1 BEHOLD, bless ye Jahve, all ye servants of Jahve, Who serve in the house of Jahve by night!
2 Lift up your hands to the sanctuary And bless ye Jahve!
there blew across to me a spark | from the lofty snow-mountain (the Hermon)," on which the commentator dictated to him the remark, that *jj&i the glowing spark, is either the snow-capped summit of the mountain glowing in the morning sun or a burning cold breath of air, for one says in everyday life j^ £*dl, the frost burns \yid. note to cxxi. 6].
3 Jahve Hess thee out of Zion, The Creator of heaven and earth!
This Psalm consists of a greeting, vers. 1, 2, and the reply thereto. The greeting is addressed to those priests and Levites who have the night-watch in the Temple; and this antiphon is purposely placed at the end of the collection of Songs of degrees in order to take the place of a final beracha. In this sense Luther styles this Psalm epiphonema superiorum. It is also in other respects (yid. Symbolce, p. 66) an appropriate finale.
Vers. 1, 2. The Psalm begins, like its predecessor, with H3n; there it directs attention to an attractive phenomenon, here to a duty which springs from the office. For that it is not the persons frequenting the Temple who are addressed is at once clear from the fact that the tarrying of these in the Temple through the night, when such a thing did actually occur (Luke ii. 37), was only an exception. And then, however, from the fact that 1EV is the customary word for the service of the priests and Levites, Deut. x. 8, xviii. 7, 1 Chron. xxiii. 30, 2 Chron. xxix. 11 (cf. on Isa. lxi. 10, and Ps. ex. 4), which is also continued in the night, 1 Chron. ix. 33. Even the Targum refers ver. lb to the Temple-watch. In the second Temple the matter was arranged thus. After midnight the chief over the gate-keepers took the keys of the inner Temple and went with some of the priests through the little wicket of the Fire Gate (npl&n rvn *w). In the inner court this patrol divided into two companies, each with a burning torch; one company turned west, the other east, and so they compassed the court to see whether everything was in readiness for the service of the dawning day. At the bakers' chamber, in which the Mincha of the high priest was baked (pivnn W rott6), they met with the cry: All is well. In the meanwhile the rest of the priests also arose, bathed, and put on their garments. Then they went into the stone chamber (one half of which was the place of session of the Sanhedrim), where, under the superintendence of the chief over the drawing of the lots and of a judge, around whom stood all the priests in their robes of office the functions of the priests in the service of the coming day were assigned to them by lot (Luke i. 9). Accordingly Tholuck, with Koster, regards vers. 1 sq. and 3 as the antiphon of the Temple-watch going off duty and those coming on. It might also be the call and counter-call with which the watchmen greeted one another when they met. But according to the general keeping of the Psalm, vers. 1 sq. have rather to be regarded as a call to devotion and intercession, which the congregation addresses to the priests and Levites entrusted with the night-service in the Temple. It is an error to suppose that "in the nights" can be equivalent to "early and late." If the Psalter contains Morning Psalms (iii., lxiii.) and Evening Psalms (iv., cxli.), why should it then not contain a vigil Psalm I On this very ground Venema's idea too, that ni?^3 is syncopated from Hi^na, " with Hallels, i.e. praises," is useless. Nor is there any reason for drawing iv'raU vvgcv, as the LXX. does, to ver. 2,* or, what would be more natural, to the *3?3 that opens the Psalm, since it is surely not strange that, so long as the sanctuary was standing, a portion of the servants of God who ministered in it had to remain up at night to guard it, and to see to it that nothing was wanting in the preparations for the early service. That this ministering watching should be combined with devotional praying is the purport of the admonition in ver. 2. Raising suppliant hands (DJT.j negligently written for B^T) towards the Most Holy Place (ra ayia), they are to bless Jahve. Bhp (according to B. Sota 39a, the accusative of definition: in holiness, i.e. after washing of hands), in view of xxviii. 2, v. 8, cxxxviii. 2 (cf. Dri in Hab. iii. 10), has to be regarded as the accusative of the direction.
Ver. 3. Calling thus up to the Temple-hill, the church receives from above the benedictory counter-greeting: Jahve bless thee out of Zion (as in cxxviii. 5), the Creator of heaven and earth (as in cxv. 15, cxxi. 2, cxxiv. 8). From the time of Num. vi. 24 jebardchja is the ground-form of the priestly benediction. It is addressed to the church as one person, and to each individual in this united, unit-like church.
1 PRAISE ye the Narne of Jahve, Praise ye, O ye servants of Jahve,
5 For I know that Jahve is great And our Lord above all gods,
7 Who bringeth the vapours up from the end of the earth, He maketh lightnings for the rain,
10 Who smote great nations And slew mighty kings,
11 Sihon, king of the Amorites, And Og, king of Bashan,
12 And gave over their land as a heritage, As a heritage to Israel His people.
13 Jahve, Thy Name endureth for ever, Thy memorial, Jahve, unto all generations.
14 For Jahve will render justice to His people, And repent Himself concerning His servants.
15 The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, The work of men's hands.
18 Like unto them must they who made them become, Every one who trusted in them.
19 0 house of Israel, bless ye Jahve! O house of Aaron, bless ye Jahve!
20 O house of Levi, bless ye Jahve! Ye who fear Jahve, bless Jahve! —
21 Blessed be Jahve out of Zion, Who dwelleth in Jerusalem,
Ps. cxxxv. is here and there (vid. Tosefoth Pesachim 117a) taken together with Ps. cxxxiv. as one Psalm. The combining of Ps. cxv. with cxiv. is a misapprehension caused by the inscriptionless character of Ps. cxv., whereas Ps. cxxxv. and cxxxiv. certainly stand in connection with one another. For the Hallelujah Ps. cxxxv. is, as the mutual relation between the beginning and close of Ps. cxxxiv. shows, a Psalm-song expanded out of this shorter hymn, that is in part drawn from Ps. cxv.
It is a Psalm in the mosaic style. Even the Latin poet Lucilius transfers the figure of mosaic-work to style, when he says: quam lepide lexeis compostos ut tesserulce omnes... In the case of Ps. cxxxv. it is not the first time that we have met with this kind of style. We have already had a glimpse of it in Ps. xcvii. and xcviii. These Psalms were composed more especially of deutero-Isaianic passages, whereas Ps. cxxxv. takes its tesserulce out of the Law, Prophets, and Psalms.
ills cwi. 19 (cf. xeii. 14); and ver. 4 is an echo of Deut. vii. 6. The servants of Jahve to whom the summons is addressed, are not, as in cxxxiv. 1 sq., His official servants in particular, but according to ver. 2b, where the courts, in the plural, are allotted to them as their standing-place, and according to vers. 19, 20, those who fear Him as a body. The threefold Jahve at the beginning is then repeated in Jdh (WJ vSjn, cf. note * to civ. 35), Jahve, and Jdh. The subject of cyj *? is by no means Jahve (Hupfeld), whom they did not dare to call D^JJJ in the Old Testament, but either the Name, according to liv. 8 (Luther, Hitzig), or, which is favoured by cxlvii. 1 (cf. Prov. xxii. 18), the praising of His Name (Apollinaris: eVet roBe icaXov aefoeiv): His Name to praise is a delightful employ, which is incumbent on Israel as the people of His choice and of His possession.
Vers. 5-7. The praise itself now begins. *3 in ver. 4a set forth the ground of the pleasant duty, and the \D that begins this strophe confirms that which warrants the summons out of the riches of the material existing for such a hymn of praise. Worthy is He to be praised, for Israel knows full well that He who hath chosen it is the God of gods. The beginning is taken from cxv. 3, and ver. 7 from Jer. x. 13 (li. 16). Heaven, earth, and water are the three kingdoms of created things, as in Ex. xx. 4. K^J signifies that which is lifted up, ascended; here, as in Jeremiah, a cloud. The meaning of nb>y "i^?- ^i?"!? is not: He makes lightnings into rain, i.e. resolves them as it were into rain, which is unnatural; but either according to Zech. x. 1: He produces lightnings in behalf of rain, in order that the rain may pour down in consequence of the thunder and lightning, or poetically: He makes lightnings for the rain, so that the rain is announced (Apollinaris) and accompanied by them. Instead of tttfiD (cf. lxxviii. 16, cv. 43), which does not admit of the retreating of the tone, the expression is N-flB, the ground-form of the part. Hiph. for plurals like D^np, DWnp, D^WP, perhaps not without being influenced by the N¥W in Jeremiah, for it is not NViD from K*D that signifies "producing," but Knft»=p'BD. The metaphor of the treasuries is like Job xxxviii. 22. What is intended is the fulness of divine power, in which lie the grounds of the origin and the impulses of all things in nature.
Vers. 8, 9. Worthy is He to be praised, for He is the Redeemer out of Egypt. ^n? as in cxvi. 19, cf. cv. 27.
Vers. 10-12. Worthy is He to be praised, for He is the Conqueror of the Land of Promise. In connection with ver. 10 one is reminded of Deut. iv. 38, vii. 1, ix. 1, xi. 23, Josh, xxiii. 9. tfsn 0^3 are here not many, but great peoples (cf. Dy^a in cxxxvi. 17), since the parallel word D*p«fg is by no means intended of a powerful number, but of powerful might (cf. Isa. liii. 12). As to the rest also, the poet follows the Book of Deuteronomy: viz. ntei>pD W> as in Deut. iii. 21, and njnj fru as in Deut. iv. 38 and other passages. It is all Deuteronomic with the exception of the B>, and the 5> in ver. 11 as the nota accus. (as in cxxxvi. 19 sq., cf. lxix. 6, cxvi. 16, cxxix. 3); the construction of a^n is just as Aramaizing in Job v. 2, 2 Sam. iii. 30 (where vers. 30, 31, like vers. 36, 37, are a later explanatory addition). The Jnn alternating with nsn is, next to the two kings, also referred to the kingdoms of Canaan, viz. their inhabitants. Og was also an Amoritish king, Deut. iii. 8.
Vers. 13, 14. This God who rules so praise worthily in the universe and in the history of Israel is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. Just as ver. 13 (cf. cii. 13) is taken from Ex. iii. 15, so ver. 14 is taken from Deut. xxxii. 36, cf. xc. 13, and vid. on Heb. x. 30, 31 (vol. ii. 191).
Vers. 15-18. For the good of His proved church He ever proves Himself to be the Living God, whereas idols and idolworshippers are vain — throughout following cxv. 4-8, but with some abridgments. Here only the *]K used as a particle recalls what is said there of the organ of smell (*)**) of the idols that smells not, just as the HVi which is here (as in Jer. x. 14) denied to the idols recalls the nnn denied to them there. It is to be rendered: also there is not a being of breath, i.e. there is no breath at all, not a trace thereof, in their mouth. It is different in 1 Sam. xxi. 9, where B* T** (not T«) is meant to be equivalent to the Aramaic 1VK PK, num (an) est; TK is North-Palestinian, and equivalent to the interrogatory DK (after which the Targum renders JVK w).
Vers. 19-21. A call to the praise of Jahve, who is exalted above the gods of the nations, addressed to Israel as a whole, rounds off the Psalm by recurring to its beginning. The threefold call in cxv. 9-1 1> cxviii. 2-4, is rendered fourfold here by the introduction of the house of the Levites, and the wishing of a blessing in exxxiv. 3 is turned into an ascription of praise. Zion, whence Jahve's self-attestation, so rich in power and loving-kindness, is spread abroad, is also to be the place whence His glorious attestation by the mouth of men is spread abroad. History has realized this.
