. But no proof is forth
coming to support the assertion that poets between
David and Amos first introduced a religious ele
ment into poetry or surpassed the historical David
in spiritual expression. And equally unfounded
is the assertion ^ that " the reorganisation of the
people in Ezra's time was too complete to allow
any considerable influence to archaic liturgical
formulae," so that "it is not possible to hold that
there is any large admixture of old and new in
the Hebrew Psalter." On the contrary, I hold
that it is perfectly within the bounds of possibility
that a considerable part of the earlier portion of
the Psalter, which presumably was the first col
lection, may come from the time of David. This
1 Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 190.
2 Ibid., p. 191. 3 Ibid., p. 194.

ELIMINATION OP DAVID. 341
can only be denied by a manipulation of the his
torical books in a manner to produce a "critically"
revised account of his character, and at the same
time by insisting on reading into the Psalms a
" Church " reference which detracts from the ob
vious simplicity of these lyrics. When one has
excised from the historical books all details that
represent the higher religious side of David's char
acter, and rejected the sacred songs that are in
these books attributed to him, it is no great feat
to say that such a David as is left cannot have
composed any of the psalms in the Psalter. And
again, when the Psalter is declared at the outset
to have been composed for use in the post-exilian
Temple, and its language is rigidly construed of the
situations and experiences of the post-exilian Juda
ism, it is plain that David could have had no share
in their composition. But when the psalms are
read, especially those in the earlier part of the
Psalter, in the obvious sense of the language, and
when the sentiments and situations are compared
with the unvarnished accounts of David contained
in the books of Samuel, it may be maintained that
many of them are quite appropriate in his mouth,
and indeed eminently suited to his circumstances.
It may be indeed that the collectors, or those
who added the superscriptions to the Psalms, have
not in all cases put down the precise situation
to which the several psalms called Davidic refer ;

342 . DAVID THE PSALMIST.
but this much may be confidently asserted, that
in the accounts that have been given of David's life
in the historical books we have the delineation
of a character quite in keeping with such psalms,
of an experience wide enough and checkered enough
to explain their varied references, and of a poetic
sensibility very strongly marked even when poetical
composition is not in question. What would the
critics have ? Do they demand formal statements
in the historical books that David at such and such
times wrote such and such psalms? Why, when
such statements are produced they reject them as
incredible, and relegate the psalms in question to
some later time. Or do they expect each psalm
to bear a categorical declaration of its authorship ?
Such declarations as are contained in the headings
being discarded, the authorship must be determined
or conjectured from the Psalms themselves ; and the
whole history of psalm-exposition, with the extra
ordinary diversity of view among expositors, shows
how difficult a matter this is. The most that the
expositor can generally do is to point to situations
in which a psalm may have been composed ; and but
for the preconceptions as to the character of David
and the " Church " character of the Psalms, my con
tention is that adequate situations can be pointed
to in the life of David ; or, what is better, that his
whole character, literary and religious, is adequate
to account for many psalms in the collection.

HIS EVENTFUL LIFE. 343
The events in the eventful life of David are set
down in the books of Samuel with a fulness that
enables us to form a very vivid conception of his
character, and with a candour and simplicity — faults
and failings being placed side by side with merits
and virtues — -that give every guarantee of veracity.
And when all is done in the separation of " late "
and " early " elements in these narratives, it comes
to this, that if we cannot believe the late, we have
no better guarantee of the truth of the early. A
king's courtiers and contemporaries are, one would
think, more liable to exaggerate a monarch's virtues
and slur over his vices than a later writer. If critics
insist on believing all the bad things that are said
of David and rejecting all the good, they have the
more difficult task of explaining how later accounts
have grown out of the earlier, and, to speak gen
erally, the task of showing how the attenuated
character whom their criticism leaves was able to
fill the position he occupied, achieve the work he
performed, and bequeath the name by which he is
remembered. The vicissitudes and situations in David's life
presented in these narratives are of such a nature
that, though we may not be able to say precisely
that such and such a psalm was composed at such
and such a time and place, yet we may confidently
say. Here is a man who has passed through certain
experiences and borne himself in such wise that

