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STUDIES IN THE
BOOK OF PSALMS

By
LINCOLN HULLEY, Ph. D.
President of John B. Stetson University,
DeLand, Florida

New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1906, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

M-fy.4-00 9(Dfc>rv

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

To my wife
Eloise Mayham Hulley

The substance of these lectures with much added
comment was given at the Summer School, Chautau
qua, N. Y., at Mont Eagle, Tenn., at the Lake Side
Assembly, Lake Side, Ohio, at Beatrice, Nebraska, at
Pertle Springs Assembly, Missouri, at the Mt. Gretna
Chautauqua, Penn., at the Summer School of the
South, Knoxville, Tenn., at Hiawatha Park, Mt.
Vernon, Ohio, at the Cliff Side Assembly, Ashland,
Ky., at Ottawa, Kansas, and at many other places.
They are given out in this form in response to many
requests to have printed copies.
L. H.

CONTENTS

I.

Hebrew Poetry ....

9

II.

The Psalter, a Book of Life

39

III.

Titles

to the Psalms .

55

IV.

The Traditional Setting of Some oi

1

the

Psalms ....

61

V.

Fifteen Psalm Groups

83

i.

The Messianic Psalms

85

2.

The Imprecatory Psalms

91

3-
The Pilgrim Psalms .
101
4-
Nature Psalms .
114
5-
Songs of Deliverance .
122
6.
Temple Psalms .
127
7-
Votive Psalms .
130
8.
Processional Psalms .
132
9-
Civic Psalms
138
IO.
A Shepherd Idyll
142
u.
Harvest Songs .
M5
12.
Festival Songs .
M7
x3-
National and Personal Psalms
149
14.
Hallelujah Psalms
i53
*5-
Doxological Psalms
7
• 157
8 Contents
VI. Ten Class Studies in the Psalms
i . The Structure of the Psalter
2. A Classification of the Psalms
3. Psalms of David .
4. Psalms from David to the Exile
5. Psalms of the Exile and Restora
tion ....
6. The Range of Subject Matter
7. Literary Features
8. The Historical Background
9. Musical and Liturgical Elements
10. The Religious Contents and Value
of the Psalms .

161163164166
168
169 170172173
176177

I
HEBREW POETRY

I
HEBREW POETRY
IN discussing Hebrew poetry, as a prepa
ration for the study of the Psalms, it will
be an aid to clearness to adopt the fol
lowing divisions of the subject : The poetic
temperament of the nation, the difference be
tween Hebrew poetry and prose, the poetic
remains of the Hebrews, the poetic range of
their literature, its substance, its poetic types,
its poetic forms, and the rules and examples
of Hebrew poetry. Poetic Temperament
The Hebrews possessed the poetic tempera
ment to an unusual degree. They lived in a
world of imagination and feeling. Every
common bush was afire with God. They
found " tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks, sermons in stone and God in every
thing." They lived in a world where common
things were glorified, where everything had re
ceived a touch of the divine, and where God
was perpetually immanent. Not alone did the
ii

12 Studies in the Book of Psalms
heavens declare the glory of God, and the
firmament show His handiwork, one day tell
ing it to another, and one night rehearsing it
unto the next, but every created thing was
full of praise. " Dragons and all deeps, fire
and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind fulfill
ing His word, mountains and all hills, fruitful
trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle,
creeping things and flying fowl, let them
praise the name of the Lord." This imagi
native power enabled them to clothe every
inanimate thing with life, to explain all nat
ural phenomena by the aid of supernatural
agency, and to discover the illustrative uses
of common things.
But this poetic temperament included the
emotional element to a great degree. No
people felt more deeply the problems of life
than the Hebrews. As a people they have
the oriental energy still. Of old they were
good haters and good lovers, wild, fierce and
violent in the expression of passion. They
were the men martyrs were made of. They
sealed their testimony with their blood.
They poured this energy of feeling into their
books. They put it into everything they
did. Intensity, vehemence, passion were the
marked characteristics of the whole nation.

Hebrew Poetry 13
Their manner of life tended to deepen this
temperament. That life was wild and free.
At first they roamed the desert. Later they
were mountaineers with rugged, strong
natures. Love, war, religion were the chief
elements of their lives. These are the special
domain of poetry, and furnish the themes and
the promptings of the spirit. Their early
ages were heroic ages, even though remain
ing historic, and so impressed the mind of
posterity with the deeds of daring and the
stalwart characters of their ancestors, that
they never ceased to praise the fathers.
Their limited development was another
thing that marked off their poetic tempera
ment. Men develop the life of feeling and
imagination before they do that of reason and
reflection. The literature of all nations be
gins in those emotions and imaginations that
are connected with love, war and religion,
and its first form is poetry. For primitive
peoples it is about as easy to sing a thing as
to tell it in prose. This improvising of song
is easy and natural to us all, if the poetic
form does not make too great a demand on
us. Children show the tendency. The early
history of nations is full of it. The Welsh,
Scotch and English bards all made up verses

14 Studies in the Book of Psalms
as they played the harp. Most of us know
what it is to go over a thing to ourselves in a
sing-song sort of way. Most people of
strong emotional and imaginative natures,
susceptible to excitement, when a strong
powerful emotion smites them, will dance the
body into appropriate motions of joy or
grief, and many of low intellectual power
will tend to burst into a sing-song narration
of it.
The Hebrews had that kind of tempera
ment and were little developed. Their poetic
forms were simple and made few demands on
them. Therefore they more easily expressed
themselves in poetry than in prose. It may be
a little hard for us to understand that a people
could write poetry more easily than prose.
A litde reflection will make the fact clear.
We have had several centuries of schooling
in the world of ideas, facts, causes, in a word,
in science, and our habits of reflection have
induced in us methods of exactness, cool de
liberation, logical definiteness and carefulness
in speech. The Hebrews never had such a
training. They lived always in an atmos
phere of warm poetic feeling. Their minds
were oriental, easily excited and swift in ut
terance. One might almost say they had no

Hebrew Poetry 15
control of their emotional processes. Fancies
were realities. Imaginations were things.
Broadly our world is the world of pure reason
and reflection ; theirs was the world of the
imagination and feeling. The one produces
science, the other music ; the one produces
prose, the other poetry. Generations of train
ing and experience begot poetic moods and
impulses in the Hebrews, and " they lisped
in numbers for the numbers came." The
prophets all possessed this poetic tempera
ment. They sedulously cultivated poetry.
They carefully cast their messages into
verses, filed their sentences, set them to
music, waited for occasion, and then chanted
their message. And the essentially poetic
nature of their work shows itself although it
is somewhat hid behind the obscuring surface
of a translation, and though found in the
worst printed book in English. If a deliber
ate attempt to conceal the literary qualities of
the Bible had been made, it could hardly
have succeeded better than it does in our
poorly printed old King James' version.
Poetry and Prose
The difference between poetry and prose
in the Bible is hard to find. This is due to

16 Studies in the Book of Psalms
three causes. First, in the ancient manu
scripts and translations, poetry and prose
were printed alike. There were no external
marks to separate them. Everything was
bunched together to save space. The actual
differences were lost sight of, and later scribes
in placing the accents ignorantly used prose
accents in poetic portions, tending to per
petually obscure the distinction. Many of us
would not know that we are reading poetry
in some places if we were not told so. The
second cause of this is the fact that our
notions of poetry are very different from those
of the Hebrews, the idea of using rhyme and
metre, and developing forms of versification,
not having dawned on them. And a third
cause is that the line between poetry and
prose has always been hard to define.
Bacon, Coleridge, DeQuincy, and Ruskin
have expressed conflicting views of the essen
tial nature of poetry and prose. Accepting
the standard of any one of them and apply
ing it, still the line would be blurred. To
some the difference is one of substance, to
others it is one of form, to others it is both,
to still others it is neither, and to some there
is no difference. Plenty of the poets have
spent their lives in versifying logic, in com-

Hebrew Poetry 17
posing metrical metaphysics, in embodying
creeds in cantos, in chanting Armenian
anthems and in singing psychological hymns.
To some this would not be poetry, however
much the form observes the laws of prosody.
One sees the incongruity of geometrizingthe
emotions, or poetizing mathematics. But to
seize on the reason for that incongruity, and
to make it a universal expression, explaining
the difference, would be hard.
To be sure it is not hard to decide that the
Psalms are lyric poetry and that the Chron
icles are sober prose. These books are like
the well developed branches of a tree. As
branches they are in plain sight, but when
they descend to the trunk, they are merged,
and the line between them is lost. So in re
gard to the poetry and prose of the Bible.
The line is not well marked. The prophets
half sang their sermons. One is often im
pressed by the musical cadences of their
orations, and need never be surprised to see
them burst into a strain of fine lyric quality
that has an elevation and an emotional
element that certainly rises superior to some
of the undoubted poetry of the Psalms.
But why not ? Prose has its rhythms, ca
dences, tone colours, tunes, time, measures

18 Studies in the Book of Psalms
and other musical qualities. It expresses
feeling as well as poetry ; just as the latter ex
presses ideas as well as prose. Especially is
this true of Biblical prose for its vocabulary is
picturesque and its sentences abound in
figures of speech.
Poetic Remains of Hebrew Literature
The poetic remains of the Hebrews point
to the existence of a larger literature of which
our Scriptures are a fragment. There are
specific cases of lost books referred to in the
Old Testament, and of these a number were
poetic books. The most primitive remains
are folk songs, particularly Lamech's Song of
the Sword, the Song of . the Well, and the
Song of Jasher. Noah's Curse and Isaac's
Blessing and also Jacob's Blessing are ancient
relics of Hebrew poetry. It will be observed
that none of these are sacred poems, but con
tain purely secular ideas and feelings about
what we usually regard as non-sacred things.
They indicate some acquaintance with the
arts of verse.
The next general class includes the poems
on war subjects, all full of religious senti
ment, scattered through the early books of
the Bible. The songs of Moses, Miriam, and

Hebrew Poetry 19
Deborah are such war pieces. In addition to
these fragmentary portions quoted occasion
ally there are poetic sections in nearly all the
prophets, amounting roughly to about one-
half the entire contents of their books. The
books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs and Solomon's
Song with the exception of small portions
such as Job's Prolog and Epilog, are entirely
poetic. The rest of the Old Testament is
prose. The Range of Hebrew Poetry
The range of Hebrew poetry was very
great — quite as much so as that of any litera
ture. The fact that it is all religious poetry
might lead to the conclusion that it must be
limited in its range, but this is not so.
Things that we regard as secular, they
treated as sacred, and poured a flood of re
ligious sentiment into them. The Hebrews
did not draw the line we do between sacred
and secular. To them nothing was secular.
If a thing was not sacred, it was not fit to
exist at all. They sanctified the whole of
life. We tend to secularize the whole of life,
leaving few things in the list of the sacred.
For instance, we do not usually hold a mar
riage song or a harvest song to be religious,

20 Studies in the Book of Psalms
but the Hebrews did. Such songs were
among the songs of Zion sung in the temple,
sung on the Sabbath, and sung just as much
in the praise of God as the 23d Psalm might
be. God was immanent in the Hebrews' world,
a constant presence, and the Hebrews were
His children. It was fitting to invoke Him at
every crisis, to honour Him in every event, to
seek Him at all times. In their praise book,
therefore, they have touched on nearly
every phase of their national and individual
life. There are poems on their national
history, poems on providence, poems on
wisdom, and poems on the Divine Attri
butes. The Substance of Hebrew Poetry
By this is meant the intellectual and spirit
ual forces that constitute the sinews of all
great literary work. With respect to these,
no book is so great as the Bible. It has been
central and vital in our thinking for hundreds
of years. It is an idea-producing book, a
soul-stirring and will-moving book. The
poetry of the psalms is world poetry. No
literature in the Bible or out of it comes so
near to the human heart in all its phases of

Hebrew Poetry 21
life as the book of Psalms. This book alone
grounds itself in the fundamental and simple
elements of human nature. It has its major
and minor moods, its sharps and flats, but it
never strikes a false note and seldom pro
duces a discord. It has its low tones and its
high tones. It is not all celestial music.
But the level is so high that our spirits go up
to reach it. One here breathes an air that is
pure and sweet and life-giving. There are
no malarious vapours, no stenches, no re
volting or forbidden subjects, no pandering
to an unworthy feeling. There is no light
treatment of sober pieces. The writers are
not making verses to be pretty, nor to minis
ter to an aesthetic taste, nor with any idle or
purely literary purpose. They are dominated
by a moral purpose. They are writing out
their deep convictions, strong feelings, high
est thinking, spiritual promptings and pur
poses, and always in a serious way and in
the solemn belief that the source of it all is
God and that it is His spirit that fills and
prompts them. Kinds of Hebrew Poetry
The grand divisions of poetry are epic,
dramatic, lyric, and gnomic. It is sometimes

22 Studies in the Book of Psalms
asserted that all these kinds are found in the
Bible, but that all depends on the definition
given to these words.
Epic poetry means heroic poetry. Its
realm is that of fable, and its tissues are the
superhuman deeds of great heroes. In the
Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, and in the
^Eneid of Vergil the epic form is given
its finest expression. In idea, this kind of
poetry calls for the heroic ; and in form, it
calls for a long extended treatment. Now in
the early books of the Bible there are epic
materials, but not a single epic poem. The
stories of Noah, Abraham, Joseph and later
the stories of Sampson and David would
furnish the substance of an epic poem. In the
stories of Sampson one recognizes a series of
tales that might be called an epic cycle, but
they are all told in pure prose.
Nor is there any ground to assert that there
is dramatic poetry, or a drama in the Bible.
To be sure there are examples of poetry con
ceived and executed with fine dramatic power.
There are studied situations, spirited dia
logues, and tragic sequels. In the book of Job
there are all these and certain additional ele
ments of the drama, namely a prolog, an
epilog, dramatis persona?, and a mechanical

Hebrew Poetry 23
division into regular cycles of speeches. But
it is all an accommodation of language to
speak of it as drama. In the sense that
Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe wrote
drama, there is no Hebrew drama. Indeed
a new vocabulary would be useful in describ
ing the linguistic and literary phenomena of
Hebrew literature, they are so different from
our own.
Greeks, Romans, Germans, and the Eng
lish all use Indo-European standards and de
cide for us the tests of a drama. The
Hebrews do not conform. They had no
theatres, and never wrote a play. This is not
said from a prejudice against applying the
word theatrical or dramatic to a sacred com
position, but out of a judgment that either is
a misnomer. The most that can be said for
the book of Job is, that it is a dramatic dia
logue, using the word dramatic in a literary
sense. It is didactic poetry. Surely the
division of Paradise Lost into parts, the
dramatic character of the subject and some
of its situations, the introduction of persons
in the dialogue, an entanglement and a solu
tion, with even the addition of a prolog and
an epilog, do not constitute that work a
drama. Its length does not rule it out, for

24 Studies in the Book of Psalms
that is no test of a drama. Wagner's dramas
are long, one a tetralogy. Only in the widest
sense is Job dramatic poetry, and it would be
better to apply the word didactic to it. The
only other book that may be urged to be
drama is Solomon's song. Like Job it has an
action, and it certainly is different from other
kinds of poetry in the Bible, but it is so
unlike drama that it may not be classed
there. To call Job a tragedy and Solomon's song
a comedy is literary trifling and is confusing.
If no better name exists, it were better to rec
ognize the new type and to invent a new
name. The poetry of the Hebrews is so dif
ferent, in respect to even the poetic elements,
from other poetry as to require a unique
analysis and a unique description, and why
not its products? The Hebrews acted as
differently from Europeans in this as they
did in the matter of tense, and as in the case
of the tense, it results in as much confusion to
speak of Hebrew drama. Solomon's song is
a single poem or a series of poems grouped
into a unity, on the subject of love and
would better be called an idyl.
Lyric poetry, however, abounds in the
Bible. There are many varieties of it in form

Hebrew Poetry 25
and subject. It is the form nearest to music,
was usually accompanied by singing, is the
easiest to write, and gets nearer to the es
sence of real poetry than any other form. Its
examples are short and therefore are more
suitable to catching and holding a strong or
passing emotion. The dialogue in drama is
always artificial. People do not talk that
way in real life. They are not asked to talk
in lyric poetry. Here an emotion is given a
body, and if the body suits, it is a liv
ing thing thereafter. The lyric is more
suited to national, local and temporary feel
ings. It catches the transient mood, not a
whole life's tragedy. It sings the emotions,
not the reflections of an individual.
Gnomic poetry is a term that had to be
invented to describe a class of Hebrew poetry.
Perhaps didactic would serve as well. Gno
mic poetry is the poetry of the proverbs, the
appropriate form given to the lessons of wis
dom. There is little reasoning in Hebrew
philosophy. It is observation, experience,
and reflection. It is expressed in short sen
tences. Systematic arrangement, logical re
lation of ideas, or a long drawn out treatise
were never attempted. The Gnomic form
embodies not the feelings of men, but their

26 Studies in the Book of Psalms
thoughts. It admits of less variety and beauty
than lyric poetry.
Varieties of Hebrew Poetry
The Hebrews distinguished poetic styles
and gave names to varieties, — Shir, mizmor,
neginah, maskil, miktam, shiggaion. These
words all have reference to poetic form. It is
hard to say just what corresponds to them in
English. Shir means simply a song, implying a poem
of lyrical quality intended for singing, but
giving no definite idea of its form. Mizmor
signifies a song set to music and intended
for instrumental accompaniment. Maskil is
a poem instructive in character, less lyrical in
form and movement than the shir, but still
one that is sung and with musical accompani
ment. Miktam is a memorial, or anniversary
song, with something of the German choral
slow movement, to be sung by many voices,
and heavy accompaniment. Shiggaion is a
medley of a rapid, irregular character. Still
other designations call attention to the subject
matter of the poem, to the spirit of it, or to
its liturgical character. Such words are te-
hillah, kinah, jedidoth, tephillah, mashal,
chidah, meaning respectively a praise songs

Hebrew Poetry 27
a lamentation, a love song, a prayer song, a
proverb and a riddle song. There are He
brew poems that would answer well to such
English descriptions as elegy, dirge, paean,
threnody, rhapsody, etc.
Elements of Hebrew Poetry
The distinctive elements of Hebrew poetry
are a sonorous rhythmical movement, the
parallel structure of lines and couplets, the
stanza and refrain, the acrostic formation,
paronomasia and punning, inversions in the
usual order of words, and the stich. These
elements are quite simple, but are run together
in such confusion that it teases one frequently
to disentangle them. The Hebrews had no
regard for consistency in this matter. None
of their poems will analyze into the logical
order, nor into the regular and equal divisions
that one desires. The stanza and refrain are
used, but in many poems the stanzas are un
equal, and before the end is reached the re
frain is dropped, or possibly the stanza is
unduly lengthened. Parallelism is used but
with the like inconsistency, rarely ever being
carried regularly on to the end of the poem.
Insertions of extra lines, unexpected inver
sions, mar the unity of the poem and jar the

28 Studies in the Book of Psalms
readers' sense of propriety in nearly all their
work. But this was the Hebrew of it. They did
not seem to have regarded unity, cohesion,
or uniformity in their composition, nor to
have felt bound to use any of their rules con
sistently, but they mixed things up just about
as one finds the elegiac, imprecatory, and de
votional feelings playing leap-frog in some of
the songs. Perhaps this is intentional. Per
haps irregularity was one of their laws of
composition, for so meagre are their resources
in form, and so short are their sentences that
if they did not break up the structure, a
droning monotony would result.
In studying Hebrew poetry some scholars
have lost their judgment, and have gone to
great pains to prove the existence of metre,
intentional alliterations and rhymes. The
latter are wholly accidental in the two or three
alleged cases and the first does not exist in a
single instance. If proved true of the English
translation, it would not hold in the Hebrew
original. Their lines were usually of nearly
equal length, but it was no point with them to
keep them equal, nor, having divided a line into
feet, to make as many kind of lines as they could
by varying the number of feet and syllables.

