CHAPTER IV

PSALMS OF HAPPY COMMUNION WITH GOD

§ 1. The sixteenth Psalm: 'Conserva me, Domine.'-It was tolerably easy in the second chapter of this section to group together the Psalms written amid trouble and persecution. With many other Psalms classification is more difficult. In this chapter I propose to bring together five Psalms only (or more strictly four and a half), which express a happy serenity of peace, a glad and restful confidence in the worship of God and in communion with him. It must not be supposed that it would be difficult to allocate more than five Psalms to this group. I have, however, preferred to place several other Psalms which could fitly be added to this chapter in other groups. The first three of my five Psalms are from the first collection, while the two last are from the second. They shall follow here according to their order in the Psalter.

Psalm xvi opens the group. One of the most spiritual of the Psalms, it is not without peculiar difficulties. These are partly due to corruptions in the text. Two obscure verses are here omitted.

Preserve me, O God; for in thee do I take refuge.

I say unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord:

I have no higher good than thee.'

The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup; Thou art my lot for ever.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places;

Yea, I have a goodly heritage.

I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel;

In the night seasons my thoughts have admonished me.

I have set the Lord always before me;

With him at my right hand I cannot be moved.

'THE PATH OF LIFE'

Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth:
My flesh also shall dwell in security.

For thou wilt not give up my soul to Sheol;

Neither wilt thou suffer thy loving one to see the pit. Thou wilt make known to me the path of life;

In thy presence is fulness of joys;

In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

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Are we to suppose that the concluding five lines of this noble Psalm refer to a life of spiritual beatitude beyond the grave? The question is one of peculiar and fascinating difficulty. At first sight an affirmative answer seems the only reasonable one. But parallel passages in other Psalms, and some other considerations on which I cannot here dwell, compel me to say that it is unlikely that these five lines refer directly and explicitly to the immortality of the soul and of the individual consciousness in our modern sense of the words.

What then is their meaning?

Some commentators, assuming that in this instance the Psalmist is speaking of himself and not sinking himself in Israel, suppose that the last five lines only refer to a temporary escape from imminent peril. In his confidence that God will deliver him from the dangers that now encompass him, the Psalmist ignores the death which must ultimately overtake him. But this explanation does not do full justice to the words. It robs them of their full significance.

Other commentators, again, suppose that the 'I' is Israel. Then the meaning is: Israel, as a community, will live for ever. It will never be destroyed. God will continue to reveal to his people that path of life which is life indeed a life which is consecrated and transfigured by communion with God, which is illumined by spiritual pleasures, the source and home of which are with him. There may also be, as Professor Cheyne now thinks, a reference to the Messianic age, when this 'fulness of joy' is to be Israel's abiding heritage. But though the words themselves became easy to explain on these lines, another difficulty suggests itself. We have already seen that though Israel or the pious community may be the speaker in a number of seemingly 'individualistic' Psalms, yet the Psalmist himself feels the thoughts which he puts into the mouth of Israel. Only because he has realized them in his own soul, does he embody them in written words. They are the expression and outcome of his own experience; Israel speaks through him. If, for instance, he lets Israel say, 'I have no higher good than thee,' 'The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant

places,' he does so because he feels the truth of these words from his own experience. They are true for Israel and, therefore, are true for him. But not only so. Because he has felt them as true for himself, therefore they are true for Israel. But if he says of Israel, Thou wilt not suffer thy loving one to see the pit,' he cannot feel his words to be true for himself as well as for Israel. As an individual he will see the pit' (i. e. the nether world), for he, like all men, is mortal. The best explanation will therefore be to assume that the Psalmist speaks both for himself and for all other pious Israelites, who together make up the true Israel. Indeed, the Hebrew text in the last line but four reads 'loving ones'-the plural, not the singular. It would not, I think, be inaccurate to say that the Psalmist was, as it were, trembling on the verge of a fuller faith. If the Psalm was written in the late Persian or early Greek period, various conceptions of a life after death, in one form or another, were making their appearance in Judæa. May we not suppose that at a moment when the Psalmist is filled with a sense of close communion with God, he forgets and ignores the approach of death, and conceives of his life with God as enduring for evermore? The Psalmist's joy in God was in truth one of the pathways whereby men climbed up to the conception of immortality. And it was the purest of all the pathways-if I may use so mingled a metaphor. For a belief in immortality is not the mere postulate of God's righteousness; it is not the supposed necessary reward of human merit; but it is the result and the corollary of communion with God. It is the conviction that the spirit which has found its source and home in God has also found a bond and a union which even death is powerless to sever. 'Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost.'

