THE POETICAL BOOKS.
The poetical books of the Old Testament now invite our attention,--"The
Lamentations," "Proverbs," "Ecclesiastes," "The Song of Solomon," "Job,"
and "The Psalms." Ecclesiastes is not in poetical form, but it is a
prose poem; the movement of the language is often lyrical, and the
thought is all expressed in poetic phrases. The other books are all
poetical in form as well as in fact.
LAMENTATIONS, called in the Hebrew Bible by the quaint title "Ah How,"
the first two words of the book, and in the Greek Bible "Threnoi,"
signifying mourning, is placed in the middle of the latest group of the
Hebrew writings. In the English Bible it follows the prophecy of
Jeremiah. It is called in our version "The Lamentations of Jeremiah."
This title preserves the ancient tradition, and there is no reason to
doubt that the tradition embodies the truth. "In favor of this opinion,"
says Bleek, "we may note the agreement of the songs with Jeremiah's
prophecies in their whole character and spirit, in their purport, and in
the tone of disposition shown in them, as well as in the language.... As
regards the occasion and substance of these songs, the two first and the
two last relate to the misery which had been sent on the Jewish people,
and particularly on Jerusalem; the middle one, however, chiefly refers
to the personal sufferings of the author." [Footnote: Vol. ii. p. 102. ]
These five parts are not the five chapters of a book; they are five
distinct poems, each complete in itself, though they are all connected
in meaning. You notice the regularity of the structure, which is even
exhibited to some extent in the Old Version. The first and second, the
fourth and fifth, have each twenty-two verses or stanzas; the third one
has sixty-six stanzas. All but the last are acrostical poems. There are
twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet; each of these letters, in
regular order, begins a verse in four of these songs; in the third
lamentation there are three verses for each letter.
The time at which these elegies were written was undoubtedly the year of
the capture of Jerusalem by the army of Nebuchadnezzar, 586 B.C. The
Chaldean army had been investing the city for more than a year; the
walls were finally broken down, and the Chaldeans rushed in; as they
gained entrance on one side, the wretched King Zedekiah escaped on the
other with a few followers and fled down the Jericho road; he was
pursued and overtaken, his sons and princes were slain before his face,
then his own eyes were put out, and he was led away in chains to
Babylon, where he afterward died in captivity. After a few months' work
of this sort, a portion of the Chaldeans under Nebuzar-adan returned to
the dismantled and pillaged city and utterly destroyed both the city and
the temple. It is supposed that Jeremiah, who was allowed to remain in
the city during this bloody interval, wrote these elegies in the midst
of the desolation and fear then impending. "Never," says Dean Milman,
"was ruined city lamented in language so exquisitely pathetic. Jerusalem
is, as it were, personified and bewailed with the passionate sorrow of
private and domestic attachment; while the more general pictures of the
famine, common misery of every rank and age and sex, all the desolation,
the carnage, the violation, the dragging away into captivity, the
remembrance of former glories, of the gorgeous ceremonies, and of the
glad festivals, the awful sense of the Divine wrath, heightening the
present calamities, are successively drawn with all the life and reality
of an eye-witness." [Footnote: _History of the Jews_, i. 446.] The
ethical and spiritual qualities of the book are pure and high; the
writer does not fail to enforce the truth that it is because "Jerusalem
hath grievously sinned" that "she is become an unclean thing." And in
the midst of all this calamity there is no rebellion against God; it is
only the cry of a desolate but trusting soul to a just and faithful
Ruler.
THE PROVERBS, in the Hebrew Bible, is called "Mishle," or sometimes
"Mishle Shelomoh." The first word signifies Parables or Proverbs or
Sayings; the second word is the supposed name of the author, Solomon. By
the later Jews it is sometimes called "Sepher Chokmah,"--the Book of
Wisdom,--the same title as that which is borne by one of the apocryphal
books.