12 With a strong hand and a stretched-out arm —
15 And overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Bed Sea —
The cry cxxxv. 3, Praise ye Jdh, for good is Jahve, is here followed by a Hodu, the last of the collection, with " for His goodness endureth for ever" repeated twenty-six times as a versus intercalaris. In the liturgical language this Psalm is called par excellence the great Hallel, for according to its broadest compass the great Hallel comprehends Ps. cxx. to cxxxvi.,*
* There are three opinious in the Talmud and Midrash concerning the compass of the " Great Hallel," viz. (1) Ps. cxxxvi., (2) Ps. cxxxv. 4-cxxxvi., (3) Ps. cxx.-cxxxvi.
whilst the Hallel which is absolutely so called extends from Pa. radii, to cxviii. Down to ver. 18 the song and countersong organize themselves into hexastichic groups or strophes, which, however, from ver. 19 (and therefore from the point where the dependence on Ps. cxxxv., already begun with ver. 17, becomes a borrowing, onwards) pass over into octastichs. In Heidenheim's Psalter the Psalm appears (after Norzi) in two columns (like Deut. ch. xxxii.), which it is true has neither tradition (yid. on Ps. xviii.) nor mss. precedent in its favour, but really corresponds to its structure.
Vers. 1-9. Like the preceding Psalm, this Psalm allies itself to the Book of Deuteronomy. Vers. 2a and 3a (God of gods and Lord of lords) are taken from Deut. x. 17; ver. 12a (with a strong hand and stretched-out arm) from Deut. iv. 34, v. 15, and frequently (cf. Jer. xxxii. 21); ver. 16a like Deut. viii. 15 (cf. Jer. ii; 6). With reference to the Deuteronomic colouring of vers. 19-22, vid. on cxxxv. 10-12; also the expression u Israel His servant " recalls Deut. xxxii. 36 (cf. cxxxv. 14, xc. 13), and still more Isa. xl.— lxvi., where the comprehension of Israel under the unity of this notion has its own proper place. In other respects, too, the Psalm is an echo of earlier model passages. Who alone doeth great wonders sounds like Ixxii. 18 (lxxxvi. 10); and the adjective "great" that is added to "wonders" shows that the poet found the formula already in existence. In connection with ver. 5a he has Prov. iii. 19 or Jer. x. 12 in his mind; njtoty like •"'P?^, is the demiurgic wisdom. Ver. 6a calls to mind Isa. xlii. 5, xliv. 24; the expression is " above the waters," as in xxiv. 2 u upon the seas," because the water is partly visible and partly invisible H.KJ nnriD (Ex. xx. 4). The plural ^"pN, luces, instead of HhNDj lumina (cf. Ezek. xxxii. 8, "liN ^^P), is without precedent. It is a controverted point whether rhitf in Isa. xxvi. 19 signifies lights (cf. fl-ntt, cxxxix. 12) or herbs (2 Kings iv. 39). The plural rnV^pp is also rare (occurring only besides in cxiv. 2): it here denotes the dominion of the moon on the one hand, and (going beyond Gen. i. 16) of the stars on the other. n^.??, like ^s3, is the second member of the stat. construct.
Vers. 10-26. Up to this point it is God the absolute in general, the Creator of all things, to the celebration of whose praise they are summoned; and from this point onwards the God of the history of salvation. In ver. 13a \T3 (instead of Vi?3, lxxviii. 13, Ex. xiv. 21, Neh. ix. 11) of the dividing of the Red Sea is peculiar; D^J| (Gen. xv. 17, side by side with B^rja) are the pieces or parts of a thing that is cut up into pieces. TJB is a favourite word taken from Ex. xiv. 27. With reference to the name of the Egyptian ruler Pharaoh (Herodotus also, ii. Ill, calls the Pharaoh of the Exodus the son of Sesostris- Eameses Miumun, not Mevo$6a<;, as he is properly called, but absolutely Qeptiv), vid. on lxxiii. 22. After the God to whom the praise is to be ascribed has been introduced with? by always fresh attributes, the? before the names of Sihon and of Og is perplexing. The words are taken over, as are the six lines of vers. 17a-22a in the main, from cxxxv. 10-12, with only a slight alteration in the expression. In ver. 23 the continued influence of the construction? Vita is at an end. The connection by means of # (cf. cxxxv. 8, 10) therefore has reference to the preceding u for His goodness endureth for ever." The language here has the stamp of the latest period. It is true "i?J with Lamed of the object is used even in the earliest Hebrew, but bzv is only authenticated by Eccles. x. 6, and PIS, to break loose = to rescue (the customary Aramaic word for redemption), by Lam. v. 8, just as in the closing verse, which recurs to the beginning, " God of heaven " is a name for God belonging to the latest literature, Neh. i. 4, ii. 4. In ver. 23 the praise changes suddenly to that which has been experienced very recently. The attribute in ver. 25a (cf. cxlvii. 9, cxlv. 15) leads one to look back to a time in which famine befell them together with slavery.
1 BY the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, When we remembered Zion.
2 Upon the willows in the midst thereof We hung our citherns.
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, Let my right hand become lame!
6 Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, If I do not remember thee,
7 Remember, Jahve, the children of Edom In the day of Jerusalem,
9 Blessed is he who taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock I
The Hallelujah Ps. cxxxv. and the Hodu Ps. cxxxvi. are followed by a Psalm which glances back into the time of the Exile, when such cheerful songs as they once sang to the accompaniment of the music of the Levites at the worship of God on Mount Zion were obliged to be silent. It is anonymous. The inscription Tat Aavlh (&ia) 'lepeplov found in codices of the LXX., which is meant to say that it is a Davidic song coming from the heart of Jeremiah,* is all the more erroneous as Jeremiah never was one of the Babylonian exiles.
The &>, which is repeated three times in vers. 8 sq., corre-
* Reversely Ellies du Pin (in the preface of his Bibliotheque des Auteurs Iscclesiastiques) says: Le Pseaume 136 porte le nom de David et de Jeremie^ ce quHlfaut apparement entendre ainsi: Pseaume de Jeremie/ait a Vimitation de David.
sponds to the time of the composition of the Psalm which is required by its contents. It is just the same with the paragogic i in the future in ver. 6. But in other respects the language is classic; and the rhythm, at the beginning softly elegiac, then more and more excited, and abounding in guttural and sibilant sounds, is so expressive that scarcely any Psalm is so easily impressed on the memory as this, which is so pictorial even in sound. The metre resembles the elegiac as it appears in the socalled caesura schema of the Lamentations and in the cadence of Isa. xvi. 9, 10, which is like the Sapphic strophe. Every second line corresponds to the pentameter of the elegiac metre.
Vers. 1-6. Beginning with perfects, the Psalm has the appearance of being a Psalm not belonging to the Exile, but written in memory of the Exile. The bank of a river, like the seashore, is a favourite place of sojourn of those whom deep grief drives forth from the bustle of men into solitude. The boundary line of the river gives to solitude a safe back; the monotonous splashing of the waves keeps up the dull, melancholy alternation of thoughts and feelings; and at the same time the sight of the cool, fresh water exercises a soothing influence upon the consuming fever within the heart. The rivers of Babylon are here those of the Babylonian empire: not merely the Euphrates with its canals, and the Tigris, but also the Chaboras (Chebar) and Eulaeos (' Ulai)^ on whose lonesome banks Ezekiel (ch. i. 3) and Daniel (ch. viii. 2) beheld divine visions. The D^ is important: there, in a strange land, as captives under the dominion of the power of the world. And D3 is purposely chosen instead of 1: with the sitting down in the solitude of the river's banks weeping immediately came on; when the natural scenery around contrasted so strongly with that of their native land, the remembrance of Zion only forced itself upon them all the more powerfully, and the pain at the isolation from their home would have all the freer course where no hostilely observant eyes were present to suppress it. The willow (n??SV) and viburnum, those trees which are associated with flowing water in hot low-lying districts, are indigenous in the richly watered lowlands of Babylonia, my (nrw), if one and the same with t-^i, is not the willow, least of all the weeping-willow, which is called safsdf mustahi in Arabic, u the bending-down willow," but the viburnum with dentate leaves, described by Wetzstein on Isa. xliv. 4. The Talmud even distinguishes between tsaph- Uapha and 'araba, but without our being able to obtain any sure botanic picture from it. The »"1?"]V, whose branches belong to the constituents of the lulab of the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. xxiii. 40), is understood of the crack-willow \_Salix fragilis], and even in the passage before us is surely not distinguished with such botanical precision but that the gharab and willow together with the weeping-willow (Salix Babylonica) might be comprehended under the word fi^ny. On these trees of the country abounding in streams the exiles hung their citherns. The time to take delight in music was past, for iiovaiKcb iv ireuOet aKcupos 8cr]- 7770^9, Sir. xxii. 6. Joyous songs, as the word "W designates them, were ill suited to their situation.
In order to understand the n3 in ver. 3, vers. 3 and 4 must be taken together. They hung up their citherns; for though their lords called upon them to sing in order that they might divert themselves with their national songs, they did not feel themselves in the mind for singing songs as they once resounded at the divine services of their native land. The LXX., Targum, and Syriac take ^vpto as a synonym of ^?i^, synonymous with W vw, and so, in fact, that it signifies not, like 5yiB>, the spoiled and captive one, but the spoiler and he who takes others prisoners. But there is no Aramaic /W =.W. It might more readily be referred back to a Poel b?)P\ (= ty>!?)> to disappoint, deride (Hitzig); but the usage of the language does not favour this, and a stronger meaning for the word would be welcome. Either TptosrWrujlj like ^^p, cii. 9, signifies the raving one, i.e. a bloodthirsty man or a tyrant, or from by, ejulare, one who causes the cry of woe or a tormentor, — a signification which commends itself in view of the words 3^in and "JWfl, which are likewise formed with the preformative n. According to the sense the word ranks itself with an Hiph. Wn, like fij^, nrDin, with Tlfin and T^in, in a mainly abstract signification (Dietrich, Abhandlungen, S. 160 f.). The *W beside "W* is used as in xxxv. 20, lxv. 4, cv. 27, cxlv. 5, viz. partitively, dividing up the genitival notion of the species: words of songs as being parts or fragments of the national treasury of song, similar to "WB a little further on, on which Kosenmuller correctly says: sacrum aliquod carmen ex veteribus Mis suis Sionicis. With the expression " song of Zion " alternates in ver. 4 " song of Jahve," which, as in 2 Chron. xxix. 27, cf. 1 Chron. xxv. 7, denotes sacred or liturgical songs, that is to say, songs belonging to Psalm poesy (including the Cantica).
Before ver. 4 we have to imagine that they answered the request of the Babylonians at that time in the language that follows, or thought thus within themselves when they withdrew themselves from them. The meaning of the interrogatory exclamation is not that the singing of sacred songs in a foreign land (p&6 nyin) is contrary to the law, for the Psalms continued to be sung even during the Exile, and were also enriched by new ones. But the shir had an end during the Exile, in so far as that it was obliged to retire from publicity into the quiet of the family worship and of the houses of prayer, in order that that which is holy might not be profaned; and since it was not, as at home, accompanied by the trumpets of the priests and the music of the Levites, it became more recitative than singing properly so called, and therefore could not afford any idea of the singing of their native land in connection with the worship of God on Zion. From the striking contrast between the present and the former times the people of the Exile had in fact to come to the knowledge of their sins, in order that they might get back by the way of penitence and earnest longing to that which they had lost. Penitence and home-sickness were at that time inseparable; for all those in whom the remembrance of Zion was lost gave themselves over to heathenism and were excluded from the redemption. The poet, translated into the situation of the exiles, and arming himself against the temptation to apostasy and the danger of denying God, therefore says: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, WW nii^ri. napn has been taken as an address to Jahve: obliviscaris dexterce meoa (e.g. Wolfgang Dachstein in his song "An Wasserflussen Baby- Ion"), but it is far from natural that Jerusalem and Jahve should be addressed in one clause. Others take H$& as the subject and n3£Ti transitively: obliviscatur dextera mea, scil. artem psallendi (Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Pagninus, Grotius, Hengstenberg, and others); but this ellipsis is arbitrary, and the interpolation of *?» after W. (von Ortenberg, following Olshausen) produces an inelegant cadence. Others again assign a passive sense to ra^'n: oblivioni detur (LXX., Italic, Vulgate, and Luther), or a half-passive sense, in oblivione sit (Jerome); but the thought: let my right hand be forgotten, is awkward and tame. Obliviscatur me (Syriac, Saadia, and the Psalterium Romanum) comes nearer to the true meaning, ro^'fl is to be taken reflexively: obliviscatur sui ipsius, let it forget itself, or its service (Amyraldus, Schultens, Ewald, and Hitzig), which is equivalent to let it refuse or fail, become lame, become benumbed, much the same as we say of the arms or legs that they a go to sleep," and just as the Arabic ^uJ signifies both to forget and to become lame (cf. Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 921b). La Harpe correctly renders: 0 Jerusalem! si je t'oublie jamais, que ma main oublie aussi le mouvement! Thus there is a correspondence between vers. 5 and 6: My tongue shall cleave to my palate if I do not remember^ thee, if I do not raise Jerusalem above the sum of my joy.,??3J^ has the affixed Chirek, with which these later Psalms are so fond of adorning themselves. C&TI is apparently used as in cxix. 160: supra summam (the totality) loztitiw mea, as Coccejus explains, lue. supra omnem Icetitiam meam. But why not then more simply /b?y, above the totality? tr'ao here signifies not fce(pd\aiov, but /cecpaXi): if I do not place Jerusalem upon the summit of my joy, i.e. my highest joy; therefore, if I do not cause Jerusalem to be my very highest joy. His spiritual joy over the city of God is to soar above all earthly joys.