Hebrew Poetry 29
Still, for all this, their poetry was none the
less poetry. It is redeemed by the elevation
of the thought and the fine feeling in it. And
it may be all the better because of the imper
fections in its forms. The more rules, the less
originality. The more expression is fettered,
and cramped by precepts, the less spontaneity
it possesses. Burns broke every rule of rhyme
in the language, but saved his originality and
spontaneity by doing so. In Walt Whitman
we have a revolt against the clumsy impedi
ments of prosody and a reliance on rhythm
and melody and sense alone to produce a
pleasing effect on the ear. We will now ex
amine the elements of Hebrew poetry, giving
examples and explanations in the following
order : Rhythm, paronomasia, parallelism,
stanza, and refrain. One must take these
examples from the English translation and
not the original.
To illustrate rhythm :
" O sing unto the Lord a new song !
Sing unto the Lord all the earth !
Sing unto the Lord, bless His name,
Show forth His salvation from day to day !
Declare His glory among the nations,
His marvellous works among all peoples,
For great is the Lord, and highly to be praised.

30 Studies in the Book of Psalms
He is to be feared above all gods.
Honour and majesty are before Him.
Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.
Give unto the Lord glory and strength,
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name.
Bring an offering and come into His courts,
O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."
To illustrate paronomasia :
"In Gath (tell-town) tell it not.
In Akka (weep-town) weep not.
In Bethleophrah (dust -town) roll thyself in dust.
Pass by thou inhabitress of Shaphir (fair-town) in
nakedness and shame.
The citizen of Zaanan (march-town) marched not
forth.
The mourning of Beth-ezel (neighbour- town) taketh
from you its standing place.
The inhabitant of Maroth (bitter-town) is in travail
about good.
Bind the chariot to the swift horse, thou inhabitress
of Lachish (horse-town).
Therefore wilt thou, Zion, give farewell presents to
Moresheth Gath (the possession of Gath).
The houses of Achzib (false spring) become Achzib
(a disappointing book) to Israel's king.
Yet will I bring the heir, citizen of Msereshah (heir-
town).
Unto Adullam shall the glory of Israel come."
The acrostic principle is another sometimes

Hebrew Poetry 31
employed. Psalms 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, in, 112,
119 and 145, the first four chapters of Lam
entations, and the praise of the virtuous
woman in Proverbs 31, are all examples of
the acrostic form. The English translation
does not preserve this. The method is vari
ously used. The simplest way is to give one
verse to each letter of the alphabet. Psalm
1 10 gives half a verse to each letter ; Psalm
37 gives two verses to each letter ; Psalm 119
gives eight verses to each letter, each of
the first eight verses beginning with the letter
a ; each of the second eight lines begins with
b, and so through the Psalm, making it one
of 1 76 verses, the longest chapter in the Bible ;
Psalm 9 goes to the letter 1 and Psalm 10 re
sumes with the letter m and with an interrup
tion goes to the end. This is an artificial and
mechanical device, and with other things
marks a degenerate taste.
The law of Hebrew parallelism, obscured
in the early text, was finally lost altogether,
till discovered by an English scholar, Lowth.
His analysis of it discloses three kinds of
parallelism. In each kind there are two lines,
sometimes three, bound together by sim
ilarity, contrast, or an expansion in the sec
ond line of the thought in the first. These

32 Studies in the Book of Psalms
kinds he names synonymous, antithetical and
synthetical. To illustrate synonymous parallelism (where
the thought is alike in both lines) :
" Why do the heathen rage,
And the peoples imagine a vain thing ?
" The Kings of the earth set themselves,
- And the rulers take counsel together.
" Against the Lord
And against His anointed :
" Let us break His bonds asunder,
And cast away His cords from us.
" He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh,
The Lord shall have them in derision.
"Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath,
And vex them in His sore displeasure."
To illustrate antithetic parallelism (where
the thought in the second line is contrasted) :
"A wise son maketh a glad father,
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
" Treasures of wickedness profit nothing,
But righteousness delivereth from death.
" The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous
to famine,
But He thrusteth away the desire of the wicked.

Hebrew Poetry 33
" He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand,
But the hand of the diligent maketh rich.
" The memory of the just is blessed,
But the name of the wicked shall rot.
" Hatred stirreth up strife,
But love covereth all transgressions."
To illustrate synthetic parallelism :
" The law of the Lord is perfect,
Restoring the soul.
" The testimony of the Lord is sure,
Making wise the simple.
" The precepts of the Lord are right,
Rejoicing the heart.
" The Commandment of the Lord is pure,
Enlightening the eyes.
" The fear of the Lord is clean,
Enduring forever.
" The judgments of the Lord are true,
And righteous altogether."
All the above examples are typical cases
and have been chosen for the sake of illustra
tion. Many cases appear, however, that are
so irregular that it is often very difficult to
decide on the form, or to discover any. In
the first two cases the parallelism is one of

34 Studies in the Book of Psalms
thought, and in the third case it is one of
form only, the idea in the second being sup
plemented in the first. The first kind is the
commonest and has the largest variety of
forms, due to inversions in the order of words,
to partial repetition in the second line of the
words in the first, to the verb occurring in
one line and being supplied in the other. It
is scarcely possible, though, to find a single
poem in which the principle is obvious
throughout, and in many the several kinds
are mixed together, with occasional lines that
cannot be classified. For example —
" Blessed is the man
That walketh not in the counsel of the
ungodly,
Nor standeth in the way of sinners,
Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the
Lord,
Synonymous — And in His law doth he meditate day
and night.
He is like the tree planted by the river
of water,
Synthetic — That bringeth forth his fruit in his
season.
His leaf also shall not wither,
Synonymous — And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Hebrew Poetry 35
The ungodly are not so,
But are hke the chaff which the wind
driveth away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand
in the judgment,
Synonymous — Nor sinners in the congregation of the
righteous.
For the Lord knoweth the way of the
righteous,
Antithetical — But the way of the ungodly shall
perish."
Strophic Structure
There is a well-marked strophic structure
in Hebrew poetry. See Psalms 42, 43, 46,
136. It is not the same as the Greek or
Roman, but it is a quite clear arrangement of
the thought into verses, sometimes of two
lines each a distich ; sometimes three lines, a
tristich ; sometimes four lines, a tetrastich ;
and so on. Of these the two lines and the four
lines are most common. Still the number of
lines in the separate verses of a poem was of
little importance, and so there is no uni
formity. These are what we call in English
the stich, distich, tristich and tetrastich. Ex
amples of the first have been given. Ex
amples of the last two follow :

36 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Three lines —
1 — " These are they that rebel against the light,
Who know not the ways thereof,
Nor abide in the paths thereof.
2 — "The wanderer riseth with the night,
He killeth the poor and needy,
And in the night he is a thief.
3 — " The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the
twilight,
Saying no eye shall see me,
And he putteth a covering on his face.
4 — " In the dark they (thieves) dig through houses ;
They shut themselves up in the daytime ;
They know not the light.
5 — " For the morning is to all of them
As the shadow of death,
For they know the terrors of the shadow of death. ' '
Four lines :
" I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
From where shall my help come ;
My help cometh from the Lord,
Which made heaven and earth.
" He will not suffer thy foot to be moved,
He that keepeth thee will not slumber ;
Behold he that keepeth Israel,
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

Hebrew Poetry 37
" The Lord is thy keeper,
The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand ;
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
" The Lord shall keep thee from all evil,
He shall keep thy soul ;
The Lord shall keep thygoing out and thy coming in,
From this time forth and forevermore."
To illustrate the refrain :
See Psalms 136, 42 and 46.

II
THE PSALTER, A BOOK OF LIFE

II
THE PSALTER, A BOOK OF LIFE
THE Psalter is essentially a book of
life. Not simply of eternal life, but
of that life that is here and now ! It
draws its materials from life, and makes its
appeals straight to life. The problems with
which it deals are the perpetual problems of
the race, as old as the hills but ever new. Its
issues are in a sense dead, but in a most real
and vital sense they cannot die. Its situ
ations are human. Its spirit is human, its
stories are human, its background is human.
Its passions and longings, its strivings and
yearnings have to do with real men and
women. While this is true of the whole
Bible, from the stories of Abraham to- the
struggles of Paul and the apostles, it is par
ticularly true of the Psalms. This book comes
closer to the heart and conscience of the uni
versal man than any other book in the Bible.
It is personal to the last degree. It searches
the deepest recesses of the spirit, and reveals
its deepest needs ; it ranges across the whole
41

42 Studies in the Book of Psalms
gamut of human emotion and feeling and
sounds them singly and in chords.
There are nature psalms in the book de
scriptive of the sky, the all-beholding sun, the
moon and the stars ; successive days and
nights are represented as singing and talking
together of the glory of God, the glorious old
sun coming from his chamber in the east at
sunrise to ride majestically across the sky,
while the moon and the stars, His handi
work, proclaim His praise. The magnifi
cence of an eastern tempest, deep calling
unto deep at the noise of His water spouts,
the blackened sky resounding with the
trumpet peals of thunder, His voice ; the
trees of the wood bending beneath the blast
of the north wind, Lebanon and Sirion shak
ing with tumult, while the flying, falling leaves
carpet anew the earth ; the fields spread out
in living green, the woods, the hills, the val
leys, the birds of the air, the wild creatures
of the rocks, the miracle of life in the spring
ing flowers, each and all the creatures and
works of His hands, declaring His glory and
majesty and testifying to the unity and
beauty of nature's God.
There are psalms of adversity like the
Lepers' Lament, cast out from his people,

The Psalter, A Book of Life

43

smitten of God and afflicted, crying from the
depths of a divine despair for the pity of
men; or like the fugitive songs and cave
songs of David, hunted for his life among
the rocky fastnesses of Judea, fleeing as a
bird in the mountains from the snares of
wicked men, tasting the bitter experience of
finding his friends faithless and even desert
ing to his foes ; while the woes of the peo
ple in the siege and sack of the city and the
desolation of the land, oppressed with the
consciousness that they have lost the divine
favour, bring heaviness of spirit even at this
late day.
There are songs of strife, battle hymns,
paeans of victory, triumphal odes and prayers
for success in battle, in which Jehovah is pic
tured as a war lord, breathing smoke from
His nostrils and fire from His mouth, treading
the earth in His wrath till it trembles, or rid
ing on a cherub with the speed of the winds,
tented in a pavilion of darkness, hurling hail
stones and coals of fire and shooting arrows
at His enemies. Or else as the host is en
camped on the eve of battle, the priest lifts
his voice in the king's behalf, to beseech that
the Lord answer him in the day of trouble,
send him help from the sanctuary, remember

44 Studies in the Book of Psalms
all his offerings, accept the burnt sacrifice,
grant his heart's desire, fulfill all his counsel,
when the host shout at the close that they
will triumph in Jehovah's victory and in His
name set up their banners. Even Messiah is
a conquering war lord, striking through
kings in the days of His wrath, filling the
earth with dead bodies, scarcely halting to
drink from the brook by the way as He pur
sues His enemies.
Funeral hymns, dirges and elegies on
death and the grave, sick bed experiences
and psalms on the future life, lie scattered
through the collection, some of them plain
tive and touching in the extreme. In one in
stance, Death is represented as a shepherd,
stalking along at the head of his flock, lead
ing them to the sheep pen — the grave, while
the thoughtless thronging behind him, heed
less of the end, are like the beasts that perish.
Men pile up their riches, call their estates by
their own name, boast of their belongings
and greatness and know not who shall follow
them in the morning.
Yet in other psalms the brevity of life, so
like the short-lived grass, or the fleeing
shadow, or the night watch, or the told-tale,
or the night-sleep, impress the heart and lead

The Psalter, A Book of Life 45
to the solemn resolution to number one's
days, procure an heart of wisdom, and seek
the beauty of the Lord. Sick bed experiences
lead to similar reflections. Lying awake at
night, tossing on a hard couch, eagerly await
ing the morning, how glad the soul is when
the night is passed and the day dawns !
Death had its terrors in the past as well as
now, or rather life was and is sweet. Hence
the psalmist prayed that he might not go
down to the pit and girded himself with glad
ness when the Lord loosed his sack cloth
and turned his mourning into dancing. The
paths of glory, the psalmist tells us, long be
fore the sweet poet Gray, lead to the grave.
But beyond the grave, behind the shadow, is
the bright light of immortality, for the soul
shall not be left in the grave, nor shall His
Holy One see corruption. These foregleams
of immortality are very few in number in the
Old Testament and are therefore all the more
precious. But there are songs of citizenship, civil
duties, unjust judges and rulers and wicked
men. The heart of the knave was never
made blacker than this book makes it. The
evils of bribery and perverted justice and
wicked counsels are very glaring as portrayed

46 Studies in the Book of Psalms
here. The injuries suffered by the innocent,
the groanings of the poor, and the decline in
the prosperity of the State, due to evil rulers,
are made vivid. On the other hand the civic
virtues are extolled. The man fitted to be a
citizen of David's Commonwealth, that is of
God's, is described as the man who walks
uprightly, works right things, speaks the truth
inwardly, slanders no one, injures no one,
gossips about no one, who despises reprobates
and loves the society of the good, who keeps
promises, acts generously and repudiates
bribes. And so in hundreds of other ways
in line upon line, here a little and there a
little, good citizenship is praised as good
religion. Side by side with these may come banquet
psalms, guest psalms, wedding psalms, and
other songs of the home life of the people re
joicing in the full cup, the bountiful feast, and
the freedom of the house. Could anything
be more beautiful than the picture of the
wedding where the royal prince, girded with
the armour of war, sword on thigh, eloquence
and grace on his lips, a national idol, to use a
figure, renowned for military prowess, the
terror of the nations' enemies, yet the friend
and righteous ruler of the poor, comes for-

The Psalter, a Book of Life 47
ward amid the blessings of the people, the
odor of incense, and the music of the skilled
orchestra to meet his bride? And has not
the bride the stature and bearing of a queen,
with virgin attendants, herself robed in em
broidered gowns, beautiful within her palace,
as she advances to join the prince, and share
the good wishes of the throng for a strong
dynasty. How full of joy the songs sung at the grape
treading or the song of the harvest home, or
the planting songs, when the rainy seasons
settled the ridges, blessing the seed that was
sown, later issuing in the song of the reapers,
" Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness,
Thy paths drop fatness ; they drop upon the
pastures of the wilderness, and the hills are
girded with joy. The pastures are filled with
flocks, the valleys are covered over with corn ;
they shout for joy, they also sing! "
Some psalms deal with personal religious
experience, the inward struggles of the soul
with doubt, fear, wicked inclination, the secret
pains of remorse, the humiliation of despair
and agony, wrought by sin, when the foun
tains broken up by repentance issue in tears
and groans of confession, followed by the
joys of forgiveness. The cry of the penitent

48 Studies in the Book of Psalms
alternates with the exultation of the saint.
The elevation and depression of spirit, like
the flow and ebb of a river's tide, result in the
melodies of peace, joy, assurance, trust.
These are the things of the spirit. Spiritual
life is just this sort of life. The psalms sing
human experiences over and over. One
enters here into the heart struggles of the
people of God in Israel. The bitter agonies,
the bloody sweats, the inward temptations,
the pains of the spirit in its conflict with moral
evil are felt through and through. It was in
hours of quiet communion, in the hush of
midnight, in the moment of high resolve,
when the soul on its knees before the throne
of God, wrestled with the spectres of sin, that
the triumphant faith that conquered doubt
and torment was born. Have mercy upon
me, blot out my transgressions, wash me from
my iniquities, cleanse me from my sin, purge
me with hyssop, hide Thy face from my sins,
create within me a clean heart, renew in me
a right spirit, take not Thy Holy Spirit from
me — these are not pretty rhetorical phrases
designed to catch the ear of a congregation,
but are the sincere pleadings of a broken and
contrite heart.
There are songs here of captives, languish-

The Psalter, A Book of Life 49
ing in foreign imprisonment, of exiles, driven
from the sacred soil of Judah, bowed down
with grief at the memory of the sieges' hor
rors, tormented by captors who taunt them
with their shame, make sport of their faith,
and tease for one of the songs of Zion. To
recall the rolling hills of Judah, the sanctuary
of worship whither they went, with the throng,
to keep the sacred feast days, only added to
the sharpness of their grief. Occasionally as
if seized by a fit of despair, lest the national
glory be gone, they strike a note of pessimism,
or praise the exploits of battle chiefs who lent
glory to their national history in the early
days. As perhaps the poor Israelite walks
among the charred ruins of the ancient city,
marks its crumbling walls, and its devastated
temple area, he recalls the unholy hordes of
pillagers who trampled down the holy places,
who lifted axes upon the temple as upon a
thicket of trees, who broke down with hatchet
and hammer the carved work and who as
they watched the smoking ruins of the City
and of synagogues throughout the land, said :
" Let us make havoc of them all together."
In quite another vein are the festival songs
set for feast days, in joyous mood with even
a suggestion now and then of merriment,

50 Studies in the Book of Psalms
pilgrim songs for the faithful journeying to
Jerusalem, sung round camp-fires and on the
march when sighting the hills or entering the
city, all full of a deep religiousness. Perhaps
they are temple songs used only for worship
in a sanctuary, liturgical hymns for use in the
Jewish ritual of service for each day of the
week and for special days in the year, antiph-
onal chants with solo parts, choir parts and
congregational responses. Some of these are
connected with elaborate ceremonies, others
are used in ordinary worship.
Several national psalms recite a few of the
leading events in Israel's history and a
number of patriotic psalms reveal the He
brews' intense love of country, almost hu
morous in the quaintness of their form of ex
pression. Some of these songs are songs of deliver
ance from national crises full of peril to the
land, as when the Lord overthrew the Egyp
tians and later the Assyrians, special groups
following close on the heels of these deliver
ances. Alternating with the note of praise there
are duller tones that threaten and menace
and break out in terrible malediction invok
ing wrath and destruction on the foes of

The Psalter, A Book of Life 51
God and Israel alike, full of fierce vindic-
tiveness, unrelieved by any softening of tem
per. These furnish hard questions and are
among the puzzles of the Bible to many
minds. Then there are wisdom psalms that con
cern themselves with theological subjects
such as atheism, the fool's creed, with the
Being and attributes of God, His decrees,
providence, creation, and the like, some of
them full of poetic fervour as well as divine
inspiration. God clothes Himself with light as with a
garment ; He makes the winds His messengers,
and uses the lightning flames as His minis
ters ; He swings the earth on invisible sup
ports and orders the changes of nature ; He
understands the thought of man even at a
distance from Him, fills every corner of the
universe with His presence, and owns no
limitation to His power. Out of a bit of jelly
like protoplasm he kneaded man's substance
and fashioned his body where there was
none of him, set all his members together
and gave him life. It is He, too, who gave
the planets their motions and calls all the
stars by name. The doctrine of God in the
Psalter is very exalted. The utter sinfulness

52 Studies in the Book of Psalms
of man comes out in the fool's creed who
denies God. " They are corrupt, they have
done foolishly, they have all gone astray."
Some of the most wonderful psalms relate
to Messiah ; His presentation to the nations
in tumult as their true ruler, enthroned on the
hill of Zion, receiving the heathen for an in
heritance and the uttermost parts of the earth
for a possession, ruling with a rod of iron re
bellious peoples, lifting His sceptre of grace
over obedient subjects. Various aspects of
Messiah are present : His divinity, advent,
mission, office, reign ; none so pathetic as the
suffering Messiah, drinking the bitter dregs
of a cup of gall, forsaken of God, taunted by
mob insults, and cast out by His people.
The range of Hebrew religious poetry was
wider than with us, because we divide our
songs into sacred and secular as we do most
other things. With the Hebrews this line
did not exist. All life was sacred to them,
none secular, though conduct could be sinful.
We tend to secularize the whole of it ; they
actually sanctified the whole of it. Hence
they placed in the psalter things we are sur
prised to find there. The book is a collec
tion of that wider field of song such as bac
chanalian songs of revelry (not sacred) as in

The Psalter, A Book of Life 53
Isaiah and Amos, the song of the harlot cited
by Isaiah, dirges over the dead, as David's
lament over Jonathan, the song of the
Hebrew maidens over Jepthah's daughter,
bewailing her virginity, the song of the well,
chanted by the women water carriers, the sword
song of the smith Tubal-Cain, songs of the
marriage feast, of the vintage, of the welcome
home, the song of loves which is the " song
of songs." The Psalm titles of a " Stag at
Dawn," "The Silent Dove," "The Lilies,"
" Destroy Not," and the like, point to popular
melodies. In Browning's Saul, there is a sketch of
David's range of song that appeals to every
lover of the Psalter. As the gifted lad lifts
the folds of the tent, and creeps beneath into
the darkness where at length he sees the form
of Saul leaning against the central prop of
the tent, he tunes the strings of his harp to
charm the evil spirit out of Saul. And first
he plays the tune all the sheep know, "as
one by one so docile they come to the pen
door till folding be done." Then " the tune
for which quails on the corn land will each
leave his mate to fly after the player." " Then
what makes the crickets elate," or the one
that sets " the quick jerboa a-musing outside

54 Studies in the Book of Psalms
his sand-house." Then the help tune of our
reapers, their wine song, when " hand grasps
at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,
and great hearts expand." " And then the last
song, when the dead man is praised on his
journey." " And then the glad chant of the
marriage — first go the young maidens, next
she whom we vaunt as the beauty, the pride
of our dwelling." And then the great march,
and " then the chorus intoned as the Levites
go up to the altar in glory enthroned." But
he stopped here, " for here in the darkness
Saul groaned." Resuming his playing he
sang of " manhood's prime vigour," of " the
wild joys of living," of the grace of the King
and one by one " fancies grew rife which had
come long ago on the pasture when round
me the sheep fed in silence." On and on he
sang, rising to the heights of religious ex
perience, calling Saul back to life as the spirit
and he ended their strife.

