SECTION IV

THE BOOK OF PSALMS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

§ 1. The origin of the Psalter.-Another and a very different form of literature will come before us in the present section: a fresh example of the great variety of religious writings contained in that wonderful collection of books which we call the Bible. For this section is to be dedicated to the Psalms. And the Psalms present us with a phase of religious thought and expression unlike the utterances of sage and prophet and story-teller to which we have already listened. A few Psalms have already been given at the end of Part I and in the story of David; these will now find their proper place among their fellows, and be gladly read again by all who read them before.

The Book of Psalms has been most succinctly defined as 'a collection of religious and devotional poetry. It is made up mainly of prayers and songs of praise, with a certain number of didactic pieces.' The total number of Psalms is 150. The Hebrew name for the book is Tehillim, and means 'Praises' or 'Songs of Praise.' And the name expresses the purpose for which the three or four collections that now compose the Psalter were originally made. After the reforms of Ezra, the services of the Temple of Jerusalem became more and more carefully and elaborately organized. These services comprised not only sacrifice, but song. And gradually the songs were almost as systematically arranged for as the sacrifices. Before the Babylonian captivity, it would seem that such singing as took place in the Temple worship was not officially organized. Various references in pre-exilic literature, as well as the total lack of any allusion to Psalms or to trained choirs, make it highly probable that such music as accompanied the sacrifices did not proceed from 'officers of the Temple, but rather from the worshippers at large,' while what we hear of the singing

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suggests the untrained efforts of the congregation rather than the disciplined music of a temple choir.' But after the return, or more accurately after Ezra, the Temple music was no longer left to the uncertain outbursts of the worshipping throng. Guilds of singers were established and trained, and the musical part of the services became as important, and perhaps as elaborate, as in a modern cathedral.

These singers needed songs-hymns, as we should now call them. The services of the Temple were, in one sense, the expression of the national life, and it was natural that the songs should vary with the changing feelings of the nation and its leader. In days of sorrow and affliction, hymns of petition and penitence were in place; in days of gladness and prosperity, hymns of rejoicing and gratitude. And on all days praises, praises of God whose lovingkindness, though sometimes seemingly veiled, was yet abiding and certain.

Who wrote these varying hymns? We cannot tell. Some the singers doubtless wrote themselves; others were written for them. Others, again, and these perhaps the oldest, had been written by this private person or that, as an expression of his own longings and piety, or more often as the vocal utterance of a heart which beat in unison with the highest aspirations and deepest sorrows of Israel. Such existing hymns might be adopted and even adapted for Temple usage.

Collections were made, added to and added together. Psalms were inserted in these collections, not all of which perhaps were used or capable of use in the Temple services. In these collections they were given a place of refuge and of preservation. As Professor Wellhausen succinctly puts it: 'The Psalms are a collection of hymns for use in public worship. Only a small proportion, however, were composed expressly for this use. Some are of a secular nature (e.g. Ps. xlv), some give lyrical expression to the thoughts of an individual (e. g. Pss. iii and iv); but all were received into the collection to promote the edification of the congregation. The Psalter is the hymn-book of the second Temple.' Some scholars would emend this statement by the omission of the word 'small.'

§ 2. The collections which make up the Psalter.-Our present Book of Psalms contains three main collections.' The first collection is the oldest and contains the oldest Psalms, though it is very doubtful whether even any of these are older than the Exile. It extends from Ps. i to Ps. xli. Some much later Psalms may have been inserted by later editors or copyists into this earliest collection.

The second collection extends from Ps. xlii to Ps. lxxxix. It is itself made up of at least two minor collections with a supplement. Into the details I have no space to enter.

The third collection begins at Ps. xc and goes down to the end of the book. On the whole, the Psalms of this the latest collection are marked by a liturgical character more predominant than in the other books.'

At a later period the whole number of Psalms was divided up afresh to form five books or divisions corresponding with the five books or divisions of the Pentateuch. The first book corresponds with the limits of the original first collection (i-xli). The second collection was split up to form the second and third books (xliilxxii; lxxiii-lxxxix). Similarly the third collection forms the fourth and fifth books (xc-cvi; cvii-cl).

We do not precisely know when the last collection was made. But we can be tolerably certain that its date and the date when it was added on to the first and second collections were not separated by many years, and that both dates lie far on in the post-exilic period. For, if on the one hand, it is doubtful whether any of our present Psalms in their present form reach back to before the Exile, it is, on the other hand, almost certain that the latest of them reach forward to the second century before the Christian era, and more particularly to the epoch of the Maccabees. In the 300 years which extend from the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah to the Maccabean revolt by far the greater portion of the Psalter was written. Let me add here that the Greekspeaking Jews called the poems with which we are here concerned Psalmoi, or songs; hence our word Psalms. Psalmos meant originally the music to which a song was set: secondarily it was used for a song set or sung to music. And as the Greek Psalterion, properly a stringed instrument, was used 'metaphorically for a collection of such songs or poems,' so our word Psalter is used as an equivalent for the Book of Psalms.