Vers. 7-9. The second part of the Psalm supplicates vengeance upon Edom and Babylon. We see from Obadiah's prophecy, which is taken up again by Jeremiah, how shamefully the Edomites, that brother-people related by descent to Israel and yet pre-eminently hostile to it, behaved in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans as their malignant, rapacious, and inhuman helpers. The repeated imper. Piel vty, from nny (not imper. Kal from "ny, which would be n'y), ought to have been accented on the ult.; it is, however, in both cases accented on the first syllable, the pausal ny (cf. v3 in xxxvii. 20, and also lE>n? Neh. viii. 11) giving rise to the same accentuation of the other (in order that two tonesyllables might not come together). The Pasek also stands between the two repeated words in order that they may be duly separated, and secures, moreover, to the guttural initial of the second viy its distinct pronunciation (cf. Gen. xxvi. 28, Num. xxxv. 16).T It is to be construed: lay bare, lay bare (as in Hab. iii. 13, cf. nja in Mic. i. 6) in it (Beth of the place), or in respect of it (Beth of the object), even to the foundation, i.e raze it even to the ground, leave not one stone upon another. From the false brethren the imprecation turns to Babylon, the city of the imperial power of the world. The daughter, Le, the population, of Babylon is addressed as riWISfel. It certainly seems the most natural to take this epithet as a designation of its doings which cry for vengeance. But it cannot in any case be translated: thou plunderer (Syriac like the Targum: bozuzto; Symmachus rj X^o-t^'?), for "HP does not mean to rob and plunder, but to offer violence and to devastate. Therefore: thou devastator; but the word so pointed as we have it before us cannot have this signification: it ought to be rnn^n, like rnfaa in Jer. iii. 7, 10, or fttntfn (with an unchangeable a), corresponding to the Syriac active intensive form dluso, oppressor, gvdufo, slanderer, and the Arabic likewise active intensive form JLfili> e.g. fdshus, a boaster, and also as an adjective: goz fdshus, empty nuts, cf. K^PJ = PiPJ, a fowler, like ndtur (TittfcO), a field-watcher. The form as it stands is partic. pass., and signifies nrpovevofxevixevr) (Aquila), vastata (Jerome). It is possible that this may be said in the sense of vcstanda, although in this sense of a part. fut. pass, the participles of the Niphal (e.g. xxii. 32, cii. 19) and of the Pual (xviii. 4) are more commonly used. It cannot at any rate signify vastata in an historical sense, with reference to the destruction of Babylon by Darius Hystaspes (Hengstenberg); for ver. 7 only prays that the retribution may come: it cannot therefore as yet have been executed; but if mnp'n signified the already devastated one, it must (at least in the main) have been executed already. It might be more readily understood as a prophetical representation of the executed judgment of devastation; but this prophetic rendering coincides with the imprecative: the imagination of the Semite when he utters a curse sees the future as a realized fact. " Didst thou see the smitten one (madrub)" i.e. he whom God must smite? Thus the Arab inquires for a person who is detested. u Pursue him who is sailed (Hhak el-ma cliudJi)" i.e. him whom God must allow thee to seize! They speak thus inasmuch as the imagination at once anticipates the seizure at the same time with the pursuit. Just as here both madrub and machddli are participles of Kal, so therefore TVVSVfSy may also have the sense of vastanda (which must be laid waste!). That which is then further desired for Babylon is the requital of that which it has done to Israel, Isa. xlvii. G. It is the same penal destiny, comprehending the children also, which is predicted against it in Isa. xiii. 1G— 18, as that which was to be executed by the Medes. The young children (with reference to iviy, TjfM, vid. on viii. 3) are to be dashed to pieces in order that a new generation may not raise up again the world-wide dominion that has been overthrown, Isa. xiv. 21 sq. It is zeal for God that puts such harsh words into the mouth of the poet. " That which is Israel's excellency and special good fortune the believing Israelite desires to have bestowed upon the whole world, but for this very reason he desires to see the hostility of the present world of nations against the church of God broken " (Hofmann). On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the " blessed" of this Psalm is not suited to the mouth of the New Testament church. In the Old Testament the church as yet had the form of a nation, and the loncrino; for the revelation of divine righteousness clothed itself accordingly in a warlike garb.
1 I WILL give thanks unto Thee with my whole heart, Before the gods will I harp unto Thee.
Thy truth, That Thou hast magnified Thy promise above all Thy Name.
4 All the kings of the earth shall give thanks unto Thee, Jahve, When they have heard the utterances of Thy mouth;
5 And they shall sing of the ways of Jahve, That great is the glory of Jahve:
6 For exalted is Jahve and He seeth the lowly, And the proud He knoweth well afar off.
7 If I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou dost revive me, Over the wrath of mine enemies dost Thou stretch forth
There will come a time when the praise of Jahve, which according to cxxxvii. 3 was obliged to be dumb in the presence of the heathen, will, according to cxxxviii. 5, be sung by the kings of the heathen themselves. In the LXX. Ps. cxxxvii. side by side with tw Aavih also has the inscription 'Iepe/jblov, and Ps. cxxxviii. has 'Ayyalov /ecu Zayapiov. Perhaps these statements are meant to refer back the existing recension of the text of the respective Psalms to the prophets named (yid. Kohler, Haggaiy S. 33). From the fact that these names of psalmodists added by the LXX. do not come down beyond Malachi, it follows that the Psalm-collection in the mind of the LXX. was made not later than in the time of Nehemiah.
The speaker in Ps. cxxxviii., to follow the lofty expectation expressed in ver. 4, is himself a king, and according to the inscription, David. There is, however, nothing to favour his being the author; the Psalm is, in respect of the Davidic Psalms, composed as it were out of the soul of David — an echo of 2 Sam. ch. vii. (1 Chron. ch. xvii.). The superabundant promise which made the throne of David and of his seed an eternal throne is here gratefully glorified. The Psalm can at any rate be understood, if with Hengstenberg we suppose that it expresses the lofty self-consciousness to which David was raised after victorious battles, when he humbly ascribed the glory to God and resolved to build Him a Temple in place of the tent upon Zion.
Vers. 1, 2 The poet will give thanks to Him, whom he means without mentioning Him by name, for His mercy, i.e. His anticipating, condescending love, and for His truth, i.e. truthfulness and faithfulness, and more definitely for having magnified His promise (rnT9^) above all His Name, i.e. that He has given a promise which infinitely surpasses everything by which He has hitherto established a name and memorial for Himself ("P^3"PV, with 0 instead of <7, an anomaly that is noted by the Masora, vid. Baer's Psalteriumy p. 133). If the promise by the mouth of Nathan (2 Sam. ch. vii.) is meant, then we may compare 2 Sam. vii. 21. Tto,?na, npia are repeated in that promise and its echo coming from the heart of David so frequently, that this TOWI seems like a hint pointing to that history, which is one of the most important crises in the history of salvation. The expression Dt6n ijj also becomes intelligible from this history. Ewald renders it: ain the presence of God!" which is surely meant to say: in the holy place (De Wette, Olshausen). But " before God will I sing praise to Thee (O God!)"— what a jumble! The LXX. renders ivavriov dyyeXcov, which is in itself admissible and full of meaning,* but without coherence in the context of the Psalm, and also is to be rejected because it is on the whole very questionable whether the Old Testament language uses D\"6tf thus, without anything further to define it, in the sense of u angels." It might be more readily rendered " in the presence of the gods," viz. of the gods of the peoples (Hengstenberg, Hupfeld, and Hitzig); but in order to be understood of gods which are only seemingly such, it would require some addition. Whereas D\T>K can without any addition denote the magisterial possessors of the dignity that is the type of the divine, as follows from lxxxii. 1 (cf. xlv. 7) in spite of Knobel, Graf, and Hupfeld; and thus, too (cf. Q^p *IJ3 in cxix. 46), we understand it here, with Rashi, Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Flaminius, Bucer, Clericus, and others. What is meant are u the great who are in the earth," 2 Sam. vii. 9, with whom David, inasmuch as he became king from being a shepherd, is ranked, and
* Bellarmine: Scio me psallentem tibi ab angelis, qui tibi assistunt, videri et attendi et ideo ita considerate me geram in psallendo, ut qui intelligam, in quo iheatro consistam.
above whom he has been lifted up by the promise of an eternal kinship. Before these earthly "gods" will David praise the God of the promise; they shall hear for their salutary confusion, for their willing rendering of homage, that God hath made him " the highest with respect to the kings of the earth" (Ixxxix. 28).