Ill
TITLES TO THE PSALMS

Ill

TITLES TO THE PSALMS

I. Diverse Destiny. 24.
2. The Messianic King. 25.
3. A Fugitive's Prayer.
4. An Evening Hymn. 26.
5. Morning Worship. 27.
6. A Cry for Deliverance. 28.
7. Divine Justice.
8. The Dignity of Man. 29.
9. A Praise Song. 30.
10. A Fiend Incarnate. 31.
11. The Security of the 32.
Righteous. 33.
12. Social Corruption. 34.
13. Gloom and Gladness. 35.
14. The Fool's Creed. 36.
15. The Ideal Citizen De
fined. 37.
16. A Blessed Faith.
17. Tested and Found 38.
Faithful. 39.
18. A Battle Song.
19. The Heavens are Tell- 40.
ing. 41.
20. God Save the King. 42,
21. A Psalm of Victory. 44.
22. The Suffering Messiah. 45.
23. The Shepherd Psalm. 46.
57

An Antiphonal Chorus.
A Plea for Pardon and
Instruction.
A Clear Conscience.
The Fatherhood of God.
Danger and Deliver
ance.
A Tempest in Lebanon.
A Sick-bed Experience.
Stayed on God.
The Joy of Forgiveness.
Rejoice in the Lord.
Divine Providence.
Righteous Retribution.
The Evil and the Good
Man.
The Reward of Good
ness.
A Memorial Song.
An Elegy: The Vanity
of Life.
Saved for Service.
" The Judas Psalm."
43. An Exile's Lament.
A Maccabean Dirge.
An Epithalamium.
Emmanuel : God with us.

58 Studies in the Book of Psalms

47-

A Song of Deliver

71-

An Old Man's Prayer

ance.

for Help.

48.

The Defenses of Jeru

72.

A Coronation Ode.

salem.

73-

The Seeming Triumph

49-

Dives and Lazarus.

of Sin.
50.
The Abuse of Sacrifice.
74-
The Destruction of the
51-
The Miserere of a
Temple.
Penitent.
75-
Divine Supremacy.
52.
The Liar's Fate.
76.
Jehovah, a War Lord.
53-
A Duplicate of No. 14.
77-
Memories of Divine
54.
A Prayer for Deliver
Power.
ance.
78.
A Sketch of Hebrew
55-
The Faithless Friend.
History.
56.
Trust in God Triumphs
79.
Desolation of Jerusa
over Fear.
lem.
57-
A Cave Song.
80.
Israel : A Vine out of
58.
An Imprecatory Psalm.
Egypt.
59-
A Fugitive and His
81.
A Festal Chorus.
Pursuers.
82.
God Bringing Judges to
60.
Defeated in Battle.
Judgment.
61.
Ein feste Burg.
33-
A Conspiracy of Nations
62.
God a Refuge and
Against Israel.
Strength.
84.
The House of Worship.
63-
A Fugitive's Psalm in
85.
The Exile's Return.
the Wilderness.
86.
A Prayer for Help.
64.
The Slanderer.
87.
A Patriot's Love of Jeru
65.
The Harvester's Song.
salem.
66.
A Lyric of Thanksgiv
88.
The Leper's Lament.
ing.
89.
The Sure Mercies of
67.
A Praise Song.
David.
68.
Bringing the Ark to
90.
Moses' Funeral Hymn.
Jerusalem.
9L
The Shadow of the Al
69.
Lamentation and Im
mighty.
precation.
92.
A Song for the Sabbath
70.
Part of Psalm 40.
Day.
Titles to the Psalms

59

93-

The Lord Jehovah

"3-

The Exaltation of the

Reigns.

Humble.

94.

Rewards and Punish

114.

Israel Marching from

ments.

Egypt.
95-
A Call to Worship.
115.
God Contrasted with
96.
Another Call to Wor
Idols.
ship.
116.
A Personal Deliver
97-
The Enthronement of
ance.
Jehovah.
117.
A Doxology.
98.
A Praise Song.
118.
God, a Trustworthy
99-
Tersanctus: God
Helper.
Thrice Holy.
119.
An Alphabetic Song
100.
Jubilate.
on the Law.
IOI.
The King's Rule of
120.
The Tents of Kedar.
Life.
121.
A Song of the Hills.
102.
A Prayer of the Af
122.
A Song of the City.
flicted.
123.
Prayer for Help.
103.
Bless the Lord, 0 my
124.
The Lord our Cham
Soul.
pion.
104.
A Nature Psalm.
125.
They that Trust in the
105.
An Historical Psalm —
Lord.
Retrospect of Is
126.
Captive's Tears Turned
rael's History.
to Laughter.
106.
Another Historical
127.
Except the Lord Build
Psalm.
the House.
107.
The Power of Prayer.
128.
Song of the Home.
108.
Part of 57 and 60.
129.
The Righteous Pre
109.
A Vindictive Psalm.
vail.
no.
A Messianic Psalm:
130.
Out of the Depths.
An Oath of Prom
131-
Like a Weaned Child.
ise.
132.
The King's Vow.
in.
The Providence of
133-
Fraternal Unity.
God.
134.
Benedicite.
112.
The Stability of the
135-
A Magnificat.
Righteous.
136.
The Great Hallel.
60 Studies in the Book of Psalms

137. By the Rivers of Baby- 143.
lon. 144.
138. A Psalm of Confi
dence.
139. The Omniscience, 145.
Omnipresence, and 146.
Omnipotence o f 147.
God.
140. The Man of Violence. 148.
141. The Good Man's Pe- 149.
tition. 150.
142. A Cave Song.

A Desolate Life.
Happy the People
Whose God is the
Lord.
The Goodness of God.
Trust in the Lord.
The Infinite Grace of
God.
A Hallelujah Psalm.
Another Hallelujah.
The Great Doxology.

IV
THE TRADITIONAL SETTING OF
SOME OF THE PSALMS

IV

THE TRADITIONAL SETTING OF SOME OF
THE PSALMS
THERE is a history back of all the
psalms. It is impossible to trace it
in many cases. It is hard to do so
in most cases. But in some of the psalms
the main outlines are clear, and some of the
details are clear also. National and personal
interests furnish the themes. It is certain
that these sacred psalms started into exist
ence under the Kings of Israel. King David
is the principal human agency in producing
them. Tradition says that he wrote about
seventy of them. Modern criticism says that
he wrote none of them. Whether he wrote
any of them or did not, the impulses to
psalm writing began in his day, and the
Hebrew tradition connects him with very
many of them.
There are seventy-four psalms having titles
assigning them to David. The contents of
some of these clearly contradict the titles,
and the idea of Davidic authorship. It is
63

64 Studies in the Book of Psalms
hardly necessary to say that the titles are
not a part of the inspired originals. Some
of those that have no titles are thought to be
his. Of these, a large number are referred
to special circumstances and events in his
life. For the others conjecture has tried to
connect them with events in his life, with
varying success. On the basis of tradition,
one may note the following historical situa
tions for a large number of the psalms, viz. :
His early life, his persecution at the hands
of Saul, the bringing up of the ark to Jeru
salem, his sin with Bathsheba, his dynastic
wars, and the revolt of Absalom.
The group belonging to his early life con
sists of Psalms 8, 19, 23, and 29. They were
not necessarily written in his youth ; likely
they were not, but they reflect the early
period of his life. The youngest son of
Jesse, he became his father's shepherd, grew
in grace and knowledge, cultivated music,
and performed many valorous deeds. Psalm
23 reflects the thoughts that took shape in
David's mind as he kept his father's sheep
near Bethlehem. The needs of his flock,
their dependence on him, and his care for
them, suggest his own needs and God's
abundant supply.

Traditional Setting of Psalms 65
Psalm 8 was likewise a memorial of those
early days. In the strength of the Lord he
had charmed the evil spirit out of Saul, and
as champion of Israel he had slain Goliath of
Gath, while still a stripling. " Out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings" God had
thus ordained strength to "still the enemy
and the avenger." His close contact with
nature, too, is evident in his fine poetic allu
sion to its being the work of God's fingers.
Psalm 19 is a beautiful song from the same
period. It is full of nature, the sky, the
glorious sun, and the eloquent spaces on
high which proclaim the greatness of God.
These had made a deep impression on David
as a shepherd boy. Devout contemplation
of the starry heavens would be the most
natural thing in the world to a youth so full
of piety and poetry as David.
Psalm 29 describes a storm such as David
often witnessed. Sheltered behind a hill as
under a ledge of rock he witnesses the gather
ing clouds, the fury of the wind, the flashing
lightnings, and hears the rolling thunder.
All the foregoing psalms reflect the scenes
and impressions of David's early life. Mar
vellous deeds are recorded in the historical
books concerning his versatility. He was a

66 Studies in the Book of Psalms
careful shepherd, an expert player on the
harp, the sweet singer of Israel, physically
capable of vanquishing a lion and a bear in
a struggle unarmed, and discreet in matters
of judgment. When an evil spirit from the
Lord troubled Saul, and he sought some one
to help him, he was advised to seek out
David of whom it was said to Saul he is
"cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant
man, and a man of war, and prudent in mat
ters and a comely person and the Lord is
with him." Shortly after this David slew
Goliath of Gath, and by this act increased
his fame. His introduction to the Court
brought him close to Saul, won for him the
friendship of Jonathan, Saul's son, and gave
promise of a great career. But Saul, tired of
hearing David's praises sung, in a fit of
jealous rage, made an attempt on the young
man's life. The early period of gladness in
his life was then followed by one of bitter
ness due to the jealousy and hatred of Saul.
Having lost the favour of the Court, he had to
reckon with the King's suspicions, and so he
left Saul's presence. An outlaw now, he flees
from place to place to save his life. The
King lays many plans to capture him and
fails in them all. From one plot David is

Traditional Setting of Psalms 67
saved by Jonathan ; from another his wife
saves him.
Psalm 58 records his emotions on hearing
from his friend Jonathan, son of Saul, that
the King would kill him. The signals
arranged by these two to assist in David's
escape, are recorded in Kings. The work
ings of David's heart are revealed in the
Psalm. Psalm 59 is a picture of David in hiding
while Saul's men surround his house and
watch for him to kill him. Their ominous
growls are compared with a dog's snarls, as
they wander about the city in the evening.
Psalm 56 represents an experience of David
at the Court of Achish. Driven from the
presence of Saul, hunted as a fugitive from
place to place, he, with other outlaws, took
refuge for a time among strangers. The
Philistines took him in Gath, whose cham
pion he had slain.
Psalm 52 has to do with one of David's
foreign enemies. Across the ravine of the
Jordan rose the hills of Moab. One of the
chieftains from these hills, Doeg by name,
now chief shepherd of Saul, had let loose his
wrath on a village of Israel by the name of
Nob, and destroyed eighty-five priests. The

68 Studies in the Book of Psalms
falsity, cruelty and cowardice of Doeg are
declared in the Psalm, and a terrible vindica
tion is predicted on one so vile.
Psalm 31 was written to celebrate his es
cape from the town of Keilah, or Ziklag. It
is remarkable that all these psalms which
are assigned to David's outlaw life, in the
hills of Judah, are full of memorials of those
hills. This fact raises presumptive evidence
in favour of the tradition that David wrote
them, under the circumstances alleged. God
is his " rock " and " fortress " and " defense " ;
God is his " refuge for hiding " ; God is his
"shelter" and "pavilion in trouble." His
hurried flights from place to place, his sud
den forays into new parts for provisions, fa
miliarized him with the scenery. In all, his
trust in God appears.
Psalm 34 is a song of praise for deliverance
from the Court of Achish. So hostile was
this person to David that the poor exile has
to feign madness. While he frothed at the
mouth and rolled his eyes, and acted like one
insane, he was sent away.
Psalm 57 is a cave song. Hiding in the
cave of Adullam suggests hiding under
the wings of the Almighty. Like lions his
enemies roar against him ; like hunters they

Traditional Setting of Psalms 69
are caught in their own traps. While ene
mies chase him and fix plots to catch him, he
will lie down in the cave and sleep, secure in
the Divine Care. While in hiding in the cave
of Adullam there are slowly gathered round
him 400 other outlaws. With these he went
to Mizpeh, in Moab, but soon had to flee
back to the wilderness of Hereth in the land
of Judah. David rescued Keilah from the
Philistines and is pursued there by Saul.
The men of Keilah turned against David, so
he fled away with his band, increased now to
600 men, to the wilderness of Ziph, a rocky,
hilly waste. Here Jonathan met David in the
woods and comforted him.
Hiding in different caves and hollows of
this region, he is betrayed by the Ziphites
and must have been caught by Saul, but that
the latter is called away to check a raid of the
Philistines. Leaving this region, David fled
to the strong, rock passes of Engedi. Saul,
with 3,000 men pursued him there " upon the
rocks of the wild goats." Here Saul retired
for sleep to a cave in which David was hid.
David could have killed him, but generously
spares Saul's life and declares himself innocent
in respect to the king's suspicions. A sudden
remorse seizes the king and so David has a

70 Studies in the Book of Psalms
brief respite from persecution. This interval
witnesses the death of Samuel, the death of
Nabal and David's marriage to Nabal's
widow, Abigail. Saul again seeks his life
and David once more went into exile.
Hunted, " as a partridge," fleeing " as a bird
to its mountain," the Ziphites again betray
him, and again he held Saul's life in his
hands, only to spare him. Leaving the bor
ders of Israel again, David becomes a vassal
of Achish of Gath and resides at Ziklag, later
to join the Philistine levies against Israel.
He is expelled from the Philistine ranks just
before the battle of Gilboa where Saul is
slain. Such is a brief sketch of David's out
law life.
To this period many of the Davidic psalms
are assigned by their titles and others by the
processes of literary criticism. Psalm 54 in
troduces one to the tribe of Ziphites living
within the borders of Judah. Among them
David twice took refuge and was twice be
trayed. Informed by the Ziphites that David
was among them, Saul came out to seize
him, David flees, and in this Psalm speaks of
the spies and liars who poison Saul's mind
against him. Psalm 35 belongs to his out
law life. His pursuers are still on his heels

Traditional Setting of Psalms 71
and the psalm is a prayer for deliverance and
vindication. Psalm 36 is usually referred to
" his experience at Engedi. Psalm 53 occurs
again in Psalm 14. Both have been con
nected with Nabal the fool, perhaps for no
other reason than that he was a fool. Psalm
22 belongs to David, and its obvious parallel
with the account of the crucifixion in the gos
pels, the writer's forsaken feeling, taunts from
the crowd, pierced hands and feet, parted
garments, and raffled vesture have stamped
it as Messianic. The primary experience, of
course, is David's, or possibly the nations' in
exile, but on any supposition the idea of
suffering, personal or national, is strikingly
set forth. One is made to suffer along with
the writer. It may be a summary of David's
experiences as an outlaw.
The battle of Gilboa was to prove the turn
ing point in David's fortunes and to usher in
the third great epoch of his life, giving a
distinctive colour to later psalms. On the
mountains of Gilboa, in the shock of battle,
the tall King Saul and his soldier sons, met
their death. None in all Israel mourned this
event more than David. He wrote an elegy
in commemoration of his love for Jonathan,
full of tender pathos preserved in the first

72 Studies in the Book of Psalms
chapter of Second Samuel. To this period
some writers assign Psalms 25-29, but while
they are Davidic, they seem to fit better other
periods of his life.
Psalm 30 describes a sick bed experience
and was sung at the anniversary of the dedi
cation of the house. Perhaps this house was
the King's residence. The Psalm was after
wards used on the anniversary of the dedica
tion of the temple. The superscription and
contents of the Psalm are held to disagree.
On the death of Saul rival factions at once
arose each aiming to secure the throne.
David was anointed King of Judah in He
bron. On the other hand, Abner, a Captain of
Saul, had taken the dead King's son, Ishbosh-
eth and had proclaimed him King of Israel.
Civil war ensued between the factions, ter
minating in Abner's treason and Ishbosheth's
assassination, followed by the coronation of
David as King over all the tribes. With the
fall of Saul's house and David's elevation to
power, a new era is opened. It was David's
purpose to found a capitol, build a royal
palace, and erect a temple of worship.
Through the bravery of Joab, the fortress of
the Jebusites was captured and became the
site of Jerusalem. This David resolved to

Traditional Setting of Psalms 73
make the centre of all political and religious
hopes and enthusiasms of the people. He
inaugurated this by elaborate ceremonies in
connection with bringing the ark of the Lord
to the city. Psalm 15 is David's definition of
citizenship. It is his conception of what the
resident of the new city should be, and may
almost be regarded as an inaugural address
to the people, calling for righteousness, sin
cerity and similar good qualities.
Psalm 24 was composed to be sung on the
occasion of the bringing up of the ark to
Jerusalem. After remaining in the house of
Obed Edom in the country, for awhile, the
nation escorted it to the city, with great
ceremony and installed it on Mount Moriah
as the symbol of Jehovah's presence in the
city. Psalm 68, one of the grandest, boldest, and
best of the whole book, was written for this
occasion. It contains reminiscences of the
great history of the nation and suggestions
of the present efforts to establish the ark in
the Royal City. The next ambition of David
in regard to religion is to build a suitable tem
ple of worship. Calling Nathan the prophet
he divulged his plans to him. Nathan first
approved and later declared against them.

