Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Ixxiii. 26), i.e. the share in a possession that satisfies him. To be allowed to call Him his God — this it is which suffices him and outweighs everything. For Jahve is the Living One, and he who possesses Him as his own finds himself thereby " in the land of the living " (xxvii. 13, lii. 7). He cannot die, he cannot perish. Vers. 7, 8. His request now ascends all the more confident of being answered, and becomes calm, being well-grounded in his feebleness and the superiority of his enemies, and aiming at the glorifying of the divine Name. In ver. 7 W"j calls to mind xvii. 1; the first confirmation, lxxix. 8, and the second, xviii. 18. But this is the only passage in the whole Psalter where the poet designates the cl distress " in which he finds himself as a prison ("Up*?). Ver. 86 brings the whole congregation of the righteous in in the praising of the divine Name. The poet therefore does not after all find himself so absolutely alone, as it mi^ht seem according to ver. 5. He is far from regarding himself as the only righteous person. He is only a member of a community or church whose destiny is interwoven with his own, and which will glory in his deliverance as its own; for " if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it" (1 Cor. xii. 26). We understand the differently interpreted V1W* after this "rejoicing with" (avy^aLpei). The LXX., Syriac, and Aquila render: the righteous wait for me; but to wait is "UFD and not IWn. The modern versions, on the other hand, almost universally, like Luther after Felix Pratensis, render: the righteous shall surround me (flock about me), in connection with which, as Hengstenberg observes, *3 denotes the tender sympathy they feel with him: crowding closely upon me. But there is no instance of a verb of surrounding (*1SK, 33D, 33b, W, "W, Ti?n) taking 3; the accusative stands with won in Hab. i. 4, and "iri3 in xxii. 13, in the signification cingere. Symmachus (although erroneously rendering: to ovofia <rov aTecfxivoocrovTcu oYfcatot), Jerome (in me coronabuntur justi), Parchon, Aben-Ezra, Coccejus, and others, rightly take wra* as a denominative from "ins, to put on a crown or to crown (cf. Prov. xiv. 18): on account of me the righteous shall adorn themselves as with crowns, i.e. shall triumph, that Thou dealest bountifully with me (an echo of xiii. 6). According to passages like lxiv. 11, xl. 17, one might have expected ia instead of *3. But the close of Ps. xxii. (vers. 23 sqq.), cf. cxl. 12 sq., shows that *3 is also admissible. The very fact that David contemplates his own destiny and the destiny of his foes in a not merely ideal but foreordain edly causal connection with the general end of the two powers that stand opposed to one another in the world, belongs to the characteristic impress of the Psalms of David that come from \he time of Saul's persecution.

1 JAHVE, hear my prayer, oh give ear to my supplication; In Thy faithfulness answer me, in Thy righteousness.

2 And enter not into judgment with Thy servant, For before Thee no man living is righteous.

3 For the enemy hath persecuted my soul, He hath crushed my life to the ground,

7 Answer me speedily, Jahve, my spirit yearneth: Hide not Thy face from me,

8 Let me hear Thy loving-kindness with the dawn of the For I trust in Thee. [morning, Make known to me the way in which I am to go,

10 Teach me to do Thy will, For Thou art my God;

12 And in Thy loving-kindness cut off mine enemies, And destroy all the oppressors of my soul,

In some codices of the LXX. this Psalm (as Euthymius also bears witness) has no inscription at all; in others, however, it has the inscription: WoX/jlos tco Aavelh ore avrov iSlw/eev 'AfSearaaXcofJL 6 vibs avrov (Cod. Sinait. ore avrov o va Kara- Sico/cei). Perhaps by the same poet as Ps. cxlii., with which it accords in vers, 4, 8, 11 (cf. cxlii. 4, 8), it is like this a modern offshoot of the Davidic Psalm-poetry, and is certainly composed as coming out of the situation of him who was persecuted by Absalom. The Psalms of this time of persecution are distinguished from those of the time of the persecution by Saul by the deep melancholy into which the mourning of the dethroned king was turned by blending with the penitential sorrowfulness of one conscious of his own guilt. On account of this fundamental feature the church has chosen Ps. cxliii. for the last of its seven Psalmi poenitentiales. The Sela at the close of ver. 6 divides the Psalm into two halves.

Vers. 1-6. The poet pleads two motives for the answering of his prayer which are to be found in God Himself, viz. God's n^EK, truthfulness, with which He verifies the truth of His promises, that is to say, His faithfulness to His promises; and His ■"•i?*]?, righteousness, not in a recompensative legal sense, but in an evangelical sense, in accordance with His counsel, i.e. the strictness and earnestness with which He maintains the order of salvation established by His holy love, both against the ungratefully disobedient and against those who insolently despise Him. Having entered into this order of salvation, and within the sphere of it serving Jahve as his God and Lord, the poet is the servant of Jahve. And because the conduct of the God of salvation, ruled by this order of salvation, or His u righteousness" according to its fundamental manifestation, consists in His justifying the sinful man who has no righteousness that he can show corresponding to the divine holiness, but penitently confesses this disorganized relationship, and, eager for salvation, longs for it to be set right a^ain, — because of all this, the poet prays that He would not also enter into judgment (BSB>»3 Kte as in Job ix. 32, xxii. 4, xiv. 3) with him, that He therefore would let mercy instead of justice have its course with him. For, apart from the fact that even the holiness of the good spirits does not coincide with God's absolute holiness, and that this defect must still be very far greater in the case of spirit-corporeal man, who has earthiness as the basis of his origin, — yea, according to li. 7, man is conceived in sin, so that he is sinful from the point at which he begins to live onward, — his life is indissolubly interwoven with sin, no living man possesses a righteousness that avails before God (Job iv. 17, ix. 2, xiv. 3 sq., xv. 14, and frequently).*