Vers. 3-6. There are two things for which the poet gives thanks to God: He has answered him in the days of trouble connected with his persecution by Saul and in all distresses; and by raising him to the throne, and granting him victory upon victory, and promising him the everlasting possession of the throne, He has filled him with a proud courage, so that lofty feeling has taken up its abode in his soul, which was formerly fearful about help. Just as 3m signifies impetuosity, vehemence, and then also a monster, so 3,,rnn signifies both to break in upon one violently and overpoweringly (Cant. vi. 5; cf. Syriac arheb, Arabic arhaba. to terrify), and to make any one courageous, bold, and confident of victory. T'y *#2>?2I forms a corollary to the verb that is marked by Mugrash or Declii: so that in my soul there was TV, i.e. power, viz. a consciousness of power (cf. Judg. v. 21). The thanksgiving, which he, the king of the promise, offers to God on account of this, will be transmitted to all the kings of the earth when they shall hear (U'££> in the sense of a fut. exactum) the words of His mouth, i.e. the divine n1*?N, an^ ^ey shall smS °f 0^ W}^h?> like 3 "isn in Ixxxvii. 3, 3 IW in cv. 2 and frequently, 3??n in xliv. 9, 3 "TOp in xx. 8, and the like) the ways of the God of the history of salvation, they shall sing that great is the glory of Jahve. Ver. 6 tells us by what means He has so super-gloriously manifested Himself in His leadings of David. He has shown Himself to be the Exalted One who in His all-embracing rule does not leave the lowly (cf. David's confessions in cxxxi. 1, 2 Sam. vi. 22) unnoticed (cxiii. 6), but on the contrary makes him the especial object of His regard; and on the other hand even from afar (cf. cxxsix. 2) He sees through (VT as in xciv. 11, Jer. xxix. 23) the lofty one who thinks himself unobserved and conducts himself as if he were answerable to no higher being (x. 4). In correct texts rail has Mugrash, and PTOB Mercha. The form of the fut. Kal jrnj is formed after the analogy of the Hiphil forms W^ in Isa. xvi. 7, and fre- qnently, and ^tt? in Job xxiv. 21; probably the word is intended to be all the more emphatic, inasmuch as the first radical, which disappears in XTTJ,, is thus in a certain measure restored.*
Vers. 7, 8. Out of these experiences — so important for all mankind — of David, who has been exalted by passing through humiliation, there arise for him confident hopes concerning the future. The beginning of this strophe calls xxiii. 4 to mind. Though his way may lead through the midst of heart-oppressing trouble, Jahve will loose these bands of death and quicken him afresh (n*n as in xxx. 4, Ixxi. 20, and frequently). Though his enemies may rage, Jahve will stretch forth His hand threateningly and tranquillizingly over their wrath, and His right hand will save him. 1JW is the subject according to cxxxix. 10 and other passages, and not (for why should it be supposed to be this?) accus. instrumenti (vid. lx. 7). In ver. 8 *tiM* is intended just as in lvii. 3: the work begun He will carry out, eirirekelv (Phil. i. 6); and ^3 (according to its meaning, properly: covering me) is the same as vy in that passage (cf. xiii. 6, cxlii. 8). The pledge of this completion is Jahve's everlasting mercy, which will not rest until the promise is become perfect truth and reality. Thus, therefore, He will not leave, forsake the works of His hands (vid. xc. 16 sq.), i.e., as Hengstenberg correctly explains, everything that He has hitherto accomplished for David, from his deliverance out of the hands of Saul down to the bestowment of the promise — He will not let one of His works stand still, and least of all one that has been so gloriously begun. HQ"|n (whence *T}Ji}) signifies to slacken, to leave slack, i.e. leave unearned out, to leave to
* The Greek imperfects with the double (syllabic and temporal) augment, as kaput/, dviuyov, are similar. Chajug' also regards the first Jod in these forms as the preformative and the second as the radical, whereas Abulwalid, Gramm. ch. xxvi. p. 170, explains the first as a prosthesis and the second as the preformative. According to the view of others, e.g. of Kimchi, JH" might be fut. Hiph. weakened from jn,T (jTTiT), which, apart from the unsuitable meaning, assumes a change of consonants that is all the more inadmissible as yT itself springs from jnv Nor is it to be supposed that ]ft" is modified from JH" (Luzzatto, § 197), because it is nowhere written yT\ itself, as in Neh. vi. 3. 5>K expresses a negation with a measure of inward excitement.
2 Teou knowest my sitting down and my rising up, Thou understandest my thought afar off.
3 My path and my lying down Thou searchest, And with all my ways art Thou familiar.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue — Lo, Thou, O Jahve, knowest it altogether.
5 Behind and before dost Thou surround me, And hast laid Thy hand upon me.
6 Incomprehensible to me is such knowledge, It is too high, I have not grown up to it.
10 There also Thy hand would guide me, And Thy right hand lay hold of me.
11 And if I should say: Let nothing but darkness enwrap me, And let the light round about me become night —
12 Even the darkness would not be too dark for Thee, And the night would be to Thee bright as the day; Darkness and liixht are alike to Thee.
14 I give Thee thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works,
16 When an embryo Thine eyes saw me, And in Thy book were they all written: Days which were already sketched out, And for it one among them.
17 And how precious are Thy thoughts unto me, O God, How mighty is their sum!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand; I awake and I am still with Thee.
19 Oh that Thou wouldest slay the wicked, Eloah; And ye men of blood-guiltiness, depart from me!
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart, Prove me and know my thoughts,
24 And see whether there is in me any way of pain, And lead me in the everlasting way!
In this Aramaizing Psalm what the preceding Psalm says in ver. 6 comes to be carried into effect, viz.: for Jahve is exalted and He seeth the lowly, and the proud He knoweth from afar. This Psalm has manifold points of contact with its predecessor. From a theological point of view it is one of the most instructive of the Psalms, and both as regards its contents and poetic character in every way wTorthy of David. But it is only inscribed iv6 because it is composed after the Davidic model, and is a counterpart to such Psalms as Ps. xix. and to other Davidic didactic Psalms. For the addition nwiD^ neither proves its ancient Davidic origin, nor in a general way its origin in the period prior to the Exile, as Ps. lxxiv. for example shows, which was at any rate not composed prior to the time of the Chaldaean catastrophe.
The Psalm falls into three parts: vers. 16-12, 13-18,
19-24; the strophic arrangement is not clear. The first part celebrates the Omniscient and Omnipresent One. The poet knows that he is surrounded on all sides by God's knowledge and His presence; His Spirit is everywhere and cannot be avoided; and His countenance is turned in every direction and inevitably, in wrath or in love. In the second part the poet continues this celebration with reference to the origin of man; and in the third part he turns in profound vexation of spirit towards the enemies of such a God, and supplicates for himself His proving and guidance. In vers. 1 and 4 God is called Jahve, in ver. 17 El, in ver. 19 Eloah, in ver. 21 again Jahve, and in ver. 23 again EL Strongly as this Psalm is marked by the depth and pristine freshness of its ideas and reeling, the form of its language is still such as is without precedent in the Davidic age. To all appearance it is the Aramaeo-Hebrew idiom of the post-exilic period pressed into the service of poetry. The Psalm apparently belongs to those Psalms which, in connection with a thoroughly classical character of form, bear marks of the influence which the Aramaic language of the Babylonian kingdom exerted over the exiles. This influence affected the popular dialect in the first instance, but the written language also did not escape it, as the Books of Daniel and Ezra show; and even the poetry of the Psalms is not without traces of this retrograde movement of the language of Israel towards the language of the patriarchal ancestral house. In the Cod. Alex. Za^aptov is added to the tw A avlS slraXfios, and by a second hand iv ry Bcacnropaj which Origen also met with " in some copies."
Vers. 1-7. The Aramaic forms in this strophe are the aTTa% Xeyofju. XH (ground-form Jfl) in vers. 2 and 17, endeavour, desire, thinking, like rfijn and (VJH in the post-exilic books, from nyj (Kin), cupere, cogitare; and the air. Xey. V3i in ver. 3, equivalent to fTj, a lying down, if ^T\ be not rather an infinitive like *y&a in job vii. 19, since WKis undoubtedly not inflected from rnk, but, as being infinitive, like *"}?j in
(Job xxxiv. 8), which are almost more strongly Aramaizing than the Book of Job itself. Further, as an Aramaizing feature we have the objective relation marked by Lamed in the expression *}Tp n^3?, Thou understandest my thinking, as in cxvi. 16, cxxix. 3, cxxxv. 11, cxxxvi. 19 sq. The monostichic opening is after the Davidic style, e.g. xxiii. lb. Among the prophets, Isaiah in particular is fond of such thematic introductions as we have here in ver. lb. On JHFn instead of *pjnrn vid. on cvii. 20; the pronominal object stands once beside the first verb, or even beside the second (2 Kings ix. 25), instead of twice (Hitzig). The " me" is then expanded: sitting down, rising up, walking and lying, are the sum of human conditions or states. 'JH is the totality or sum of the life of the spirit and soul of man, and *Tto the sum of human action. The divine knowledge, as inrn says, is the result of the scrutiny of man. The poet, however, in vers. 2 and 3 uses the perfect throughout as a mood of that which is practically existing, because that scrutiny is a scrutiny that is never unexecuted, and the knowledge is consequently an ever-present knowledge, pinnp is meant to say that He sees into not merely the thought that is fully fashioned and matured, but even that which is being evolved. JV")T from rn? is combined by Luther (with Azulai and others) with "tt, a wreath (from "HJ, constringerey cingere), inasmuch as he renders: whether I walk or lie down, Thou art round about me (Ich gehe oder lige, so bistu vmb mich). rnt ought to have the same meaning here, if with Wetzstein one were to compare the Arabic, and more particularly Beduin, j.j, dherrd, to protect; the notion of affording protection does not accord with this train of thought, which has reference to God's omniscience: what ought therefore to be meant is a hedging round which secures its object to the knowledge, or even a protecting that places it in security against any exchanging, which will not suffer the object to escape it.* is an elegant word; with reference to another derivative, dherwe, a wall of rock protecting one from the winds, vid. Job, ii. 23, note. The II. form (Piel) signifies to protect in the widest possible sense, e.g. (in Neshwan, ii.
3436), " pluJ! ^J, he protected the sheep (against being exchanged) by leaving a lock of wool upon their backs when they were shorn, by which they might be recognised among other sheep."
The Arabic ^J, to know, which is far removed in sound, is by no means to be compared; it is related to \j^ to push, urge forward, and denotes knowledge that is gained by testing and experimenting. But we also have no need of that ^ j, to protect, since we can remain within the range of the guaranteed Hebrew usage, inasmuch as Hit, to winnow, i.e. to spread out that which has been threshed and expose it to the current winnowing-fork, like nrn, racht, a winnowing-shovel), gives an appropriate metaphor. Here it is equivalent to: to investigate and search out to the very bottom; LXX., Symmachus, and Theodotion, kfyyyiaaa^ after which the Italic renders investigasti, and Jerome eventilasti. P??«? with the accusative, as in Job xxii. 21 with DV: to enter into neighbourly, close, familiar relationship, or to stand in such relationship, with any one;
cogn. |3E>, „^L>. God is acquainted with all our ways not only superficially, but closely and thoroughly, as that to which He is accustomed.
In ver. 4 this omniscience of God is illustratively corroborated with *3; ver. 46 has the value of a relative clause, which, however, takes the form of an independent clause.?bft (pronounced by Jerome in his letter to Sunnia and Fretela, § 82, MALA) is an Aramaic word that has been already incorporated in the poetry of the Davidico-Salomonic age. n>>3 signifies both all of it and every one. In ver. 5 Luther has been misled by the LXX. and Vulgate, which take "W in the signification formare (whence rni¥, forma); it signifies, as the definition " behind and before" shows, to surround, encompass. God is acquainted with man, for He holds him surrounded on all sides, and man can do nothing, if God, whose confining hand he has lying upon him (Job ix. 23), does not allow him the requisite freedom of motion. Instead of W* (LXX. rj yvtoak gov) the poet purposely says in ver. 6a merely njn: a knowledge, so all-penetrating, all-comprehensive as God's knowledge. The Keri reads na^B, but the Chethib w6i is supported by the Chethib "^3 in judg. xiii. 18, the Keri of which there is not K?B, but *5>B (the pausal form of an adjective ^B, the feminine of which would be n)?3). With *3Bp the transcendence, with H3aK>3 the unattainableness, and with /OWfcO «Y the incomprehensibleness of the fact of the omniscience of God is expressed, and with this, to the mind of the poet, coincides God's omnipresence; for true, not merely phenomenal, knowledge is not possible without the immanence of the knowing one in the thing known. God, however, is omnipresent, sustaining the life of all things by His Spirit, and revealing Himself either in love or in wrath, — what the poet styles His countenance. To flee from this omnipresence (IP, away from), as the sinner and he who is conscious of his guilt would gladly do, is impossible. Concerning the first TON, which is here accented on the ultima, vid. on cxvi. 4.