344 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
we are not surprised to hear that, being a poet, he
composed this and the other psalm. It is very
doubtful whether we should tie down any lyric
to a precise set of circumstances, the poet being
like a painter, who, having found a fit landscape,
sits down to transfer it to canvas. I do not think
it likely that David, finding himself in some great
perplexity or sorrow, called for writing materials
in order to describe the situation and record his
feelings. But I do think it probable that the
vicissitudes through which he passed made such
an impression on his sensitive heart, and became so
inwrought into an emotional nature, that when he
soothed himself in his retirement with his lyre, they
came forth spontaneously in the form of a psalm or
song or prayer, according as the recollection was
sad or joyful, and as his singing mood moved him.
There is one day in David's life — a long and sor
rowful day, not untouched with gleams of brightness
— of which the sacred historians have left a minute
description as it waxed from early morn till it closed
in the rest of night. ^ It was the day on which, at
the revolt of Absalom, the aged king set out from
Jerusalem, and, attended by faithful friends as well
as encountered by ruthless enemies, made his way
' A description of this day is given in his own inimitable style by
Dean Stanley (' Jewish Church,' Lecture xxiv.), who draws attention
to the fact that it was reserved for Ewald (Hist., iii. 228-235) to bring
out the singular interest of this day.

A DAY IN David's life. 345
slowly over the slopes of Olivet, down into the
valley beyond, and finally slept on the other side
of Jordan. Without presuming to tell each turn
of the road at which a psalm was suggested, we
may say in a word that, if there is poetry in actual
life, if there is pathos in meek endurance, that
long and eventful day is a psalter in itself, even
had the mouth of David been closed and his voice
silent from morning to night. The few words he
speaks to his faithful adherents, the submission
with which he bows to the divine will, his meekness
under rebuke and reviling, his tender regard for the
welfare of his friends and his greater solicitude for
the honour of his God, — all breathe the very spirit
of the Psalter, and reveal a character than which
no period of Israelite history, late or early, can
produce one more closely in keeping with the tone
of many of the psalms. The 3rd Psalm bears in the
superscription that it is "a psalm of David, when
he fled from Absalom his son." It may or may not
be that it was composed, as expositors have been in
the habit of explaining, on the morning after that
anxious day, when he awoke (see ver. 5) refreshed
by sleep and in safety from his enemies. But at all
events, no one who is not possessed by a theory can
read dispassionately the prose account of that day's
events and then say that such a psalm as this is out
of keeping with David's character and far beyond
his experience. It is true that Hitzig, who reck-

346 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
oned this among the Davidic psalms, placed it not
at the crisis of Absalom's rebellion, but at the time
after the capture of Ziklag, when "David was
greatly distressed, for the people spake of stoning
him, but David strengthened himself in Jehovah
his God" (1 Sam. xxx. 6). This is proof, at least,
that there were various occasions in David's life
on which such a psalm as this might have been
suggested. By the more modern criticism, which
finds the spiritual tone of the psalms too high
for any individual, late or early, we are told that
this psalm, and others which by the comparative
method go along with it, belong to " the period
when faithful Israelites were so sorely oppressed
both by traitors in their midst and by their Persian
tyrants";^ and the situation of the psalm is one in
which "the sources of danger to the spiritual ker
nel of the nation are, first, an Israelitish faction
openly opposed to the khasidim, and secondly, the
many desponding friends of the cause of truth, who
are discontented at the prosperity of the strict
Jehovists." I confess that such knowledge is too
wonderful for me. The reader may peruse the
psalm, first with the traditional title, and then
with this revised critical heading, and judge for
himself I would merely hazard the remark that
the psalm is at least better poetry if read in the
older fashioned way.
1 Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 227.

