It is not to be supposed that our reverence for the Psalms in their
moral and religious aspects will make us put them all on the same level
poetically. There is a difference among the books of the New Testament
in regard to the purity and dignity of the Greek in which they are
written. There is a difference among St. Paul’s Epistles in regard to
the clearness and force of their style. There is a difference even among
the chapters of the same epistle in regard to the beauty of thought and
language. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter
is poetic, and the fourteenth is prosaic. Why should there not be a
difference in poetic quality among the Psalms?
There is a difference. The honest reader will recognize it. It will be no
harm to him if he should have his favourites among the poems which have
been gathered from many centuries into this great collection.
There are some, like the Twenty-seventh, the Forty-second, the
Forty-sixth, the Fifty-first, the Sixty-third, the Ninety-first, the
Ninety-sixth, the One Hundred and Third, the One Hundred and Seventh,
the One Hundred and Thirty-ninth, which rank with the noblest poetic
literature of the world. Others move on a lower level, and show the
traces of effort and constraint. There are also manifest alterations
and interpolations, which are not always improvements. Dr. Perowne,
who is one of the wisest and most conservative of modern commentators,
says, “Many of the Psalms have not come down to us in their original
form,”[8] and refers to the alterations which the Seventieth makes in
the Fortieth, and the Fifty-third in the Fourteenth. The last two verses
of the Fifty-first were evidently added by a later hand. The whole book,
in its present form, shows the marks of its compilation and use as the
Hymn-Book of the Jewish people. Not only in the titles, but also in the
text, we can discern the work of the compiler, critic, and adapter,
sometimes wise, but occasionally otherwise.