Vers. 8-12. The future form PEN, customary in the Aramaic, may be derived just as well from P?D (P.??), by means of the same mode of assimilation as in 3fc* = 33D*, as from pp: (Pp3), which latter is certainly only insecurely established by Dan. vi. 24, njjwr6 (cf. npnrrp, Ezra iv. 22; pssn, Dan. v. 2), since the Nun, as in '"^l1?, Dan. iv. 3, can also be a compensation for the resolved doubling (vid. Bernstein in the Lexicon Chrestom. Kirschiance, and Levy s.v. pp:). DN with the simple future is followed by cohortatives (vid. on lxxiii. 16) with the equivalent NEW among them: et si stratum facerem (mild) infernum (accusative of the object as in Isa. lviii. 5), etc. In other passages the wings of the sun (Mai. iii. 20 [iv. 2]) and of the wind (xviii. 11) are mentioned, here we have the wings of the morning's dawn. Pennce aurora?, Eugubinus observes (1548), est velocissimus aurora? per omnem mundum decursus. It is therefore to be rendered: If I should lift wings (Q^J? Nb>J as in Ezek. x. 16, and frequently) such as the dawn of the morning has, i.e. could I fly with the swiftness with which the dawn of the morning spreads itself over the eastern sky, towards the extreme west and alight there. Heaven and Hades, as being that which is superterrestrial and sub terrestrial, and the east and west are set over against one another. D^ W\Q& is the extreme end of the sea (of the Mediterranean with the " isles of the Gentiles"). In ver. 10 follows the apodosis: nowhere is the hand of God, which governs everything, to be escaped, for dextera Dei ubique est. ipN) (not "ip&0, Ezek. xiii. 15), " therefore I spake," also has the value of a hypothetical protasis: quodsi diverim. ^ and T^'n belong together: merce tenebrce (vidr xxxix. 6 sq.); but **&&*. is obscure. The signification secured to it of conterere, conlundere, in Gen. iii. 15, Job ix. 17, which is followed by the LXX. (Vulgate) KaraiTaTrjo-ei,, is inappropriate to darkness. The signification inhiare, which may be deduced as possible from *|NP, suits relatively better, yet not thoroughly well (why should it not have been *3gOTt). The signification obvelare, however, which one expects to find, and after which the Targum, Symmachus, Jerome, Saadia, and others render it, seems only to be guessed at from the connection, since sp$ has not this signification in any other instance, and in favour of it we cannot appeal either to *\W} — whence *|Bfo, which belongs together with 3B0, DEO, and PBJ — or to *\VV, the root of which is ttj/ (n9?)> or to *|y¥, whence *!'#¥, which does not signify to cover, veil, but according to t—a*«g, to fold, fold together, to double. We must therefore either assign to '3jMK^ the signification operiat me without being able to prove it, or we must put a verb of this signification in its place, viz. ^5^ (Ewald) or 'JBW. (Bottcher), which latter is the more commendable here, where darkness Q\wn, synon. n^y, S|WD) is the subject: And if I should say, let nothing but darkness cover me, and as night (the predicate placed first, as in Amos iv. 13) let the light become about me, i.e. let the light become night that shall surround and cover me P?JE3» poetic for TJJ3, like 'Win in 2 Sam. ch. xxii.) — the darkness would spread abroad no obscurity (cv. 28) that should extend beyond (|») Thy piercing eye and remove me from Thee. In the word "W, too, the Hiphil signification is not lost: the night would give out light from itself, as if it were the day; for the distinction of day and night has no conditioning influence upon God, who is above and superior to all created things (der Uebercreaturliche), who is light in Himself. The two a are correlative, as e.g. in 1 Kings xxii. 4. nyyn (with a superfluous Jod) is an old word, but rnta (cf. Aramaic KTHta) is a later one.
Vers. 13-18. The fact that man is manifest to God even to the very bottom of his nature, and in every place, is now confirmed from the origin of man. The development of the child in the womb was looked upon by the Israelitish Chokma as one of the greatest mysteries, Eccles. xi. 5; and here the poet praises this coming into being as a marvellous work of the omniscient and omnipresent omnipotence of God. n:^ here signifies condcre; and "H^D not: to cover, protect, as in cxl. 8, Job. xl« 22, prop* to cover with network, to hedge in, but: to plait, interweave, viz. with bones, sinews, and veins, like *I?fe> in Job x. 11. The reins are made specially prominent in order to mark them, the seat of the tenderest, most secret emotions, as the work of Him who trieth the heart and the reins. The Trpocr- €v^ij becomes in ver. 14 the ev^apiaria: I give thanks unto Thee that I have wonderfully come into being under fearful circumstances, i.e. circumstances exciting a shudder, viz. of astonishment (niX"ji: as in lxv. 6).?v33 (= *y??) is the passive to n/?n? iv. 4, xvii. 7. Hitzig regards nriyM (Thou hast shown Thyself wonderful), after the LXX., Syriac, Vulgate, and Jerome, as the only correct reading; but the thought which is thereby gained comes indeed to be expressed in the following line, ver. 146, which sinks down into tautology in connection with this reading. EVy (collectively equivalent to B^psy, Eccles. xi. 5) is the bones, the skeleton, and, starting from that idea, more generally the state of being as a sum-total of elements of being. "lEW, without being necessarily a conjunction (Ew. § 333, a), attaches itself to the suffix of W. DJ9T, " to be worked in different colours, or also embroidered," of the system of veins ramifying the body, and of the variegated colouring of its individual members, more particularly of the inward parts; perhaps, however, more generally with a retrospective conception of the colours of the outline following the undeveloped beginning, and of the forming of the members and of the organism in general.* The mother's womb is here called not merely "HID (cf. JEschylus1 Eumenides, 665: ev gkotoigi vrjhvos Te6pafjL/j,ivr], and the designation of the place where the foetus is formed as " a threefold darkness" in the Koran, Sur. xxxix. 8), the e of which is retained here in pause {vid. Bottcher, Lehrbuch, § 298), but by a bolder appellation pK nfwnfl, the lowest parts of the earth, i.e. the interior of the earth (vid. on lxiii. 10) as being the secret laboratory of the earthly origin, with the same retro-
* In the Talmud the egg of a bird or of a reptile is called ripplD, when the outlines of the developed embryo are visible in it; and likewise the mole (mola), when traces of human organization can be discerned in it.
spective reference to the first formation of the human body out of the dust of the earth, as when Job says, ch. i. 21: " naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither" — HBB^ viz. efc rr)v yrjv rrjv fir)T€pa ttclvtcov, Sir. xl. 1. The interior of Hades is also called btev |D3 in Jonah ii. 3, Sir. Ii. 5. According to the view of Scripture the mode of Adam's creation is repeated in the formation of every man, Job xxxiii. 6, cf. 4. The earth was the mother's womb of Adam, and the mother's womb out of which the child of Adam comes forth is the earth out of which it is taken.
(Ver. 16.) The embryo folded up in the shape of an egg is here called D^a, from B^3, to roll or wrap together (cf. glomus, sl ball), in the Talmud said of any kind of unshapen mass (LXX. a/cciTepyao-Tov, Symmachus afiopcpcoTov) and raw material, e.g. of the wood or metal that is to be formed into a vessel ( Chullin 25a, to which Saadia has already referred).* As to the rest, compare similar retrospective glances into the embryonic state in Job x. 8-12, 2 Mace. vii. 22 sq. (Psychology, S. 209 ff., tr. pp. 247 sq.). On the words in libro tuo Bellarmine makes the following correct observation: quia habes apud te exemplaria sive ideas omnium, quomodo pictor vel sculptor scit ex informi materia quid futurum sit, quia videt exemplar. The signification of the future *3?3* is regulated by *fcO, and becomes, as relating to the synchronous past, scribebantur. The days T15£, which were already formed, are the subject. It is usually rendered: " the days which had first to be formed." If ViaP could be equivalent to VIST* } it would be to be preferred; but this rejection of the pro?form. fut. is only allowed in the fut. Piel of the verbs Pe Jod, and that after a Waw convertens, e.g. BW = ^.]], Nah. i. 4 (cf. Caspari on Obad. ver. ll).f Accordingly, assuming the original character of the fc6 in a negative signification, it is to be rendered: The days which were (already) formed, and there was not one among them, i.e. when none among them had as yet become a reality. The suffix of ofcj
* Epiphanius, Exr. xxx. § 31, says the Hebrew yohpn signifies the peeled grains of spelt or wheat before they are mixed up and backed, the still raw (only bruised) flour-grains — a signification that can now no longer be supported by examples.
t But outside the Old Testament it also occurs in the Pual, though as a wrong use of the word; vide my Anekdota (1841), S. 372 f.
points to the succeeding D*DJ, to which W is appended as an attributive clause; Drn inx N7l is subordinated to this *W: cum non or nondum (Job xxii. 16) T/m*s inter eos = units eorum (Ex. \iv. 28) ess^. But the expression (instead of n*Jl to "lijn or FWYJ DTO) remains doubtful, and it becomes a question whether the Kerl *b\ (vid. on c. 3), which stands side by side with the Chetlilb *6l (which the LXX., Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targum, Syriac, Jerome, and Saadia follow), is not to be preferred. This lii, referred to SD^, gives the acceptable meaning: and for it (viz. its birth) one among them (these days), without our needing to make any change in the proposed exposition down to TW. We decide in favour of this, because this Dm nritf *6l does not, as Dnn ins tib\ make one feel to miss any nvi? and because the vl which begins ver. 17 connects itself to it by way of continuation. The accentuation has failed to discern the reference of rf?3 to the following D"1^, inasmuch as it places Olewejored against *\2r\y. Hupfeld follows this accentuation, referring tbl back to ^rftt as a coil of days of one's life; and Hitzig does the same, referring it to the embryos. But the precedence of the relative pronoun occurs in other instances also,* and is devoid of all harshness, especially in connection with Dp3, which directly signifies altogether (e.g. Isa. xliii. 14). It is the confession of the omniscience that is united with the omnipotence of God, which the poet here gives utterance to with reference to himself, just as Jahve says with reference to Jeremiah, Jer. i. 5. Among the days which were preformed in the idea of God (cf. on YW) Isa. xxii. 11, xxxvii. 26) there was also one, says the poet, for the embryonic beginning of my life. The divine knowledge embraces the beginning, development, and completion of all things (Psychology, S. 37 if., tr. pp. 46 sqq.). The knowledge of the thoughts of God which are written in the book of creation and revelation is the poet's cherished possession, and to ponder over them is his favourite pursuit: they are precious to him, *lj£ (after xxxvi. 8), not: difficult of comprehension (schwerbegreiflich, Maurer, Olshausen), after Dan. ii. 11, which
* The Hebrew poet, says Gesenius (Lehrgebaude, S. 739 f.), sometimes uses the pronoun before the thing to which it referred has even been spoken of. This phenomenon belongs to the Hebrew style generally, vid. my Anekdota (1841), S. 382.
would surely have been expressed by }ppj> (xcii. 6), more readily: very weighty (schwergewichtig, Hitzig), but better according to the prevailing Hebrew usage: highly valued (schwergeiverthet), cava.* "Their sums" are powerful, prodigious (xl. 6), and cannot be brought to a summa summarum. If he desires to count them (fut. hypothet. as in xci. 7, Job xx. 24), they prove themselves to be more than the sand with its grains, that is to say, innumerable. He falls asleep over the pondering upon them, wearied out; and when he wakes up, he is still with God, i.e. still ever absorbed in the contemplation of the Unsearchable One, which even the sleep of fatigue could not entirely interrupt. Ewald explains it somewhat differently: if I am lost in the stream of thoughts and images, and recover myself from this state of reverie, yet I am still ever with Thee, without coming to an end. But it could only perhaps be interpreted thus if it were Trivyn or WHSSffifJ. Hofmann's interpretation is altogether different: I will count them, the more numerous than the sand, when I awake and am continually with Thee, viz. in the other world, after the awaking from the sleep of death. This is at once impossible, because tfttPpn cannot here, according to its position, be a per/, hypotheticum. Also in connection with this interpretation "riy would be an inappropriate expression for " continually," since the word only has the sense of the continual duration of an action or a state already existing; here of one that has not even been closed and broken off by sleep. He has not done; waking and dreaming and waking up, he is carried away by that endless, and yet also endlessly attractive, pursuit, the most fitting occupation of one who is awake, and the sweetest (cf. Jer. xxxi. 26) of one who is asleep and dreaming.