VICISSITUDES IN HIS LIFE. 347
This reference to one eventful day in David's life
has been made, however, not for the purpose of
finding occasion for any particular psalm, but to
direct attention to the way in which his charac
ter was manifested in a very special set of cir
cumstances. Let us now call to mind the long
and checkered life in which that character was
developed and matured — the peaceful home-life of
the boy, the stuping activities of youth, and chiefly,
in that the most receptive time of life, the pecu
liar influences favourable and adverse that bore
upon him during the years of Saul's reign. And
then there is the long period of his own reign, as he
passed from vigorous manhood to feeble old age,
building up a kingdom out of jealous warlike tribes,
ruling unruly men by a strange attractiveness, yet
himself ruled by men far his inferiors in principle,
falling a prey to his own passions, suffering the
penalty of over - indulgence to his children. No
life's day ever opened brighter, none had so many
and so strange variations, few a more sombre even-
time. Let the accounts be criticised to the last
degree, enough remains to show us a character of
extraordinary sensitiveness and susceptibility ; and
it is passing strange that he should be declared to
be susceptible of almost any impression but that of
religion, or, at all events, so little influenced by it
that, though he is presented to us in almost every
conceivable aspect, there was no religious aspect

348 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
worth presenting, no word from him of a religious
character worth preserving. Did he not, in all
those years of persecution by Saul, lift up a thought
to the God of Israel ? or was his religion in truth
nothing but a mechanical consulting of the oracle as
to the success or reverse of a projected raid ? Was
it for the mere love of adventure and the passion
for fighting that he took his life in his hand all
those years ? And when some new turn in his
fortunes came, and in retired cave or on remote
hillside he found breathing-space from his enemy,
was his lyre tuned to some secular song to solace
his spirits, and did he and his followers regale
themselves like those nobles of Samaria in Amos'
time who are said to have so closely imitated him ?
Among all the thoughts that passed through his
busy brain, was God not in any of them ; and
though admiring posterity has preserved his elegy
on Abner, has it not been able to preserve a single
line of a religious character that he uttered ? It is
hard to believe all this of one who confessedly had
a pre-eminent faculty of song, and was so richly
endowed in almost every sensibility that is akin to
religion — tenderness of heart, love of country and
home, devotion to friends, magnanimity towards
enemies. And all because these apparently simple
and heartfelt lyrics are the expression of the
fortunes of the "Jewish Church," and in David's
time the Jewish Church did not exist.

BROAD HUMANITY OP THE PSALMS. 349
Whatever may be said of " Church - religion,"
readers of all grades of intelligence for thousands
of years have recognised and been touched by "the
broad humanity of the book of Psalms " ; ^ and what
is maintained here is, that the character of the his
torical David, as a fair reading of the historical
books enables us to conceive it, exhibits just the
kind of humanity in the sufficient degree of inten
sity that is reflected in many of the Psalms. After
all, what is the religion of the Psalms in its broader
and firmer features ? For an answer to this ques
tion we must address ourselves not to the theologian
and the scholar, but to men with all the fulness of
human nature, even with " passions wild and strong,"
like our Scottish poet. They will tell us how a
psalm has the power to soothe their feverish unrest,
or " allay emotions when their strength threatens
harm." ^ When friends prove false, when the foun
dations of the earth seem to be dissolved, when
justice and kindness alike seem to have become
words without meaning, it is a psalm that gives the
assurance that —
" God's in His heaven, all's right with the world." ^
When the evil part of nature has gained the upper
hand, when falls already confessed have anew to be
1 Ker, The Psalms in History and Biography, p. viii.
2 Currer Bell, in Shirley, chap. xii.
3 Browning, " The Year's at the Spring.'' Compare Ps. xi. 4.