With s3 (ver. 3) the poet introduces the ground of his petition for an answer, and more particularly for the forgiveness of his guilt. He is persecuted by deadly foes and is already nigh unto death, and that not without transgression of his own, so that consequently his deliverance depends upon the forgiveness of his sins, and will coincide with this. " The enemy persecuted my soul " is a variation of language taken from vii. 6 (rpn for D,sn, as in lxxviii. 50, and frequently in the Book of Job, more particularly in the speeches of Elihu). Ver. 2>c also recalls vii. 6, but as to the words it sounds like Lam. iii. 6 (cf. lxxxviii. 7). afty *flD (LXX. vetcpov? alwvos) are either those for ever dead (the Syriac), after tbSy JW in Jer. li. 39, cf.)u?)y rva in Eccles. xii. 5, or those dead time out of mind (Jerome), after tbSy DV in Ezek. xxvi. 20. The genitive construction admits both senses; the former, however, is rendered more natural by the consideration that WBfin glances back to the beginning that seems to have no end: the poet seems to himself like one who is buried alive for ever. In consequence

* Gerson observes on this point (yid. Thomasius, Dogmatik, iv. 251): I desire the righteousness of pity, which Thou bestowest in the present life, not the judgment of that righteousness which Thou wilt put into operation in the future life—the righteousness which justifies the repentant one.

of this hostility which aims at his destruction, the poet feels his spirit within him, and consequently his inmost life, veil itself (the expression is the same as cxlii. 4, lxxvii. 4); and in his inward part his heart falls into a state of disturbance (Dpifiy^ a Hitlipo. peculiar to the later language), so that it almost ceases to beat. He calls to mind the former days, in which Jahve was manifestly with him; he reflects upon the great redemptive work of God, with all the deeds of might and mercy in which it lias hitherto been unfolded; he meditates upon the doing (JWVB2, Ben-Naphtali ^OT?2) of His hands, i.e. the hitherto so wondrously moulded history of himself and of his people. They are echoes out of lxxvii. 4-7, 12 sq. The contrast which presents itself to the Psalmist in connection with this comparison of his present circumstances with the past opens his wounds still deeper, and makes his prayer for help all the more urgent. He stretches forth his hands to God that He may protect and assist him (vid. Holemann, Bibelstudien, i. 150 f.). Like a parched land is his soul turned towards Him, — language in which we recognise a bending round of the primary passage lxiii. 2. Instead of v it would be ^, if npp (Targum TOTp) were not, as it always is, taken up and included in the sequence of the accents.

Vers. 7-12. In this second half the Psalm seems still more like a reproduction of the thoughts of earlier Psalms. The prayer, " answer me speedily, hide not Thy face from me," sounds like lxix. 18, xxvii. 9, cf. cii. 3. The expression of languishing longing, Tin nri73, is like Ixxxiv. 3. And the apodosis, " else I should become like those who go down into the pit," agrees word for word with xxviii. 1, cf. lxxxviii. 5. In connection with the words, " cause me to hear Thy lovingkindness in the early morning," one is reminded of the similar prayer of Moses in xc. 14, and with the confirmatory " for in Thee do I trust" of xxv. 2, and frequently. With the prayer that the night of affliction may have an end with the next morning's dawn, and that God's helping loving-kindness may make itself felt by him, is joined the prayer that God would be pleased to grant him to know the way that he has to go in order to escape the destruction into which they are anxious to ensnare him. This last prayer has its type in Ex. xxxiii. 13, and in the Psalter in xxv. 4 (cf. cxlii. 4); and its confirmation: for to Thee have I lifted up my soul, viz. in a craving after salvation and in the confidence of faith, has its type in xxv. 1, lxxxvi. 4. But the words W?3 *pb«, which are added to the petition " deliver me from mine enemies" (lix. 2, xxxi. 16), are peculiar, and in their expression without example. The Syriac version leaves them untranslated. The LXX. renders: oti 7rpo? <T€ fcaTe(f)vyov, by which the defective mode of writing TIDD is indirectly attested, instead of which the translators read VIM (cf. ^V W3 in Isa. x. 3); for elsewhere not npn but DU is reproduced with /earacpvyelv. The Targum renders it *I"JB*8 pnw WJD, Thy Logos do I account as (my) Redeemer (i.e. regard it as such), as if the Hebrew words were to be rendered: upon Thee do I reckon or count, WDS = V0S, Ex. xii. 4. Luther closely follows the LXX.: " to Thee have I fled for refuge." Jerome, however, inasmuch as he renders: ad te protectus sum, has pointed WM (WM). Hitzig (on the passage before us and Prov. vii. 20) reads VIM from ND3 = *9p? to look (" towards Thee do I look"). But the Hebrew contains no trace of that verb; the full moon is called NDD (hdd), not as being " a sight or vision, species" but from its covered orb (vol. ii. 394).