74 Studies in the Book of Psalms
David's life work was to be the extension of
the Kingdom. His son should build the
temple. The wars of David then begin
which were to result in adding territory to
Israel, and in increasing the nation's prestige.
To this period tradition assigns Psalms i io,
20, 21, 60, 61, 9, and 10.
Psalm 1 10 is predictive of successful war.
It stands on the threshold of David's con
quest. While its fullest import is Messianic,
still Jesus Himself said that David wrote it,
and it was primarily of David, the Lord's
anointed. It seats the King on the throne,
his enemies are his footstool, his sceptre is a
rod of strength, his rule is obeyed. In the
dew of youth he strives and conquers. He
strikes through Kings in his wrath, and
scarce stopping to drink from the brook in
the way, he pursues his glorious career of
conquest. Psalm 9 is a paean of victory called forth
by triumph over foreign foes. It is full of
thanksgiving. It is not possible to fix the
connection exactly. Any foreign war would
answer the language. Delitzch thought it
was a victory over the Philistines. The style
and content bear out the Davidic title.
Psalm 10 is a continuation of Psalm 9 which

Traditional Setting of Psalms 75
is proved both by its contents and its acrostic
structure. Psalm 60 was written to com
memorate Joab's repulse and overthrow of
Edom in the valley of Salt. It is full of the
battle shock and the fierce shout of war. It
exults in a united country and in abased foes.
Psalm 60 also belongs to the period of his
wars recording his sure confidence in Jehovah
his refuge, who will " prolong the King's
life." Psalm 20 is a prayer for success on the eve
of battle. "God save the King" has been
suggested as a good title for it. One can
hear the officiating priest speaking the
words, "the Lord hear thee in the day of
trouble; the name of the God of Jacob de
fend thee, send thee help from the sanctuary
and strengthen thee out of Zion. Remember
all thine offerings and accept thy burnt
sacrifices." The hosts wave their banners
and declare that they fight in Jehovah's
name. Psalm 21 is a paean of victory. The mood
of it is subdued. There is no hardness in it
but a glad sense of a throne secured, life and
prosperity extended, and all devices of the
enemy frustrated.
The splendour of David's life was marred

76 Studies in the Book of Psalms
at the very zenith by a terrible crime. From
the day he committed it a cloud hung over
his life and it has never lifted. His passion
for Bathsheba led to a series of three revolt
ing sins — murder, adultery and deception.
The story of Uriah's death, David's marriage
with Bathsheba, and Nathan's parable of re
buke, is well known. Three psalms mark the
event. Psalm 38 is heart revealing. The
agonies of a criminal were never portrayed
so vividly. He suffers from God's hot dis
pleasure. The arrows of God stick fast in
him, and he suffers to such an extent that his
health is impaired. Burdened by a sore con
science he is brought to the point of con
fession. Psalm 51 contains the confession, and is
the most beautiful penitential psalm in exist
ence. It bears the evidence of genuine
sorrow. The spirit of it is not in the least
artificial nor insincere. The burden of it is a
plea for mercy, for the cleansing of his heart,
for restoration to divine favour.
Psalm 32 goes a stage farther than the two
preceding ones, and describes the joy he ex
perienced in forgiveness. It is so jubilant in
tone that it proves how deep his remorse and
contrition were.

Traditional Setting of Psalms 77
Following his sin, trouble never left David.
In later years his son Absalom conspired
against him to seize the crown. A large
group of psalms is referred to this treason,
including those numbered 40, 41, 69, 70, 71,
62:3-7, 55 and 63. Psalm 40 declares that
God had mercifully helped him out of the pit
and out of the miry clay and had set him on
the rock. He prays once more to be delivered
from the innumerable evils that beset him.
Psalm 41 is a pathetic picture of the old
King, sick, suffering, deserted. Conspiracy
even within his inner circle, and the whis
perers stealthily conspiring almost round his
sick bed, are plainly there.
Psalms 69, 70, 71 are referred to the same
period and are full of tears and sighs. His
troubles are like a flood of waters and over
whelm him. His enemies are more than the
hairs of his head. His friends have been
turned into foes and he is beset with snares,
reproaches and dishonour. To God he turns
in his agony and pleads for help, comforted
by the assurance that this defense at least
will never fail him.
Psalms 62 and 63 belong to the period of
Absalom's rebellion. The title and contents
favour a period of exile in the wilderness of

78 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Judah, but the reference to the King's rejoic
ing in God requires one to assign it to a
period later than Saul's persecution. Rocks,
high towers, refuges are the frequent imagery
of Psalm 62 while drought and shadow and
jackals figure in Psalm 63.
Psalms 3-7 also reflect the rebellion of
Absalom. Psalms 3 and 4 go together, the
one a morning hymn, the other an evening
prayer. In the one, after a night in camp,
David rises in the morning to offer up thanks
giving for the protection that has held his
enemies at bay. In the other, his heart lifts
itself up in the night season to commune with
God who has lifted upon him the light of His
countenance. Psalms 5 and 6 are filled with revolt. The
arrogant, deceitful, bloody, iniquitous enemies
of the King have assailed his throne and used
corrupt means to maintain themselves. Psalm
7 concerns itself with Cush the Benjamite.
This means Cush the negro. He is identi
fied with Shimei who cursed David during
the rebellion of Absalom.
Psalms 109 and 55 belong to the same
period. While the conspiracy of Absalom
was being hatched, David was on his sick bed.
This may have seemed like the opportune

Traditional Setting of Psalms 79
moment to the conspirators, especially as the
illness seemed likely to prove mortal. The
elegy in Psalm 39 is sometimes referred to
this illness. During this sickness of the King
Ahithophel deserted him and counselled trea
son with Absalom.
Psalm 109 reveals the indignation of the
King against this traitor. It is one of the
most vindictive pieces of writing in all litera
ture. The worst calamities are invoked on
the evil wretch who has played the King so
basely. Some of the language of it is applied
to Judas in the New Testament.
Psalm 55 is the plaint of a fugitive, lodged
in the wilderness, seeking a shelter from the
stormy wind and tempest Violence and
strife are in the City, the walls watched and
guarded every night, wherein the unfilial
Absalom has usurped his father's seat. The
bitterest dreg in David's cup of sorrow is the
fact that his own familiar friend and trusted
confidant, Ahithophel has lifted up his heel
against him.
Psalm 37 describes a situation quite like
the times of David's restoration after the
death of Absalom. As the King's end draws
near, contemplation of his career would likely
result in the gloomy thoughts expressed in

80 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Psalm 39. His life had been full of incident.
Power and gain had been heaped up, but
years bring illness. The grave opens before
him, and death like a grim spectre stalking
before his flock, leading them all to the sheep-
fold, — the grave — summons him.
Psalm 2 portrays the mutterings of a dis
gruntled people against the reception of the
King's son as their ruler. This utterance'
may have been occasioned by the objection
in some parts to receive Solomon, his father's
nominee for the crown.
Modern criticism of an extremely destructive
type has done much to shake the confidence
of Biblical scholars in the validity of the
traditional background of the Psalter. Pro
fessor Cheyne in his Bampton lectures, outran
all his predecessors in destructiveness.
To him they have a post-exilic origin, ex
cept a possible half dozen. This is likely be
cause his mind is strongly biased in favour of
the theory of a post-exilic origin for nearly
all of the Old Testament. While it is doubt
less true that post-exilic editing wrought rad
ical changes in the Hebrew literature, this fact
ought not unsettle one's judgment. The
traditional view is very old. It likely has,
with all its faults, far more merit than much

Traditional Setting of Psalms 81
of the destructive criticism. The rules of liter
ary interpretation are not infallible. Guesses,
theories, inferences, must be substituted if
tradition is wholly set aside. The tradition
is not infallible, either. It surely is sometimes
contradicted by good evidence but it has
much in its favour. In presenting the tradi
tional background of the psalms of David, the
writer is fully aware of its difficulties, and
urges the student not to be over-confident of
its accuracy.

V
FIFfEEN PSALM GROUPS

V
FIFTEEN PSALM GROUPS
i. The Messianic Psalms
THE question is sometimes asked, are
there any Messianic psalms? If
there are any such psalms, in re
spect to what elements are they Messianic?
The following psalms are cited as most evi
dently Messianic. If this characteristic is not
found in these psalms, it would be hard to
discover it anywhere. A casual reading of
any of these psalms will show that the Mes
sianic element does not consist of direct
primary reference to the Messiah by name or
otherwise. These poems are descriptive of
the King of Israel, the royal office, duty, re
lationships and the like.
Psalm 2 represents the anointing of Mes
siah as King, and the assembled nations are
called on to acknowledge Him. Psalm 22
represents the suffering Messiah, drinking
the cup of humiliation. A large element of
it is reproduced in the gospel accounts of the
crucifixion. Psalm 45 is a marriage song,
and by the allegorical interpreters is held to
85

86 Studies in the Book of Psalms
be a description of the marriage of Messiah
with His bride, the church. Psalm 72 is a
coronation psalm presenting the Messiah in
a regal aspect. Psalm no is held to be a
picture of Messiah in the r61e of a conqueror.
Now what makes these psalms Messianic ?
Is Jesus as Messiah present here? Is the
king ruling at the time a Messianic king,
though not Jesus? Is there any Messiah
present to the writer's mind? Is the Mes
sianic element simply the accidental coinci
dence of the life of Jesus with the psalms,
though not a foreseen coincidence? Or is
the Messianic element to be found in the
view that the King of Israel, his office, duties,
relations and the like, being divinely ap
pointed, were in a typical sense a foreshad
owing of the Messiah so that anything said
about the king in the psalms has a reference
to the Messiah? Or, apart from all these
meanings, is the Messianic element in the
Psalter a hidden element divinely intended,
but not consciously designed by the writer,
and only discovered later on by the church ?
It must be observed that this is not a ques
tion of how many explanations may be in
vented, nor how many are possible, but which
explanation does the largest number of facts

Fifteen Psalm Groups 87
declare for ; which one is most natural and
reasonable. It is hardly worth while to con
sider that view of the Messianic psalms which
makes every reference in them apply in a
specific and primary sense to the Messiah.
Such a view holds that the king talked about
in all these psalms is none other than Jesus ;
that they do not in any sense apply to any
other prince ; that by special revelation the
writer was given in anticipation a view of
Jesus in His Messianic relations and of
fices, and has Him only in his mind when he
writes. If this is true, we see vastly more in
them than the Jews did. They did not give
them this direct reference, and they certainly
did not think Jesus was meant by these
words. He fulfilled Jewish hopes in a much
different way than anyone could have judged
he would from these psalms.
The opposite of this view is the one that
holds that the Messianic idea was not present
to the mind of the writer. His horizon was
bounded by the present. Whatever words
were spoken of the future were vague. Gen
eral prediction such as any one might indulge
in is here found, more or less true depending
on the wisdom of the speaker, but definite
personal allusions or exact outlining of events

88 Studies in the Book of Psalms
are nowhere to be found. The concrete ele
ments of these psalms, the local incidents, the
warm colours and touches, the entire histor
ical setting of each piece is so presented that
any other than an immediate application of
the psalm is excluded.
The Messianic element is often taken to be
the hidden sense of Scripture. These men
were wiser than they knew. They did not
understand the import of their message or the
underlying purpose of the divine spirit. Of
what use is a revelation of that sort ? Later
ages might conceivably profit by it, but not
the one addressed. But even later ages are
unconvinced of the Messianic element to the
extent claimed for these psalms. The ad
mitted local element is against this view. To
be moved by the Holy Ghost is not to be
made unconscious of what one is doing, nor
to be made to act blindly. That sort of in
spiration once widely believed in is not or
ganic, but mechanical ; it does not affiliate
with the laws of life, but is at war with such
laws. The Messianic application of certain psalms
may have been a matter of coincidence not
foreseen but discovered. Certain events in
the life of Jesus were seen to resemble the

Fifteen Psalm Groups 89
experiences recited in certain royal psalms,
and so a connection was established. This
view accords more with the fact however
viewed. First, the definite Messianic applica
tion arose historically in the Christian Church,
not among the Hebrews. Second, the con
nection of some of the psalms with the person
of Jesus is forced. The King's rejection in
Psalm 2 accords with the Jewish rejection of
Jesus, and the suffering of the subject of
Psalm 22 is clearly paralleled in the life of
Jesus, but to what events in the life of Jesus
do the King's marriage in Psalm 45, or to
the King's anointing in Psalm 72 or the
King's battle triumph in no agree? Only
in figurative senses can they be applied to
Jesus' marriage with the church, His heav
enly crowning, and spiritual conquests, all of
which reference does violence to the plain
sense of Scripture. This method of discover
ing the Messianic element is faulty because
arbitrary. The interpreter has no guide, but
selects at will whatever passages he thinks
he can find something parallel to in the life
of Christ, and calls it prophetic and Mes
sianic. This could be done of almost any
one. It could not carry conviction to a mind
unprejudiced for the Christian faith.

90 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Only in a typical sense can these psalms
be regarded as Messianic. It may be said in
a general way that all Israel looked on the King
and the Kingship as a type of the Messiah ;
that all their theocratic arrangements fore
shadowed Him, and that in every chief event
of the King's life a Messianic type or mean
ing was present. This theory is far from be
ing sufficiently expounded. It is more than
an assumption, however, and is based on a
large array of facts ; and it runs in strict
accord with the evident and direct reference
of these psalms to definite local circum
stances. The life of Israel was permeated with the
idea of a divine destiny. Their teachers
taught them a glorious past and predicted a
still more glorious future. They believed
themselves divinely chosen and divinely
guided. All their institutions were divinely
appointed and were given a special signifi
cance. Amid all national disasters the ideal
of a triumphant nation, representing an ideal
state, and presided over by one of God's
choice, an ideal King was present to them.
Each King who ascended the throne was
anointed, which is the meaning of Messiah,
and was in a sense God's Messiah to Israel.

Fifteen Psalm Groups 91
Each King it was fondly hoped might prove
to be the supreme Messiah of whom all the
rest were types. Every fond hope expressed
and every local word spoken of the King in
the Psalter has reference to this constant
thought of the nation that the King, as the
Priest, was a type of the Messiah. The per
son who held this office was chosen of God
and so represented Him and he also repre
sented the nation. He was the earthly centre
of their hopes, the representation of their
community, the suggestion of their blessed
future. This is the Messianic element of the
Psalter. It is not a vague hope for better
times, a future Golden Age indefinite and
uncertain, but a sure faith based on promise,
partially realized already and steadily draw
ing near in David's day.
2. The Imprecatory Psalms
This name is given to those psalms which
invoke wrath and destruction on enemies.
To call them vindictive or cursing psalms is
a trifle too harsh ; to call them psalms of de
nunciation is too mild.
In Psalm 137 an exile in far off Babylon is
thinking of his home land, and is being
taunted by strangers to sing one of the songs

92 Studies in the Book of Psalms
of Zion. He recalls the Holy City of his
fathers and the days of its siege and sack by
foreign soldiery, and of the joy with which
Edom, a neighbour tribe, gloated over the fall
of Jerusalem, and the exile prays that God
may curse Edom too, that strangers may des
troy Edom and beat out the brains of their
children on the rocks.
Remember, O Lord, against the children of Edom,
The day of Jerusalem ;
Who said, Rase it, rase it,
Even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed ;
Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee
As thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy lit
tle ones
Against a rock.
In Psalm 109 the writer solemnly invokes
the wrath of God on his adversaries by a
series of maledictions. The tenacity with
which the subject is pursued suggests that
the writer almost takes a malicious delight in
imagining the object of his displeasure in all
sorts of bad plights. He prays that an evil
person may continually dog his enemies' foot
steps, as if to strike at him whenever oppor
tunity presented itself ; that whenever he
has a case before the judges it may go

Fifteen Psalm Groups 93
against him, and that even his prayer may be
turned into sin ; that the vengeance of God
may pursue even after his family. See also
Psalms 69, 59, 58 and 35.
Various attempts have been made to ex
plain these vindictive psalms. Here are
some of them :
1. The first impression that one receives
on reading these psalms is that they are ma
lignant expressions of an angry man, caused
by private hatreds and suffering from unjust
persecutions. This view would hold their in
spiration to be not from above but from below.
2. The Hebrew verb here translated as a
precative or jussive is the form also of the
simple future. If the verb is translated as a
future the expression is a declaration that
death and destruction will be inflicted and
not a prayer that they may be. This is not
a correct view, though the rule of grammar
is correct. These curses are often introduced
by an imperative which determines the later
verb forms as precatives. The form in which
they are quoted in Acts 1 : 20 shows too
that they are there accepted in the impreca
tory sense. This method evades the question
and tacitly admits weakness if the correct
translation is adopted.