350 DAVID THE PSALMIST.
deplored, when progress upwards seems impossible,
and speech fails to express contrition, the familiar
words of a penitential psalm recur to the memory
with unexhausted meaning. Nay, when unsolved
problems and " questions over - queried " rush in
upon the mind in mad confusion, and deep dark
ness threatens to envelop the soul, the mysterious
weird images of the Psalms — bulls of Bashan, lions'
mouths — recur to the mind, and suit the mood
of the perturbed affrighted spirit. We know not
how, we know not why ; but a human soul seems to
have drawn near and passed by us, and there was
warmth and life in the passage. The Psalmist is
not a " poet's poet," nor is he a theological versifier.
It is because the Psalms touch the broad sympathies
of humanity at its tenderest parts that they have
been, and will continue to be, the prayer-book of
stumbling, erring, hoping, believing mankind. And
it would seem that David was raised up, so richly
gifted with poetic talent, so severely trained by a
unique experience, that he was able to strike the
chords of those sympathies, and has had his name
indissolubly associated with the Psalms. The note
once struck re-echoed in the ages that followed, with
more art no doubt, with growing intensity perhaps,
but never with truer tone or deeper pathos. It
would seem almost incredible that the experiences
through which David passed should never have
awakened in a soul so sensitive the religious senti-

DAVID A PEOPLES POET. 351
ments they seem so purposely adapted to awaken,
and that one who could compose the exquisitely
tender lament over Jonathan was not sympathet
ically touched by the countless situations in which
his own dramatic life was laid. It seems almost
cruel to deny to one who so grievously sinned
the relief of a sacred song to express his penitence,
and to one who was so deeply oppressed by sorrow
the consolation of a song of resignation. Silent he
was, no doubt, when God's hand lay heavy upon
him ; but by the power of divine grace he was able
again to look up, again to tune his harp, though in
a subdued note and minor key ; and the world of
sinful erring souls who have been cheered by his
words will not grudge him his due place as the
sweet singer of Israel.

352

CONCLUSION.
The aim of the preceding chapters has been to
vindicate for the Psalms an earlier place in the
history of Israel, and a higher place in the religion
of the Old Testament, than a modern school of
criticism is willing to concede to them. It has
been necessary to lead an argument of a broad
and general kind, because, on the one hand, the
critical estimate of the pre-exilian religious history
would preclude even the possibility of sacred lyrics
like the Psalms being composed before the Exile ;
and because, on the other hand, the interpretation
of the Psalms in a " Church " sense, while professing
to enhance the spirituality of their meaning, seems
to deprive them of their simplicity as expressions
of individual heart-religion. The attempt has been
made by two main converging lines of proof to
reach the twofold conclusion — first, that though
many of the Psalms belong to a comparatively
late period in the history, psalmody has its origin
far back in pre-exilian times, having been prepared

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS. 353
for in the very earliest religious songs, and brought
to the definite psalm-type at the hands of David ;
and, secondly, that beneath the forms of expression,
and behind the temporal occasions of the Psalms,
we must recognise as the great moving impulse
to psalmody the stirring of a true spirit of indi
vidual religious experience, which itself, though
perhaps somewhat unformed and vague, is also of
great antiquity.
No doubt any conclusion at which we finally
arrive in regard to the Psalter as a whole must be
based primarily on an exegesis of individual psalms ;
and hence a more minutely detailed examination
or classification of these lyrics may be desiderated
in an inquiry of this kind. But when we are met
by sweeping assertions as to the impossibility of
pre-exilian psalmody, it becomes necessary to ex
amine the foundations on which such broad state
ments rest, in order to have clear ground on which
to carry out the examination of the individual
pieces. It is lost labour disputing whether such
and such a psalm came from David, if one party
in the discussion takes the firm position that David
could not have composed a psalm. On the other
hand, if it can be made probable that David was
capable of psalm - composition, it is then a fair
subject of inquiry whether psalms ascribed to him
are really his. There is, moreover, this advantage
gained, if our general position can be made good.