Here, doubtless, we have again, in the name of the author, what
Delitzsch calls a common denominator. On this subject the words of
William Aldis Wright, in Smith's "Bible Dictionary," express a
conservative judgment:--
"The superscriptions which are affixed to several portions of the Book
of Proverbs in i. 1, x. 1, xxv. 1, attribute the authorship of those
portions to Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. With the
exception of the last two chapters, which are distinctly assigned to
other authors, it is probable that the statement of the superscriptions
is in the main correct, and that the majority of the proverbs contained
in the book were uttered or collected by Solomon. It was natural and
quite in accordance with the practice of other nations that the Hebrews
should connect Solomon's name with a collection of maxims and precepts
which form a part of their literature to which he is known to have
contributed most largely (1 Kings, iv. 32). In the same way the Greeks
attributed most of their sayings to Pythagoras; the Arabs to Lokman, Abu
Obeid, Al Mofaddel, Meidani, and Samakhshari; the Persians to Ferid
Attar; and the northern people to Odin.
"But there can be no question that the Hebrews were much more justified
in assigning the Proverbs to Solomon than the nations which have just
been enumerated were in attributing the collections of national maxims
to the traditional authors above mentioned." [Footnote: Art. "Book of
Proverbs."]
This is, undoubtedly, as much as can be truly said respecting the
Solomonian authorship of these sayings. Professor Davidson, writing at a
later day, is more guarded.
"In the book which now exists we find gathered together the most
precious fruits of the wisdom of Israel during many hundreds of years,
and undoubtedly the later centuries were richer, or at all events
fuller, in their contributions than the earlier. The tradition, however,
which connects Solomon with the direction of mind known as 'The Wisdom'
cannot be reasonably set aside.... Making allowances for the
exaggerations of later times, we should leave history and tradition
altogether unexplained if we disallowed the claim of Solomon to have
exercised a creative influence upon the wisdom in Israel." [Footnote:
Art. "Proverbs," _Encyc. Brit._]
The book is divided into several sections:
1. A general introduction, explaining the character and aim of the book,
which occupies the first six verses.
2. A connected discourse upon wisdom, not in the form of maxims, but
rather in the manner of a connected essay, fills the first nine
chapters.
3. The next thirteen chapters (x.-xxii. 16) contain three hundred and
seventy-four miscellaneous proverbs, each consisting of two phrases, the
second of which is generally antithetical to the first, as "A wise son
maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is a heaviness to his mother."
There is only one exception (xix. 7), where the couplet is a triplet.
Probably one phrase has been lost. The heading of this section is "The
Proverbs of Solomon;" the section ends with the twenty-second chapter.
4. From xxii. 17 to xxiv. 22 is a more connected discussion, though in
the proverbial form, of the principles of conduct. This is introduced by
a brief exhortation to listen to "the words of the wise."
5. At xxiv. 23, begins another short section which extends through the
chapter, under this title: "These also are sayings of the wise."
6. The next five chapters (xxv.-xxix.) have for their caption this
sentence: "These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of
Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out."
7. Chapter xxx. is said to contain "The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh,
the oracle." The author is wholly unknown.
8. Chapter xxxi. 1-9, contains "The words of King Lemuel, the prophecy
that his mother taught him." He too stands here upon the sacred page but
the shadow of a name.
9. The book closes with an acrostical poem---twenty-two verses beginning
with the Hebrew letters in the order of the alphabet--upon "The Virtuous
Woman." The word "virtue" here is used in the Roman sense; it signifies
rather the vigorous woman, the capable woman.
Of these sections it seems probable that the one here numbered 6 is the
oldest, and that it contains the largest proportion of Solomonian
sayings. Professor Davidson thinks that it cannot have taken its present
form earlier than the eighth century.
The character of the teaching of the book is not uniform, but on the
whole it is best described as prudential rather than prophetic. It
embodies what we are in the habit of calling "good common sense." There
is an occasional maxim whose application to our own time may be doubted,
and now and then one whose morality has been superseded by the higher
standards of the New Testament; but, after making all due deductions, we
shall doubtless agree that it is a precious legacy of practical counsel,
and shall consent to these words of Professor Conant:--
"The gnomic poetry of the most enlightened of other nations will not
bear comparison with it in the depth and certainty of its foundation
principles, or in the comprehensiveness and moral grandeur of its
conceptions of human duty and responsibility." [Footnote: Smith's
_Bible Dictionary_, iii. 2616. ]
Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, bears in the Hebrew collection the name,
"Koheleth," which means the assembler of the people, and therefore,
probably, the man who addresses the assembly. Ecclesiastes is the Greek
name of the book in the Septuagint; we have simply copied the Greek word
in English letters.