94 Studies in the Book of Psalms
3. That these imprecations are of the
nature of quotations from the lips of David's
enemies in regard to him and not his own
words in regard to them. All one needs to
render such a view correct is to supply quota
tion marks and supply a word here and there,
which is done in every chapter of the Bible
in the interests of a smooth reading. This in
terpretation is ingenious, but it does violence
to the text.
4. The curses are not David's but God's.
The verbal theory of inspiration relieves man
of all responsibility for the language of Scrip
ture. Viewed in this light, God does the
cursing, and David simply records it. But
if God does thus pray, it seems odd that the
prayer should be put in David's mouth and
offered back to God. It is a false view of
inspiration that altogether eliminates the per
sonal factor from the process. People gen
erally would not look on these curses as
God's but rather as David's and might easily
be led to follow the King's example of in
voking curses on their enemies. To claim,
as some have, that the persons who utter
these anathemas are moved with the highest
degree of benevolence is to make oneself
ridiculous. These psalms mean vastly more

Fifteen Psalm Groups 95
than the expressions of those sanctions and
penalties that God has thrown round His
laws. Every man will admit that punish
ment may be just. Few men will agree that
these psalms mean a tame concurrence in the
righteous plans by which God rules the world.
5. Some have held that these imprecations
are David's, but that he here identifies him
self with God and views his own foes as God's
foes, and hence invokes on them the divine
justice which they are sure to incur anyway.
This view holds that the writer is the good
man, taunted, ill treated, and is the one who
prays that the divine justice which punishes
wrong-doing may deliver him from his ene
mies and catch them in their own traps ; that
he speaks with calm deliberation and not
with rancour in his heart, else how understand
his sudden transition to a frame of mind that
expresses trust, faith, joy, love and similar
emotions. It may be remarked that this transition is
not at all hard to understand. Any man who
reflects on his own psychology will observe
that in many forms of intense excitement, he
alternates from one extreme to another. The
Hebrew was much given to it. Blessings
and cursings often left his lips in the same

96 Studies in the Book of Psalms
breath. Further, to allege that because he
cites his own innocence and acts of kindness
to his foes as contrasted with their treatment
of him, one has no reason to conclude that
there is no malice in the malediction.
6. Akin to the foregoing is that explana
tion which claims that the Hebrews never
grasped things in the abstract but always in
the concrete, that hence when denouncing a
cause that is unjust the writer would see the
cause embodied in some imaginary person.
There is a good deal of force in this view,
and the principle it builds on is admitted
freely. It appeals so strongly that one's
judicial faculty is almost carried away by it.
One must insist, however, that a good deal
of the atmosphere of these psalms demands a
personal reference and not an impersonal,
Platonic condemnation of evil, poetically
represented as incarnate in a human being.
7. This view is modified by taking out
the personal element and saying that the
psalmist is not resenting affront to himself
but to God. He is hot against sin in general,
and desires to see right not wrong prevail.
But all such reasoning, however true in itself,
is advocacy, and not true interpretation.
8. Others have held that these impreca-

Fifteen Psalm Groups 97
tions are expressions of righteous indignation
intensified by Hebrew vehemence, but that
they are not as fierce as they seem, and are
justifiable, owing to deep provocation. It is
true that the Hebrews felt deeply and on
slight occasions uttered wild intense emo
tions which must always be discounted. It
is true, too, that there were irritating occa
sions that heighten the probability of an ex
plosion of wrath. Here may be found the
true explanation of the vindictive psalms ;
that David did not fully and really wish these
horrors to fall on his foes, but as he said once
in his haste that all men were liars, so here
in his haste he begs that his enemies may be
damned. 9. Another view of the subject is that
these psalms are historic and not didactic ;
that they record previous states of mind and
not those at the moment of writing ; or that
they set down a momentary passion, not in
tended to be endorsed later nor to serve as
instruction or guidance in the treatment of
enemies. 10. A fairer view of these psalms is that
they are Jewish in spirit and not Christian ;
that they are excusable in that stage of re
ligious development in which they were

98 Studies in the Book of Psalms
spoken, but are not in accord with the
greater light and wider knowledge of Chris
tian revelation.
These explanations show a surprising in
genuity of interpretation. They aim not so
much to discover the true view as to multiply
possible views. Nearly all these views dodge
the real explanation. The evident object of
most of them is to remove an unworthy view
of the psalms. Most of us start with precon
ceived ideas that nothing unworthy is to be
found in the Bible, and then construe every
fact to fit our theory. The true mode of pro
cedure, and the only one on which the inspir
ation and the authority of the Bible securely
rests, is to argue from the facts to a theory.
The natural interpretation is the end least de
sired. Language should be taken on its face
value. If these writers are not speaking in
their own person they have failed to make it
plain. If they are speaking impersonally,
they should have left the element of personal
injury out of it. If they are representing
God's view of wicked men one might ask
why they place Him in the second and third
person and invoke His wrath on human be
ings rather than leave Him to visit His judg
ment on them.

Fifteen Psalm Groups 99
The assumption generally made is that
David was never wrong and that his enemies
always were. The incidents to which the
imprecatory psalms attach themselves are
such as represent ordinary tribal hatreds and
personal encounters. David was often as
much to blame for these as his enemies.
While we follow the fortunes of David with
more personal sympathy we cannot always
justify his courses and we can often see noble
qualities in his enemies. It was an age of
aggression It was an age that hit back.
Retaliation was a tribal law. Blood revenge
prevailed. Rude hard savage justice, the
law of the desert, was in force. The man
who could stoop to murder, lust and other
crimes would be very likely to invoke curses
on his foes. David, of course, did not write
all these imprecations but what applies to him
is true of the nation generally.
God does no more endorse David's revenge
ful spirit than He approves Joel's treachery
and deed of blood, or Jepthah's sacrifice of
his virgin daughter, or David's tearing the
Ammonites with saws and axes and harrows
of iron. No amount of special pleading can
justify actions such as these. Raiding de
fenseless villages, ripping up women with

100 Studies in the Book of Psalms
child, devoting a country to fire and pillage,
selling their foes into slavery, were all too
common in those early days. One defends
this at the expense of God's justice or com
mon morality. The Bible records with un
sparing fidelity the weaknesses of even its
greatest heroes. It exposes Jacob's decep
tions, Judah's immorality, Saul's perversity,
Elijah's pessimism, Jonah's selfishness, the
disciples' errors and narrowness. It dis
closes in these psalms the bitterness which
hard experiences had engendered in men's
hearts, and attempts no justification. They
are faithful expressions of the ethics of the
times that produced them. Nor has Chris
tian grace wholly triumphed over these
ebullitions of savage joy. See Tertullian in
his treatise on spectacles. Recall the deeds of
the Christian fathers and bishops, the Spanish
Inquisition, and the fierce vindictiveness of
Spinoza's persecution by Jews and Christians
alike. Rejected by His beloved city, Jesus wept
over it. The element of personal offense
done to Him is not present in His lamenta
tion. Seeing the doom that impends over
the city He is moved with compassion to say,
" How oft would I have gathered thy children

Fifteen Psalm Groups 101
together." On the cross He prayed for His
enemies, saying " Father forgive them."
To His disciples He laid down the precept :
" Love your enemies," adding at the end
of many similar advices and commands
this motive, " that ye may be as your father
in heaven." Contrasted with these tears
and prayers and commands of Jesus how
can any one justify the fierce vindictiveness
that flashes and gleams in sundry places in
the Psalter. 3. Pilgrim Psalms
The pilgrim psalms are among the choice
gems of the collection. Each one is a pearl
of great price. Their lustrous brilliancy, rich
colouring, local suggestiveness, and beautiful
spirit impress even a casual reader. They
were probably dearer to the people than most
others of the collection. Growing up amid
the associations of the home as well as the
temple, a ballad poetry of the people, chanted
by pilgrim bands wending their ways towards
the Holy City, they would attach themselves
to the most delightful sort of memories.
These songs compose a single group. It is
idle to try to fix their date. A casual reading
proves that one or two certainly were com-

102 Studies in the Book of Psalms
posed after the return from captivity ; perhaps
they all were. That seems to be the generally
accepted opinion. The purpose of them is
obscured too by the ambiguity of the phrase
" Songs of ascents " which is variously under
stood. Delitzsch and others believe it to re
fer to a rhythm that advances " by degrees "
towards a climax. Hitzig and others hold it
to have reference to use by the priests in as
cending the steps to the outer court of the
temple, in which case they are processionals.
Some believe it refers to the return from cap
tivity, hence to a single pilgrimage to Jeru
salem. Ewald thinks the term applies to the
pilgrimages in general to Jerusalem to attend
the yearly feast. The testimony of tradition
and the weight of authority favour Ewald's
view. Psalm 120 — In Alien Lands
This is presumably a psalm of the exile,
though it would fit any situation of suffering.
The author, speaking for himself as the nation,
has felt the barbs and stings of lying lips and
deceitful tongues. They inflict wounds like
the sharp arrows of a warrior, and inflame the
spirit like hot coals. In alien lands he longs
for peace and rest, while those among whom

Fifteen Psalm Groups 103
his life is spent are out for war and strife.
Gossips, liars, slander-mongers scatter fire
brands that rob communities as well as indi
viduals of peace. The only refuge from the
distress of such is the presence of Jehovah.
Psalm 121 — Song of the Hills
It is a poetic]tradition that when the pilgrim
first caught sight of the hills of Judea the
fervour of his patriotism broke out in the
words, " I will lift up mine eyes to the hills."
The most sacred memories of home life, of
national history, of familiar family tradition
were connected with the glorious hills of their
fathers. As the high Alps inspire the Swiss
with liberty, the hills of Judah stirred the
souls of the Hebrew mountaineers. It was
here that God led the nation in the past, and
so they are for all time the sturdy symbols of
divine strength. To the God suggested by
the hills they look for help. He, the Im
movable, will not suffer their feet to be moved,
nor will He sleep in His watch care over Israel.
As the shade of tree or rock to the travel
ling oriental is a great protection against the
heat, " Those sunbeams like swords," so the
Lord will be a shade to ward off the evil from
His chosen people.

104 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Psalm 122 — The Holy City
The Holy City has frequently been the
theme of poets and song writers. With what
beauty and simplicity it was treated here I
From the point of view of Israel, what was
more sacred than the city of his fondest
memories and hopes ! The devout heart of
each would echo the delight of one who re
joiced in those who said, " Let us go up to the
house of the Lord." Jerusalem, the com
pactly built city of the fathers, the place of
the assembling of the tribes, the seat of the
Royal family of David, the centre of Israel's
best. Its foundations were laid in righteous
ness through the prayers and tears of his
fathers and, like the city not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens, was precious beyond
the power of tongue to tell. Like the
"Pax Vobiscum" of Jesus this "Peace be
within thee" trembles on the worshipper's
lips several times with earnest, tender solici
tude. Psalm 123 — Song of the Camp
This was the psalm of the camp when the
tents of the pilgrims were pitched for the
night and they turned their eyes towards the
stars of heaven which their imagination, as

Fifteen Psalm Groups 105
ours, made the dwelling place of God. This
was the use to which the psalm was put, but
it had its origin plainly in the heavy experi
ences of the exiles. The scorn and con
tempt of the proud stung the writer to the
quick, and in his extremity he becomes sup
pliant for heavenly grace. Even as the eyes
of servants look unto the hands of the Master,
this poor troubled one waits for Divine mercy.
It is easy to find situations for this as for
other psalms. The more universal the ex
perience, the easier it is to declare that it be
longs to this or that incident
Psalm 124 — Deliverance
" If it had not been the Lord who was on
our side, now let Israel say ; if it had not been
the Lord who was on our side, when man
rose up against us : Then they had swallowed
us up quick when their wrath was kindled
against us." Here again is an experience
that is universal. What matters whether
David wrote it or not, as the title says,
whether it belongs to the exile or not, the
man who has ever felt the malice of an attack
by foes, will find this language expressive of
his own heart. Even as Burns in one of his
poems says of another's verse "it thrills the

106 Studies in the Book of Psalms
heart strings in the breast 'a to the life."
The flood of waters is a familiar figure of
Scripture for trouble and for enemies. But
the figure suddenly changes. They were a
flood of waters, now they are beasts of
prey from whom he has escaped as a
bird from a hunter's net. Delivered from
such a danger the most reasonable thing
is to thank the Lord, maker of heaven and
earth. Psalm 125 — The Everlasting Hills
The soul that trusts in God remains for
ever unshaken. Just as the temple was laid
on rock that reached to the granite core of
the mountains, so the soul that builds on God
is resting on the sure rock of ages. It can
not be moved. Other foundations may yield
but this one abides firm forever. Such is the
chief lesson of this beautiful psalm. In in
terpreting the psalm men catch at straws to
prove an historical situation that fits, but a
hundred may be cited that would fit very
well, and that is what makes it valuable. As
the mountains surround the city, so the
Lord surrounds His people. The rule of un
holy men shall not rest on them. But such
as shall follow after those whose paths are

Fifteen Psalm Groups 107
crooked (what a figure !) they shall pass out
with the workers of iniquity.
Psalm 126 — The Release and Return
This psalm was evidently written at the
close of the exile; and fixes on the events
immediately after as the theme.
It almost makes one weep with joy. The
wild intoxication of exiles told to go free is
the subject of it. Loosed from captivity,
once more the freemen of Jehovah, laughter
chases the tears from their cheeks. It is too
good to be true ! They can hardly believe
their ears. " When the Lord turned again
the captivity we were like men that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter and
our tongue with singing." Of course it was
written after the exile, how soon it is hard to
say. The material of it belongs certainly to
the glad moment of release. Their wild joy
impresses their alien neighbours who say,
" The Lord hath done great things for them."
In their deliverance they are mindful of
others in like straits and pray that release
may be general. Just as the streams flood
up in the rainy seasons, so may the roads fill
up with freemen. Their lot at home, striving
with the hard conditions of life, the barren

108 Studies in the Book of Psalms
wastes, the thorn clad hills, reminds them
that though their planting and restoring be
amid tears, they shall rejoice in the full har
vest to follow, just as those who sow in tears
reap in joy.
Psalm 127 — The Home
This is a beautiful psalm for the home.
Every householder should know it and love
it. To build a home without God is futile.
All protection, watch care and provision are
from Him, whether building a house or
watching a city. In earning one's daily
bread, the credit should go to God. At the
opening session of the Federal Convention,
as they were about to begin forming the
Constitution of the United States, Benjamin
Franklin moved that the Assembly first pray,
for said he, " Except the Lord build the house
they labour in vain that build it ; except the
Lord keep the City, the watchmen watch but
in vain." The title " for Solomon," and the
phrase "the house," lead many interpreters
to believe that the temple is meant. Pages
of absurd matter are written to base tremen
dous guesses on slender data. The things
which the man strives for without God, and
fails to attain, God gives to His beloved in

Fifteen Psalm Groups 109
sleep and without apparent striving. So also
children are a gift from God. They are the
strength of a man when he is old, as arrows in
a hero's hand, and they are an honour to him in
public. The thought of the psalm is, therefore,
that in building a house, watching the city,
earning a living, rearing children, and the
like, divine care is needed, or the work is vain.
Psalm 128 — The Family
This is an epithalamium or marriage song.
Only the married can understand much of
the scripture. But perhaps our age cannot
understand the Hebrew's delight in children.
When Hebrew mothers prayed for children,
and treated virginity and barrenness as ca
lamities, it is easy to see how their hearts
would rejoice at the sight of many olive
branches round their tables. The man who
fears God and walks in His ways, shall have
the blessing of fruitful fields and shall eat of
the labour of his own hands ; and the blessing
of a fruitful wife who shall produce like a
fruitful vine by the side of the house. All
this is by divine blessing, and such a one
lives to see honour and glory — and to see the
good of Jerusalem, and of his grandchildren
that cluster about him.

no Studies in the Book of Psalms
Psalm 129 — National Oppression
This is a song of national oppression.
Sorrows have lasted since Israel's youth,
which phrase conceives the nation's history
after the analogy of an individual's, the period
of the nation's youth being the sojourn in
Egypt. Afflicted but not conquered ! The
foes have driven the ploughshare full on his
back and made the furrows long, but the Lord
is righteous and has cut their cords asunder.
The imprecatory element that follows is
not so fierce as usual. May all be "con
founded and turned back that hate Zion. Let
them be as the grass upon the house top
which withers before it groweth up, where
with the reaper filleth not his hand, nor he
that bindeth sheaves his bosom, neither do
they which go by say, ' The blessing of the
Lord be upon you.' "
Psalm 130 — De Profundis
De profundis ! How often the deeps of the
sea are used as the symbol of trouble. All
Thy waves and Thy billows passed over me.
Here they stand for the depths of distress and
disaster wrought by sin. It is one of the
penitential psalms, for the voice of supplica
tion and of confession mingle in it. The sup-

Fifteen Psalm Groups in
pressed premise of the third verse is that " we
have sinned." If the Lord should mark iniq
uity, who could stand. The fact is, all have
sinned, but there is forgiveness with God,
and forgiveness for what a strange reason,
that He may be feared. Perhaps the idea of
fear falls back in thought into a connection
with the idea of sin — such would not be rare
in the Semite's psychology — or else fear is
used in the old sense of worship as in " The
Fear of Jehovah." The deeper one sinks in
trouble, the louder his cry from the depths for
help, and the intensity of this psalm would
indicate that its author had suffered a good
deal. Psalm 3 1 — The Weaned Child, or Humility
There are two prominent ideas in this
psalm, — humility and trust. But these two
virtues are exceedingly rare. Humility is
opposed to the haughty heart, that reveals
itself always in tell-tale eyes, and it is op
posed to that intellectual inquisitiveness that
gazes irreverently on the mysteries and ex
ercises itself in matters beyond human reach.
Humility, the first, begets trust, the second
of these two virtues. Just as the weaned
child has learned to accept the parent's re-

112 Studies in the Book of Psalms
straint, so the child of God should learn the
same thing. Certainly much unhappiness in
life is due to the qualities of disposition that
are here impliedly condemned, and the only
way to give relief desired is by that self-
denial and contentment that learns to be
rich and abound in whatever state one is.
Psalm 133 — Fraternity
Fraternity and unity are the beautiful words
of this psalm. How blessed it is when they
go together in life. No strife is so pitiable
as that of brothers. The reason social or
ganizations take the name of brotherhoods
and the members style each other brothers is
because the word is *one to conjure with.
Discord in such a relationship is most pain
ful. But unity is beautiful. "It is like the
precious ointment upon the head, that ran
down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard :
that went down to the skirts of his garments,
or it is as the dew of Hermon, as the dew
that descended upon the mountains of Zion."
The point here is not merely that the oint
ment was costly or finely scented, if it means
these at all, but that it was diffusive, reach
ing eVen to the skirts of the garment, or in
the case of the dew diffusing itself from

Fifteen Psalm Groups 113
Hermon all the way over the hills of Zion.
Where brethren thus dwell together, the
Lord commands the blessing, even life for-
evermore. Psalm 134 — Benedictus
This song closes the pilgrim group. It is
an antiphonal. The first part was sung by
the night watch reporting for duty, and the
second part by the watchers who were re
tiring. It is a most fitting close, with its
words of benediction, to the rich songs of
this part. " Behold," is the word to attract
attention as the gracious salutation is about
to be pronounced. " Bless ye the Lord, all
ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand
in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands
in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord." The
night watch in the temple was changed after
midnight. A tour of inspection was made
to see that all was in readiness for the service
early in the morning. Then the priests who
expected to be on duty in the morning
prepared themselves, drew lots for their
separate functions, and awaited the dawn.
The song of the night watch was answered
by a similar word of blessing and so the psalm
ends.

