I was dumb with silence,

I held my peace altogether; (?)
But my sorrow was stirred.
My heart was hot within me,
As I mused the fire burned;
Then spake I with my tongue :

'Lord, make me to know mine end,

And the measure of my days, what it is;
That I know how frail I am.

may

Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth;
And mine age is as nothing before thee;
Verily every man is but a breath.

Surely as a mere semblance every man walketh to and fro;
His tumult is but a breath;

He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.'

And now, Lord, what wait I for?

My hope is in thee.

Deliver me from all my transgressions:
Make me not the reproach of the foolish.
I am dumb, I open not my mouth;
Because thou hast done it.

Remove thy stroke away from me:

I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: Surely every man is but a breath.

Hear my prayer, O Lord,

And give ear unto my cry;

Hold not thy peace at my tears:

For I am a stranger with thee,

And a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Look away from me, that I may be glad again, Before I go hence, and be no more.

'Look away from me,' in the last paragraph, recalls a phrase in Job. It is a metaphor, and means: Cease to be angry.' Even as the law bids the Israelites be kind and charitable to all strangers

THE HEROISM OF FAITH

453

and foreign settlers, so does the Psalmist claim a like protection from God. For the earth is his, and man comes and goes upon it, as a guest who tarries for a season. Commenting on the last verse of this Psalm, Professor Wellhausen observes: The Psalmist's resignation borders upon despair. It is remarkable how little he desires from God. The present is cheerless; of a future world there is no thought. Faith longs for sight, but longs in vain; yet it persists, though it is almost extinguished by the painful contradiction which experience brings. A prayer like this cannot be found except in the Old Testament.' But Professor Delitzsch has said more truly of this same Psalm: This is just the heroic feature in the faith of the Old Testament, that, in the midst of the riddles of this life, and face to face with the impenetrable darkness resting on the life beyond, it throws itself without reserve into the arms of God.'

Socrates, called Scholasticus, an ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century, tells of a plain man named Pambo, who came to a learned man and asked him to teach him some Psalm. He began to read to him the thirty-ninth: "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue." Having heard this first sentence, Pambo took his leave, saying he would make this his first lesson. He did not return, and when his teacher met him after the space of two months, and asked him when he would proceed, he replied that he had not yet mastered his first lesson; and he gave the like answer to one who asked the same question forty-nine years after' (Ker, The Psalms in History and Biography). But Pambo became a great saint all the same. The story is humorously told by Mr. Browning with a comic. application to himself in Jocoseria-the last poem in that volume.

§ 13. The forty-first Psalm.-The subject of the next Psalm (xli) is somewhat obscure. Some scholars regard it as a Psalm of Thanksgiving for deliverance from trouble; others as a didactic Psalm; others as a prayer for help. I have chosen the last interpretation. Perhaps when the Psalm was adopted for liturgical purposes its original opening was modified. The disease is a metaphor for communal calamity, but originally the Psalm must have been the result and record of an individual's sorrow. writer is conscious of personal sin, but he belongs to the party of integrity. It is to that party, the true Israel, to whose continual existence the honour of God is pledged. They will abide before God's face for ever. In the opening line 'considereth' is Coverdale's very happy and accurate rendering of the Hebrew word 'maskil.' 'Consideration' implies both thought and benevolence.

The

Happy is he that considereth the poor:

The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive; And he shall be counted happy upon the earth:

And thou wilt not deliver him unto the rage of his enemies. The Lord will support him upon the bed of languishing: Thou changest all his couch in his sickness.

I

say, 'Lord, be merciful unto me:

Heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee.' Mine enemies speak evil of me,

"When shall he die, and his name perish?'

And if one come to see me, he speaketh falsehood:
His heart gathereth malice to itself;

When he goeth abroad, he telleth it.

All that hate me whisper together against me:

Against me do they devise evil.

'A sore disease,' say they, 'cleaveth fast unto him:

And now that he lieth he shall rise up no more.'

Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who did

eat of my bread,

Hath lifted up his heel against me. (?)

But thou, O Lord, be gracious unto me,

Raise me up, and requite them.

By this I shall know that thou hast pleasure in me,
That mine enemies will not triumph over me.
For I-thou upholdest me in mine integrity,
Thou settest me before thy face for ever.

§14. Psalms forty-two and forty-three: The soul which longs for God. With the next Psalm we pass out of the first collection into the second. For some unknown reason it has become divided in our present Psalter into two (xlii, xliii). It was written, perhaps by some Levite (for it is a Psalm of Korah), at any rate by some lover of the Temple and its services, far from Jerusalem, in an enforced captivity. Some scholars assign it to the reign of Artaxerxes Ochus; Professor Cheyne would look rather to the days of Scopas and Antiochus the Great (198 B.C.). The Psalm is divided into three equal parts by a thrice-repeated refrain. The 'little mountain' is apparently the hill of Zion, but the text is probably corrupt. How admirably the love of the Temple became combined with the purest religious rapture! And note that the

THE THIRST FOR GOD

455

lack of the material temple could not separate the singer from his God. Spirit was near to spirit.

As a hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:
When shall I come and behold God's face?
My tears have been my bread day and night,

While they continually say unto me, 'Where is thy God?' I remember these things, and pour out my soul within me: How I went with the throng, and led them to the house of God,

With the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping holiday.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

And why art thou disquieted within me?

Wait thou for God: for I shall yet praise him,

Who is the salvation of my countenance, and my God.

O my God, my soul is cast down within me:

Therefore will I remember thee far from the land of Jordan,
Far from Hermon and the little hill.

Deep calleth unto deep at the voice of thy waterspouts ;
All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

I say unto God my rock, 'Why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?'

As with rottenness in my bones, mine enemies reproach me;
While they say daily unto me, 'Where is thy God?'
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

And why art thou disquieted within me?

Wait thou for God: for I shall yet praise him,

Who is the salvation of my countenance, and my God.

Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against a merciless nation:

O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.

For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off?

Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me;

Let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy dwellingplace.

Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy:

Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God. Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

And why art thou disquieted within me?

Wait thou for God: for I shall yet praise him,

Who is the salvation of my countenance, and my God.

§ 15. The fifty-fifth Psalm: Exaudi, Deus.'-The occasion and nearer epoch of the next Psalm (lv) are unknown. Doubtless the speaker is, as usual, the representative of his party, but the 'friend' can hardly be other than an individual, and the incident referred to a real one. The rendering of the last verse is partly

conjectural.

Give ear to my prayer,

O God,

And hide not thyself from my supplication.

Attend unto me, and hear me:

I toss to and fro in my complaint, and moan aloud, (?) Because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked:

For they cast mischief upon me, and in wrath they persecute me.

My heart is sore pained within me:

And the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me,
And horror hath overwhelmed me.

And I said, 'Oh that I had wings like a dove!
For then would I fly away, and be at rest.
Lo, then would I fly far off,

I would lodge in the wilderness.

I would hasten my escape

From the windy storm and tempest.'

Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues :

For I have seen violence and strife in the city.
Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof:
Mischief also and trouble are in the midst of it.
Wickedness is in the midst thereof:

Oppression and guile depart not from its market-place.