The 71D3 before us only admits of two interpretations: (1) Ad (apud) te texi =. to Thee have I secretly confided it (Rashi, Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Coccejus, J. H. Michaelis, J. D. Michaelis, Rosenmiiller, Gesenius, and De Wette). But such a constructio prcegnans, in connection with which HD3 would veer round from the signification to veil (cf. |0 HDD, Gen. xviii. 17) into its opposite, and the clause have the meaning of Wfc v£« *, Jer. xi. 20, xx. 12, is hardly conceivable. (2) Ad (apud) te abscondidi, scil. me (Saadia, Calvin, Maurer, Ewald, and Hengstenberg), in favour of which we decide; for it is evident from Gen. xxxviii. 14, Deut. xxii. 12, cf. Jonah iii. 6, that HD3 can express the act of covering as an act that is referred to the person himself who covers, and so can obtain a reflexive meaning. Therefore: towards Thee, with Thee have I made a hiding = hidden myself, which according to the sense is equivalent to *rppn (v{d. vol. i. 99), as Hupfeld (with a few mss.) wishes to read; but Abulwalid has already remarked that the same goal is reached with snED. Jahve, with whom he hides himself, is alone able to make known to him what is right and beneficial in the position in which he finds himself, in which he is exposed to temporal and spiritual dangers, and is able to teach him to carrv out the recognised will of God (" the will of God, good and well-pleasing and perfect," Rom. xii. 2); and this it is for which he prays to Him in ver. 10 (^JWH; another reading, IJttn). For Jahve is indeed his God, who cannot leave him, who is assailed and tempted without and within, in error; may His good Spirit then (inn nniD for nnitsn, Neh. ix. 20*) lead him in a level country, for, as it is said in Isaiah, ch. xxvi. 7, in looking up to Jahve, "the path which the righteous man takes is smoothness; Thou makest the course of the righteous smooth." The geographical term "Nt^O pK, Deut. iv. 43, Jer. xlviii. 21, is here applied spiritually. Here, too, reminiscences of Psalms already read meet us everywhere: cf. on " to do Thy will," xl. 9; on " for Thou art my God," xl. 6, and frequently; on " Thy good Spirit," li. 14; on " a level country," and the whole petition, xxvii. 11 (where the expresssion is " a level path"), together with v. 9, xxv. 4 sq., xxxi. 4. And the Psalm also further unrolls itself in such now well-known thoughts of the Psalms: For Thy Name's sake, Jahve (xxv. 11), quicken me again (lxxi. 20, and frequently); by virtue of Thy righteousness be pleased to bring my soul out of distress (cxlii. 8, xxv. 17, and frequently); and by virtue of Thy loving-kindness cut off mine enemies (liv. 7). As in ver. 1 faithfulness and righteousness, here loving-kindness (mercy) and righteousness, are coupled together; and that so that mercy is not named beside fcO¥in? nor righteousness beside JVByfi, but the reverse (yid. on ver. 1). It is impossible that God should suffer him who has hidden himself in Him to die and perish, and should suffer his enemies on the other hand to triumph. Therefore the poet confirms supply jjl£*N between the words); the former is confirmed from the Hebrew, vid. Ewald, § 287, a.

the prayer for the cutting off (n^n as in xciv. 23) of his enemies and the destruction (T??.^ elsewhere *T3N) of the oppressors of his soul (elsewhere TfV) with the words: for I am Thy servant.

1 BLESSED be Jahve my Rock, Who traineth my hands for the fight, My fingers for the war —

2 My loving-kindness and my fortress, My high tower and my deliverer for me, My shield and He in whom I hide, Who subdueth my people under me!

3 Jahve, what is man that Thou takest knowledge of him, The child of mortal man that Thou heedest him!

5 Jahve, bow Thy heavens and come down, Touch the mountains that they smoke.

6 Cast forth lightnings to scatter them; Send forth Thine arrows to destroy them.

Rescue me and deliver me out of great waters: Out of the hand of the sons of the strange land,

And whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

9 Elohim, a new song will I sing unto Thee, Upon a ten-stringed nabla will I play unto Thee,

L2 Beeousi our sons are as high-reared plants in their youthful vigour, Our daughters as adorned corners after the mode of structure of a palace;

Our sheep bringing forth by thousands, multiplying by tens of thousands in our pastures;

14 Our kine bearing without mishap and without loss, And no lamentation in our streets.

15 Blessed is the people that is in such a case, Blessed is the people whose God is Jahve!

Praised be Jahve who teacheth me to fight and conquer (vers. 1, 2), me the feeble mortal, who am strong only in Him, vers. 3, 4. May Jahve then be pleased to grant a victory this time also over the boastful, lying enemies, vers. 5-8; so will I sing new songs of thanksgiving unto Him, the bestower of victory, vers. 9, 10. May He be pleased to deliver me out of the hand of the barbarians who envy us our prosperity, which is the result of our having Jahve as our God, vers. 11-15. A glance at this course of the thought commends the additional inscription of the LXX. (according to Origen only " in a few copies"), 7T/30? top roXidB, and the Targumist's reference of the " evil sword" in ver. 10 to the sword of Goliath (after the example of the Midrash). Read 1 Sam. xvii. 47. The Psalm has grown out of this utterance of David. In one of the old histories, just as several of these lie at the foundation of our Books of Samuel as sources of information that are still recognisable, it was intended to express the feelings with which David entered upon the single-handed combat with Goliath and decided the victory of Israel over the Philistines. At that time he had already been anointed by Samuel, as both the narratives which have been worked up together in the First Book of Samuel assume: see 1 Sam. xvi. 13, x. 1. And this victory was for him a gigantic stride to the throne.