1 14 Studies in the Book of Psalms
4. Nature Psalms
No poetry is so full of natural scenery as
that of the Bible. The Hebrews were primi
tive and lived close to nature's heart. They
personified the forces of life, and the inani
mate things of the world. The hills leaped,
the corn-fields sang, the little hills clapped
their hands for joy. Such vivid figures of
speech turn on natural phenomena. They
had their song of the sun, the song of the
storm, the song of creation and other nature
poems.
Psalm 19 — The Song of the Sun
A fine bit of nature is found in the first half
of Psalm 19. This nature element of the
psalm has impressed itself on all our minds.
Perhaps Addison's paraphrase in verse has
helped us to remember it. The translation
is faulty and without reflection on it will not
give the sense. Haydn's "The Heavens
are Telling " is a beautiful setting of the piece
to music. While a shepherd, watching his
flock on the hills round Bethlehem, David
may have composed this psalm. The first
astronomers were shepherds and oriental.
Their occupation and the warm climate gave
them opportunity to study and trace the con-

Fifteen Psalm Groups 115
figurations of the heavens and to call all the
stars by name.
The mere physical exercise of naming the
stars was not the end of it to this writer. He
saw these stars personified. Like so many
souls they arose to declare the glory of God.
Their silent influence was eloquent with
praise; their very shining a brilliant wit
nessing. Even the days are alive and speak.
Luther's translation in German makes it read,
" One day talking to another." The idea
of the days talking together and the nights
rehearsing the story one to another, is very
poetic, but the English version does not flash
that sense into the mind. The picture of the
sun, too, having his home in a tent among
the stars, coming out of his door in the sky,
as a bridegroom comes out of his chamber,
and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race,
his course being across the sky from one end
of it to the other — sunrise and sunset — is
finely drawn. These are glowing metaphors
and one can guess with what exuberant fancy
the mind of the shepherd as his eyes gazed
heavenward peopled the sky with energetic
spirits voicing the praise of God. Other na
tions in other days had worshipped these

116 Studies in the Book of Psalms
stars, but nature in the psalms is a panorama
shifted by the hands of a personal creator.
It is He that hath made us and not we our
selves. Blind men do not see this radiant
glory as deaf men do not hear the music of
the spheres, and some who see and hear do
not know the music or the piece. Unbelief
says, " The heavens declare the glory of as
tronomy," but Kepler, the astronomer,
thanked God that he was permitted to read
God's thought in the heavens after Him.
Ruskin says that the sky is the most beautiful
picture ever painted. It changes every mo
ment. It is never twice the same. New light
tints, cloud effects vary the result constantly.
It was while gazing at this same vault of
heaven resplendent with stars — the planets
flashing and twinkling on a summer night —
all like a diadem of jewels or a crown of
grace and glory on the brow of Jehovah, that
the psalmist conceived the Eighth Psalm —
" When I consider Thy heavens, the work of
Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which
Thou hast ordained."
Psalm 29 — The Tempest
Another nature psalm is the 29th. It is a
storm piece — an eastern tempest in all its

Fifteen Psalm Groups 117
fury and glory. One sees in it the progress
of a storm. The imagination needs no
prompting to picture the thick dark clouds
with ragged edges rent by flashes of light
ning and rumbling with the roll of thunder.
As the wind rises and the storm bursts in
fury on the land, the trees of the forest
wrestle with the giant. They bend and bow
before the storm, rent and torn by its power,
and scatter their leaves in wild confusion.
The mountains, Lebanon and Hermon, shake
and tremble beneath the blast and the force
of it spreads even to Kadesh. Scared by the
crashing tempest, the poor animals crouch
together, trembling and casting their young.
In the most poetic symbols the scene is de
scribed. Earth, like a mighty temple is full
of glory. But above the floods sits God,
King forevermore. The voice of the Lord
is out on many waters, the God of Glory
thundereth. The mountains skip like a calf
or like a young wild ox, while the thunder
heweth out flames of fire. The frequent
repetition of the phrase " voice of the Lord "
is like an echo of the thunder that pealed
from the sky.
The first two verses and the last two are
like a frame enclosing the picture. Each is

118 Studies in the Book of Psalms
pervaded by a spirit in contrast with the storm
set in between them. The first is full of calm,
calling on all to worship the Lord in the
beauty of holiness, then with a crash comes
the storm and at the close is another great
calm with the words — the Lord will bless His
people with peace.
God is in His world according to the He
brews. He did not once build it, give it over
to the mechanical laws necessary to run it,
start it going, and then move off to the rim
of the universe to see it go. Deism denied
the immanence of God and gave us a notion
of His transcendence that makes the universe
an orphan deserted by the Creator. Rather
is it true that God is not far from every one of
us — In Him we live and move and have our
being — we are also His offspring. The forces
of nature are directly under the control of
His Almighty power, who first prescribed
their course.
He who marks the sparrow when it falls,
who numbers the hairs of our heads, who
clothes the grass of the field which to-day is
and to-morrow is cast into the oven — knows
also every wind of heaven whence it cometh
and whither it goeth.
No wonder he exclaims, O Lord, how man-

Fifteen Psalm Groups 119
ifold are Thy works. In wisdom Thou hast
made them all. This is the substance of the
modern " design argument." Only, the He
brews never attempt to prove God's exist
ence. They everywhere assume it. No fact
was so patent to them. The invisible things
of Him are known from the things that are
seen. The facts of nature lead to God.
They at least prove His power, wisdom and
goodness. The human eye, the eagle's wing,
and ten thousand other things manifesting
intelligence in adaptation, correlation and
adjustment declare the existence of a Being
equal to these effects.
This is not speculative, but concrete The
ism. There are fifty nouns and pronouns in
this one psalm that show God as a personal
Being, not as a material substance animated by
life forces, controlled by mechanical laws ; and
not as a person identical with nature. God
is a living God, apart from His work — nature.
The Hebrew was a child of nature, as well
as a child of God. In nature he found God.
The first attribute of God that impressed him
was force and so he called God " Elohim."
This force was everywhere, and wherever it
was God had to be for the force was a mani
festation of God. God was everywhere. He

120 Studies in the Book of Psalms
was more than His world but He was every
where present in His world. The Hebrews
were highly imaginative. Further, they dis
pensed with secondary causes and referred
everything to the First Cause. The thunder
was the sound of God's voice, the lightning
was the flash of His eye. The hot simoon
was the hot breath of His mouth. The
earthquake was the tread of His feet on the
mountains. The volcano was the fierce
wrath of His nostrils. The bright light was
His vesture. The winds were His messen
gers, and His ministers were flaming fires.
This was not merely poetic personification
with them. Not having the knowledge that
modern science gives of nature, they offered
none of its explanations, but felt that a mighty
Spirit was present and at work in the world.
Their first notion of God was that He is the
Mighty One. It was reflection later on that
helped men to see God's Metaphysical attri
butes in the name Jehovah, or His Ethical
attributes in our name, God.
In Psalm 104, we have a very poetic pic
ture of nature. What could be more poetic
than the opening verses where God clothes
Himself with light as with a garment, and
stretches out the heavens as a curtain. He

Fifteen Psalm Groups 121
lays the beams of His chambers in the waters
and makes the cloud His chariot. He
walks on the wings of the wind and makes
the winds His messengers and the lightning
flashes His ministers. He laid the founda
tions of the earth that it should not be moved
forever, and covered it with water as a ves
ture. The waters hung over the mountain,
but at God's rebuke they fled. At the voice
of His thunder they hasted away. They
went up by the mountains and down by the
valleys to the place that God had appointed
for them, and so the language runs all
through the psalms.
I think it was Humboldt who said that this
great nature psalm proclaims God as Creator
and Provider of all. The needs of nature are
infinite. God's resources, too, are infinite.
Millions of creatures turn to Him, and He
supplies all their desire with infinite ease and
fullness and does it in due season. The
dependence of the universe on God is made
more striking by this concrete way of putting
it. Had he reasoned abstractly of creation
and Divine Providence, the effect would not
have been so impressive, but these vivid
pictures of animals from wood and field are
argument and illustration all in one.

122 Studies in the Book of Psalms
In all these nature psalms it should be
noticed also that God is good. The presence
of suffering in the world is not urged as an
argument against His pity ; the fact of sin is
not urged against His goodness.
5. Songs of Deliverance
The nation's deliverance from Sennacherib's
army was the occasion of great national ex
citement and thanksgiving. Tradition refers
Psalms 46, 47 and 48 to this glad event.
They have in them a tremendous spirit of
joy and pride in their city and in their God.
The key-note of them is Emmanuel, or the
Lord of Hosts is with us. While the foun
tains of the great deep are broken up, the
river of God flows smoothly on in Zion.
While the nations are shaken with tumult,
the people of Jehovah have a sure protection.
While others depend on battlements and
physical strength, the forces that sustain
Israel are invisible.
The story of the Great King's invasion of
Israel is told in the Bible and in the tablets of
Assyria. On the death of Solomon the tribes
of Israel were divided into two kingdoms, the
southern one under Rehoboam and the north
ern under Jeroboam. The northern kingdom

Fifteen Psalm Groups 123
lasted about 200 years when its capitol fell
and its best people went into captivity to
Nineveh. The southern kingdom lasted over
a hundred years longer. Jerusalem being
situated on the mountain heights had natural
protection. It was ruled over by many bad
Kings having as litde character as the
average sheikh of the desert to-day. The
story of the city is a story of mingled glory
and shame. There were luxury, oppression,
and anarchy on all sides. Hezekiah came to
power. He was a good King. He opposed
the prevailing anarchy and luxury. The
idols were demolished, the temple was
purified and was reopened for the worship of
God. Religious festivals were renewed.
In the midst of this prosperity, a great
cloud of war loomed up in the northeast.
Assyria was again invading the Holy Land.
Assyria's strength was like the cedars.
Sennacherib is described on one of his own
tablets as " The great, the powerful King,
the favoured of the gods, the observer of
sworn faith, a noble hero, a strong warrior,
the first of Kings, the punisher of unbelievers,
and the destroyer of bad men." The
Assyrian King's objective point was Egypt.
To reach it he made his power felt on all the

124 Studies in the Book of Psalms
provinces that lay between. Syria and
Israel were wiped out of existence. It is
now Judah's turn. Sennacherib comes
against Judah with overwhelming force.
Isaiah lived at the time and described the
invading army. He says, " Their arrows are
sharp, their bows are bent, their horses' hoofs
are like flint and their chariots are like
whirlwinds in sound." Hezekiah makes a
temporary submission. Later he revolts and
the army returns. The garrison of Jerusalem
is weak. There are no provisions, no forces.
The people are panic stricken, the foe is
insolent. In the midst of all this distress
Hezekiah stakes all on God. He appeals to
Him for help, then Isaiah comes as the mes
senger of God and says to the King concern
ing the invader, " He shall not come into this
city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come be
fore it with shield, nor cast a bank against it.
By the way he came, he shall return and
shall not come in this city for I will defend
this city to save it."
Deliverance came in the night. While
Jerusalem was in terror, and suffering from
the siege, the camp outside was full of confi
dence, but the angel of the Lord went forth
among the invading host. This angel of the

Fifteen Psalm Groups 125
Lord was likely the breath of pestilence;
185,000 corpses strewed the ground. The
book of Kings describes the scene. The
tablets of Assyria tell a boastful story of it,
representing Sennacherib as saying, " And
because Hezekiah, King of Judah would not
submit to my yoke, I came up against him,
and by force of arms I took forty-six fenced
cities and carried off 200,150 people, and
Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem
like a bird in a cage, building towers round
the city to hem him in, and raising banks of
earth against the gate to prevent his escape.
Then upon this Hezekiah there fell the fear
of my arms, and he sent out to me the chiefs
and elders of Jerusalem with thirty talents of
gold and 800 talents of silver and rich and
immense booty. All these things were
brought to me at Nineveh. Hezekiah sent
them as tribute and as a token of submission
to my power."
The tablets of Assyria are full of such
boastings and it is a significant fact that they
never rehearsed their disasters. Their defeat
on this occasion is told by the poet Byron in
the following strong lines :
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

126 Studies in the Book of Psalms
For the angel of Death spread his wings on the blast
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill
And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew
still.
And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,
Though through it there rolled not the breath of his
pride.
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the might of the gentile, unsmote by the sword
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.
Out of the stress of these times Psalms 46,
47 and 48 came. " God is our refuge and
strength, a very present help in trouble."
Those lines inspired Luther's hymn " Ein
Feste Burg ist unser Gott," and also the
English hymn, " God is the refuge of His
saints when storms of sharp distress invade."
These psalms helped Wesley when delivered
from the earthquake. They helped the
Russians in their deliverance at Moscow.
They have helped individuals, too. Luther
would say to Melanchthon, "Come, Philip,
let us sing, ' Our helper He.' " These
psalms are full of earthquake and storm, the
usual symbols of war and trouble, but the
swelling sea gives way to the quiet stream ;

Fifteen Psalm Groups 127
the fierce host gives way to a secret peace,
while " The Lord of hosts is with us, the God
of Jacob is our refuge."
6. Temple Psalms, 84, 132, 134.
When the Hebrews dwelt in tents the place
of public meetings was the great tent centrally
located among the tribes. It was a sacred
shrine that held all that was holy in religion.
During many years it had inspired the awe
and the reverence of the nation. When
Israel passed from the nomadic to the agricul
tural stage of development and so ceased to
live in tents, the temple superseded the taber
nacle as the place of worship. All the old re
gard for the tabernacle was transferred to the
temple. It was the centre of Israel's hopes, as
pirations, beliefs, memories. It was the dwell
ing place of Jehovah. Again and again the
psalms make reference to it, hence it is not sur
prising that it should be the sole theme of some
psalms. Psalm 84 is such a temple psalm
with its allusion to the house, the dwellings,
courts, altars, doors, steps, the paths that lead
to it and the worship there. Its delight is
tinged with a gentle melancholy as though
the author of it were denied the privileges of
worshipping at Zion. It begins with an ex-

128 Studies in the Book of Psalms
clamation as though long pent up feelings
were finding expression. " How amiable are
Thy dwellings, O Lord of Hosts. My soul
longs, yea faints for the courts of my God.
My heart and flesh cry out for the living
God." It is worthy of notice that a living
personal knowable God is meant here. The
men of Israel had a vital, real faith in
Jehovah. The thought here rises above the
altar to the altar's God. The fittings of the
temple were aids to worship and not objects
of worship. Degrading they may have been
to the ignorant, but helps to devotion they
always were to the enlightened. So in the
big cathedrals of Europe to-day. The great
stone columns and arches in nave and tran
sept are sermons in stone. The huge stained
glass windows that mellow the instreaming
light induce a spirit of reverence. The
swinging censer, priestly vestments, pleasant
incense and tinkling bells arrest and guide
the attention of the worshipper. The altar
paintings and mural decorations in eloquent
silence tell the story of the faith ; the organ
music and the choir voices roll the sound of
it through the dome that reverberates with
the organ thunders and trembles with the
gentlest whisper. But in and above all is God

Fifteen Psalm Groups 129
A pretty effect is found in this psalm
where the psalmist alludes to the sparrows
that had nested in the eaves or about the
altar as they do in the ivy trellis that climbs
the walls of our churches to bring forth their
young and twitter their hymn of praise to be
borne on the evening winds. " Blessed are
they that dwell in Thy house." " Blessed is
the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose
heart are the highways to Zion." To such
the vale of tears becomes the well-spring of
joy. " They go from strength to strength."
The tenth verse is much altered by a better
translation. The thought is loyal and stir
ring. " For a day in Thy court is better than
a thousand" ordinary days, or days spent
anywhere else, but observe the next phrase, " I
would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of
my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness."
That translation has always seemed to carry
little sense. One's mind says of course that
is so. Any one would admit that. It is
hardly worth the saying. But the revised
translation renders it very expressively, giv
ing the sense that I would rather stand out
side on the steps of God's house than dwell
inside the tents of wickedness.
The pilgrim psalms with their frequent ref-

130 Studies in the Book of Psalms
erence to the hills and the temple illustrate
how sacred it was. " I was glad when they
said unto me let us go into the house of the
Lord." The votive psalm, number 132, re
solving on the temple's erection, and the ark's
ascent to Zion, the selection of a permanent
place of worship, the clothing of the priests
with salvation, reflects the spirit of the nation.
The last of the pilgrim psalms, number 134,
is a charming picture of a night scene on the
temple area when the night watch was
changed. It is written in dialogue style and
hence was probably an antiphonal. A voice
addresses the Temple watch with words of
salutation, and urges that they spend the night
season in praise and prayer as well as in
watching, at the same time pronouncing a
blessing upon them. In response they in
voke a similar blessing on those who greet
them.
7. Votive Psalms
The Hebrew made much of vows. These
were more solemn than ordinary promises,
were usually made in connection with relig
ion, and hence were held very sacred. A
nameless terror haunted the mind of one
who had hanging over him an unfulfilled

Fifteen Psalm Groups 131
vow. They were not to be idly assumed nor
lighdy esteemed.
David, the King of Israel in the early part
of his reign made a memorable vow with
respect to the ark of God. It was so solemn
and involved the public to such an extent
that it seemed fitting that it should be
poetized, as it is. The circumstances were
these : When David began his reign, the
country was unsettled. The ark at the time
had no permanent resting place. It had been
kept for the most part at Shiloh. The ark was
the visible symbol of the Divine Presence,
among the people. To the superstitious
indeed as to the stranger it was an object of
idolatry. The foreign peoples called it Jeho
vah. It was a most precious possession at any
rate and must be housed. After David had
built his own cedar palace, in Jerusalem, and
had made the old Jebusite fortress the seat
of government, he resolved to build another
palace there, the temple, for Jehovah and so
make the city the centre of the religious life
of the people. The ark, guarded by Levites
was at this time at Kirjath Jearim (Forest
Town), where it had been taken after the
Philistines had abandoned it. For fifty
years it had been neglected. The heart of

132 Studies in the Book of Psalms
David was deeply stirred by the contemplation
of this apathy and he vowed a vow. This
was soon or late made the theme of a votive
psalm numbered 132.
" He swore unto the Lord and vowed unto
the Mighty One of Jacob : surely I will not
come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go
up into my bed ; I will not give sleep to mine
eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids until I find
out a place for the Lord, a tabernacle for the
Mighty One of Jacob. So we heard of it in
the Ephrathah. We found it in the field of
the wood. We will go into His tabernacle,
we will worship at His footstool. Arise, O
Lord into Thy resting place ; Thou and the
ark of Thy strength." The balance of the
psalm is carried easily to another set of related
ideas : The promise to David and his seed
and the sanctity of Zion. Psalm 65 is another
votive psalm.
8. Professional Psalms, 24 and 68
The clashing of cymbals, beating of drums
and blowing of trumpets were conspicuous
features of ancient worship. It would seem
as though these impressionable peoples
studied how to make strong appeals to the
soul through the senses. The worship of

Fifteen Psalm Groups 133
Jehovah was spiritual, but the mind of Israel
was aided in its effort to reach God by all
sorts of symbols intended to make the reali
zation easy.
It is usual to connect a group of psalms
with David's formal establishment of worship
in Jerusalem, namely, 132 as a votive psalm,
declarative of the King's wish to house the
ark, 101 as expressive of the King's purpose
made at this time to be a model ruler, 15 as a
definition of the citizenship expected in his
commonwealth, and 24 with 68 as psalms
sung at the public ceremony of bringing up
the ark. There is no positive proof that these
two beautiful processionals were composed
for this solemn event, though they may have
been. It is certain, however, that they are
marching songs. It is certain, too, that David
composed songs for the bringing up of the
ark to Jerusalem, that he had the choirs trained
to sing part songs and that he himself went
before the procession on the line of march
dancing and singing with joy. Perhaps,
therefore, this is the song used on that day in
the manner already outlined. Ewald indeed
insists that two fragments of songs are joined
here. Such a theory is inconsistent with the
explanation given unless it be assumed that

134 Studies in the Book of Psalms
David combined two earlier fragments. The
composite theory has no other foundation,
however, than the dissimilarity of the two
parts and that is not enough for the difference
of purpose would account for differences of
form. As the multitudes climb the approaches to
the city gates, the whole congregation is sup
posed to sing the great chorus in 24 : 1. " The
earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof ;
the world and they that dwell therein. For
He hath founded it upon the seas, and estab
lished it upon the floods." Then the leader
of the choir sings the solo part, " Who shall
ascend into the hill of the Lord, and who
shall stand in His holy place ? " Then follows
the answer, possibly by the united choirs
giving substantially the thought of Psalm 15,
the definition of citizenship, that the men of
clean hands, pure heart, dignity and honour
are the true Jacob or Israel.
When the multitudes reach the closed
gates, they pause amid the singing and di
rectly a voice or one choir sings, " Lift up
your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye
everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall
come in." The gates remain locked and
barred while the solo voice from within sings

Fifteen Psalm Groups 135
in imitation of the watchers on the city walls,
" Who is the King of Glory ? " This affords
an opportunity for the entire congregation to
respond with the resounding chorus,
"Jehovah strong and mighty,
Jehovah mighty in battle."
The summons to open the gates is repeated,
the challenge from within is sung once more,
and then as the great gates open to the
throng escorting the ark, the multitudes swell
the chorus once more.
" The Lord of hosts,
He is the King of Glory."
The psalm is full of beautiful phrases and
sudden dramatic transitions, and justifies,
indeed demands, the sort of interpretation
here given to it.
The advancing procession halts, moves on,
shouts its feelings, enters through the gates
and exalts Jehovah to His rightful seat.
That much is clear. One word of caution,
however, is necessary. One must not read
too much into the text. Only those con
structions which are plainly warranted by
common sense and by the known principles
of Hebrew literature are admissible.

