us power to do it. Direct our understanding; purify our hearts; strengthen our will. § 30. The eightieth Psalm.-I propose to close the group with four Psalms which seem to reflect one and the same definite historical situation. I have therefore taken them out of the order in which they come in the Psalter, and we go back from the third collection to the second. They are national Psalms written amid persecution, suffering and war. From all we know of the postexilic history of the Jews, they must be assigned either to the reign of Artaxerxes Ochus or to the era of the Maccabees. With regard to the last three of them, at any rate, the later date seems to me by far the more probable. The intense consciousness that they were suffering for a religious cause was more characteristic of the Jews under Antiochus than of those under Ochus. And were synagogues already frequent in the Persian period? As I have already said, all the four Psalms belong to the second collection. That is one reason why Professor Robertson-Smith and other scholars think they cannot be Maccabean. They would limit the appearance of Maccabean Psalms to the third and latest collection. First shall come Psalm 1xxx. Note that 'Turn us again' means 'Restore our prosperity.' The 'vine' is of course Israel; the 'mountains' represent the southern, the 'cedars of God' the northern frontier; the 'sea' is the Mediterranean, and the 'river' the Euphrates: i. e. the western and eastern boundaries. Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; Thou that art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth. Stir up thy strength, And come and save us. Turn us again, O God, Cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. O Lord God of hosts, How long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; And givest them tears to drink in great measure. Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: And our enemies laugh among themselves. Turn us again, O God of hosts, Cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. THE VINE FROM EGYPT Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt: Thou didst cast out the nations and plant it. And it put forth its roots and filled the land. Why hast thou then broken down its hedges, So that all they who pass by the way do rend it? The boar out of the wood doth tear it, And the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Turn us again, O God of hosts [Cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved]. Look down from heaven, and behold, And visit this vine and establish it. They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down: 483 Upon the son of man whom thou hast chosen for thyself. So will we not go back from thee: Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name, Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, Cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. § 31. The seventy-ninth Psalm: 'Deus, venerunt gentes.'-Of the next Psalm (lxxix) the only adequate commentary is the story of the Maccabean persecutions, which we shall hear in the next section. O Lord, the nations are come into thine inheritance; They have laid Jerusalem in heaps. They have given the dead bodies of thy servants to be food unto the birds of the heaven, The flesh of thy loving ones unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood they have shed like water round about Jerusalem, And there was none to bury them. We are become a reproach to our neighbours, A scorn and a derision to them that are round about us. How long, O Lord, will thou be angry for ever, How long will thy passion burn like fire? Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that do not know thee, And laid his homestead waste. O remember not against us the iniquities of our ancestors; Let thy tender mercies speedily come to meet us: For we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: And deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake. Wherefore should the nations say, 'Where is their God?' Let there be made known among the nations in our sight The revenging of the blood of thy servants which hath been shed. Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; According to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die; And render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom Their reproach, wherewith they have reproached thee, O Lord. So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture Will give thee thanks for ever: We will shew forth thy praise to all generations. §32. Psalm seventy-four: 'Ut quid, Deus, repulisti.'-The following Psalm (lxxiv) evidently reflects the same historical situation as its predecessor. O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? Why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture? Remember thy congregation, which thou didst acquire of old ; Thine adversaries roar in the midst of thy Place of Meeting; They destroy as they who lift up Axes in the forest thicket. (?) They break off the carved work thereof; They hew down with axes and hammers. (?) THE BURNING OF THE SYNAGOGUES 485 They have set on fire thy sanctuary, They have defiled the dwelling place of thy name unto the ground. They said in their hearts, 'Let us destroy them altogether': They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land. We see not our signs: There is no more any prophet: Neither is there among us any that knoweth how long. Why withdrawest thou thy hand; And keepest thy right hand within thy bosom? But God is my King of old, Working deliverances in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: Thou driedst up everlasting rivers. The day is thine, the night also is thine: Remember how the enemy hath reviled thee, O Lord, For the dark places of the earth are full of cruelty. Arise, O God, plead thy cause: Remember how the fool revileth thee daily. Forget not the voice of thine enemies, The tumult of those that rise up against thee mounteth up continually. They set up their signs for signs.' A difficult and perhaps corrupt line. Are these signs military banners or heathen images and symbols? And how are the signs set up as signs? Signs of what? Of supremacy? The Place of Meeting is the Temple, and the difficult and corrupt verse with the axes describes its spoliation and ruin. 'Synagogues'; the translation is literal. For the Hebrew is 'meeting-places,' and that is the meaning of synagogues. In the third stanza there are allusions to the Exodus and the subsequent events. "The dark places of the earth': a doubtful verse. Is it that the earth is darkened by cruelty, or does it literally refer to the secret hiding-places in which the Jewish fugitives took refuge? But these were shelters from cruelty, filled with its victims. $33. The forty-fourth Psalm: 'Deus, auribus nostris audivimus.-The last of these four Psalms (xliv) seems also clearly Maccabean. Note the emphasis laid on the religious character of the persecution under which the people are labouring. For thy sake are we killed all the day long.' What work thou didst in their days, in the times of old. Thou didst drive out the nations with thy hand, and didst uproot them; Thou didst afflict the peoples and cast them out. For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them : But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou hadst a favour unto them. Thou art my King, O God; Command deliverances for Jacob. Through thee will we push down our enemies: Through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, Neither shall my sword save me. But thou hast saved us from our enemies, And hast put them to shame that hated us. In God we boast all the day long, And praise thy name for ever. But thou hast cast off, and put us to shame; |