The first verse is, "The words of Koheleth (the Preacher), the son of
David, King in Jerusalem." The only son of David who was ever king in
Jerusalem was Solomon; was Solomon the author of this book? This is the
apparent claim; the question is whether we have not here, as in the case
of Daniel, a book put forth pseudonymously; whether the author does not
personate Solomon, and speak his message through Solomon's lips. That
this is the fact modern scholars almost unanimously maintain. Their
reasons for their opinion may be briefly stated:
1. In the conclusion of the book the author speaks in his own person,
laying aside the thin disguise which he has been wearing. In several
other passages the literary veil becomes transparent. Thus (i. 12), "I
Koheleth was king over Israel in Jerusalem." This sounds like the voice
of one looking backward and trying to put himself in Solomon's place.
Again, in this and the following chapter, he says of himself: "I have
gotten me great wisdom above all that were before me in Jerusalem;" "I
was great, and increased more than all that were before me in
Jerusalem," etc.,--"all of which," says Bleek, "does not appear very
natural as coming from the son of David, who first captured Jerusalem."
Nobody had been before him in Jerusalem except his father David.
2. The state of society as described in the book, and particularly the
reference to rulers, agree better with the theory that it was written
during the Persian period, after the Captivity, when the satraps of the
Persian king were ruling with vacillating arbitrariness and fitful
violence.
3. The religious condition of the people as here depicted, and the
religious ideas of the book represent the period following the
Captivity, and do not represent the golden age of Israel.
4. More important and indeed perfectly decisive is the fact that the
book is full of Chaldaisms, and that the Hebrew is the later Hebrew, of
the days of Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Esther. It could not have been
written by Solomon, any more than the "Idylls of the King" could have
been written by Edmund Spenser. There are those, of course, who maintain
that the book was written by Solomon; just as there are those who still
maintain that the sun revolves around the earth. The reason for this
opinion is found in the first sentence of the book itself. The book
announces its own author, it is said; and to question the truth of this
claim is to deny the veracity of Scripture. On this question we may
call, from the array of conservative writers who have given us Smith's
"Bible Dictionary," such a witness as Professor Plumptre:--
"The hypothesis that every such statement in a canonical book must be
received as literally true is, in fact, an assumption that inspired
writers were debarred from forms of composition which were open, without
blame, to others. In the literature of every other nation the form of
personated authorship, when there is no _animus decipiendi_, has
been recognized as a legitimate channel for the expression of opinions,
or the quasi-dramatic representation of character. Why should we venture
on the assertion that if adopted by the writers of the Old Testament it
would make them guilty of falsehood?...There is nothing that need
startle us in the thought that an inspired writer might use a liberty
which has been granted without hesitation to the teachers of mankind in
every age and country." [Footnote: Art. "Ecclesiastes," vol. i. p.
645.]
That such is the character of the book and that it appeared some time
during the Persian age are well-ascertained results of scholarship.
The doctrine of the book is not so easily summarized. It is a hard book
to interpret. Dr. Ginsberg gives a striking _résumé_ of the
different theories of its teaching which have been promulgated. There is
no room here to enter upon the great question. Let it suffice to say
that we seem to have in these words the soliloquy of a soul struggling
with the problem of evil, sometimes borne down by a dismal skepticism,
sometimes asserting his faith in the enduring righteousness. The
writer's problem is the one to which Mr. Mallock has given an
epigrammatic statement: "Is life worth living?" He greatly doubts, yet
he strongly hopes. Much of the time it appears to him that the best
thing a man can do is to enjoy the present good and let the world wag.
But the outcome of all this struggle is the conviction that there is a
life beyond this life and a tribunal at which all wrongs will be
righted, and that to fear God and keep his commandments is the whole
duty of man. There are thus many passages in the book which express a
bitter skepticism; to winnow the wheat from the chaff and to find out
what we ought to think about life is a serious undertaking. It is only
the wise and skillful interpreter who can steer his bark along these
tortuous channels of reflection, and not run aground. Yet, properly
interpreted, the book is sound for substance of doctrine, and the
experience which it delineates, though sad and depressing, is full of
instruction for us. Dean Stanley's words about it are as true as they
are eloquent; they will throw some light on the path which lies just
before us:--
"As the Book of Job is couched in the form of a dramatic argument
between the patriarch and his friends, as the Song of Songs is a
dramatic dialogue between the Lover and the Loved One, so the Book of
Ecclesiastes is a drama of a still more tragic kind. It is an
interchange of voices, higher and lower, mournful and joyful, within a
single human soul. It is like the struggle between the two principles in
the Epistle to the Romans. It is like the question and answer of 'The
Two Voices' of our modern poet.... Every speculation and thought of the
human heart is heard and expressed and recognized in turn. The
conflicts, which in other parts of the Bible are confined to a single
verse or a single chapter, are here expanded into a whole book." And
after quoting a few of the darker and more cynical utterances, this
clear-sighted teacher goes on: "Their cry is indeed full of doubt and
despair and perplexity; it is such as we often hear from the melancholy,
skeptical, inquiring spirits of our own age; such as we often refuse to
hear and regard as unworthy even a good man's thought or care, but the
admission of such a cry into the Book of Ecclesiastes shows that it is
not beneath the notice of the Bible, not beneath the notice of God."
