'O LORD, HOW LONG?'

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morally superior to the great majority of their antagonists, but yet all their antagonists were certainly not that mass of corruption and hypocrisy which the leaders and founders, no doubt honestly enough, believed them to be. But none the less may we suppose that within their own party the lives of the Psalmists were noble and pure, and that their yearning for righteousness and their love of God were unfeigned and sincere.

The opening of the third paragraph of this Psalm is prettily expanded in Sir Philip Sidney's metrical version:

But I myself will to thy house address

With passport of thy graces manifold;
And in thy fear, knees of my heart will fold
Towards the temple of thy holiness.

Thou Lord, thou Lord, the Saviour of thine own,
Guide me, O in thy justice be my guide;
And make thy ways to me more plainly known,
For all I need, that with such foes do bide.'

§ 5. The sixth Psalm.-In the next Psalm (vi) the gloom deepens. The sickness is a metaphor for sorrows, and the speaker, one with his community, 'feels their sins and sufferings as his own.' Professor Cheyne supposes that this and kindred Psalms 'may refer either to the slavery into which the Jews were brought for seven years by Bagoses, or to that other outburst of Persian fury under Artaxerxes Ochus, when Jewish captives were carried away to Egypt, Babylonia, and even Hyrcania.'

O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger,

Neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am sick;
O Lord, heal me; for my bones are confounded.
My soul also is sore confounded:

But thou, O Lord, how long?

Return, O Lord, deliver my soul:

Oh save me for thy lovingkindness' sake. For in death there is no remembrance of thee: In Sheol who shall give thee thanks ?

I am weary with my groaning;

All the night make I my bed to swim;
I water my couch with my tears.
Mine eye is consumed because of sorrow:
It waxeth old because of all mine enemies.

Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity;

For the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord hath heard my supplication;

The Lord will receive my prayer.

All mine enemies shall be ashamed and sore confounded:
They shall be ashamed right suddenly.

'My bones are confounded.' This and similar expressions are metaphors for any kind of suffering.

The Lord hath heard.' 'The confidence now expressed does not contradict the lamentation which has been already uttered. Nor does it indicate a change in the state of affairs. He who sets forth his lamentation before God is already confident that help will be found in him' (Wellhausen).

"They shall be ashamed.' 'disconcerted,'' disappointed.'

'Ashamed' here, as frequently, means

§ 6. Psalms eleven, twelve, thirteen and seventeen.—The Psalmist speaks again (xi) as the leader or representative of his partythe strong in faith, who stay at their post and trust in God. A wise friend of mine, who sent me a suggested classification of the Psalter, put this Psalm with some thirty others under the heading, Psalms of Trust. But Psalms of Trust are also Psalms of Prayer, for only he can pray who trusts, and it is the trustful who pray.

In the Lord I take my refuge: how say ye then to me: 'Flee quickly like a bird.

For, lo, the wicked bend their bow,

They make ready their arrow upon the string,

That they may shoot in the darkness at the upright in heart.

If the pillars be destroyed,

What can the righteous do?'

The Lord in his holy temple,

The Lord whose throne is in heaven,

His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.

The Lord trieth the righteous:

But the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.

Upon the wicked he shall rain coals of fire and brimstone,
A burning wind shall be the portion of their cup.

For the Lord is righteous; he loveth righteousness;
The upright shall behold his face.

'HE LOVETH RIGHTEOUSNESS

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"The upright shall behold his face.' A metaphorical expression to indicate the fullest measure of divine grace and of spiritual happiness. We shall meet with the idea again.

The next Psalm (xii) represents the party of piety as a mere remnant amid a crowd of mocking oppressors. The true Israelites are frequently identified in the Psalter with the poor, the afflicted and the needy. On the other hand, we do not find denunciations of the rich qua rich. In this Psalm too we find an early use of Chasid as a party term. The Chasid is the man who shows Chesed, or lovingkindness, to his fellow-man, even as God shows Chesed to him. The term, as Professor Cheyne says, is untranslatable in English. The 'loving,' the pious,' the 'godly,' are all more or less inapposite and inaccurate. (With a slight correction of the text, Professor Wellhausen would render the first two lines, 'Help me, O Lord; love is clean gone, and faithfulness vanished from men.')

Help, Lord; for the godly man is no more;

For the faithful have ceased from among the children of men.

