Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the life of David is its
romantic variety of circumstances. What a many-coloured career that was
which began amidst the pastoral solitudes of Bethlehem, and ended in the
chamber where the dying ears heard the blare of the trumpets that
announced the accession of Bathsheba's son! He passes through the most
sharply contrasted conditions, and from each gathers some fresh fitness
for his great work of giving voice and form to all the phases of devout
feeling. The early shepherd life deeply influenced his character, and
has left its traces on many a line of his psalms.
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills;
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills."
And then, in strange contrast with the meditative quiet and lowly duties
of these first years, came the crowded vicissitudes of the tempestuous
course through which he reached his throne--court minstrel, companion
and friend of a king, idol of the people, champion of the armies of
God--and in his sudden elevation keeping the gracious sweetness of his
lowlier, and perhaps happier days. The scene changes with startling
suddenness to the desert. He is "hunted like a partridge upon the
mountains," a fugitive and half a freebooter, taking service at foreign
courts, and lurking on the frontiers with a band of outlaws recruited
from the "dangerous classes" of Israel. Like Dante and many more, he has
to learn the weariness of the exile's lot--how hard his fare, how
homeless his heart, how cold the courtesies of aliens, how unslumbering
the suspicions which watch the refugee who fights on the side of his
"natural enemies." One more swift transition and he is on the throne,
for long years victorious, prosperous, and beloved.
"Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place
The wisdom which adversity had bred,"
till suddenly he is plunged into the mire, and falsifies all his past,
and ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heart
and the prosperity of his kingdom. Thenceforward trouble is never far
away; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness of
his great fault, as well as by hatred and rebellion and murder in his
family, and discontent and alienation in his kingdom.
None of the great men of Scripture pass through a course of so many
changes; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of them
were so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, by
such heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. Like his
great Son and Lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be "in all
points tempted like as we are," that his words may be fitted for the
solace and strength of the whole world. Poets "learn in suffering what
they teach in song." These quick transitions of fortune, and this wide
experience, are the many-coloured threads from which the rich web of his
psalms is woven.
And while the life is singularly varied, the character is also
singularly full and versatile. In this respect, too, he is most unlike
the other leading figures of Old Testament history. Contrast him, for
example, with the stern majesty of Moses, austere and simple as the
tables of stone; or with the unvarying tone in the gaunt strength of
Elijah. These and the other mighty men in Israel are like the ruder
instruments of music--the trumpet of Sinai, with its one prolonged note.
David is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of
God murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of
triumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies of
all devout emotions.
The man had his faults--grave enough. Let it be remembered that no one
has judged them more rigorously than himself. The critics who have
delighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; and
their indictment has been little more than the quotation of his own
confession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by
the delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of
occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile
and war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times
break from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affection
became, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an unworthy
son.
But when all this is admitted, there remains a wonderfully rich, lovable
character. He is the very ideal of a minstrel hero, such as the legends
of the East especially love to paint. The shepherd's staff or sling, the
sword, the sceptre, and the lyre are equally familiar to his hands. That
union of the soldier and the poet gives the life a peculiar charm, and
is very strikingly brought out in that chapter of the book of Samuel (2
Sam. xxiii.) which begins, "These be the last words of David," and after
giving the swan-song of him whom it calls "the sweet psalmist of
Israel," passes immediately to the other side of the dual character,
with, "These be the names of the mighty men whom David had."
Thus, on the one side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all its
capacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulous
mobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-like
wonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, its
simplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings "after worlds half
realized," its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. He was made to
be the inspired poet of the religious affections.
And, on the other side, we see the greatest qualities of a military
leader of the antique type, in which personal daring and a strong arm
count for more than strategic skill. He dashes at Goliath with an
enthusiasm of youthful courage and faith. While still in the earliest
bloom of his manhood, at the head of his wild band of outlaws, he shows
himself sagacious, full of resource, prudent in counsel, and swift as
lightning in act; frank and generous, bold and gentle, cheery in defeat,
calm in peril, patient in privations and ready to share them with his
men, modest and self-restrained in victory, chivalrous to his foes, ever
watchful, ever hopeful--a born leader and king of men.
The basis of all was a profound, joyous trust in his Shepherd God, an
ardour of personal love to Him, such as had never before been expressed,
if it had ever found place, in Israel. That trust "opened his mouth to
show forth" God's praise, and strengthened his "fingers to fight." He
has told us himself what was his habitual temper, and how it was
sustained: "I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my
right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my
glory rejoiceth." (Psa. xvi. 8, 9.)