If "l^^: in ver. 12a is taken as eo quod, so that envy is brought under consideration as a motive for the causeless (KWf)| lyingly treacherous rising pi$ i^) of the neighbouring peoples, then the passage vers. 12-15 can at any rate be comprehended as a part of the form of the whole. But only thus, and not otherwise; for 1B>K cannot be intended as a statement of the aim or purpose: in order that they may be... (Jerome, De Wette, Hengstenberg, and others), since nothing but illustrative substantival clauses follow; nor do these clauses admit of an optative sense: We, whose sons, may they be... (Maurer); and IB'K never has an assuring sense (Vaihinger). It is also evident that we cannot, with Saadia, go back to ver. 9 for the interpretation of the IPK (U ^U ^aJ). But that junction by means of eo quod is hazardous, since envy or ill-will (nwp) is not previously mentioned, and "i£P p»* DJW expresses a fact, and not an action. If it is further considered that nothing is wanting in the way of finish to the Psalm if it closes with ver. 11, it becomes all the more doubtful whether vers. 12-15 belonged originally to the Psalm. And yet we cannot discover any Psalm in its immediate neighbourhood to which this piece might be attached. It might the most readily, as Hitzig correctly judges, be inserted between vers. 13 and 14 of Ps. cxlvii. But the rhythm and style differ from this Psalm, and we must therefore rest satisfied with the fact that a fragment of another Psalm is here added to Ps. cxliv., which of necessity may be accounted as an integral part of it; but in spite of the fact that the whole Psalm is built up on a gigantic scale, this was not its original corner-stone, just as one does not indeed look for anything further after the refrain, together with the mention of David in vers. 10 sq., cf. xviii. 51.

Vers. 1, 2. The whole of this first strophe is an imitation of David's great song of thanksgiving, Ps. xviii. Hence the calling of Jahve "my rock," xviii. 3, 47; hence the heaping up of other appellations in ver. 2a, in which xviii. 3 is echoed; but 4"c6ttM (with Lamed deprived of the Dagesh) follows the model of 2 Sam. xxii. 2. The naming of Jahve with *iDn is a bold abbreviation of *»pn *n% in Hx. U9 \Sy as also in Jonah ii. 9 the God whom the idolatrous ones forsake is called BTOn. Instead of nor6o the Davidic Psalms also poetically say 3-Jp, lv. 22, cf. lxxviii. 9. The expression " who traineth my hands for the fight" we have already read in xviii. 35. The last words of the strophe, too, are after xviii. 48; but in-

.id of 12T1 this poet says T^^IJj from TTJ:=nTl (cf. Isa. xlv. 1, xli. 2), perhaps under the influence of Tib* in 2 Sam. xxii. 48. In Ps. xviii. 48 we however read D*oy, and the Masora lias enumerated Ps. cxliv. 2, together with 2 Sam. xxii. 44, Lam. iii. 14, as the three passages in which it is written 'oy, whilst one expects D'oy (ansy pT3Dl ':), as the Targum, Syriac, and Jerome (yet not the LXX.) in fact render it. But neither from the language of the books nor from the popular dialect can it be reasonably expected that they would say *Bp for D^S]/ in such an ambiguous connection. Either, therefore, we have to read ti^ny* or we must fall in with the strong expression, and this is possible: there is, indeed, no necessity for the subduing to be intended of the use of despotic power, it can also be intended of God-given power, and of subjugating authority. David, the anointed one, but not having as yet ascended the throne, here gives expression to the hope that Jahve will grant him deeds of victory which will compel Israel to submit to him, whether willingly or reluctantly.

Vers. 3, 4. It is evident that ver. 3 is a variation of viii. 5 with the use of other verbs. JH* in the sense of loving intimacy; 3'^n, properly to count, compute, here rationem habere. Instead of ^ followed by the future there are consecutive futures here, and B"^~i? is aramaizingly (BOX 13) metamorphosed into BfafcTja, Ver. 4 is just such another imitation, like a miniature of xxxix. 6 sq., 11, cf. Ixii. 10. The figure of the shadow is the same as in cii. 12, cf. cix. 23. The connection of the third stanza with the second is still more disrupt than that of the second with the first.

Vers. 5-8. The deeds of God which Ps. xviii. celebrates are here made an object of prayer. We see from xviii. 10 that "nfflj ver. 5a, has Jahve and not the heavens as its subject; and from xviii. 15 that the suffix em in ver. 6 is meant in both instances to be referred to the enemies. The enemies are called sons of a foreign country, i.e. barbarians, as in xviii. 45 sq. The fact that Jahve stretches forth His hand out of

* Rashi is acquainted with an otherwise unknown note of the Masora: "•"Ip Vnnn; but this Keri is imaginary.

tlie heavens and rescues David out of great waters, is taken verbatim from xviii. 17; and the poet has added the interpretation to the figure here. On ver. 8a cf. xii. 3, xli. 7. The combination of words " right hand of falsehood " is the same as in cix. 2. But our poet, although so great an imitator, has, however, much also that is peculiar to himself. The verb P"i_3, " to send forth lightning;" the verb HVQ in the Aramaeo- Arabic signification "to tear out of, rescue," which in David always only signifies " to tear open, open wide" (one's mouth), xxii. 14, lxvi. 14; and the combination " the right hand of falsehood " (like " the tongue of falsehood " in cix. 2), i.e. the hand raised for a false oath, are only found here. The figure of Omnipotence, " He toucheth the mountains and they smoke," is, as in civ. 32, taken from the mountains that smoked at the giving of the Law, Ex. xix. 18, xx. 15. The mountains, as in Ixviii. 17 (cf. lxxvi. 5), point to the worldly powers. God only needs to touch these as with the tip of His finger, and the inward fire, which will consume them, at once makes itself known by the smoke, which ascends from them. The prayer for victory is followed by a vow of thanksgiving for that which is to be bestowed.