[Footnote: _History of the Jewish Church_, ii. 283, 284.]
"THE SONG OF SONGS" is another of the books ascribed to Solomon. It may
have been written in Solomon's time; that it was composed by Solomon
himself is not probable.
It has generally been regarded as an allegorical poem; the Jews
interpreted it as setting forth the love of Jehovah for Israel; the
Christian interpreters have made it the representation of the love of
Christ for his Church. These are the two principal theories, but it
might be instructive to let Archdeacon Farrar recite to us a short list
of the explanations which have been given of the book in the course of
the ages:--
"It represents, say the commentators, the love of God for the
congregation of Israel; it relates the history of the Jews from the
Exodus to the Messiah; it is a consolation to afflicted Israel; it is an
occult history; it represents the union of the divine soul with the
earthly body, or of the material with the active intellect; it is the
conversation of Solomon and Wisdom; it describes the love of Christ to
his Church; it is historico-prophetic; it is Solomon's thanksgiving for
a happy reign; it is a love-song unworthy of any place in the canon; it
treats of man's reconciliation to God; it is a prophecy of the Church
from the Crucifixion till after the Reformation; it is an anticipation
of the Apocalypse; it is the seven days' epithalamium on the marriage of
Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh; it is a magazine for direction and
consolation under every condition; it treats in hieroglyphics of the
sepulchre of the Saviour, his death, and the Old Testament saints; it
refers to Hezekiah and the Ten Tribes; it is written in glorification of
the Virgin Mary. Such were the impossible and diverging interpretations
of what many regarded as the very Word of God. A few only, till the
beginning of this century, saw the truth,--which is so obvious to all
who go to the Bible with the humble desire to know what it says, and not
to interpret it into their own baseless fancies,--that it is the
exquisite celebration of a pure love in humble life; of a love which no
splendor can dazzle and no flattery seduce."
These last sentences of Canon Farrar give the probable clew to the
interpretation of the book. It is a dramatic poem, celebrating the story
of a beautiful peasant girl, a native of the northern village of Shunem,
who was carried away by Solomon's officers and confined in his harem at
Jerusalem. But in the midst of all this splendor her heart is true to
the peasant lover whom she has left behind, nor can any blandishments of
the king disturb her constancy; her honor remains unstained, and she is
carried home at length, heart-whole and happy, by the swain who has come
to Jerusalem for her rescue. This is the beautiful story. The phrases in
which it is told are, indeed, too explicit for Occidental ears; the
color and the heat of the tropics is in the poetry, but it is perfectly
pure; it celebrates the triumph of maiden modesty and innocence. "The
song breathes at the same time," says Ewald, "such deep modesty and
chaste innocence of heart, such determined defiance of the
over-refinement and degeneracy of the court-life, such stinging scorn of
the growing corruption of life in great cities and palaces, that no
clearer or stronger testimony can be found of the healthy vigor which,
in this century, still characterized the nation at large, than the
combination of art and simplicity in the Canticles." [Footnote: _History
of Israel_, iv. 43.]
The Book of Job has been the subject of a great amount of critical
study. The earliest Jewish tradition is that it was written by Moses;
this tradition is preserved in the Talmud, which afterward states that
it was composed by an Israelite who returned to Palestine from the
Babylonian Captivity. It is almost certain that the first of these
traditions is baseless. The theory that it was written after the
Captivity is held by many scholars, but it is beset with serious
difficulties.