354 CONCLUSION.
If the pre-exilian time as a whole was a time
in which psalmody was practicable and practised,
we have a pretty wide field in which to look for
the occasions of individual psalms, and are not
precluded from assigning them to authors known
or unknown during the period. That is to say,
the choice is not between David alone and the
post-exilian time.
It would, of course, be deeply interesting if we
could say definitely of each psalm who was its
author and under what circumstances it was com
posed. Yet even could we call back the original
singers of these lyrics and question them, per
haps after all they would tell us little to satisfy
our curiosity. The history of the composition of
modern lyrics shows how evanescent an occasion
has often led to the production of many an ever
lasting poem, and how, in most cases, it is the
mood of the singer more than his surrounding
that explains the song. So that it may be mis
directed labour to search for some historical occa
sion underlying a psalm, while the mental situation
that explains it is written plainly on its face.
The very fact that it should be possible to assign
a given psalm with varying plausibility to half-a-
dozen different periods before or after the Exile, and
to explain it either of individual experience or of the
vicissitudes of the nation, is sufficient proof that
the theme in the psalmist's mind was no accidental

EPIC TRUNK OF HISTORY. 355
and transient event or feeling, but something so
deep and universal that it could not but continu
ally recur, and could not be circumscribed by too
definite terms. Instead, therefore, of resolving the
Psalms into " occasional " pieces, all arising out of
the conflict of the post-exilian Jewish Church with
the world -Powers or with faithless adherents, a
truer view, as I take it, is, that we have in
them the conflict between the right and the
wrong on the largest scale — a conflict which is
as old as the dawn of conscience, and has taken
more and more definite shape as conscience became
enlightened, and as experience of man and of the
world was extended. But they are not poems
descriptive of the conflict ; they are the sighs or
the shouts, the prayers or the praises, of the men
actively engaged in the conflict. And so in all
succeeding ages they have appealed to the hearts
of men who have still the same combat to wage,
and they are as fresh to-day as when they were
first composed. Epic poetry was, as Dean Stanley ^
finely observes, denied to the Semitic races; but
this defect is to a great extent supplied by the
ivy-like tenacity with which the growth of the
Hebrew lyrics winds itself round and round the
more than epic trunk of the Hebrew history. But
then, be it remembered, that history gains all its
interest and significance from the religion. Take
1 Jewish Church, Lect. xxv.

356 CONCLUSION.
away from the history of Israel the religious
element and it would shrink into insignificance,
even as the states that were contiguous to Israel
have sunk into oblivion. And it seems to me that
to deny to pre-exilian Israel such a religion as is
expressed in the more general of the psalms, is
not only to denude the trunk of its clinging ivy,
but to take away the life - sap of the trunk
itself Here, in fact, the whole subject comes to a point,
and here lies the justification for this whole discus
sion. Without the existence of a genuine vital
godliness in pre-exilian Israel, it seems to me that
the whole history of that people becomes an in
soluble riddle, because nothing would be left where
by to explain the persistence of the nation on a
religious basis — the tenacity with which, through
all misfortune, they clung to the national faith
and institutions, the devotion which enabled them
to survive political wreck, and to spring up into
new life on the ruins of the old order of things.
There would, in short, be no living materials to
constitute a nation such as Israel was.
The religion of the Psalms is but the counterpart
of the religion of the Prophets. Even if it should
be affirmed that the teaching of these men had first
to work itself into the national consciousness before
it could come forth again in the religion of the
Psalms, yet the two extremities of this process

PROPHETIC AND PSALM RELIGION. 357
cannot be separated by centuries. A power must
operate where it exists ; and the prophetic voice,
to be effective on the heart, must not be dissipated
into the air. Now, what have we in the Psalms
but the process actually going on — -the religion
taught by the prophets being echoed back in the
language of devotion and personal experience ?
There is no dividing line in history at which we
can say the teaching of the prophets ends and
the response of the Psalms begins. Accordingly,
the estimate we form of the one will control our
estimate of the other. If we are convinced that
the prophetic religion attained a high tone at an
early period, it will not be difficult for us to believe
that there are pre - exilian Psalms. On the other
hand, to lower the tone and bring down the date
of prophetic influence will lead to the depreciation
of the Psalms as expressions of vital personal re
ligion, and to the relegating of them to a later
and later point of time.
We cannot leave the whole pre-exiHan period
without religion altogether. It is bad enough to
eliminate from it the great names which the
national memory has set up as landmarks — to pre
sent us with a pre-prophetic period without the
patriarchs and without a Moses ; to offer us, instead
of David, the sweet singer of Israel, a series of
hypothetical Davids, whose attempts at sacred
song, however, have, Hke his, all been forgotten;