Vers. 9-11. With the exception of Ps. cviii., which is composed of two Davidic Elohim-Psalms, the Elohim in ver. 9 of this strophe is the only one in the last two Books of the Psalter, and is therefore a feeble attempt also to reproduce the Davidic Elohimic style. The " new song " calls to mind xxxiii. 3, xl. 4; and "IW TO also recalls xxxiii. 2 (which see). The fact that David mentions himself by name in his own song comes about in imitation of xviii. 51. From the eminence of thanksgiving the song finally descends again to petition, vers. 7c, 8 being repeated as a refrain. The petition developes itself afresh out of the attributes of the Being invoked (ver. 10), and these are a pledge of its fulfilment. For how could the God to whom all victorious kings owe their victory (xxxiii. 16, cf. 2 Kings v. 1, 1 Sam. xvii. 47) possibly suffer His servant David to succumb to the sword of the enemy! Hjn nin is the sword that is engaged in the service of evil.

Vers. 12-15. With reference to the relation of this passage to the preceding, vid. the introduction. "WK (it is uncertain whether this is a word belonging originally to this piece or one added by the person who appended it as a sort of clasp or rivet) signifies here guonutm^ as in Jndg. ix. 17, Jer. xvi. 13, and frequently. LXX. tov ol viol (Drr:3 *rc;x); so that the temporal prosperity of the enemies is pictured here, and in ver. 15 the spiritual possession of Israel is contrasted with it. The union heroines satisfactorily close in connection with this reading, but the reference of the description, so designedly set forth, to the enemies is improbable. In vers. 12-1 1 we hear a language that is altogether peculiar, without any assignable earlier model. Instead of D^OJ we read D'?B) elsewhere; "in their youth " belongs to u our sons." U\WD, our garners or treasuries, from a singular ttD or WD (apparently from a verb HID, but contracted out of WO), is a hapaxlegomenon; the older language has the words DDK "i¥ix muDD instead of it. In like manner

It, genus (vid. Evvald, Lehrbuch, S. 380), is a later word (found besides only in 2 Chron. xvi. 14, where D^tt signifies et varia quidem, Syriac zenonoje, or directly spices from species); the older language has PO for this word. Instead of D'B&M, kine, which signifies u princes" in the older language, the older language says D^EPX in viii. 8. The plena scriptio B3ttfe^ in which the Waiv is even inaccurate, corresponds to the later period; and to this corresponds t? = ~i£>N in ver. 15, cf. on the other hand xxxiii. 12. Also D^aDD, laden = bearing, like the Latin forda from ferre (cf. 13VO in Job xxi. 10), is not found elsewhere. |N¥ is (contrary to Gen. xxx. 39) treated as a feminine collective, and *&$ (cf. "W in Job xxi. 10) as a nomen epiccenum. Contrary to the usage of the word, Maurer, Koster, Von Lengerke, and Fiirst render it: our princes are set up (after Ezra vi. 3); also, after the mention of animals of the fold upon the meadows out-of-doors, one does not expect the mention of princes, but of horned cattle that are to be found in the stalls. m? elsewhere signifies a corner, and here, according to the prevailing view, the corner-pillars; so that the elegant slender daughters are likened to tastefully sculptured Caryatides — not to sculptured projections (Luther). For (1) rplf does not signify a projection, but a corner, an angle,

Arabic <L J;, zdwXa (in the terminology of the stone-mason the square-stone = H3Q J2xy in the terminology of the carpenter the chabdjd, in the comers are treasures). (2) The upstanding pillar is better adapted to the comparison than the overhanging projection. But that other prevailing interpretation is also doubtful. The architecture of Syria and Palestine — the ancient, so far as it can be known to us from its remains, and the new — exhibits nothing in connection with which one would be led to think of " corner-pillars." Nor is there any trace of that signification to be found in the Semitic rPW. On the other hand, the corners of large rooms in the houses of persons of position are ornamented with carved work even in the present day, and since this ornamentation is variegated, it may be asked whether ninttnp does here signify " sculptured," and not rather iC striped in colours, variegated," which we prefer, since zipn (cogn. 3Vn) signifies nothing more than to hew firewood;* and on the other side, the signification of the Arabic fc_^L^, to be striped, many-coloured (IV. to become green-striped, of the coloquintida), is also secured to the verb 3pn side by side with that signification by Prov. vii. 16. It is therefore to be rendered: our daughters are as corners adorned in varied colours after the architecture of palaces.f The words ■IvW],

* In every instance where 2&n (cogn. 3¥n) occurs, frequently side by side with D^D 2$W (to draw water), it signifies to hew wood for kindling;

wherefore in Arabic, in which the verb has been lost, y -l>^ signifies firewood (in distinction from ik_^i^1 wood for building, timber), and not merely this, but fuel in the widest sense, e.g. in villages where wood is scarce, cow-dung (yid. Job, i. 377, note), and the hemp-stalk, or stalk of the maize, in the desert the &jc, i.e. camel-dung (which blazes up with a blue flame), and the perennial steppe-plant or its root. In relation to c-^ka-, u^b^.) signifies lopped, pruned, robbed of its branches (of a tree), and c^-^U- S-^p- a pruning war, which devastates a country, just as the wood-gathering women of a settlement (styled ^LA>U>1! or