The book contains no allusion whatever to the Levitical law, nor to any
of the religious rites and ceremonies of the Jews. The inference has
therefore been drawn that it must have been written before the giving of
the law, probably in the period between Abraham and Moses. It seems
inconceivable that a devout Hebrew should have treated all the great
questions discussed in this book without any reference to the religious
institutions of his own people. It is equally difficult to understand
how the divine interposition for the punishment of the wicked and the
rewarding of the righteous could have been so fully considered without a
glance at the lessons of the Exodus, if the Exodus had taken place
before the book was written. But these arguments for an early origin are
quite neutralized by the doctrine of the book. The view of divine
providence set forth in it is very unlike that contained in the
Pentateuch. It is not necessary to say that there is any contradiction
between these two views; but the subject is approached from a very
different direction, and the whole tone of the book indicates a state of
religious thought quite different from that which existed among the
Hebrews before the Exodus. "If we are to believe that Moses wrote it,"
says a late critic, "then we must believe that he held these views as an
esoteric philosophy, and omitted from the religion which he gave to his
people the truths which had been revealed to him in the desert. The book
itself must have been suppressed until long after his day. The ignorant
Israelites could not have been trained under the discipline of the Law
if they had had at the same time the fiery, cynical, half-skeptical, and
enigmatical commentary which the Book of Job furnishes. There is nothing
abnormal or contrary to the conception of an inspired revelation in the
development of truth by wider views and deeper analysis through
successive sacred writers. But it is repulsive to conceive an inspired
teacher as first gaining the wider view, and then deliberately hiding
it, to utter the truth in cruder and more partial forms." [Footnote:
Raymond's _The Book of Job_, p. 18.] The fact that neither the
person nor the Book of Job is mentioned in the historical books of the
Jews, and that the first reference to him is in the Book of Ezekiel,
would indicate that the date of the book must have been much later than
the time of Moses. This argument could not be pressed, however, for we
have noted already the silence of the earlier historical books
concerning the Mosaic law.
The dilemma of the critics may be summed up as follows:--
1. The absence of allusion to the history of the Exodus and to the
Mosaic system shows that it must have been written before the Exodus. 2.
The absence of all reference to the book in the Hebrew history, and more
especially the doctrinal character of the book, shows that it could not
have been written before the age of Solomon. The latter conclusion is
held much more firmly than the former; and the silence respecting the
history and the Law is explained on the theory that the book is a
historical drama, the scene of which is laid in the period before Moses,
and the historic unities of which have been perfectly observed by the
writer. _The people of this drama_ lived before the Exodus and the
giving of the Law, and their conversations do not, therefore, refer to
any of the events which have happened since. The locality of the drama
is the "Land of Uz," and the geographers agree that the descriptions of
the book apply to the region known in the classical geographies as
"Arabia Deserta," southeast of Palestine. It is admitted that the
scenery and costume of the book are not Jewish; and they agree more
perfectly with what is known of that country than with any other. That
Job was a real personage, and that the drama is founded upon historical
tradition cannot be doubted. It is probable that it was written after
the time of Josiah.
I need not rehearse the story. Job is overtaken by great losses and
sufferings; in the midst of his calamities three friends draw near to
condole with him, and also to administer to him a little wholesome
reproof and admonition. Their theory is that suffering such as he is
enduring is a sign of the divine displeasure; that Job must have been a
great sinner, or he could not be such a sufferer. This argument Job
indignantly repels. He does not claim to be perfect, but he knows that
he has been an upright man, and he knows that bad men round about him
are prospering, while he is scourged and overwhelmed with trouble; he
sees this happening all over the earth,--the good afflicted, the evil
exalted; and he knows, therefore, that the doctrine of his miserable
comforters cannot be true. Sin does bring suffering, that he admits; but
that all suffering is the result of sin he denies. He cannot understand
it; his heart is bitter when he reflects upon it; and the insistence of
his visitors awakes in him a fierce indignation, and leads him to charge
God with injustice and cruelty. They are shocked and scandalized at his
almost blasphemous outcries against God; but he maintains his
righteousness, and drives his critics and censors from the field.
Finally Jehovah himself is represented as answering Job out of the
whirlwind, in one of the most sublime passages in all
literature,--silencing the arguments of his friends, sweeping away all
the reasonings which have preceded, explaining nothing, but only
affirming his own infinite power and wisdom. Before this august
manifestation Job bows with submission; the mystery of evil is not
explained; he is only convinced that it cannot be explained, and is
content to be silent and wait. The teaching of the book is well
summarized in these words of Dr. Raymond:--
"The current notion that calamity is always the punishment of crime and
prosperity always the reward of piety is not true. Neither is it true
that the distress of a righteous man is an indication of God's anger.