Vers. 19-21. And this God is by many not only not believed in and loved, but even hated and blasphemed! The poet now turns towards these enemies of God in profound vexation of spirit. The DX, which is conditional in ver. 8, here is an optative o si, as in lxxxi. 9, xcv. 7. The expression ta^n k}VX reminds one of the Book of Job, for, with the exception of our Psalm, this is the only book that uses the verb ^BjJ, which is more Aramaic than Hebrew, and the divine name Eloah occurs more frequently in it than anywhere else. The transition from the optative to the imperative WiD is difficult; it would have been less so if the Waw copul. had been left out: cf. the easier expression in vi. 9, cxix. 115. But we may not on this account seek to read ^^, as Olshausen does. Everything here is remarkable; the whole Psalm has a characteristic form in respect to the language. *|0 is the ground-form of the overloaded ^DD, and is also like the Book of Job, ch. xxi. 16, cf. VUO ch. iv. 12, Ps. lxviii. 24. The mode of writing THOs (instead of which, however, the Babylonian texts had "^"ipto) is the same as in 2 Sam. xix. 15, cf. in 2 Sam. xx. 9 the same melting away of the Aleph into the preceding vowel in connection with W1K, in 2 Sam. xxii. 40 in connection with *>W, and in Isa. xiii. 20 with /HK. Construed with the accusative of the person, 1EN here signifies to declare any one, projiteri, a meaning which, we confess, does not occur elsewhere. But '"i^IPp (cf. n?"!P?, xxiv. 4; the Targum: who swear by Thy name for wantonness) and the parallel member of the verse, which as it runs is moulded after Ex. xx. 7, show that it has not to be read 1V1D* (Quinta: irapeiviicpavdv ai). The form N^, with Aleph otiansj is also remarkable; it ought at least to have been written *NBW (cf. N*B^?, Ezek. xlvii. 8) instead of the customary *XB>a; yet the same mode of writing is found in the Niphal in Jer. x. 5, K*fe^, it assumes a ground-form nfco (xxxii. 1) = Nbo, and is to be judged of according to &W3K in Isa. xxviii. 12 [Ges. § 23, 3, rem. 3]. Also one feels the absence of the object to tnw? 6WB>3. It is meant to be supplied according to the decalogue, Ex. xx. 7, which certainly makes the alteration 10P (Bottcher, Olsh.) or TJ3? (Hitzig on Isa. xxvi. 13), instead of "py, natural. But the text as we now have it is also intelligible: the object to fcObO is derived from TrW, and the following T"}V is an explanation of the subject intended in fcojw that is introduced subsequently. Ps. lxxxix. 52 proves the possibility of this structure of a clause. It is correctly rendered by Aquila avrl- £V;\ot aovj and Symmachus ol ivavrioi gov. ">y, an enemy, prop.
maism is appropriate to this Psalm. The form DSipn for DEipnp has cast away the preformative Mem (cf. tN?|P and DW:;p, rn#B in Deut. xxiii. 11 for nnpBD); the suffix is to be understood according to xvii. 7. Pase& stands between ITliT and KJ&K in order that the two words may not be read together (cf. Job' xxvii. 13, and above x. 3). BBipnn as in the recent Ps. cxix. 158. The emphasis in ver. 22b lies on ^; the poet regards the adversaries of God as enemies of his own. fTOH takes the place of the adjective: extremo (odio) odi eos. Such is the relation of the poet to the enemies of God, but without indulging any self-glorying.
Vers. 23, 24. He sees in them the danger which threatens himself, and prays God not to give him over to the judgment of self-delusion, but to lay bare the true state of his soul. The fact " Thou hast searched me," which the beginning of the Psalm confesses, is here turned into a petitioning M search me." Instead of BT). in ver. 17, the poet here says tP&Jpfet, which signifies branches (Ezek. xxxi. 5) and branchings of the act of thinking (thoughts and cares, xciv. 19). The Besh is epenthetic, for the first form is t^sy^, Job iv. 13, xx. 2. The poet thus sets the very ground and life of his heart, with all its outward manifestations, in the light of the divine omniscience. And in ver. 24 he prays that God would see whether any 2yy"T!/|. cleaves to him (s2 as in 1 Sam. xxv. 24), by which is not meant "a way of idols" (Kosenmuller, Gesenius, and Maurer), after Isa. xlviii. 5, since an inclination towards, or even apostasy to, heathenism cannot be an unknown sin; nor to a man like the writer of this Psalm is heathenism any power of temptation. JTC3 "]Vi (Gratz) might more readily be admissible, but 3V'y "]Y1 is a more comprehensive notion, and one more in accordance with this closing petition. The poet gives this name to the way that leads to the pain, torture, viz. of the inward and outward punishments of sin; and, on the other hand, the way along which he wishes to be guided he calls Dbiy?rn, the way of endless continuance (LXX., Vulgate, Luther), not the way of the former times, after Jer. vi. 16 (Maurer, Olshausen), which thus by itself is ambiguous (as becomes evident from Job xxii. 15, Jer. xviii. 15), and also does not furnish any direct antithesis. The "everlasting way" is the way of God (xxvii. 11), the way of the righteous, which stands fast for ever and shall not " perish " (i. 6).
4 They sharpen their tongue like a serpent, Adder's poison is under their lips. (Sela.)
5 Keep me, Jahve, from the hands of the wicked, From the violent man preserve me,
6 The proud hide snares for me and cords, They spread nets close by the path, They set traps for me. (Sela.)
8 Jahve the Lord is the stronghold of my salvation, Thou coverest my head in the day of equipment.
12 Let not the man of the tongue be established on the earth, The man of violence — let wickedness hunt him in violent
14 Yea, the righteous shall give thanks unto Thy Name, The upright shall dwell beside Thy countenance.
The close of the preceding Psalm is the key to David's position and mood in the presence of his enemies which find expression in this Psalm. He complains here of serpent-like, crafty, slanderous adversaries, who are preparing themselves for war against him, and with whom he will at length have to fiaht in open battle. The Psalm, in its form more bold than beautiful, justifies its TTT? in so far as it is Davidic in thoughts and figures, and may be explained from the circumstances of the rebellion of Absalom, to which as an outbreak of Ephraimitish jealousy the rebellion of Sheba ben Bichri the Benjamite attached itself. Ps. lviii. and lxiv. are very similar. The close of all three Psalms sounds much alike, they agree in the use of rare forms of expression, and their language becomes fearfully obscure in style and sound where they are directed against the enemies.
Vers. 2-4. The assimilation of the Nun of the verb 1VJ is given up, as in lxi. 8, lxxviii. 7, and frequently, in order to make the form more full-toned. The relative clause shows that E^pipn fc^N (yid. vol. i. 277) is not intended to be understood exclusively of one person. 27Z1 strengthens the notion of that which is deeply concealed and premeditated. It is doubtful whether *W signifies to form into troops or to stir up. But from the fact that "Via in lvi. 7, lix. 4, Isa. liv. 15, signifies not congregare but se congregare, it is to be inferred that Ti3 in the passage before us, like rna (or i™?1? in Deut. ii. 9, 24), in Syriac and Targumic r»3, signifies concitare, to excite (cf. "W together with rvjfe^ Hos. xii. 4 sq.). In ver. 4 the Psalm coincides with lxiv. 4, lviii. 5. They sharpen their tongue, so that it inflicts a fatal sting like the tongue of a serpent, and under their lips, shooting out from thence, is the poison of the adder (cf. Cant, iv. 11). 3*BOy is a aira^ \eyofi,. not from 2^3 (Jesurun, p.
207), but from Bby, ^Jlc and J^x., root cU (yid, Fleischer on Isa. lix. 5, ^3J?), both of which have the significations of bending, turning, and coiling after the manner of a serpent; the Beth is an organic addition modifying the meaning of the root.*
* According to the original Lexicons ^Ss. signifies to bend one's self, to wriggle, to creep sideways like the roots of the vine, in the V. form to
Vers, 5| C. The course of this second strophe is exactly parallel with the first. The perfects describe their conduct hitherto,:is;i comparison of ver. 3b with 3a shows. DTO3 is poetically equivalent to D^Jl, and signifies both the foot that stops (lvii. 7, lviii. 11) and the step that is made by the foot (lxxxv. 11, cxix. loo), and here the two senses are undistinguishable. They are called D^3 on account of the inordinate ambition that infatuates them. The metaphors taken from the life of the hunter (cxli. 9, cxlii. 4) are here brought together as it were into a bodv of synonyms. The meaning of OTETTv becomes explicable from cxlii. 4; Tv, at hand, is equivalent to "immediately beside" (1 Chron. xviii. 17, Neh. xi. 24). Close by the path along which he has to pass, lie gins ready to spring together and ensnare him when he appears.
Vers. 7-9. Such is the conduct of his enemies; he, however, prays to his God and gets his weapons from beside Him. The day of equipment is the day of the crisis when the battle is fought in full array. The perfect nrri3D states what will then take place on the part of God: He protects the head of His anointed against the deadly blow. Both ver. 8a and 8b point to the helmet as being ^Ni TWO, lx. 9; cf. the expression 11 the helmet of salvation" in Isa. lix. 17. Beside *J!W?, from the air. \ey. n^p, there is also the reading V.^p, which Abulwalid found in his Jerusalem codex (in Saragossa). The
move one's self like an adder (according to the Ramus) and to walk like a drunken man (according to Neshwdn); but i/jJis. signifies to be intertwined, knit or closely united together, said of hairs and of the branches of trees, in the V. form to fight hand to hand and to get in among the crowd. The root is apparently expanded into y\WD%J by an added Beth
which serves as a notional speciality, as in l—;J c the convex bend of the steep side of a rock, or in the case of the knee of the hind-legs of animals, and in <. >*3.:>- (in the dialect of the country along the coast of Palestine, where the tree is plentiful, in Neshwan churnub), the horn-like curved pod
regular form would be *WO, and the doubly irregular mctawajje follows the example of *?^nj?, ^np, and the like, in a manner that is without example elsewhere. i»»T for frlBTD is also a hapaxlegomenon; according to Gesenius the principal form is DOT, but surely more correctly DET (like 2*}p), which in Aramaic signifies a bridle, and here a plan, device. The Hiph. p^an reportare, Pro v. iii. 13, viii. 35, xii. 2, xviii. 22 y and of por~ rigere, cxliv. 13, Isa. lviii. 10. A reaching forth of the plan is equivalent to the reaching forth of that which is projected. The choice of the words used in this Psalm coincides here, as already in?3VD, with Proverbs and Isaiah. The future *onj expresses the consequence (cf. lxi. 8) agai'ist which the poet wishes to guard.
Vers. 10-12. The strophic symmetry is now at an end. The longer the poet lingers over the contemplation of the rebels the more lofty and dignified does hi* ln^'—age become, the more particular the choice of the expre and the more difficult and unmanageable the constructs The Hiph. 3DH signifies, causatively, to cause to go round i;^nt (Ex. xiii. 18), and to raise round about (2 Chron. xiv. 6, here, after Josh, vi. 11, where with an accusative following it signifies to go round about: to make the circuit of anything, as enemies who surround a city on all sides and seek the most favourable point for assault; '•SpD from the participle 3DD. Even when derived from the substantive 2D>? (Hupfeld), "my surroundings" is equivalent to *niMD *n$ in xxvii. 6. Hitzig, on the other hand, renders it: the head of my slanderers, from 310, to go round about, Arabic to tell tales of any one, defame; but the Arabic l-^wj, fut. w, to abuse, the IV. form (Hiphil) of which moreover is not used either in the ancient or in the modern language, has nothing to do with the Hebrew a3D, but signifies originally to cut off round about, then to clip (injure) any one's honour and good name.* The fact that the enemies who surround the psalmist on every side are just such calumniators, is intimated here in the word iDTisb'. He wishes that the trouble which the enemies' slanderous lips occasion him may fall back upon their own head. Ptfl is head in the first and literal sense according to vii. 17; and to*??] (with the Jod of the groundform *D3, as in Deut. xxxii. 26, 1 Kings xx. 35; Chethib \0\®y » • after the attractional schema, 2 Sam. ii. 4, Isa. ii. 11, and frequently; cf. on the masculine form, Prov. v. 2, x. 21) refers back to C;N"i, which is meant of the heads of all persons individually. In ver. 11 *B*D) (with an indefinite subject of the higher punitive powers, Ges. § 137, note), in the signification to cause to descend, has a support in lv. 4, whereas the Niph. BilM, fut. Bte?, which is preferred by the Keri, in the signification to be made tc' descend, is contrary to the usage of the language. The cir,. Xey. HfabriD has been combined by Parchon and others with the Arabic -*&, which, together with other munhamir, flovvin ater). "Fire" and "water" are emblems of perils that ca, t be escaped, lxvi. 12, and the mention of fire is therefore at vropriately succeeded by places of flowing water, pits of wate The signification "pits" is attested by the Targum, Symm xhus, Jerome, and the quotation in Kimchi: " first of all they buried them in nm»PiD; when the flesh was consumed they collected the bones and buried them in coffins." On *D}pJ"73 cf. Isa. xxvi. 14. Like vers. 10, 11, ver. 12 is also not to be taken as a general maxim, but as expressing a wish in accordance with the excited tone of this strophe. JiBv fc^tf is not a great talker, i.e. boaster, but an idle talker, i.e. slanderer (LXX. dvrjp ryXcoacrooBr]^ cf. Sir. viii. 4). According to the accents, in DDn t^K is the parallel; but what would be the object of this designation of violence as worse or more malignant? With Sommer, Olshausen, and others, we take V"J as the subject
why dost thou cut into us? i.e. why dost thou insult our honour? — Wetzstein.