U-Jplysj!!) with their small hatchet (v^^k^yc) lay a district covered with tall plants bare in a few days. In the villages of the Merg' the little girls who collect the dry cow-dung upon the pastures are called c^Uu

t Corners with variegated carved work are found even in the present to bring forth by thousands, and 3£TO (denominative from.1321), which surpasses it, multiplied by tens of thousands, are freely formed. Concerning imin, meadows, vul. on Job xviii. 17. Pr3, ID a martial sense a defeat, eludes, e.g. in Judg. xxi. 15, is here any violent misfortune whatever, as murrain, which causes a breach, and nssv any head of cattle which goes off by a single misfortune. The lamentation in the streets is intended as in Jer. xiv. 2. n??^ is also found in Cant. v. 9; nor does the poet, however, hesitate to blend this W with the tetraerammaton into one word. The Jod is not da^eshed (cf. exxiii. 2), because it is to be read -rise", cf. rrtPPDsstflKB in Gen. xviii. 14. Luther takes ver. 15a and 156 as contrasts: Blessed is the people that is in such a case, But blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. There is, however, no antithesis intended, but only an exceeding of the first declaration by the second. For to be allowed to call the God from whom every blessing comes his God, is still infinitely more than the richest abundance of material blessing. The pinnacle of Israel's good fortune consists in being, by the election of grace, the people of the Lord (xxxii. 12).

day in Damascus in every reception-room (the so-called iclij) of respectable houses [cf. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Introduction]. An architectural ornament composed with much good taste and laborious art out of wood carvings, and glittering with gold and brilliant colours, covers the upper part of the corners, of which a kd'a may have as many as sixteen, since three wings frequently abut upon the bet el-bahara, i.e. the square with its marble basin. This decoration, which has a most pleasing effect to the eye, is a great advantage to saloons from two to three storeys high, and is evidently designed to get rid of the darker corners above on the ceiling, comes down from the ceiling in the corners of the room for the length of six to nine feet, gradually becoming narrower as it descends. It is the broadest above, so that it there also covers the ends of the horizontal corners formed by thjs walls and the ceiling. If this crowning of the corners, the technical designation of which, if I remember rightly, is <Lu Ji!l, kornia, might be said to go back into Biblical antiquity,

the Psalmist would have used it as a simile to mark the beauty, gorgeous dress, and rich adornment of women. Perhaps, too, because they are not only modest and chaste (cf. Arabic mesturdt, a veiled woman, in opposition to memshushdt, one shone on by the sun), but also, like the children of respectable families, hidden from the eyes of strangers; for the Arabic proverb quoted above says, "treasures are hidden in the corners," and the superscription of a letter addressed to a lady of position runs: "May it kiss the hand of the protected lady and of the hidden jewel." — Wetzstein.

And I will bless Thy Name for ever and ever.

And I will glorify Thy Name for ever and ever.

And His tender mercies are over all His works.

12 7 To make known to the sons of men His mighty acts,

And let all flesh bless His holy Name for ever and ever!

With Ps. cxliv. the collection draws doxologically towards its close. This Psalm, which begins in the form of the beracha

('n 1113), is followed by another in which benedicam (vers. 1, 2)

and benedicat (ver. 21) is the favourite word. It is the only the collective name of the Psalms. In B. Berachoth ib it is distinguished by the apophthegm: u Every one who repeats the

"n"6 r6nn three times a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come (ann oinyn p)." And why? Not merely follows the course of the alphabet (for Ps. cxix. is in fact also alphabetical, and that in an eightfold degree), and not merely because it celebrates God's care for all creatures (for this the

Great Hallel also does, Ps. cxxxvi. 25), but because it unites

In fact, Ps. cxlv. 16 is a celebration of the goodness of God which embraces every living thing, with which only cxxxvi.

S. 54); ver. 15 was also used at the holy communion, hence

Kara aTot^elov, observes Theodore t, real outo? 6 vjjlvos avy- Keirai. The Psalm is distichic, and every first line of the distich has the ordinal letter; but the distich Nun is wanting.

The Talmud (loc. cit.) is of opinion that it is because the fatal T\bp\ (Amos v. 2), which David, going on at once with 'n *piD D*t®3rno^ skips over, begins with Nun. On the other hand, Ewald, Vaihinger, and Sommer, like Grotius, think that the Aim- strophe has been lost. The LXX. (but not Aquila, Svmmachus, Theodotion, nor Jerome in his translation after the original text) gives such a strophe, perhaps out of a MS. (like the Dublin Cod. Keunicot, 142) in which it was supplied: ITtoTo? (jiD&o as in cxi. 7) icvptos iv {iracFi) rot? \6yoi<; avrov nal oaios iv iraai rol<; epyow avrov (according with ver. 17, with the change only of two words of this distich). Hitzig is of opinion that the original iVwn-strophe has been welded into Ps. cxli.; but only his clairvoyant-like historical discernment is able to amalgamate ver. 6 of this Psalm with our Ps. cxlv. We are contented to see in the omission of the iVwn-strophe an example of that freedom with which the Old Testament poets are wont to handle this kind of forms. Likewise there is no reason apparent for the fact that Jeremiah has chosen in ch. ii., iii., and iv. of the Lamentations to make the Ajhi-stroiphe follow the Ptf-strophe three times, whilst in ch. L it precedes it.