There are other purposes in the Divine mind of which we know nothing.
For instance, a good man may be afflicted, by permission of God, and
through the agency of Satan, to prove the genuine character of his
goodness. But whether this or some other reason, involved in the
administration of the universe, underlies the dispensation of temporal
blessings and afflictions, one thing is certain: the plans of God are
not, will not be, cannot be revealed; and the resignation of faith, not
of fatalism, is the only wisdom of man." [Footnote: _The Book of
Job_, p. 49.]
I have reserved for the last the most precious of all the Hebrew
writings, the _Book of Psalms_. The Hebrews called it "Tehillim,"
praise-book or hymn-book, and the title exactly describes it; in the
form in which we have it, it was a hymn-book prepared for the service
of the later temple.
If the question "Who wrote the Psalms?" were to be propounded in any
meeting of Sunday-school teachers, nine tenths of them would
unhesitatingly answer, "David." If the same question were put to an
assembly of modern Biblical scholars some would answer that David wrote
very few and perhaps not any of the psalms; that they were written
during the Maccabean dynasty, only one or two hundred years before
Christ. Both these views are extreme. We may believe that David did
write several of the psalms, but it is more than probable that the great
majority of them are from other writers.
Seventy-three psalms of the book seem to be ascribed to David in their
titles. "A Psalm of David," "Maschil of David," "Michtam of David," or
something similar is written over seventy-three different psalms.
Concerning these titles there has been much discussion. It has been
maintained that they are found in the ancient Hebrew text as constituent
parts of the Psalms, and are therefore entitled to full credit. But this
theory does not seem to be held by the majority of modern scholars. "The
variations of the inscriptions," says a late conservative writer, "in
the Septuagint and the other versions sufficiently prove that they were
not regarded as fixed portions of the canon, and that they were open to
conjectural emendations." [Footnote: _Speaker's Commentary_, iv.
151.] Dr. Moll, the learned author of the monograph on the Psalms in
Lange's "Commentary," says in his introduction: "The assumption that all
the inscriptions originated with the authors of the Psalms, and are
therefore inseparable from the text, cannot be consistently maintained.
It can at most be held only of a few.... There is now a disposition to
admit that some of them may have originated with the authors
themselves."
The probability is that most of these inscriptions were added by editors
and transcribers of the Psalms. You open your hymn-book, and find over
one hymn the name of Watts, and over another the name of Wesley, and
over another the name of Montgomery. Who inserted these names? Not the
authors, of course, but the editor or compiler of the collection.
Compilers in these days are careful and accurate, but they do make
mistakes, and you find the same hymn ascribed to different authors in
different books, while hymns that are anonymous in one book are credited
in another, rightly or wrongly, to the name of some author. The men who
collected the hymn-book of the Jews made similar mistakes, and the old
copies do not agree in all their titles.
But while the inscriptions over the psalms do not, generally, belong to
the psalms themselves, and are not in all cases accurate, most of them
were, no doubt, suffixed to the psalms at a very early day. "On the
whole," says Dr. Moll, "an opinion favorable to the antiquity and value
of these superscriptions has again been wrought out, which ascribes them
for the most part to tradition, and indeed a very ancient one."
Even if the titles were rightly translated, then, they would not give us
conclusive proof of the authorship of the Psalms. But some of the best
scholars assert that they are not rightly translated. The late Professor
Murray of Johns Hopkins University, whose little book on the Psalms is
vouched for as one of the most admirable productions of Biblical
scholarship which has yet appeared in this country, says that "whenever
we have an inscription in our version stating that the psalm is 'of
David' it is almost invariably a mistranslation of the original." It
should be written "to David," and it signifies that the compilers
ascribed the psalm to a more ancient collection to which the name of
David had been appended, not because he wrote all the poems in it, but
because he originated the collection and wrote many of its songs. This
older collection was called "The Psalms of David" something as a popular
hymn-book of these times is called Robinson's "Laudes Domini," because
Dr. Robinson compiled the book, and wrote some of the hymns. This old
Davidic collection is not in existence, but many of the psalms in our
book were taken from it, and the titles in our version are attempts to
credit to this old book such of them as were thus borrowed.