* Which is favoured by Ex. xv. 5, fchasjumu with mu instead of mo, which is otherwise without example.
to W: let evil, i.e. the punishment- which arises out of evil, hunt him; cf. Prov. xiii. 21, nyn Vfm &mn, and the opposite in xxiii. 6. It would have to be accented, according to this our construction of the words, T\amt& W Xn D»n *K. The £tt. Xey. nbrn»5> we do not render, with Hengstenberg, Olshausen, and others': push upon push, with repeated pushes, which, to say nothing more, is not suited to the figure of hunting, but, since ^ always has the signification of precipitate hastening: by hastenings, that is to say, forced marches..
Vers. 13, 14. With ver. 13 the mood and language now again become cheerful, the rage has spent itself; therefore the style and tone are now changed, and the Psalm trips along merrily as it were to the close. With reference to nyT for V1JTP (as in Job xlii. 2), vid. xvi. 2. That which David in ix. 5- confidently expects on his own behalf is here generalized into the certain prospect of the triumph of the good cause in the person of all its representatives at that time oppressed.:JK, like **??£, is an expression of certainty. After seeming abandonment God again makes Himself known to His own, and those whom they wanted to sweep away out of the land of the living have an ever sure dwelling-place with His joyful countenance (xvi. 11).
1 JAHVE, I call upon Thee, Oh haste Thee unto me; Oh hearken to my voice, when I call upon Thee!
2 Let my prayer be accounted as incense before Thee, The lifting up of my hands as the evening meat-offering,
3 Oh set a watch, Jahve, upon my mouthj A protection upon the door of my lips.
4 Incline not my heart to an evil matter, To practise knavish things in iniquity With the lords who rule wickedly, And let me not taste their dainties.
G I lulled down upon the sides of the rock are their judges, And they hear my words as welcome.
7 As when one furroweth and breaketh up the earth, Are our bones sowed at the gate of Hades.
8 For unto Thee, Jahve Lord! do mine eyes look, In Thee do I hide, pour not my soul out!
snares for me, And from the traps of those who rule wickedly. 10 Let the wicked fall into their own net, Whilst / altogether escape.
The four Psalms, cxl., cxli., cxlii., and cxliii., are interwoven with one another in many ways (Symbolce, pp. 67 sq.). The following passages are very similar, viz. cxl. 7, cxli. 1, cxlii. 2, and cxliii. 1. Just as the poet complains in cxlii. 4, " when my spirit veils itself within me," so too in cxliii. 4; as he prays in cxlii. 8, " Oh bring my soul out of prison," so in cxliii. 11, u bring my soul out of distress," where mv takes the place of the metaphorical "ODD. Besides these, compare cxl. 5, 6 with cxli. 9; cxlii. 7 with cxliii. 9; cxl. 3 with cxli. 5, mjn; cxl. 14 with cxlii. 8; cxlii. 4 with cxliii. 8.
The right understanding of the Psalm depends upon the right understanding of the situation. Since it is inscribed in!?, it is presumably a situation corresponding to the history of David, out of the midst of which the Psalm is composed, either by David himself or by some one else who desired to give expression in Davidic strains to David's mood when in this situation. For the gleaning of Davidic Psalms which we find in the last two Books of the Psalter is for the most part derived from historical works in which these Psalms, in some instances only free reproductions of the feelings of David with respect to old Davidic models, adorned the historic narrative. The Psalm before us adorned the history of the time of the persecution by Absalom. At that time David was driven out of Jerusalem, and consequently cut off from the sacrificial worship of God upon Zion; and our Psalm is an evening hymn of one of those troublous days. The ancient church, even prior to the time of Gregory (Constitutiones Apostolicce, ii. 59), had chosen it for its evening hymn, just as it had chosen Ps. Ixiii. for its morning hymn. Just as Ps. lxiii. was called 6 opOpLvos (ibid. viii. 37), so this Psalm, as being the Vesper Psalm, was called 6 eirCkv-xyios (ibid. viii. 35).
Vers. 1, 2. The very beginning of Ps. cxli. is more after the manner of David than really Davidic; for instead of haste thee to me, David always says, haste thee for my help, xxii. 20, xxxviii. 23, xl. 14. The *$ that is added to WjJ3 (as in iv. 2) is to be explained, as in lvii. 3: when I call to Thee, i.e. when I call Thee, who art now far from me, to me. The general cry for help is followed in ver. 2 by a petition for the answering of his prayer. Luther has given an excellent rendering: Let my prayer avail to Thee as an offering of incense; the lifting up of my hands, as an evening sacrifice (Mein Gebet miisse fur dir tiigen wie ein Heuchopffer, Meine Hende auffheben, ivie ein Abendopffer). P3fi is the fut. Niph. of }te, and signifies properly to be set up, and to be established, or reflexive: to place and arrange or prepare one's self, Amos iv. 12; then to continue, e.g. ci. 7; therefore, either let it place itself, let it appear, sistat se, or better: let it stand, continue, i.e. let my prayer find acceptance, recognition with Thee H^bp, and the lifting up of my hands anjrrinjD. Expositors say that this in both instances is the comparatio decurtata, as in xi. 1 and elsewhere: as an incense-offering, as an evening mincha. But the poet purposely omits the 3 of the comparison. He wishes that God may be pleased to regard his prayer as sweet-smelling smoke or as incense, just as this was added to the azcara of the mealoffering, and gave it, in its ascending perfume, the direction upward to God,* and that He may be pleased to regard the incense-offering upon the golden altar of the holy place, Ex. xxx. 8, that is meant (since it is a non-priest who is speaking, according to Hitzig, of course John Hyrcanus), but rather, as also in Isa. i. 13, the incense of the azcara of the meal-offering which the priest burnt (T»Dpn) upon the altar; the incense (Isa. lxvi. 3) was entirely consumed, and not merely a handful taken from it.
lifting up of his hands (nxb'E, the construct with the reduplication given up, from HN^D, or even, after the form ruijlD, from nxtpD, here not ablatio, but according to the phrase D'ss urn [DHj], clevatio, Judg. xx. 38, 40, cf. Ps. xxviii. 2, and frequently) as an evening mincha, just as it was added to the evening tamtd according to Ex. xxix. 38-42, and concluded the work of the service of the day.*
Vers. 3, 4. The prayer now begins to be particularized, and that in the first instance as a petition for the grace of silence, calling to mind old Davidic passages like xxxix. 2, xxxiv. 14. The situation of David, the betrayed one, requires caution in speaking; and the consciousness of having sinned, not indeed against the rebels, but against God, who would not visit him thus without his deserving it, stood in the way of any outspoken self-vindication. In pone custodlam ori meo ^P^ is air. Xey., after the infinitive form npafl, row, HEsy. In ver. 3b
TH is air. Xey. for H7*; cf. " doors of the mouth" in Mic. vii. 5, and ttvXcll aTOfiaros in Euripides, rnatt might be imper. Kal: keep I pray, with Dag. dirimens as in Prov. iv. 13. But 15M?V is not in use; and also as the parallel word to n"JP^, which likewise has the appearance of being imperative, H1SM is explicable as regards its pointing by a comparison of nnjp* in Gen. xlix. 10, '"n^i in Deut. xxxiii. 3, and nanf? in lxxiii. 28. The prayer for the grace of silence is followed in ver. 4 by a prayer for the breaking off of all fellowship with the existing rulers. By a flight of irony they are called D^K, lords, in the sense of tt^N *33j iv. 3 (cf. the Spanish hidalgos = hijos d'algo, sons of somebody). The evil thing (in ' ^31, with Pasek between the two -i, as in Num. vii. 13, Deut. vii. 1 between the two D, and in 1 Chron. xxii. 3 between the two ^j), to which Jahve may be pleased never to incline his heart (Eft, fut. apoc. Hiplu as in xxvii. 9), is forthwith more particularly designated: perpetrate faci-
* The reason of it is this, that the evening mincha is oftener mentioned than the morning mincha (see, however, 2 Kings iii. 20). The whole burnt-offering of the morning and the meat-offering of the evening (2 Kings xvi. 15, 1 Kings xviii. 29, 36) are the beginning and close of the daily principal service; whence, according to the example of the nsus loquendi in Dan. ix. 21, Ezra ix. 4 sq.f later on mincha directly signifies the afternoon or evening.
nora maligne cum dominis, etc. «w8 of great achievements in the sense of infamous deeds, also occurs in xiv. 1, xcix. 8. Here, however, we have the Hithpo. <^1?, which, with the accusative of the object Tn^y, signifies: wilfully to make such actions the object of one's acting (cf. ^Jb J1*J> to meddle with any matter, to amuse, entertain one's self with a thing). The expression is made to express disgust as strongly as possible; this poet is fond of glaring colouring in his language. In the dependent passage neve eorum vescar cupediis, Dry is used poetical lv for ^3N, and 3 is the partitive Beth, as in Job xxi. 25. DWJ» is another hapaxlegomenon, but as being a designation of dainties (from DVJ, to be mild, tender, pleasant), it may not have been an unusual word. It is a well-known thing that usurpers revel in the cuisine and cellars of those whom they have driven away.
Vers. 5-7. Thus far the Psalm is comparatively easy of exposition; but now it becomes difficult, yet not hopelessly so. David, thoroughly conscious of his sins against God and of his imperfection as a monarch, says, in opposition to the abuse which he is now suffering, that he would gladly accept any friendly reproof: " let a righteous man smite in kindness and reprove me — head-oil (i.e. oil upon the head, to which such reproof is likened) shall my head not refuse." So we render it, following the accents, and not as Hupfeld, Kurtz, and Hitzig do: " if a righteous man smites me, it is love; if he reproves me, an anointing of the head is it unto me;" in connection with which the designation of the subject with NNT would be twice wanting, which is more than is admissible. P*)¥ stands here as an abstract substantive: the righteous man, whoever he may be, in antithesis, namely, to the rebels and to the people who have joined them. Amyraldus, Maurer, and Hengstenberg understand it of God; but it only occurs of God as an attribute, and never as a direct appellation. ^or\f as in Jer. xxxi. 3, is equivalent to lonst, cum benignitate = benigne. What is meant is, as in Job vi. 14, what Paul (Gal. vi. 1) styles irvevfjua irpavT7)T0<s. And D?n, tmidere, is used of the strokes of earnest but well-meant reproof, which is called " the blows of a friend" in Prov. xxvii. 6. Such reproof shall be to him as head-oil (xxiii. 5, cxxxiii. 2), which his head does not despise. V, written defectively for N"1?), like ^J in lv. 16, the nasal;/, which also expresses the negation in the Indo-Germanic languages) here signifies to deny, as in xxxiii. 10 to bring to nought, to destroy. On the other hand, the LXX. renders fii) XaravaTU) ttjv tcecpaXi'jv fAov, which is also followed by the Syriac and Jerome, perhaps after the Arabic ^jy, to become or to be fat, which is, however, altogether foreign to the Aramaic, and is, moreover, only used of fatness of the body, and in fact of camels. The meaning of the figure is this: wellmeant reproof shall be acceptable and spiritually useful to him. The confirmation 'U1 TfjP3 follows, which is enigmatical both in meaning and expression. This *viy is the cipher of a whole clause, and the following 1 is related to this *"riy as the Waw that introduces the apodosis, not to *3, as in 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, since no progression and connection is discernible if *3 is taken as a subordinating quia. We interpret thus: for it is still so (the matter still stands thus), that my prayer is against their wickednesses; i.e. that I use no weapon but that of prayer against these, therefore let me always be in that spiritual state of mind which is alive to well-meant reproof. Mendelssohn's rendering is similar: I still pray, whilst they practise infamy. On 1 Tiy cf. Zech. viii. 20 "Nf* Ttt (vid. Kohler), and Prov. xxiv. 27 \ ^rw. He who has prayed God in ver. 3 to set a watch upon his mouth is dumb in the presence of those who now have dominion, and seeks to keep himself clear of their sinful doings, whereas he willingly allows himself to be chastened by the righteous; and the more silent he is towards the world (see Amos v. 13), the more constant is he in his intercourse with God. But there will come a time when those who now behave as lords shall fall a prey to the revenge of the people who have been misled by them; and on the other hand, the confession of the salvation, and of the order of the salvation, of God, that has hitherto been put to silence, will again be able to make itself freely heard, and find a ready hearing.