136 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Another processional psalm is number 68.
There is a solemn majesty about it that lifts it
high above other psalms for dignity, power and
grandeur. It is not possible to date it. It
has been placed early and late in Hebrew
history. Delitzsch says very early, Ewald
says late ! DeWette assigns it to the age of
Solomon ; Hitzig, the age of Jehoshaphat ;
Kimchi, the age of Hezekiah; Thenius, the
age of Josiah ; Ewald, the exile ; Renos the
age of the Ptolemies ; Olshausen, the age
of the Maccabees. One may justly conclude
that any writing that will permit the extreme
of speculation that has been exercised on this
one cannot furnish a very convincing clue as
to its date. It is litde better than guesswork
to try to fix its date. We have the psalm
anyway and it fits any great ceremonial oc
casion where the people march into the city
possibly with the ark in their midst, rejoicing
in their Jehovah of hosts, the conqueror.
No mere comment can do this psalm
justice. It must be read and studied until the
beauties and power of it master the reader.
It leaps and dances till one feels that he has
caught the joyful step of the marching crowds.
It then steadies its movements till one feels
the stately dignity and impressive tread of

Fifteen Psalm Groups 137
the mighty host. Then it shouts and sings
till the joy and the lyric quality of it almost
set the readers singing.
The march begins with triumphant refer
ence to the past as if to prove that God's
activities are permanent, that what He was
once He is now, a changeless God. The
grandeur of the thought cannot be over
emphasized. Then follows a battle hymn in
which one feels the shock of battle, hears the
hurrying feet of charging warriors, and
catches the enthusiasm and excitement of
strife, flight, plundering, in a word, victory.
Scattered are the enemies of Israel, and now
Jehovah the victor returns to Jerusalem
where He prefers to fix His dwelling place.
This is the central idea of the psalm. It is
really a paean of victory, a processional to
bring the ark back in triumph to the temple.
The psalm is rapturous at this point It re
quires little imagination to call up the multi
tudes exulting, transported with joy. From
the height of rejoicing, expressed in verses
15-18 — the psalm descends to a minor mood
until in verse 24 it resumes the " going of the
Lord into His sanctuary." "The singers
went before, the minstrels followed after, in
the midst of the damsels playing the timbrels."

138 Studies in the Book of Psalms
9. Civic Psalms. Read 15, 101, 82
There are two psalms assigned to King
David that define his conception of citizen
ship and civil righteousness. They are num
bered 15 and 101. The first of these is
alleged to have been written when David
inaugurated his reign in Jerusalem. That
reference to time is uncertain. But there is
no doubt that David is here describing the
qualities that make up the ideal citizen of his
commonwealth. The psalm may be com
pared to a picture, the first and last verses
being the top and bottom of the frame, and
the body of the psalm the picture. The first
verse starts the inquiry with the question,
and after the answer is given the last verse
estimates the reply. In the first verse, " Who
shall abide in Thy tabernacle, who shall dwell
in Thy holy hill " are phrases equivalent to
this one, " Who is fit to be a citizen of the com
monwealth of Zion ? " Recalling that Israel
was a theocracy in David's time, the question
really asks, " Who is worthy to be a citizen of
David's kingdom? " Of course the most ap
propriate time in the world to ask such a
question would be at the beginning of his
reign, hence many have fixed it there. The
definition that follows the question is as clear

Fifteen Psalm Groups 139
as day and rings true, " He that walketh
uprightly and worketh righteousness and
speaketh truth in his heart, he that slandereth
not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his
friend, nor taketh up a reproach against his
neighbour. In whose eyes a reprobate is
despised, but he honoureth them that fear
the Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt
and changeth not, he that putteth not out
his money to usury, nor taketh reward against
the innocent." There is the character.
With the Hebrews, citizenship was religion.
Duty to the State was duty to God.
The final clause estimates this character.
He that doeth these things shall never be
moved. These things are of the essence of
the divine nature. Whoever builds on them
is grounding his life on the Eternal. Just as
the temple was built on rock that reached
down to the base of the everlasting hills, so
the soul that builds on these foundations can
never be moved, for he has built on the im
movable God.
Psalm 101 is a royal psalm and has often
been called " the mirror for monarchs." It,
too, declares the character that is expected to
be cultivated by the King's subjects. The
King himself resolves to "behave wisely in a

140 Studies in the Book of Psalms
perfect way." "To walk within his house
with a perfect heart, to set no base thing be
fore his eyes and to hate the work of those
who turn aside." He resolves with respect to
others that the froward heart shall depart
from him, that he will know no evil person.
He will not tolerate the man of an high look
or proud heart. His companions shall be
the faithful in the land ; his ministers shall be
those who walk in a perfect way. The man
of deceit and the liar shall be put away and
he will make daily effort to destroy the wicked
of the land. This is a strong code of civic
righteousness. In an age when standards
were low among rulers and the masses, the
kind who had enough religion to make a vow
or resolution like that was worth his weight
in gold many times. Even if the programme
was ideal, it at least showed a worthy motive
and would insure a larger degree of fidelity
than living without such a rule. It should
be observed that this vow of the King had
reference rather to his public than to his
private duties. His public office will be
carefully administered. His example to his
subjects shall be above reproach. His courts
shall be clean and the whole land made law-
abiding. Though there is no certainty as to

Fifteen Psalm Groups 141
the time of its composition, the probability is
strong for the beginning of the King's reign.
Psalm 82 has a special reference to civil
justice and the men who administered it. It
would hardly do to speak of the national
judiciary for that savours of a refinement of
organization such as Israel never had. The
only law that existed among the Hebrews for
many centuries was that of tribal custom.
The Book of Judges declares many times
that in those days each one did what was
right in his own eyes. This does not mean
a high development of law, but anarchy.
Each one had to determine his own code.
There were always men in Israel who studied
natural justice and tribal custom. These
men acted as referees in the disputes that
arose among the people. At the gates and
in other public places, they heard and de
cided causes. Being under no restraints or
oaths, they frequently perverted justice when
it was to their advantage to do so. How
ever, with all their bribe taking, and double
dealing, they represented the practical sources
of equity in the land and in the majority of
cases meted out substantial justice. They
were in honour among the people and their
decisions were accepted as a decision of God,

142 Studies in the Book of Psalms
in whose seat they sat, being called for that
reason gods.
Along with princes, false prophets, priests,
and other leading classes they came in for
their share of denunciation from the prophets.
Psalm 82 plainly contemplates the unjust
judges. It proclaims, " God standeth in the
congregation of the gods. He judgeth
among the gods. How long will ye judge
unjustly and respect the persons of the
wicked? Judge the poor and fatherless. Do
justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue
the poor and needy. Deliver them out of
the hand of the wicked. They know not,
neither do they understand ; they walk to
and fro in the darkness. All the foundations
of the earth are moved. I said, ye are gods,
and all of you sons of the Most High. Never
theless, ye shall die like men and fall like one
of the princes."
10. A Shepherd Idyll
The Twenty-third Psalm is better known
perhaps than any other. It contains two dis
tinct groups of figures of speech. One group
is drawn from country life, the other group is
drawn from a banquet. In the first half God
is a faithful shepherd ; in the other He is a

Fifteen Psalm Groups 143
gracious host. In the one the singer lies
down in green pastures, by waters of rest, or
is guided in straight paths and protected in
the dark glens against robbers and wild
beasts ; but in the other the scene changes
completely to a banquet room. Now the
singer sits at a feast, the table is spread, the
anointing oil is poured on his head, he has
the full cup and will dwell in the house for
ever. This psalm is the banquet psalm as
well as the shepherd psalm. The first part
is truly idyllic. It is as mild and soft as a
day in June. It breathes an atmosphere of
rest and stillness.
Originally the whole nation was nomadic.
The great ancestors of the race had dignified
the occupation of a shepherd. Abraham had
pastured his flocks in the hills near Bethel
and in the South country. His descendants
followed the same life for many generations.
Under the light of the stars and the moon
David had watched the flocks. He had
learned their natures and knew their habits,
and in his daily care of them, finding green
pastures, cool shady places of rest, fresh
flowing streams, leading them through the
glens, defending them against robbers and
jackals, and under the light of the stars, and

144 Studies in the Book of Psalms
the silver moon, or in the blackness of night
folding them till the morning, he learned to
love his sheep as every " good shepherd " did.
It is no wonder that God's care of him sug
gested itself to his mind under the figure of a
shepherd's care for his sheep. The mind
ever clothes the new ideas in the garb of old
familiar ones, and inspiration grounds itself
in experience. The words of Jesus concern
ing " the good Shepherd " are so beautiful
that they deserve a place alongside of this
psalm as the best commentary on it.
When the figure shifts from the shepherd
and the sheep to the host and the guest, it is
simply to further emphasize the idea of di
vine care and provision. Many incidents in
David's life could have suggested the figure.
He had often been entertained by some kind
friend when surrounded by his enemies. The
gracious anointing with oil as a mark of
favour, even as perfumes are sprinkled to this
day on guests in the orient, he had often re
ceived. The full cup, proof of a host's bounty
and symbol of joy and goodly fellowship, he
had often shared. And what was best of all,
this goodness and mercy of God his host,
was not for a moment's duration merely,
but would follow him all the days of his

Fifteen Psalm Groups 145
life. And he should dwell in His house for
ever. So ends this beautiful pastoral poem. It has
sung its way into thousands of weary hearts
and carried with it a confidence and trust
akin to that in the heart of its composer.
The notes of its music are rest, peace, trust,
satisfaction, joy and fellowship. It is clearly
the gem of the collection. Language could
not be more simple, chaste or realistic.
Unlike the studied artificial and heavy lines
of most pastorals, these are easy, graceful
and spontaneous. The central idea is God.
There is rest in His bosom. He has grace
for all needs. He brings comfort and joy in
sorrow.
n. Harvest Songs
Seed times and harvest were alike seasons
of rejoicing with the Hebrews. The first
fruits of all their increase were devoted to the
altar. A special feast was observed to cele
brate the gathering of the harvest. The He
brews lived close to nature and everywhere
felt the presence of God. It is not surprising
that Psalm 65, the song of the Harvest
Home, should be sung by the reapers both
in the field at work, and in the temple area

146 Studies in the Book of Psalms
when they came to worship and to offer their
tithes. It is a typical harvest song, and it is
a psalm of great poetic beauty. The spring
opens with promise. The outgoing of the
morning and evening rejoice, showers have
rained upon the earth, there is sunshine and
dew, and these make it fit for plowing. The
seed has been scattered over the field, and
that again by the blessing of God has been
prepared for growing. The ridges have once
more been wet with the rains, and the
drenched furrows softened for the germinat
ing corn. The fruitful rains have been the
signs of a good year, and now on every
tongue and in every heart is a glad song of
the reapers, " Thou crownest the year with
Thy goodness. Thy paths drop fatness."
The years of abundant crops were years of
grace and goodness. They were nearly al
ways interpreted as marks of divine favour.
A series of figures of speech of great beauty
and boldness close the song. " The little
hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are
clothed with flocks. The valleys also are
covered over with corn. They shout for joy.
They also sing." The reapers sang this song
in the fields as they laboured to bring in
sheaves. They sang it beneath the harvest

Fifteen Psalm Groups 147
moon at the merrymakings of the country
folk. They sang it also at the feast of the
first fruits when they came formally to offer
public thanksgiving to God.
The first half of the psalm was prepared
for this public service. The opening lines,
" Praise waiteth for Thee in Zion and unto
Thee shall the vow be performed," indicate
that the song was to be sung in the temple,
which view is corroborated by the fourth
verse. There follow four more verses of
general praise to the great God who rules
throughout the universe, everywhere making
His power known, and then the harvest song
breaks out in praise of the fruitful rains, the
rich fields of grain, and the bounties of the
harvest. Psalm 67 is also a harvest psalm. It is in
vocation and thanksgiving combined, based
on the blessing of an abundant ingathering
and broadening in its sympathy to include all
the nations.
12. Festival Songs. Read 81
The foregoing Harvest Songs may be in
cluded in a wider group of festival songs.
They were doubtless used in connection with
some of the great anniversaries in Jerusalem.

148 Studies in the Book of Psalms
as their language would prove even if tradi
tion were silent.
In the Harvest Psalm, 65, occur the words :
" Praise waiteth for Thee in Zion and unto
Thee shall the vow be performed. O Thou
that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh
come. Blessed is the man whom Thou
choosest and causest to approach unto Thee
that he may dwell in Thy courts. We shall
be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house
even of Thy Holy Temple." These words at
the beginning of a Harvest Song prove that
it was used on the occasion of a religious as
sembly. Psalms 65-67 inclusive are often
regarded as belonging to the harvest festi
vals, though I should exclude Psalm 66 from
this class.
The beautiful pilgrim psalms rich in mem
ories of Jerusalem, and the Judean hills, were
festival songs. The title to Psalm 30 says
that psalm was used on the anniversary of
the building of the house which was more
or less of a festival. The Egyptian Hallel
Psalms 1 1 3-1 18 were the hymns used each
year at the Feast of Passover. Many other
songs were sung at this great festival. Psalm
81 had special reference to it and deserves
special notice here. It begins, " Sing aloud

Fifteen Psalm Groups 149
unto God our strength. Make a joyful noise
unto the God of Jacob. Take a psalm and
bring thither the timbrel, the pleasant harp
with the psaltery. Blow up the trumpet in
the new moon in the time appointed on our
solemn feast day." It then explains : " For
this was a statute for Israel and a law of the
God of Jacob. This He ordained in Joseph
for a testimony when He went out through
the lands of Egypt."
Then follows an account of the goodness
of God in the great deliverance. The refer
ence in the fourth verse to " The full moon,
our solemn feast day " clearly fixes it as be
longing to the Paschal Sabbath, the opening
of the great festival. It is idle to try to con
nect its composition with the early or the
later temple, but when once written its ap
propriateness to the festival is obvious. The
Talmud describes this song as the Jewish
New Year Psalm and prescribes it for use
every Thursday in the weekly liturgy of the
temple. 13. National and Personal Psalms
Broadly, all the psalms are national, if not
in their origin, at least in their universal ap
plication, to Hebrew life. Many of them

150 Studies in the Book of Psalms
originated in connection with national events
and never had a personal reference. Others
originated in the experiences of individuals
and afterwards were used to express the
mood of the nation. Often the use of the
first person singular must be taken in a
national and not a personal sense. When
the nation prospers, these psalms are jubilant
with victory ; when the nation suffers, a tone
of sorrow and despair pervades them. Some
of them celebrate the presence of God in the
past history of His people, and rejoice in His
providential guidance and assistance. Some
represent the anguish of captives enslaved in
foreign countries. Just as individual psalms
were taken up as expressive of national feel
ing, so national psalms had been used to ex
press personal feelings. The very fact that
the psalms have a general application makes
it hard to assign their origin.
In retrospect, they reflect the history of
Israel from the beginning. In prospect, they
point to the glorious destinies of Israel in the
future. And in the present tense, they glow
with the experiences and conquests of David,
the overthrow of Sennacherib, the loneliness
of the exile, the joy of the restoration, and the
lost hopes of later ages.

Fifteen Psalm Groups 151
The national spirit of the Psalter is revealed
in the elements of Hebrew music. In ruder
ages music took on lowly forms. The beat
ing of cymbals, and of noisy drums and of
loud sounding cymbals, the blowing of horns
and pipes, and the use of rude harps of ten
strings, doing service for various kinds of
stringed instruments in use to-day. Wild
dance music with its monotonous rhythms, wild
gesticulations and irregular movements, were
characteristic of the Hebrews. Such was the
minstrelsy, the moods, the soil, from which
our Psalter came.
Passing to the personal element, it is not
too much to say that the Psalter searches the
soul through and through and voices all its
secrets. It is not a disparagement of the
psalms to speak of them from the point of
view of their human origin and history.
Whatever the source of their inspiration, and
I believe that was God, the instrumentalities
that produced them were human. To speak
of literary devices, poetic colouring, and artistic
finish in respect to the poetry of the psalms, does
no more than assert that when moved to speak
by the divine spirit, the writers guided by that
spirit, made use of those forms that appealed to
the imaginations and hearts of their hearers.

152 Studies in the Book of Psalms
The personal element in the psalms is very
marked. Out of deep experiences these
psalms came. Broken in spirit by a sense of
loneliness, sorrow, and despair, groping
through darkness for a single ray of light and
divine favour, oppressed bj' doubt and fear,
and other grim spectres, clinging to the least
vestige of hope and mercy, these psalm
writers pour out their souls to Jehovah.
When slipping away from God how passion
ate the plea for help 1 When blessed by His
favour, how ardent the praise and thanksgiv
ing ! When carried to the mountain top of
vision, He sees the glad fruition of all His
patient hopes, how exultant the song ! The
men who wrote these hymns were pilgrims
and strangers in the earth, often fugitives in
the land of their fathers, hiding in caves from
the fierce anger of enemies who knew no
pity. They were men who wandered into
the wilderness to escape persecution and
death, or followed a train of captives into
exile, destined to die there longing for one
sweet glimpse of the holy hills of Judea.
They were men who followed the King into
battle, and saw their king and his hosts, put
to flight by the armies of the aliens, or, driv
ing the foe before them, wrest victory for

Fifteen Psalm Groups 153
Israel sometimes out of the very jaws of
defeat. Quietly gazing at the tender blue of the
heavens, telling the stars by name in the
night watches, catching the secrets of the
wild life of the mountains, or listening with
awe to the voice of God, in the storm, these
men saw visions, dreamed dreams, heard
voices, and lived the life of the spirit. If any
literature is steeped in feeling, or marked by
intensity, surely it is this of David. Here
hearts break for joy or grief. Here passion
burns. Here wrath is hot. Here joy is
transport, ecstasy, bliss !
14. Hallelujah Psalms
The Psalter is a book of joy and gladness.
The First Psalm opens with a Beatitude, and
the last one closes with a hallelujah. Be
tween the first and the last psalms of the
book joy is the dominant note, the title de
scribing them all as " Praise songs," their
music being glad and inspiring all through.
Even the penitential psalms are touched
by this spirit of joy, the 32d being per
vaded by it, starting as it does with a beati
tude on the man whose sins are forgiven.
One psalm truthfully declares, " I will bless

154 Studies in the Book of Psalms
the Lord at all times ; His praise shall con
tinually be in my mouth. " And that is the
spirit of many another. Of course there are
some low notes and minor strains in the
music of the Psalter, and many students have
been impressed by them and have called it a
sad book ; but this charge is not true. It is
just as untrue to fact as the man's statement
was who said that if he were making this
world he would make it a world in which
health, not sickness should be the rule.
Health is the rule. Men have more bright
days than sad ones. They take no account
of the bright ones but are deeply impressed
by the few sad ones. It is so with the Psalter.
By far the most prominent tone of the book
is joy. The book rejoices in God's strength
and abounds in hope and trust and confi
dence. Some of the psalms are paeans of
victory, celebrating battle triumphs ; some are
the exultant outbursts of youth rejoicing with
timbrel and dance in the achievements of
Israel ; some glow with enthusiasm, kindled
by the evidences of divine favour, or tremble
with the joy of acceptance and the forgive
ness of sin. Others rejoice in God's strength
calling Him a strong rock and fortress and
refuge in time of distress.