Thus endowed, he moved among men with that irresistible fascination
which only the greatest exercise. From the day when he stole like a
sunbeam into the darkened chamber where Saul wrestled with the evil
spirit, he bows all hearts that come under his spell. The women of
Israel chant his name with song and timbrel, the daughter of Saul
confesses her love unasked, the noble soul of Jonathan cleaves to him,
the rude outlaws in his little army peril their lives to gratify his
longing for a draught from the well where he had watered his father's
flocks; the priests let him take the consecrated bread, and trust him
with Goliath's sword, from behind the altar; his lofty courtesy wins the
heart of Abigail; the very king of the Philistines tells him that he is
"good in his sight as an angel of God;" the unhappy Saul's last word to
him is a blessing; six hundred men of Gath forsake home and country to
follow his fortunes when he returns from exile; and even in the dark
close of his reign, though sin and self-indulgence, and neglect of his
kingly duties, had weakened his subjects' loyalty, his flight before
Absalom is brightened by instances of passionate devotion which no
common character could have evoked; and even then his people are ready
to die for him, and in their affectionate pride call him "the light of
Israel." It was a prophetic instinct which made Jesse call his youngest
boy by a name apparently before unused--David, "Beloved."
The Spirit of God, acting through these great natural gifts, and using
this diversified experience of life, originated in him a new form of
inspiration. The Law was the revelation of the mind, and, in some
measure, of the heart, of God to man. The Psalm is the echo of the law,
the return current set in motion by the outflow of the Divine will, the
response of the heart of man to the manifested God. There had, indeed,
been traces of hymns before David. There were the burst of triumph which
the daughters of Israel sang, with timbrel and dance, over Pharaoh and
his host; the prayer of Moses the man of God (Psa. xc.), so archaic in
its tone, bearing in every line the impress of the weary wilderness and
the law of death; the song of the dying lawgiver (Deut. xxxii.); the
passionate pæan of Deborah; and some few briefer fragments. But,
practically, the Psalm began with David; and though many hands struck
the harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, he
remains emphatically "the sweet psalmist of Israel."
The psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a marked
similarity of manner. Their characteristics have been well summed up as
"creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form and
movement, antique but lucid style;"[A] to which may be added the
intensity of their devotion, the passion of Divine love that glows in
them all. They correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life as
given in the historical books. The early shepherd days, the manifold
sorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, the
triumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikingly
in the latter, all reappear in the psalms. The illusions, indeed, are
for the most part general rather than special, as is natural. His words
are thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials of
other lives. But it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the
allusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them with
any precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutually
illustrative. Much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed,
and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that
score have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process
sufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness
of many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as
throwing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made in
some degree in this volume.
[A] Delitzsch, Kommentar, u. d. Psalter II. 376.
It will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the Davidic
psalms in general. Can we tell which are David's? The Psalter, as is
generally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from some
idea that it corresponded with the Pentateuch. These five books are
marked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. The first
portion consists of Psa. i.-xli.; the second of Psa. xlii.-lxxii; the
third of Psa. lxxiii.-lxxxix; the fourth of Psa. xc.-cvi.; and the fifth
of Psa. cvii.-cl. The psalms attributed to David are unequally
distributed through these five books. There are seventy-three in all,
and they run thus:--In the first book there are thirty-seven; so that
if we regard psalms i. and ii. as a kind of double introduction, a
frontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the first
book proper only two which are not regarded as David's. The second book
has a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. The
third book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen,
eight of which (cxxxviii.-cxlv.) occur almost at the close. The
intention is obvious--to throw the Davidic psalms as much as possible
together in the first two books. And the inference is not unnatural that
these may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwards
added the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms of
David, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at the
end, so as to round off the whole.
Be that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of the
Psalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' names
are at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided the
order of the collection in the grouping not only of Davidic psalms, but
also of those attributed to the sons of Korah (xlii.-xlix.) and to Asaph
(lxxiii.-lxxxiii.)
The question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotly
debated. The balance of modern opinion is decidedly against their
genuineness. As in greater matters, so here "the higher criticism" comes
to the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, and
on very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective of
these ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. The extreme
form of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of Ewald, who
has devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with all
his equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and has
come to the conclusion that we have but eleven of David's psalms,--which
is surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method which
has attained it.
These editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by such
considerations as these: The Septuagint translators found them, and did
not understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explain
them; the Book of Chronicles throws no light upon them; they are very
rare in the two last books of the Psalter (Delitzsch, ii. 393). In some
cases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there is
nothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which they
are appended; while very frequently they throw a flood of light upon
these, and all but prove their trustworthiness by their appropriateness.
They are not authoritative, but they merit respectful consideration,
and, as Dr. Perowne puts it in his valuable work on the Psalms, stand on
a par with the subscriptions to the Epistles in the New Testament.
Regarding them thus, and yet examining the psalms to which they are
prefixed, there seem to be about forty-five which we may attribute with
some confidence to David, and with these we shall be concerned in this
book.