As ver. 6 says, the new rulers fall a prey to the indignation of the people and are thrown down the precipices, whilst the people, having again come to their right mind, obey the words of David and find them pleasant and beneficial (vid. Prow xv. 26 xvi. 24). *B*?^ is to be explained according to 2 Kings ix. 33. The casting of persons down from the rock was not an unusual mode of execution (2 Chron. xxv. 12). ^D^T are the sides (cxl. 6, Judg. xi. 26) of the rock, after which the expression iyo\xeva irerpas of the LXX., which has been misunderstood by Jerome, is intended to be understood;* they are therefore the sides of the rock conceived of as it were as the hands of the body of rock, if we are not rather with Bottcher to compare the expressions H*3 and ^IT^S? construed with verbs of abandoning and casting down, Lam. i. 14, Job xvi. 11, and frequently. In ver. 7 there follows a further statement of the issue on the side of David and his followers: instar findentis et secantis terram (V?2 with Beth, elsewhere in the hostile signification of irrumpere) dispersa sunt ossa nostra ad ostium (s£? as in Prov. viii. 3) orci; Svmmachus: axrirep yecopybs orav pr}crar) rrjv yrjv, ovtcos eatcopiriaOr) ra ocna tj/ulcou eh ajo^ia ahov; Quinta: a>? KaWiepyoov Kal o-KCLTTTcov iv rfj 777, k.t.\. Assuming the very extreme, it is a look of hope into the future: should his bones and the bones of his followers be even scattered about the mouth of Sheol (cf. the Syrian picture of Sheol: " the dust upon its threshold *alescufteh" Deutsche Morgenldnd. Zeitschrift, xx. 513), their soul below, their bones above — it would nevertheless be only as when one in ploughing cleaves the earth; i.e. they do not lie there in order that they may continue lying, but that they may rise up anew, as the seed that is sown sprouts up out of the upturned earth. LXX. Codd. Vat. et Sinait. ra oara tJ/xwz;, beside which, however, is found the reading avrcov (Cod. Alex, by a second hand, and the Syriac, Arabic, and -ZEthiopic versions), as Bottcher also, pro ineptissimo utcunque, thinks ITOVJJ must be read, understanding this, according to 2 Chron. xxv. 12 extrem.f of the mangled bodies of those cast down from the rock. We here discern the hope of a resurrection, if not directly, at least (cf. Oehler in Herzog's Real-Encyklopddie, concluding volume, S. 422) as an emblem of victory in spite of having succumbed. That which authorizes this interpretation lies in the figure of
* Beda Pieringer in his Psalterium Romana Lyra Redditum (Ratisbonaa 1859) interprets KCLTiKoQnoc&v txo^ivx 7rirpctg oi xoccrctioi ocvtZu, absorpti, i.e. operti sunt loco ad petram pertinente signiferi turpis consilii eorum.
the husbandman, and in the conditional clause (ver. 8), which leads to the true point of the comparison; for as a complaint concerning a defeat that had been suffered: u so are our bones scattered for the mouth of the grave (in order to be swallowed up by it)," ver. 7, would be alien and isolated with respect to what precedes and what follows.
Vers. 8-10. If ver. 7 is not merely an expression of the; complaint, but at the same time of hope, we now have no need to give the *3 the adversative sense of imo, but we may leave it its most natural confirmatory signification namque. From this point the Psalm gradually dies away in strains comparatively easy to be understood and in perfect keeping with the situation. In connection with ver. 8 one is reminded of xxv. 15, xxxi. 2; with vers. 9 sq., of vii. 16, lxix. 23, and other passages. In " pour not out (pvn with sharpened vowel instead of "OT, Ges. § 75, rem. 8) my soul," n"JV, Piel, is equivalent to the Hiph. rnyn in Isa. liii. 12. ns H] are as it were the hands of the seizing and capturing snare; and y ^i£ is virtually a genitive: qui insidias tendunt mihi, since one cannot say nQ KJp^ ponere laqueum. DHbSD, nets, in ver. 10 is another hapaxlegomenon; the enallage numeri is as in lxii. 5, Isa. ii. 8, v. 23, — the singular that slips in refers what is said of the many to each individual in particular. The plural rwpb for D^pb, xviii. 6, Ixiv. 6, also occurs only here. TO is to be explained as in iv. 9: it is intended to express the coincidence of the overthrow of the enemies and the going forth free of the persecuted one. With *33K TO the poet gives prominence to his simultaneous, distinct destiny: simul ego dum (*W as in Job viii. 21, cf. i. 18) prcetereo h. e. evado. The inverted position of the *3 in cxviii. 10-12 may be compared; with cxx. 7 and 2 Kings ii. 14, however (where instead of wn"*|K it is with Thenius to be read NiDN)} the case is different.
4 When my spirit veils itself within me, Thou indeed art acquainted with my way.
to praise Thy Name — In me shall the righteous glory: that Thou dealest bountifully with me.
This the last of the eight Davidic Psalms, which are derived by their inscriptions from the time of the persecution by Saul (vid. on Ps. xxxiv.), is inscribed: A Meditation by David, when he was in the cave, a Prayer. Of these eight Psalms, Ps. lii. and liv. also bear the name of Maskil (vid. on Ps. xxxii.); and in this instance n?Dn (which occurs besides as an inscription only in xc. 1, cii. 1, Hab. iii. 1) is further added, which looks like an explanation of the word maskil (not in use out of the range of Psalm-poetry). The article of mjJDa, as in lvii. 1, points to the cave of Adullam (1 Sam. ch. xxii.) or the cave of Engedi (1 Sam. ch. xxiv.), which latter, starting from a narrow concealed entrance, forms such a labyrinthine maze of passages and vaults that the torches and lines of explorers have not to the present time been able to reach the extremities of it.
The Psalm does not contain any sure signs of a post- Davidic age; still it appears throughout to be an imitation of older models, and pre-eminently by means of vers. 2 sq. (cf. lxxvii. 2 sq.) and ver. 4 (cf. lxxvii. 4) it comes into a relation of dependence to Ps. lxxvii., which is also noticeable in Ps. cxliii. (cf. ver. 5 with lxxvii. 12 sq.). The referring back of the two Psalms to David comes under one and the same judgment.
Vers. 2-4a. The emphasis of the first two lines rests upon 'n"?x. Forsaken by all created beings, he confides in Jahve. He turns to Him in pathetic and importunate prayer (PVJ, the parallel word being l^nnn, as in xxx. 9), and that not merely inwardly (Ex. xiv. 15), but with his voice (vid. on iii. 5) — for audible prayer reacts soothingly, strengtheningly, and sanctifyingly upon the praying one — he pours out before Him his trouble which distracts his thoughts (JV'W:JQB> as in cii. 1, cf. Ixii. 9, lxiv. 2, 1 Sam. i. 16), he lays open before Him everything that burdens and distresses him. Not as though He did not also know it without all this; on the contrary, when his spirit (^nn as in cxliii. 4, lxxvii. 4, cf. ^M Jonah ii. 8, Ps. cvii. 5, *3p Ixi. 3) within him ( vV, see xlii. 5) is enshrouded and languishes, just this is his consolation, that Jahve is intimately acquainted with his way together with the dangers that threaten him at every step, and therefore also understands how to estimate the title (right) and meaning of his complaints. The Waw of nnffl is the same as in 1 Kings viii. 36, cf. 35. Instead of saying: then I comfort myself with the fact that, etc., he at once declares the fact with which he comforts himself. Supposing this to be the case, there is no need for any alteration of the text in order to get over that which is apparently incongruous in the relation of ver. 46 to 4a.
Vers. 46-6. The prayer of the poet now becomes deepbreathed and excited, inasmuch as he goes more minutely into the details of his straitened situation. Everywhere, whithersoever he has to go (cf. on cxliii. 8), the snares of craftily calculating foes threaten him. Even God's all-seeing eye will not discover any one who would right faithfully and carefully interest himself in him. EP3n, look! is a graphic hybrid form of tt^n and t^an, the usual and the rare imperative form \ cf. K^n 1 Sam. xx. 40 (cf. Jer. xvii. 18), and the same modes of writing the inf. absoL in Judg. i. 28, Amos ix. 8, and the fut. conv. in Ezek. xl. 3. TOO is, as in Ruth ii. 19, cf. 10, one who looks kindly upon any one, a considerate (cf. the phrase D^B T3rt) well-wisher and friend. Such an one, if he had one, would be vsw'by "ic'y or iwp (xvi. 8), for an open attack is directed to the arms-bearing right side (cix. 6), and there too the helper in battle (ex. 5) and the defender or advocate (cix. 31) takes his place in order to cover him who is imperilled (exxi. 5). But then if God looks in that direction, He will find him, who is praying to Him, unprotected. Instead of jW one would certainly have sooner expected i£;N or *a as the form of introducing the condition in which he is found; but Hitzig's conjecture,?£>\ B*an nN~n, " looking for days and seeing," gives us in the place of this difficulty a confusing half-Aramaism in rpj = rpv in the sense of D^ in Dan. viii. 27, Neh. i. 4. Ewald's rendering is better: " though I look to the right hand and see (n^)> yet no friend appears for me; " but this use of the inf. absol. with an adversative apodosis is without example. Thus therefore the pointing appears to have lighted upon the correct idea, inasmuch as it recognises here the current formula ntoi Dan? e.g. Job xxxv. 5, Lam. v. 1. The fact that David, although surrounded by a band of loyal subjects, confesses to having no true friend, is to be understood similarly to the language of Paul when he says in Phil. ii. 20: "I have no man like-minded." All human love, since sin has taken possession of humanity, is more or less selfish, and all fellowship of faith and of love imperfect; and there are circumstances in life in which these dark sides make themselves felt overpoweringly, so that a man seems to himself to be perfectly isolated and turns all the more urgently to God, who alone is able to supply the soul's want of some object to Jove, whose love is absolutely unselfish, and unchangeable, and unbeclouded, to whom the soul can confide without reserve whatever burdens it, and who not only honestly desires its good, but is able also to compass it in spite of every obstacle. Surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, and misunderstood, or at least not thoroughly understood, by his friends, David feels himself broken off from all created beings. On this earth every kind of refuge is for him lost (the expression is like Job xi. 20). There is no one there who should ask after or care for his soul, and should right earnestly exert himself for its deliverance. Thus, then, despairing of all visible things, he cries to the Invisible One. He is his « refuge " (xci. 9) and his " portion " (xvi. 5,