They speak falsehood every one with his neighbour :

With flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.

May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,

And the tongue that speaketh proud things: Who say, 'Through our tongue will we prevail; Our lips are our own: who is lord over us?'

"For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, Now will I arise,' saith the Lord;

'I will set him in safety that panteth towards me.' (?)

The words of the Lord are pure words

:

As smelted silver, as gold purified seven times.

The wicked walk on every side,

When vileness is exalted among the sons of men: (?) Thou wilt keep us, O Lord.

Thou wilt preserve us from this generation for ever.

In the following Psalm (xiii), which belongs still to the same period and group, the speaker is again a representative of his persecuted party. Note the fine transition from heavy complaint to the joyful assurance of faith.

How long wilt thou for ever forget me, O Lord?
How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?
How long shall I lay up sorrows in my soul,
And have trouble in my heart day by day?
How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?
Look and hear me, O Lord my God:

Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;
Lest mine enemy say, 'I have prevailed against him'
And those that trouble me rejoice that I am moved.
But as for me, I trust in thy lovingkindness;

My heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.

I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

From the next Psalm (xvii) some verses have been omitted. The text is frequently corrupt and uncertain.

Hear my right, O Lord, attend unto my cry,

Give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips. Let my sentence come forth from thy presence;

Thine eyes see uprightly.

If thou provest mine heart and visitest my reins;
Yea, if thou triest me, thou wilt find no evil thought;
My mouth doth not transgress. (?)..

By the word of thy lips

...

I have kept me from the paths of the spoiler.
My goings have held fast unto thy paths,
My footsteps have not slipped.

I call upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God:
Incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech.

Shew thy marvellous lovingkindness,

O thou that savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee

From those that rise up against them.

Keep me as the apple of the eye,

Hide me under the shadow of thy wings,

From the wicked that oppress me,

From my deadly enemies that compass me about. As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness:

I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thine image. (?)

The last line is exceedingly obscure. Perhaps the text is faulty. Some have seen in it a reference to a future life, but this is

WAS THE PSALMIST SELF-RIGHTEOUS ? 44I

improbable. For the speaker is Israel or the pious community. Others suppose that the night, from which the Psalmist will 'awake,' is the darkness of calamity-the awakening is at the dawning of the Messianic age. Some, with a slight change of text, would read, when thou awakest;' that is, when God's judgement has been executed, when the wicked have been destroyed and the pious delivered, the Psalmist, or the community of believers in whose name he speaks, will be undisturbed in their pure enjoyment of the divine communion.

On the verse, 'Let my sentence [or 'judgement'] come forth from thy presence,' the Midrash asks: How can it be proved that God takes bribes? Because it says, "He takes a bribe out of the bosom of the wicked" (Prov. xvii. 23. The real translation is, "The wicked takes a bribe out of his bosom "). And what is the bribe which he takes from the wicked in this world? Repentance and prayer and charity. God says, "My children, so long as the doors of prayer are open, repent; for in this world I take a bribe, but when hereafter I sit in judgement, I take no bribe, as it is said, He will not regard any ransom, neither will he consent, though thou multiply thy bribes."

Noteworthy in this Psalm is the strong expression of the speaker's own righteousness. But it is very unlikely that the Psalmist believed himself personally free from all wrongdoing. Such conceit would show that he was far even from that degree of virtue which it is possible for man to acquire. For humility and the consciousness of imperfection-the vivid recognition of the more one might do and the better that one might be―are the foundation of human excellence. But the Psalmist is convinced of one thing: his faith and joy in God. It is this which he urges in contrast to the impiety (as he believes) of his adversaries. And as he speaks of his party rather than of his own individual self, the character of his assertion is changed. His party, as a matter of fact, comprised those who did honestly try to order their lives in accordance with the mandates of the Law, who did 'set the Lord before them.' I admit that self-righteousness was a spiritual and moral fault into which the pious Jews of the post-exilic period were sometimes liable to fall. For it was possible with a certain moderate effort to obey the ritual and ceremonial law; it was even possible to obey all the negative commands of the moral law, and some of its positive commands as well. And then, especially at a time when there were others who did not obey the ritual and ceremonial ordinances, it was easy and tempting to think yourself a pattern of moral and religious excellence, and so thinking to be in truth anything but that which you thought