This method of crediting is not altogether unknown in this critical age.
In the various eclectic commentaries on the Sunday-school lessons I
often find sentences and paragraphs credited to "William Smith" which
were taken from Dr. Smith's "Bible Dictionary," the articles from which
they are taken being signed in all cases by the initials of the men who
wrote them. I find, also, quotations from the "Speaker's Commentary," of
which Canon Cook is the editor, ascribed to "F. C. Cook," or to "Cook,"
though the table of contents in the volume from which the quotation was
taken bears in capital letters the name of the writer of the commentary
on this particular book. In like manner "Lange" gets the credit of all
that is written in his famous "Bibelwerk," though he wrote very little
of it himself. The power to distinguish between editorship and
authorship was not, probably, possessed by ancient compilers in any
greater degree than by modern ones; and the inscriptions over the psalms
must be estimated with this fact in view.
I have spoken of the present collection of the Psalms as one book, but
it is in reality five books. It is so divided in the Revised Version.
The concluding verse of the Forty-first Psalm is as follows: "Blessed be
the Lord God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and amen."
This doxology marks the close of the first hymn-book prepared by the
Jews for the worship of the second temple. It was probably formed soon
after the first return from the Exile. All the Psalms except the first,
the tenth, and the thirty-third are credited to the old Davidic Psalm
Book. The title of the thirty-third has probably been omitted by some
copyist; the ninth and tenth in some old Hebrew copies are written as
one psalm, and there is an acrostical arrangement which shows that they
really belong together. The psalm may have been divided for liturgical
purposes, or by accident in copying. The title of the ninth, therefore,
covers the tenth. The first and second are, then, the only psalms that
are not ascribed to the old book of which this book was simply an
abridgment.
At the end of the Seventy-second Psalm is the doxology which marks the
close of the second of these hymn-books. After a while the psalms of the
first book grew stale and familiar, and a new book was wanted. "Gospel
Hymns No. 1," of the Moody and Sankey psalmody, had to be followed after
a year or two by "Gospel Hymns No. 2," and then by "No. 3" and "No. 4"
and "No. 5," and finally they were all bound up together. I may be
pardoned for associating things sacred with things not very sacred, and
poetry with something that is not always poetry, but the illustration,
familiar to all, shows exactly how these five hymn-books of the Jews
first came to be, and how they were at length combined in one.
The last verse of the Seventy-second Psalm has puzzled many readers:
"The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended." After this you find
in our collection several psalms ascribed to David, some of which he
undoubtedly wrote. The probable explanation is that the Seventy-second
Psalm was the last psalm of the old Davidic hymn-book; the compiler made
it the last one of this second book, and carelessly copied into this
psalm the inscription with which the old book ended.
The second of these hymn-books begins, therefore, with Psalm xlii., and
ends with Psalm lxxii., a collection of thirty-one songs of praise.
Number three of the temple-service contains eighteen psalms, and ends
with Psalm lxxxix; this book, as well as the one that precedes it, is
ascribed by a probable tradition to Nehemiah as its compiler.
The last verse of Psalm cvi. indicates the close of the fourth book. It
contains but seventeen psalms, and is the shortest book of the five. The
fifth book includes the remaining forty-four psalms, among them the
"Songs of David," or Pilgrim Songs, sung by the people on their journeys
to Jerusalem to keep the solemn feasts. It is probable that this fifth
book was compiled by the authorities in charge of the temple worship,
and that they at the same time collected the other four books and put
them all together, completing in this way the greater book of sacred
lyrics which has been so precious to many generations not only of Jews,
but also of Christians.
Various unsuccessful attempts have been made to classify these books
according to their subject-matter. It is plain that the first two are
composed chiefly of the oldest psalms and of those adapted to the
general purposes of worship; the third book reflects the grief of the
nation in the Captivity; the fourth, the joy of the returning exiles;
the fifth contains a more miscellaneous collection. The Jewish scholars
recognize and sometimes attempt to explain this arrangement of the
Psalms into five books. The Hebrew Midrash on Psalm i. I., says: "Moses
gave the five books of the law to the Israelites, and as a counterpart
of them, David gave the Psalms consisting of five books." This is, of
course, erroneous; the present collection of Psalms was made long after
the time of David; but it is not unlikely that some notion of a
symmetrical arrangement of the Psalms, to correspond to the five-fold
division of the Law, influenced the compilers of this Praise Book.