Vers. 1-7. The strains with which this hymn opens are familiar Psalm-strains. We are reminded of xxx. 2, and the likewise alphabetical song of praise and thanksgiving xxxiv. 2. The plena scriptio *w*$ in cxliii. 10 is repeated here. God is called "the King" as in xx. 10, xcviii. 6. The language of address " my God the King," which sounds harsh in comparison with the otherwise usual " my King and my God " (v. 3, Ixxxiv. 4), purposely calls God with unrelated generality, that is to say in the most absolute manner, the King. If the poet is himself a king, the occasion for this appellation of God is all the more natural and the signification all the more pertinent. But even in the mouth of any other person it is significant. Whosoever calls God by such a name acknowledges His royal prerogative, and at the same time does homage to Him and binds himself to allegiance; and it is just tins confessory act of exalting Him who in Himself is the absolutely lofty One that is here called D^n. But how can the poet express the purpose of praising God's Name for ever? Because the praise of God is a need of his inmost nature, he has a perfect right to forget his own mortality when engaged upon this devotion to the ever-living King. Clinging adoringly to the Eternal One, he must seem to himself to be eternal; and if there is a practical proof for a life after death, it is just this ardent desire of the soul, wrought of God Himself, after the praise of the God of its life (lit. its origin) which affords it the hiirhest. noblest delight. The idea of the silent Hades, which forces itself forward elsewhere, as in vi. G, where the mind of the poet is beclouded by sin, is here entirely removed, inasmuch as here the mind of the poet is the undimmed mirror of the divine glory. Therefore ver. 2 also does not concede the possibility of any interruption of the praise: the poet will daily (lxviii. 20) bless God, be they days of prosperity or of sorrow, uninterruptedly in all eternity will he glorify His Name (n^?j]^ as in lxix. 31). There is no worthier and more exhaustless object of praise (ver. 3): Jahve is great, and greatly to be praised (^P, taken from xlviii. 2, as in xcvi. 4, cf. xviii. 4), and of His "greatness" (cf. 1 Chron. xxix. 11, where this attribute precedes all others) there is no searching out, i.e. it is so abysmally deep that no searching can reach its bottom (as in Isa. xl. 28, Job xi. 7 sq.). It has, however, been revealed, and is being revealed continually, and is for this veiy reason thus celebrated in ver. 4: one generation pro pagates to the next the growing praise of the works that He has wrought out (EvkfTO n^V), and men are able to relate all manner of proofs of His victorious power which prevails over everything, and makes everything subject to itself (ni^5 as in xx. 7, and frequently). This historically manifest and traditional divine doxa and the facts (*J?1 as in cv. 27) of the divine wonders the poet will devoutly consider, Tin stands in attributive relation to ^23, as this on its part does to Tj'"l: Thy brilliantly glorious (kingly) majesty (cf. Jer. xxii. 18, Dan. xi. 21). The poet does not say \3K D5, nor may we insert it, either here in ver. 5, or in ver. 6, where the same sequence of thoughts recurs, more briefly expressed. The emphasis lies on the objects. The mightiness (TO as in lxxviii. 4, and in Isa. xlii. 25, where it signifies violence) of His terrible acts shall pass from mouth to mouth (")EK with a substantival object as in xl. 11), and His mighty acts (ni?*ia, magnalia, as in 1 Chron. xvii. 19, 21) — according to the Keri (which is determined by the suffix of n3"iapK; cf., however, 2 Sam. xxii. 23, 2 Kings iii. 3, x. 26, and frequently): His greatness (n^?0 — will he also on his part make the matter of his narrating. It is, however, not alone the awe-inspiring majesty of God which is revealed in history, but also the greatness (T[ used as a substantive as in xxxi. 20, Isa. lxiii. 7, xxi. 7, whereas D*3l in xxxii. 10, lxxxix. 51 is an adjective placed before the noun after the manner of a numeral), i.e. the abundant measure, of His goodness and His righteousness, i.e. His acting in inviolable correspondence with His counsel and order of salvation. The memory of the transcendent goodness of God is the object of universal, overflowing acknowledgment, and the righteousness of God is the object of universal exultation (|jn with the accusative as in li. 16, lix. 17). After the poet has sung the glorious self-attestation of God according to both its sides, the fiery and the light sides, he lingers by the light side, the front side of the Name of Jahve unfolded in Ex. xxxiv. 6.

Vers. 8-13. This memorable utterance of Jahve concerning Himself the writer of Ps. ciii., which is of kindred import, also Interweaves into his celebration of the revelation of divine love in ver. 8. Instead of ^5£"3"! the expression here, however, is HDn bra (Keri, as in Nah. i. 3, cf. lxxxix. 29, with Makkeph -*H*i). The real will of God tends towards favour, which gladly giving stoops to give (1^0), and towards compassion, which interests itself on behalf of the sinner for his help and comfort (nnrn). Wrath is only the background of His nature, which He reluctantly and only after long waiting (D)SX SpK) lets loose against those who spurn His great mercy. For His goodness embraces, as ver. 9 says, all; His tender mercies are over all His works, they hover over and encompass all His creatures. Therefore, too, all His works praise Him: they are all together loud-speaking witnesses of that sympathetic all-embracing love of His, which excludes no one who does not exclude himself; and His saints, who live in God's love, bless Him (nM"Q* written as in 1 Kings xviii. 44): their mouth overflows with the declaration (pto&) of the glory of the kingdom of this loving God, and in speaking (p?V) of the sovereign power with which He maintains and extends this kingdom. This confession they make their employ, in order that the knowledge of the mighty acts of God and the glorious majesty of His kingdom may at length become the general possession of mankind. When the poet in ver. 12 sets forth the purpose of the proclamation, he drops the form of address. God's kingdom is a kingdom of all aeons and His dominion is manifested without exception and continually in all periods or generations ("ft) "ift"732 as in xlv. 18, Esth. ix. 28, a pleonastic strengthening of the expression "ft) Via, xc. 1). It is the eternal circumference of the history of time, but at the same time its eternal substance, which more and more unfolds and achieves itself in the succession of the periods that mark its course. For that all things in heaven and on earth shall be gathered up together (avaicetyaXaia)- aaaOai, Eph. i. 10) in the all-embracing kingdom of God in His Christ, is the goal of all history, and therefore the substance of history which is working itself out. With ver. 13 (cf. Dan. iii. 33 [iv. 3], iv. 31, according to Hitzig the primary passages) another paragraph is brought to a close.

