Know that the Lord is God indeed;

Without our aid he did us make;
We are his flock, he doth us feed,
And for his sheep he doth us take.
O enter then his gates with praise,
Approach with joy his courts unto;
Praise, laud and bless his name always,
For it is seemly so to do.

For why? the Lord our God is good;
His mercy is for ever sure;

His truth at all times firmly stood,

And shall from age to age endure.

§ 12. The eighty-first Psalm: Exultate Deo.'-I now interrupt the sequence in order to insert a Psalm of joyful thanksgiving (lxxxi) which, like the ninety-fifth, seems made up of two originally distinct passages. Moreover, the second half of this eighty-first Psalm is curiously parallel to the second half of the ninety-fifth Psalm.

The first of the two passages is a glad summons to the celebration of the festival of Passover or Tabernacles. Because of the mention of the Trumpet (Shophar) it has, however, now become the Psalm read or sung on the Day of Memorial. In the second passage a Psalmist is apparently recording words which he had heard in a vision or a dream. Whether the hypothesis of two separate fragments be true or not, in either case something is wanting before the words, 'I heard the speech of one I knew not.'

Sing aloud unto God our strength:

Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. Make melody, and strike the timbrel,

The pleasant lyre with the harp.

Blow the trumpet on the new moon,

At the full moon, for the day of our festival. For this is a statute for Israel,

And a law of the God of Jacob.

This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony,
When he went forth from the land of Egypt.

I heard the speech of one I knew not:
"I removed his shoulder from the burden:
His hands were delivered from the basket.
Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee;
I answered thee in the secret place of thunder:
I proved thee at the waters of Meribah.

THE HALLEL

(I said), "Hear, O my people: I will warn thee,

O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;
Let there be no strange god within thee;
Neither worship thou any strange god.
I am the Lord thy God,

Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt:
Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it."

'But my people would not hearken to my voice;
And Israel would none of me.

So I gave them up to the stubbornness of their own hearts,
That they might walk in their own counsels.
Oh that my people would hearken unto me,
And Israel would walk in my ways!

I would soon subdue their enemies,

And turn my hand against their adversaries.

They that hate them would submit themselves unto them; And their time would endure for ever. (?)

I would feed thee with the fat of wheat:

And with honeycomb would I satisfy thee.'

535

§ 13. The Hallel: Psalms one hundred and thirteen, and one hundred and fourteen.-We now come to the six famous Psalms (cxiii-cxviii) which form the so-called Hallel. They are, as every Jew knows or should know, recited (wholly or in part) in the synagogue on the three great festivals of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles, and also on the New Moons and on the Feast of Dedication. This custom is undoubtedly very ancient, and was certainly in vogue before the Christian era. It is highly probable that the Psalms were first used at the Feast of Dedication, and then afterwards at the Pentateuchal festivals. But more than this. It is probable that four of the six were written in the very midst of the Maccabean uprising, and that the last was composed for the very event which ever after it has helped to commemorate so worthily. The first two of the six may have

been composed at an earlier date.

Praise ye the Lord.

Praise, O ye servants of the Lord,

Praise ye the name of the Lord.

Blessed be the name of the Lord

From this time forth and for evermore.

From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same The Lord's name is to be praised.

The Lord is high above all nations,

And his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto the Lord our God, Who dwelleth on high,

Who looketh down so low

Upon the heaven and the earth?

Who raiseth up the poor out of the dust,
And lifteth the needy out of the dunghill;
That he may set him with princes,

Even with the princes of his people.

Who maketh the barren woman to keep house,
As the joyful mother of children.

Praise ye the Lord.

The 'poor' and 'needy' generally refer to the pious community or to some section of the Jewish people. But the following lines are difficult: "That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.' Some would emend the text, and read even with princes his (i.e. God's) people,' or 'even with the princes of peoples.' In that case the allusion might be to the return from Babylon and to the anticipations connected with it. The 'barren woman' would be Israel, which takes its place again among the nations and will become great and populous. Compare the metaphor in the Second Isaiah (Part I, p. 499). But if the text be correct, it would seem that the date of the Psalm must be Maccabean, and the only feasible explanation that of Wellhausen, whose pithy note runs: The Maccabean champions were received among the nobility and blended with them.'

In the following Psalm (cxiv) the poet looks back to the exodus from Egypt. The celebration of God's mighty deeds to Israel in the past is a prelude to the thanksgiving for more recent mercies.

The close of this Psalm seems sudden. Perhaps something is lost. By the imperatives in the last stanza the singer gives his own answer to the rhetorical question which he had put to the waters and the hills.

When Israel went out of Egypt,

The house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah became his sanctuary,

And Israel his dominion.

The sea saw, and fled:

Jordan turned back.

'NOT UNTO US'

537

The mountains skipped like rams,

And the hills like lambs.

What aileth thee, O thou sea, that thou fleest?
Thou Jordan, that thou turnest back?

Ye mountains, that ye skip like rams;
And ye hills, like lambs?

Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob;
Who turneth the rock into a pool of water,
The flint into a springing well.

§ 14. Psalm one hundred and fifteen: Non nobis, Domine.'Our next Psalm (cxv) is certainly Maccabean, but its precise date is hard to fix. Was it written after a victory, but before the final triumph? It begins beseechingly as if amid affliction, but a more confident and happy tone soon succeeds.

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
But unto thy name give glory,

For the sake of thy lovingkindness and thy truth.
Wherefore should the nations say,

'Where, pray, is their God?"
But our God is in the heavens:
He doeth whatsoever he pleaseth.

Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not:
Eyes have they, but they see not:
They have ears, but they hear not:

Noses have they, but they smell not:
They have hands, but they handle not:
Feet have they, but they walk not:
Neither speak they through their throat.
They that make them shall be like unto them;
Every one that trusteth in them.

O Israel, trust thou in the Lord :

He is their help and their shield.

O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord :-
He is their help and their shield.

Ye that fear the Lord, trust in the Lord :

He is their help and their shield.

The Lord hath been mindful of us: he will bless us;
He will bless the house of Israel;

He will bless the house of Aaron.

He will bless them that fear the Lord,
Both small and great.

May the Lord increase you more and more,

You and your children.

Blessed may ye be of the Lord

Who made heaven and earth.

The heavens are heavens for the Lord

But the earth hath he given to the children of men. And we will bless the Lord

From this time forth and for evermore.

Praise ye the Lord.

The third person following on the imperative in the third stanza seems to be explicable upon the supposition that half the choir sang the summons, and the other half made the rejoinder. Note the triple division of the people. The priests are important, but scarcely less so are the proselytes. For they are those that fear the Lord.'

§ 15. Psalm one hundred and sixteen.-The situation out of which the following Psalm (cxvi) was written is very obscure, though it probably belongs to the same Maccabean period. Some scholars regard it (in Professor Cheyne's words) as the 'tender musings of a devout soul on some personal or rather national deliverance.' In that case it is a Psalm of thanksgiving. But others believe that it is a prayer in sore affliction, and that it is only the confidence produced by prayer which views the danger as overpast. The nature of Hebrew tenses makes this uncertainty possible; moreover, in several places the text is probably corrupt, and in others defective. The Psalmist speaks as one of his party, the Chasidim or Asidaioi, of whom we shall hear in the next section. The son of thy handmaid' is to be explained as in Psalm 1xxxvi (p. 468). The pious community of the present is the descendant of the pious community of the past.

I love the Lord, because he hearkeneth
Unto the voice of my supplications;
Because he inclined his ear unto me
On the day when I called.