'A BROKEN AND A CONTRITE HEART'

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not despise. The Genevan Bible renders: The sacrifices of God are a contrite spirit; a contrite and broken heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' The Bishops' Bible introduces a new rendering which did not maintain itself: Sacrifices for God is a mortified spirit; O Lord, thou wilt not despise a mortified and an humble heart. Finally, in the Authorized Version, we get at last to a version which is no less literal than beautiful: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise-a rendering which the Revised Version has rightly found no necessity to change. I hope my readers may be as interested as I have been myself in tracing the various forms which this superb verse has assumed in the various English translations.

§ 5. The last two verses of the Psalm.-'For thou desirest not sacrifice.' In these sublime and soul-stirring sentences the great Psalm culminates and (as I believe) concludes. True penitence can no further go. I cannot perceive myself that we have here no true end of the Psalm; I discern no abruptness.' The Psalmist ends with a noble asseveration of the doctrine upon which his whole prayer depends. Can we really imagine that in one and the same breath he would declare that God has no pleasure in sacrifices, and that for his (the Psalmist's) purpose they are valueless, and then immediately proceed to pray for an opportunity to offer them? Such a juxtaposition seems to me a contradiction in terms. And yet in the Hebrew after the line, 'A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise,' the following two verses are appended :

O do good in thy favour unto Zion;

Build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

Then shalt thou delight in the sacrifices of righteousness, in burnt offering and whole offering;

Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

The relation of the last two verses to the rest of the Psalm depends partly on a question of date. On the old idea that the Psalm was written by David, the last two verses are clearly an addition, and the Jewish commentator, Ibn Ezra, mentions and approves of this supposition. But if the whole Psalm was written in the Exile, the particular difficulty of date disappears. It is this period to which most modern commentators assign it, and the majority of them strenuously maintain that the supposed 'appendix' is really an integral portion of the Psalm. So, for instance,

Professor Robertson-Smith: At present, says the Psalmist, God desires no material sacrifice, but will not despise a contrite heart.... But does the Psalmist then mean to say, absolutely and in general, that sacrifice is a superseded thing? No; for he adds that when Jerusalem is rebuilt, the sacrifice of Israel will be pleasing to God. He lives, therefore, in a time when the fall of Jerusalem has temporarily suspended the sacrificial ordinances, but-and this is the great lesson of the Psalm-has not closed the door of forgiveness to the penitent heart.' Professor Cheyne, who does not himself share this view, points out nevertheless that it is in full accordance with a continuous line of Jewish thought. We know how in the mediaeval Jewish liturgy there are constant prayers for the return to Zion, for the rebuilding of the Temple, for the renewal of sacrifices. At present, and while the dispersion lasts, prayer and penitence must take the place of sacrifice. But even while acknowledging their intrinsic superiority, it is never stated that because they are superior, therefore sacrifice will never be restored and need not be prayed for again. The Hymn of Unity for the first day of the week' quotes our Psalm and other similar passages, and adds

'I will build an altar with my broken heart,

And I will break my spirit within me.

I will humble the haughtiness of my heart and of mine eyes,
And I will rend my heart because of the Lord.

The sherds of my spirit are thy sacrifices;

May they come up with favour upon thine altar.'

Yet the author of this hymn could and did also pray for the restoration of the Temple and of its service as the mark and sign of the divine forgiveness unto Israel. He was not conscious of the smallest contradiction.

In one of a remarkable series of articles on the Psalms, Dr. B. Jacob argues strongly for the same view; he undoubtedly proves the close connexion of the Psalter with the Temple, and the intense devotion of the Psalmists to its services. We commit an anachronism if we suppose that spiritual religion and material sacrifices could not go hand in hand. This must be freely acknowledged, and yet I am not persuaded that in this particular instance the proposed application of this undoubted truth is either accurate or justifiable.

The fifty-first Psalm may have been written during the Exile, and the 'appendix' added on to it by another writer of the same period. Or the Psalm may have been written in the Exile, and the appendix added before the building of the walls by Nehemiah. Or the

'LEST WE FORGET'

Psalm may be post-exilic, and the appendix added in the days of Artaxerxes Ochus. (This latter theory would have to assume a breaking down of the walls at that date as a part of the cruel punishment inflicted upon the Jews for their revolt.') Or lastly, though the Psalm itself is hardly Maccabean, as Olshausen supposed, I do not see why the appendix could not be so. At any rate, an exilic or post-exilic date is not adverse to a separation of the body of the Psalm from the appendix. And is not the close contiguity of the verses against sacrifices with the prayer for their restoration and acceptance a further proof that both could not have proceeded from the same pen? The Psalmist makes no qualifications: Thou hast no pleasure in sacrifices. These are his words. He does not say, 'Thou hast no pleasure now, but thou wilt have in the future.' The statement is absolute and general. It seems to me a psychological impossibility that the man whose prayer culminated in the doctrine of the broken heart,' could at that very moment have put up a petition for the speedy restoration of those outward rites whose value in the eyes of God he had so deliberately denied. The very form of the last verse, with its overloaded first half and awkward third person in the second half, seems to plead for its later date and separate origin. That for us to-day the worth of the Psalm. closes with the 'contrite heart' would be acknowledged on all hands. I am glad to think that on exegetical grounds also the appendix may rightly be omitted.

The greatness and importance of this Psalm have, as I think, not only justified me in placing it in a chapter by itself, but also in commenting upon it at quite exceptional length. I will conclude by recalling the grand use of it made by Rudyard Kipling in his famous Jubilee hymn :

'The shouting and the tumult dies,

The captains and the kings depart,
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
A humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

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