Fifteen Psalm Groups 155
How resounding are the lines, " O come let
us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful
noise to the rock of our salvation ; let us come
before His presence with thanksgiving. Let
us make a joyful noise unto Him with
psalms." Such are the common expressions of the
book. The four groups of songs, Coronation,
Hallelujah, Hallel, and Doxological, all illus
trate this quality in a marked degree as do the
pilgrim choruses.
The surroundings of the Pilgrim Psalms
fitted in well with the festival spirit, for
they were sung at Passover, at their love
feasts, and on their journeys from all
parts of the land to the hill country of
Judea. The Hallelujah Psalms are praise
psalms in a glad sense. There is hardly a
heavy line in them. They strike a key-note
of joy at the start and sound it all the way
through. No one can read Psalms 92-100
inclusive and miss it. A wholesome optimism
is here. God is good, His world is good ;
His creatures are happy and blessed. The
exhilaration of the battle hymns is not more
marked than the whole-hearted joy that swells
the heart and moves the lips of the sweet
singers of Israel who composed these songs.

156 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Some of these songs sing themselves. The
spirit of jubilation and the well-marked
rhythm sustaining the lines, swell on to the
very end. The choicest diction in the vocab
ulary of praise is here found, and is used in
unstinted profusion ; the most spontaneous ut
terance of the human heart also is here found,
free from the fetters of conventional poetry,
striving only to voice the soul of song.
Worship was a joyful thing to the Hebrews.
The temple area resounded with the blare of
trumpets, and the beating of cymbals. The
shrill cries and calls of many voices might
often have made a din, but the glad earnest
faces and light dance movements of the
people made their worship conspicuously a
happy one.
Some of these gladdest pieces have been
painted on a sombre background. The Thir
teenth Psalm begins in darkness and closes
in light. Its first verse chills one with a
winter of discontent, but melts one at the end
by the genial assurance, " I will sing unto the
Lord because He hath dealt bountifully with
me." Psalm 4 is another. A dark day has
enveloped the writer but it has ended in a
glorious sunset that " has put gladness in his
heart" and he says, "I will both lay me

Fifteen Psalm Groups 157
down in peace and sleep for Thou Lord
makest me to dwell in safety." There are
many instances where the serene sky of the
psalm is blackened for a moment with an
angry storm cloud livid with flashes of fire,
but the sun shines out bright and full
again. Mercy and deliverance are experiences that
shine on every page and they lead each time
to a renewal of praise and to a declaration of
confidence in perpetual salvation.
The religious life is the blessed life. It
should be the happy life. It is built on solid
foundations and has the promise of this life
and the next. " Finally my brethren rejoice
and again I say rejoice."
Religion ought to make sorrow light. It
ought to warm one's enthusiasm. It ought
to brighten hope. The natural expression of
the religious life is song.
15. The Doxological Psalms
The doxologies in our church hymnals are
appropriately placed at the close of the book.
That is where they come in the Psalter. The
last five are doxologies, the last one being
the " Grand Doxology," grandest and best of
all. These closing doxologies are a fitting

158 Studies in the Book of Psalms
end to the book. Just as in a grand
symphony, the musical score closes with full
orchestra in an elaborate series of harmonic
effects, resounding in volume and stately in
movement, so the music of the Psalter comes
to an end in five beautiful doxologies that
summon all things in heaven and earth to
praise God. Notice the beauty of the last
Psalm in the book :
' ' Praise ye the Lord,
Praise God in His sanctuary ;
Praise Him in the firmament of His power,
Praise Him for His mighty acts,
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness,
Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet,
Praise Him with the Psaltery and harp,
Praise Him with the timbrel and dance,
Praise Him with stringed instruments and the pipe,
Praise Him upon the loud cymbals,
Praise Him upon the high sounding cymbals,
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord,
Praise ye the Lord," (
Compare it with our Long Metre Doxology :
" Praise God — from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him — all creatures here below,
Praise Him — above ye heavenly host,
Praise — Father, Son and Holy Ghost."

Fifteen Psalm Groups 159
The Hebrew Psalm is unspeakably finer,
beginning and ending with the phrase " Hal
lelujah, praise the Lord " and in the body of
it calling on all persons and things to praise
Him. It should be noticed that the word
" Doxology " is a Greek derivative, meaning
" a word of praise." The word " Hallelujah "
is a Hebrew derivative meaning " Praise
Jehovah." In this connection the subject of using
musical instruments in the service of the
sanctuary, naturally suggests itself. Perhaps
that is a question that each age must settle
for itself. Puritan influences drove musical
instruments out of the church. Quaker in
fluences keep them out to-day. But the cus
tom of the Jews is certain. Every instrument
known to musical culture was pressed into
service by the choirs in the temple. Wind
instruments such as the horn or cornet, the
flute and the pipe ; stringed instruments,
such as the psaltery and harp ; percussive
instruments, such as cymbals, loud sounding
cymbals, drums and triangles, all were used
to furnish an accompaniment for the human
voice issuing from a thousand throats, rising
and swelling like the sound of the sea.
A more serious matter in church music is

160 Studies in the Book of Psalms
the kind of music selected. When words
and tunes are well wedded, church music is
inspiring. But when words of no value or
words maudlin in sentiment are used ; or
when the tunes are bad and badly sung, then
there is no inspiration in it.
A much more serious matter in regard to
church music is the character of the singer. It
is a form of hypocrisy for a person of evil life to
stand before a church audience and attempt
to sing feelingly a piece of music or a lot of
words that he does not believe, or that he
gives the lie to in his life. Church music is
a sacred thing. It ought to be surrounded
by an atmosphere in keeping with its holy
character.

VI
TEN CLASS STUDIES

VI
TEN CLASS STUDIES
i. The Structure of the Book
i. The division into five books of psalms.
2. The number of psalms in each book.
3. The number in the whole collection.
1. The earlier number of 147.
2. The present number of 150.
3. The Aprocryphal Psalm 151.
4. The doxologies at the end of each book.
5. The group of doxologies at the end of
the Psalter.
6. The smaller books within the five books.
1. The Egyptian Hallel, 113-118.
2. The Pilgrim Psalms, 120-134.
3. The Songs of the Sons of Korah,
42-49.
4. The Songs of the Sons of Asaph,
73-83-
7. The order of arrangement of psalms.
8. The length of various psalms.
9. Broken psalms, 1 and 2 ; 9 and 10 ; 42
and 43 ; 116 and 117.
163

164 Studies in the Book of Psalms
10. Alphabetic psalms, 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, no,
in, 119, 145.
11. Composite psalms, 144.
12. Agglutinated psalms, 108. Examine 24
and 19.
13. Duplicate psalms, 14 and 53 ; 70 and
final verses of 40.
Cf. Psalm, 108 : 2-6 with 57 : 7-1 1.
Also, 108 : 6-13 with 60 : 5-12 ; 18
with 2 Sam. 22 ; 96 with 1 Chron.
16, and 105 with 1 Chron.
16 : 8-22.
14. Psalms omitted in various translations.
Cf. Septuagint.
15. Additions, changes and glosses.
16. The analogy of modern hymn books.
2. A Classification of the Psalms
1. Nature Psalms, 8, 19, 29, 104.
2. Fugitive Psalms, 58, 59, 52, 31, 56, 54,
35, 36, 57, 142.
3. Ceremonial and Votive Psalms, 132, 101,
15, 24, 68, 30.
4. War Songs, 18, 20, 21, 60, 61, 144, 108.
5. Penitential Psalms, 38, 51, 32, 6, 102,
130, 143-
6. Songs of Adversity, 3-7, n-13, 17, 36,
109, 55, 9, 10, 41, 63, 64, 69, 140, 141.

Ten Class Studies 165
7. Denunciatory Psalms, 5, 7, 10, 62, 82.
8. Messianic Psalms, 2, 16, 22, 45, 72, no.
9. Imprecatory Psalms, 109, 58, 35, 40, 41,
69, 59, 70, 60, 3-7, 55, 94, 140.
10. Elegiac Psalms, 90, 39, 49, 30, 88, 102.
11. Songs of the Exile, 42, 43, 137, 80, 71,
109, 77, 89.
12. Songs of the Restoration, 93-100, 85.
13. Pilgrim Psalms, 120-134.
14. Festival and Liturgical; 65, 66, 92, 67,
136.
15. Didactic Psalms, 1, 139, 37, 50, 92, 75,
14, 119.
16. History Psalms, 105, 106, 78, 87, 8i,
114, 89.
17. The Egyptian Hallel, 1 1 3-1 18.
18. Other Hallelujah Psalms, in, 112, 135.
19. Maccabaean Psalms, 44, 74, 79.
20. Doxological Psalms, 146-150.
21. Devotional Psalms, 34, 91, 84, 145, 23,
25, 27, 107, 103, 26, 28, 38, 33, 138, 40,
70, 86.
25. Songs of Deliverance, 46, 48, 76, 83, 66,
67.
26. Theological Psalms, 14, 53, 139, 75, 37,
50, 73-
27. Patriotic Psalms, 87, 84.
88. Wisdom Psalms, 139, 104.

166 Studies in the Book of Psalms

29
30
31 323334 35

Coronation Psalms, 93-100.
Consolation Psalms, 34, 91.
Marriage Song, 45.
Funeral hymns, 39, 90, 49.
Harvest Song, 65.
The Storm Song, 29.
A Pastoral, 23.
3. Psalms of David
The Psalms of David, according to tra
dition. 1. Psalms 3-41, except 33.
2. Psalms 51-70, except 66 and 67.
3. Psalm 86.
4. Psalms 101 and 103
5. Psalms 108-110, 122, 124, 131.
133, 138-145-
The Psalms of David fitted to his life.
1 His early life, 8, 19, 23, 29.
2. Saul's persecution of David, 59,
54, 56, 34, 57, H2, 52, 7, 6, n,
35-
3. Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem,
101, 15, 24, 68, 132, 30.
4. His wars, 20, 21, no, 2, 60, 18.
5. His sin, 51, 32.
6. Revolt of Absalom, 63, 3, 4, 26,
62, 27, 28, 41, 55, 69, 109.

Ten Class Studies 167
7. Psalms of David not related to
his life.
3. The traditional view of the psalms.
1. The view stated.
2. The authorities.
3. The reasons that support it.
4. David's time, his gifts, the super
scriptions.
4. The modern critical view of the psalms.
1. Cheyne's view.
2. The historical perspective in the
Psalter.
3. The influence of tradition on
Moses and David.
4. Alleged difficulties in psalms and
titles.
5. Davidic Psalms analyzed.
1. As to their style.
2. As to their spontaneity.
3. As to their unstudied quality.
4. As to their vigour.
5. As to their elemental human pas
sions.
6. As to their original and forceful
elements.
7. Absence of late characteristics.

168 Studies in the Book of Psalms
6. The traditional view of the poet David.
i. The testimony of the book of
Samuel.
His early skill as a musician.
His place in Saul's household.
His shepherd experiences.
His poetic temperament.
His relation to religion.
2. The times of David.
3. The character of David.
4. Psalms from David to the Exile
1. A period of several hundred years.
1. The age of Solomon.
2. The division of the Kingdom.
3. Dynastic wars.
4. The fall of Samaria.
5. Sennacherib's invasion of Judea.
2. The religious and moral conditions.
3. The work of the prophets.
4. The literature of the period.
5. General psalms, 2, 72, 45, 12, 6, 30, 39,
62, 66.
6. Sennacherib's Invasion, 46-48, 75, 76.
7. The Reign of Manasseh, Amon and
Josiah.
8. The Scythian Invasion and Jeremiah.
1. The Book of Deuteronomy.

Ten Class Studies 169
2. The reform.
3. Josiah's death.
9. Psalms, tradition assigns to Manasseh's
period, 140, 142, 64, 54.
10. Psalms, tradition assigns to Josiah's
period, 61, 63, 58, 59, 50, 1.
n. Psalms, tradition assigns to a later
period, 87, 80, 89, 132.
5. Psalms of the Exile and Restoration
1. The Conquest of Judea.
2. The fall of Jerusalem.
3. The beginnings of the Captivity.
4. Exiles in Egypt.
5. The faithful and the unfaithful Israelites.
6. Their occupations and new home.
7. The work of the prophets in this period.
8. Isaiah 40-66.
9. The suffering servant.
10. Psalms assigned to the period.
The suffering Messiah, 22.
The plaint of the Exile, 42, 43,
The Temple courts of Jehovah, 84.
Psalms 49, 69, 71, 102, 109.
11. The Restoration.
1. Cyrus overthrows Babylon.
2. The release from captivity.
3. The effect on the Israelites.

170 Studies in the Book of Psalms
4. The exiles return.
5. The sufferings in Judea.
6. The slow work of recuperation.
12. Psalms of the restoration, 122, 124, 125,
126, 129, 127, 128, 133, 134, 137,
118, 115.
13. Later psalms of the restoration, 91-100,
67, 68, 47, 66, 139.
14. The first exiles to return.
15. Ezra's return.
16. Nehemiah's return.
17. The new temple.
18. Psalms of the Second Temple, 119, 103,
104, 106, 107, in, 112.
19. Six periods of Jewish history preceding
the birth of Christ.
Persia, Greece, Ptolemies, Syria,
Maccabees, Rome.
20. The work of the Maccabees.
21. The Maccabaean Psalms, 44, 74, 79, 80,
83, 60.
6. The Range of Subject Matter
1. The connection of the psalms with life.
2. The analogy of modern hymn books.
3. The modern titles to hymns.
4. Personal experiences in the Psalter.

Ten Class Studies 171
5. Characteristic emotions.
Joy, 114.
Penitence, 51.
Grief, 74.
Trust, 25.
Praise, 103.
Fear, Hope, Resignation, Grati
tude, 30.
6. Personal afflictions.
Persecution.
Sickness, 30.
Difficulties.
Exile.
7. Personal religious activities.
Confession, 38 and 51.
Thanksgiving, 107.
Consecration, 101.
8. National subjects.
The temple, 84.
The city, 87, 122.
The holy hills, 121, 125.
National Invocation, 67.
National Deliverance, 46, 48.
Domestic subjects.
The home, 127, 128.
Marriage, 45.
Song of the reapers, 65.

172 Studies in the Book of Psalms
Civic relations and duties.
Citizenship, 15. The duty of judges,
82.
Personal uprightness, 101. The
Coronation of the King, 72.
7. Literary Features
1. The titles of the book.
2. The place of psalms in Hebrew poetry.
3. Folk songs, " Song of the well " ; " Song
of the sword."
4. War ballads, Joshua's victory.
5. Elegies, David's lament over Jonathan.
6. Odes of Moses, Miriam and Deborah.
7. Scattered fragments in the prophets.
8. Kinds of poetic composition.
1. Shir, 7, Mizmor, 57, Maskil, 13,
Michtam, Shiggaion, etc.
2. Compare lyric, epic, dramatic,
dirge, elegy, medley, etc.
9. Elements of Hebrew poetry.
1. Parallelism, Psalm 2.
2. Strophe and refrain, 107, 42, 43,
136.
3. Rhythm, 19.
4. Compare with English poetry,
rhyme, measures, blank verse,
stanza structure, etc.

Ten Class Studies

!73

io. Various literary styles due to
i. Different periods of history ;
David or the Exile.
2. Different subject matter.
3. Different authors.
11. Earlier and later periods of Hebrew
poetry.
12. Alphabetic acrostics, 9, 10, 25, 34, 37,
in, 112, 119, 145.
13. Poetic devices and resources.
14. Linguistic elements, 14 and 53.
15. The Rhetorical Elements.
1. Figures of speech.
2. Modes of Expression.
16. The distinctive poetic qualities of the
psalms apart from the form.
17. Poetic ideas, emotions and language.
18. The Informing Spirit.
19. The editorial elements.
20. The testimony of the superscriptions.
21. The poetic gifts of David.
8. The Historical Background
{Historic Periods.)
1. Mosaic religion, example 90.
2. The period of religious decadence.
3. The revival under Samuel.
4. The Age of David and Solomon.

174 Studies in the Book of Psalms
5. The days of Hezekiah.
6. The period of Exile, example 137.
7. The time of Restoration.
8. The second Temple.
9. The Maccabaean Era, example 44.
{National Elements.)
10. Psalms connected with national crises,
46-48.
11. Psalms reciting national history, 105,
106, 78.
12. Psalms centring in national customs.
13. Patriotic psalms, 87.
14. Civic psalms, 15, 82.
15. Ceremonial psalms, 24.
16. Personal experiences and history.
17. Incidents in the life of David.
18. The prophetic element.
19. The Messianic element.
20. Does the national element absorb the
individual ?
21. Psalms primarily individual, 23, 137.
22. Psalms national or individual, 58, 22.
23. The Relation of the Psalter to the His
torical books.
24. Psalms objectively historical, 105, 106,
78.
25. Psalms subjectively historical, 46, 76.

Ten Class Studies 175
26. The historic elements in the superscrip
tions.
2 7. Is the historical element the primary one ?
28. Are there distinct references to historic
events?
29. Are the history eras, broadly speaking,
distinct ? (The Canon.)
30. The growth of the Psalter.
1. Are there any Mosaic psalms?
2. The perpetuation of psalms.
3. The oldest psalm in the book.
4. The place of the Psalter among
the Hebrew books.
5. The work of collecting and com
piling.
6. Editorial elements.
7. The need of psalmody.
8. The/various collections of psalms ?
9. The work of the choir guilds.
10. The post-exilic collections.
11. The influence of David.
12. Scattered songs. Later compi
lations.
{The Superscriptions of the Psalms.)
1. Define and describe them.

176 Studies in the Book of Psalms

3
4 5
6 7
89
1011

Their number.
Additional titles in the Septuagint.
Orphan psalms.
Historical and biographical elements.
Dedications and ascriptions.
Editorial and literary elements.
Musical and liturgical elements.
Their origin.
Their authority.
Their value.

p. Musical and Liturgical Elements
1. The psalm titles.
1. Literary elements.
2. Liturgical elements.
3. Musical elements.
2. Traces of tunes, time, measures, chants,
responses, orchestration, choirs, so
loists.
Tunes : " Destroy Not," "The Silent
Dove," " Fair as the Lilies," " The
Stag at Dawn."
Style : " For bass voices," " in a slow
manner," " for stringed instruments,"
" for the Hexachord."
3. The place of music among the Hebrews.
4. The training of temple choirs.
5. The style of music in worship.

Ten Class Studies 177
6. Responsive singing.
7. Liturgical Psalms.
The Anniversary of the Temple
dedication, 30.
The praise of the thank-offering, 100.
Songs of the grape-treading, 81
and 84.
Pilgrim Psalms, 120-134.
To bring to remembrance, 38 and 70.
8. Later liturgical uses.
1. Sabbath Day Psalm, 92.
2. Monday Psalm, 48.
3. Tuesday Psalm, 82.
4. Wednesday Psalm, 94.
5. Thursday Psalm, 81.
6. Friday Psalm, 93.
7. Saturday Psalm, 24.
10. The Religious Contents and Value of
the Psalms
1. Theological elements.
1. The doctrine of God.
2. The Messianic hope.
3. The suggestions of immortality.
4. The suggestion of Divine Im
manence.
2. Doctrinal elements.
1. The conception of law.

178 Studies in the Book of Psalms
2. The conception of Divine Provi
dence.
3. The idea of sin.
4. The idea of penitence.
5. The idea of forgiveness.
3. The moral standards.
1. Justice and equity.
2. Mercy.
3. Purity.
4. The idealism of the psalms.
4. The practical side.
1 . The emphasis on right purposes,
2. The emphasis on daily duties.
3. The emphasis on right relations.
5. The spiritual element.
1. The devotional quality.
2. The exalted spiritual outlook.
3. The joyous worshipful tone.

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