§3. King David and the Psalter.-Nearly half of our 150 Psalms have in Hebrew the superscription Mizmor le-David, which is commonly translated a Psalm of David (Mizmor, like Psalmos, is supposed to mean a song set or sung to music). It is not certain that this translation is accurate. Except in this and similar superscriptions the Hebrew preposition 'le' is never used to indicate the author or maker of anything. Perhaps originally the phrase Mizmor le-David had a musical or liturgical meaning which was gradually forgotten. So thinks Professor Cornill. But even in Biblical times-for example, in the age of the man who

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wrote the Books of Chronicles-the words Mizmor le-David were taken to mean a Psalm written by David.

These Davidic Psalms occur mainly in the first and second collections. In the first collection every Psalm but four bears the Davidic superscription; in the second collection, out of twenty-two consecutive Psalms, eighteen are so superscribed. In the supplement to that second collection there is one. In the third collection, out of a total of sixty-one Psalms, seventeen are Davidic; but these do not form a group by themselves, and are perhaps the most indisputably post-Davidic of all the seventy-three. In their case, as Professor Robertson-Smith said, 'the only possible question for the critic is whether all these titles rest on editorial conjecture, or whether some of the Psalms exemplify the habit, so common in later Jewish literature, of writing in the name of ancient worthies.'

The Davidic Psalms in the first and second collections of the Psalter are in a somewhat different position. They were probably from the first collected together as Davidic Psalms, and perhaps the superscription which each one now bears separately formed originally a title for the whole group. But even in their case the value of the superscription is small. External and internal evidences of various kinds combine to make it excessively unlikely, either that David could have written such poems as these, or that these poems go back anything like as far as the Davidic age. I have briefly indicated in Part I (chapter x) how David's character and work became idealized in later ages, and how, known and celebrated in his own times as a famous singer and musician, he became regarded as the founder and framer of the national psalmody, just as Moses became regarded as the founder and framer of the national laws. Originally the words Mizmor le-David had probably a far closer reference to David as a musician than to David as a poet. Professor Robertson-Smith says rightly that though the old histories do not speak of David as a Psalm-writer, they dwell on his musical skill, and we are told how he danced and played before the ark as it was brought up with joy to Jerusalem. Dancing, music and song were in early times the united expression of lyrical inspiration, and the sacred melodies were still conjoined with dances at the time of the latest Psalms. We have every right, therefore, to conclude that the talents of Israel's most gifted singer were not withheld from the service of Jehovah, which king David placed high above all considerations of royal dignity. On the other hand, a curious passage of the Book of Amos, "They devise for themselves instruments of music like David," makes

David the chosen model of the dilettanti nobles of Samaria, who lay stretched on beds of ivory, anointed with the choicest perfumes, and mingling music with their cups in the familiar fashion of Oriental luxury. These two views of David as a musician are not irreconcilable if we remember that in old Israel' ('old' is inaccurate and unnecessary in this connexion, for in 'new' Israel it has ever been the same) 'religion was not separated from ordinary life, and that the gladness of the believing heart found natural utterance in sportful forms of unconstrained mirth. At a much later date chants for the Temple service were borrowed from the joyous songs of the vintage, and so it was possible that David should give the pattern alike for the melodies of the sanctuary and for the worldly airs of the nobles of Samaria. The sacred music of Israel was of popular origin, and long retained its popular type, and of this music David was taken to be father and great master. The oldest psalmody of the second Temple was still based on the ancient popular and Davidic model, and this seems to be the real reason why the oldest Psalm-book came to be known as "David's." The same name was afterwards extended to the other lay collection of "Prayers of David," while the collections that were formed from the first for use in the Temple were simply named from the Levitical choirs, or in later times bore no distinctive title.' The reference in this last sentence is to the fact that in the second collection eleven Psalms are superscribed 'Psalms for the sons of Korah,' and twelve as 'Psalms of Asaph.' The Korahites and Asaphites seem to have been two hereditary choir guilds, who traced their origin to their two Levitical ancestors. Further details on the subject can be read by the curious in Professor Robertson-Smith's delightful book, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (p. 204, &c.). The only doubtful point in Professor Robertson-Smith's statements seems to be his description of the Davidic collections as emanating from laymen. I should be far more inclined to think that they too were formed by the superintendents and executants of the musical services at the Temple.

§ 4. Character and contents of the Psalter.-The titles and even the precise dates of the Psalms have only a minor interest from a religious point of view. From that point of view what interests us most and chiefly is the contents of the Psalter, those wonderful contents that have made it, as Dean Church has rightly said, the one unique book of sacred poetry, which has nothing like it or second to it.' 'It expresses,' he goes on to say, 'the ideas and feelings of a religion of which the central