The 'goodly heritage' is the Lord and the Lord's religion.

'My glory rejoiceth.' 'Heart' and 'glory' are synonyms; 'flesh' and soul,' strange though it may seem to us, are synonyms too, both being equivalent to 'life.'

§ 2. The twenty-third Psalm: 'The Lord is my shepherd.'—The second Psalm (xxiii) in this group is the famous hymn, 'The Lord is my shepherd.' The Shepherd of Israel was a familiar appellation of God. The speaker,' says Professor Cheyne, 'is any pious Israelite in whose mind both national and personal hopes and fears rest side by side; the "national and the "personal" elements cannot be dissevered by the most potent analysis. Israel's Shepherd does not neglect the individual. From Jeremiah's time onwards this truth was realized with increasing vividness; it has found its classic expression in this Psalm.'

THE DIVINE SHEPHERD

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The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me to waters of rest.

He refresheth my soul:

He guideth me on right paths for his name's sake Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies :

Thou anointest head with oil; my cup my

runneth over. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life:

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

The pastures' and 'waters of rest' keep up the metaphor of the flock and the shepherd. But what do they actually represent? The inward peace and security of those who are assured of God's protecting care. Even in calamity Israel will know no fear.

'He guideth me on right paths.' God leads Israel on paths which are sure and safe, and in the right direction. Right tracks as opposed to delusive tracks which lead nowhere.' The metaphor of the flock is still continued.

'For his name's sake.' The honour and trustworthiness of God are intimately bound up with the salvation of Israel. The idea was that God had made to Israel covenant promises to which he was bound to adhere. Though God of the whole world, he was emphatically and especially the God of Israel. Israel was the only people that knew him and worshipped him. Those who persecute Israel, laugh at and ridicule Israel's God.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.' The Psalmist's faith and even his joy in God are available for dark days as well as bright ones. 'He holds fast to his confidence alike

in prosperity and adversity.' The valley of the shadow of death' is a metaphor for a mortal peril. It keeps up the metaphor of the flock and the shepherd. It alludes to 'one of those narrow mountain glens so common in central Palestine, haunted by robbers and wild beasts, and dismal even at midday' (Cheyne).

Thy rod and thy staff.' The shepherd's club. The conviction of God's loving protection is a comfort for Israel.

'Thou preparest a table.' A new metaphor. Israel is the guest; God is the host. Israel draws near to God and enjoys

spiritual communion with him. His foes may be near at hand, but Israel fears them not. The 'oil' and 'cup' are part of the feast.

'Goodness and lovingkindness:' perhaps we should rather render, 'welfare and grace.' Israel is assured that God will grant both outward prosperity and inward beatitude. The grace or favour comes from God, Israel will experience it.

'I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.' Is this also a metaphor for communion with God? Not quite, but nearly. The Psalmist was doubtless thinking of the actual Temple, where his highest moments of spiritual experience had been passed. But nobody dwelt' in the Temple without intermission. As in another Psalm of this group, the Temple has become the symbol of that close communion with God which was expressed and often realized by its services.

§ 3. Older translations of the twenty-third Psalm.-Few Psalms have been more widely used and loved than the twenty-third. As Professor Kirkpatrick says, it is 'unrivalled for calm serenity and perfect faith. Under Jehovah's loving care the Psalmist knows neither want nor fear. His words admit of the most universal application to all needs, temporal and spiritual, in every age. The beauty and fame of the Psalm justify my dwelling upon it at some length, and it may be of interest to my readers to have before them some of the earlier English translations. Wycliffe's version was made not from the Hebrew but from the Vulgate, and, like the earlier rendering of Hampole, it is scarcely intelligible unless the Latin accompanies it. The clumsy Vulgate runs as follows:

Dominus regit me et nihil mihi deerit. In loco pascuae ibi me collocavit; super aquam refectionis educavit me. Animam meam convertit; deduxit me super semitas justitiae propter nomen suum. Nam etsi ambulavero in medio umbrae mortis, non timebo mala, quoniam tu mecum es; virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. Parasti in conspectu meo mensam adversus eos qui tribulant me; impinguasti in oleo caput meum: et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est. Et misericordia tua subsequetur me omnibus diebus vitae meae, et ut inhabitem in domo Domini in longitudinem dierum.

Now shall follow Wycliffe's rendering as revised by Purvey (about 1388).

The Lord governeth me, and no thing shall fail to me; in the place of pasture there he hath set me. He nourished me on the water of refreshing; he converted my soul. He led me forth on the paths of righteousness, for his name. For why though I shall go in the midst of shadow of death, I shall not dread evils. for thou art with me.