Of the contents of this book, of the peculiar structure of Hebrew
poetry, and of the historic references in many of the psalms, much might
be said, but this investigation would lead us somewhat aside from our
present purpose.
It may, however, be well to add a word or two respecting some of the
inscriptions and notations borne by the Psalms in our translation. Many
of them are composed of Hebrew words, transliterated into
English,--spelled out with English letters. King James' translators did
not know what they meant, so they reproduced them in this way. There has
been much discussion as to the meaning of several of them, and the
scholars are by no means agreed; the interpretations which follow are
mainly those given by Professor Murray:--
First is the famous "Selah," which we used to hear pronounced with great
solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning,
perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"--a mark of
expression like those Italian words which you find over the staff on
your sheet music.
"Michtam" and "Maschil" are also musical notes, indicating the time of
the melody,--metronome-marks, so to speak; and "Gittith" and "Shiggaion"
are marks that indicate the kind of melody to which the psalm is to be
sung.
"Negiloth" means stringed instruments; it indicates the kind of
accompaniment with which the psalm was to be sung. "Nehiloth" signifies
pipes or flutes, perhaps wind instruments in general.
The inscription "To the Chief Musician" means, probably, "For the Leader
of the Choir," and indicates that the original copy of the psalm thus
inserted in the book was one that had belonged to the chorister in the
old temple. "Upon Shemimith" means "set for bass voices;" "Upon
Alamoth," "set for female voices." "Upon Muthlabben," a curious
transliteration, means "arranged for training the soprano voices."
Professor Murray supposes that this particular psalm was used for
rehearsal by the women singers.
Some of these inscriptions designate the airs to which the psalms were
set, part of which seem to be sacred, and part secular. Such is "Shushan
Eduth," over Psalm lx., meaning "Fair as lilies is thy law," apparently
the name of a popular religious air. Another, probably secular, is over
Psalm xxii., "Aijeleth Shahar," "The stag at dawn," and another, over
Psalm 1vi., "Jonathelem Rechokim," which is, being interpreted, "O
silent dove, what bringest thou us from out the distance?"
These inscriptions and many other features of this ancient Hebrew poetry
have furnished puzzles for the unlearned and problems for the scholars,
but the meaning of the psalms themselves is for the most part clear
enough. The humble disciple pauses with some bewilderment over
"Neginoth" or "Michtam;" he classes them perhaps among the mysteries
which the angels desire to look into; but when he reads a little farther
on, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want;" or "God is our refuge
and strength, a very present help in trouble;" or "Create in me a clean
heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me," he knows full well
what these words mean. There is no life so lofty that these psalms do
not lift up a standard before it; there is no life so lowly that it does
not find in them words that utter its deepest humility and its faintest
trust. Wherever we are these psalms find us; they search the deep things
of our hearts; they bring to us the great things of God. Of how many
heroic characters have these old temple songs been the inspiration!
Jewish saints and patriots chanted them in the synagogue and on the
battle-field; apostles and evangelists sung them among perils of the
wilderness, as they traversed the rugged paths of Syria and Galatia and
Macedonia; martyrs in Rome softly hummed them when the lions near at
hand were crouching for their prey: in German forests, in Highland
glens, Lutherans and Covenanters breathed their lives out through their
cadences; in every land penitent souls have found in them words to tell
the story of their sorrow, and victorious souls the voices of their
triumph; mothers watching their babes by night have cheered the vigil by
singing them; mourners walking in lonely ways have been lighted by the
great hopes that shine through them, and pilgrims going down into the
valley of the shadow of death have found in their firm assurances a
strong staff to lean upon. Lyrics like these, into which so much of the
divine truth was breathed when they were written, and which a hundred
generations of the children of men have saturated with tears and
praises, with battle shouts and sobs of pain, with all the highest and
deepest experiences of the human soul, will live as long as joy lives
and long after sorrow ceases; will live beyond this life, and be sung by
pure voices in that land from which the silent dove, coming from afar,
brings us now and then upon her shining wings some glimpses of a glory
that eye hath never seen.
NOTE. The reference on pages 200 and 201 to the Gospel Hymns is not
strictly accurate. "Number Five" has not been bound up with the other
numbers.