358 CONCLUSION.
and, now in these last days also, to reduce the
genuine Isaiah to very insignificant bulk. The
landscape of pre - exilian history becomes tame
enough when the towering trees are so ruthlessly
hewn down ; but it will become a bleak wilderness
if we remove also the soil which was necessary for
the growth of even the humble vegetation that is
allowed to remain. Did the prophets themselves
have no pious mothers to instil into their minds
the fear of God and the love of goodness ? no godly
homes in which the religion they taught was
practised ? Is it indeed possible to believe that
these men stood up, one by one, with nothing
behind them, absolutely alone in their conceptions
of the truth and their devotion to it ? How then
were they understood by their contemporaries ?
How were they not only tolerated but feared,
unless their words were known to be but the ex
pression of the better mind of the people? And
it is this better mind that finds utterance in the
Psalms. Be it that the prophets towered above
the mass of their contemporaries, still there were
those who heard and followed their words ; and
the nation has religiously preserved their utter
ances, even when they sound as the nation's con
demnation. So also in the Psalms, the response
of a narrower or wider circle of such susceptible
hearers, there has been preserved a witness that
the religion was not entirely without a heart.

THE ANSWER OF THE CONSCIENCE. 359
And, as time went on and the general conscience
became more and more tender, there was an in
creasing number who could appropriate to them
selves the language of these sacred songs, till they
became indeed and in the truest sense the voice
of the Jewish Church.
It may not be possible for us to identify the
psalms which are David's, and to tell precisely
whose are the others. If our view of the history
is correct, the song was continuous, only ebbing
and flowing with the ebb and flow of national life.
But old songs, as they were repeated from mouth
to mouth, may have been modified or added to ;
and it may be that, side by side with the most
ancient, there are now some of the most recent
utterances of the psalmists. The history of psalm-
writing and psalm-transmission would be different
from the history of all other lyrical collections,
whether secular or sacred, if it were not so. The
most popular of songs are most freely handled, and,
like the commonest coins in circulation, most fre
quently conceal their image and superscription.
Zunz has shown ^ how many of the hymnic pieces
now incorporated in the Jewish Prayer-book were
first of all the compositions, for private individual
or social use, of the leaders of prayer in the syna
gogue, or of other men in positions of prominence ;
that these pieces were first repeated by their authors
•¦ Gottesdienstliche Vortriige, p. 392 ff.

360 CONCLUSION.
in the hearing of their pupils, then introduced into
the local synagogues, and finally became part of the
common prayer-book, whose history and composi
tion can thus be traced step by step. And very
probably the Psalter had a similar history. We
know almost to a certainty that it arose, as a
whole, out of more limited collections ; but in all
probability the first beginnings were simple enough.
As the persistent tradition assigns to David the
origin of psalmody, so the earlier psalms in the
collection have a more personal tone, and the
public liturgical use reveals itself more markedly
as the collection grew.
But psalmody once exercised, became the outlet
for the expression of the best that Judaism had of
vital religion — earnest heart - searching and the
seeking of God's face and favour. As the God of
Israel was never without a witness during all the
vicissitudes of His people's history, so He never
left His chosen ones without a consolation, giving
them songs in the darkest night of their distress,
expressive of the faith which they had in His
promises, of the influence which His revelation
through Law and Prophecy had upon their hearts,
and keeping alive a practical religion till the time
came for the Hope of Israel to be manifested.

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