Vers. 14-21. The poet now celebrates in detail the deeds of the gracious King. The words with? are pure datives, cf. the accusative expression in cxlvi. 8. He in person is the support which holds fast the falling ones (BvBbj here not the fallen ones, see xxviii. 1) in the midst of falling (Nicephorus: tou? KaTaireaelv fteWovras khpcuoi, ware fjirj Karaireaelv^ and the stay by which those who are bowed together raise themselves. He is the Provider for all beings, the Father of the house, to whom in the great house of the wrorld the eyes (*yg with the second e toneless, Ew. § 100, b) of all beings, endowed with reason and irrational, are directed with calm confidence (Matt. vi. 26), and who gives them their food in its, i.e. in due season. The language of civ. 27 is very similar, and it proceeds here, too, as there in ver. 28 (cf. Sir. xl. 14). He opens His hand, which is ever full, much as a man who feeds the doves in his court does, and gives |i^n, pleasure, i.e. that which is good, which is the fulfilling of their desire, in sufficient fulness to all living things (and therefore those in need of support for the body and the life). Thus it is to be interpreted, according to Deut. xxxiii. 23 (after which here in the LXX. the reading varies between euSo/aa? and eiiXoyta^j cf. Acts xiv. 17, ifjLTrnrXwv Tpocfrf)? koli ev<f)poavv7)$ t<z? icaphia<; rjficov. WSfo*} is construed with a dative and accusative of the object instead of with two accusatives of the object (Ges. § 139. 1, 2). The usage of the language is unacquainted with pyi as an adverb in the sense of " willingly " (Hitzig), which would rather be

■pim. In all the ways that Jahve takes in His historical rule He is " righteous," i.e. He keeps strictly to the rule (norm) of His holy love; and in all His works which He accomplishes in the course of history He is merciful p'?n)> i.e. He practises mercy ppn, see xii. 2); for during the present time of mercy the primary essence of His active manifestation is free preventing mercy, condescending love. True, He remains at a distance from the hypocrites, just as their heart remains far from Him (Isa. xxix. 13); but as for the rest, with impartial equality He is nigh (3fri2 as in xxxiv. 19) to all who call upon Him fl£j^, in firmness, certainty, truth, i.e. so that the prayer comes from their heart and is holy fervour (cf. Isa. x. 20, xlviii. 1). What is meant is true and real prayer in opposition to the veicpov epyov, as is also meant in the main in John iv. 23 sq. To such true praying ones Jahve is present, viz. in mercy (for in respect of His power He is everywhere); He makes the desire of those who fear Him a reality, their will being also His; and He grants them the salvation (o-GOTTjpia) prayed for. Those who are called in ver. 19 those who fear Him, are called in ver. 20 those who love Him. Fear and love of God belong inseparably together; for fear without love is an unfree, servile disposition, and love without fear, boldfaced familiarity: the one dishonours the all-gracious One, and the other the all-exalted One. But all who love and fear Him He preserves, and on the other hand exterminates all wanton sinners. Having reached the Tav, the hymn of praise, which has traversed all the elements of the language, is at an end. The poet does not, however, close without saying that praising God shall be his everlasting employment (sJj <m&T. with Olewejored, the Mahpach or rather Jethib sign of which above represents the Makkepli), and without wishing that all flesh, i.e. all men, who are aap% koX alfia, tH) "W3, may bless God's holy Name to all eternity. The realization of this wish is the final goal of history. It will then have reached ver. 43 of the great song in Deut. ch. xxxii.— Jahve one and His Name one (Zech. xiv. 9), Israel praising God virep aXqOetas, and the Gentiles virep eXeou? (Rom. xv. 8 sq.).

4 If his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his clod — In that day his devices perish.

5 Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, Whose confidence is in Jahve his God,

6 The Creator of heaven and earth, Of the sea and all that is therein — Who keepeth truth for ever,

7 Obtaining judgment for the oppressed, Giving bread to the hungry.

Jahve raiseth up those who are bowed down, Jahve loveth the righteous,

He helpeth up the orphan and widow, And the way of the wicked He turneth down. 10 Jahve reigneth as King for ever,

The Psalter now draws to a close with five Hallelujah Psalms. This first closing Hallelujah has many points of coincidence with the foregoing alphabetical hymn (compare •wn&s in ver. 2 with cxlv. 2; i"OB> in ver. 5 with cxlv. 15 ransre of thought betrays one author. In the LXX. Ps. cxlvi.- cxlviii. (according to its enumeration four Psalms, viz. cxlv.- cxlviii., Ps. cxlvii. being split up into two) have the inscription 'AWrfkoma. 'Ayyaiov kcl\ Za^apiov^ which is repeated four times. These Psalms appear to have formed a separate Hallel, which is referred back to these prophets, in the old liturgy of the second Temple. Later on they became, together with Ps. cxlix., cl., an integral part of the daily morning prayer, and in fact of the m»n *jflDB, i>e. of the mosaic-work of Psalms and other poetical pieces that was incorporated in the morning prayer, and are called even in Shabbath 118b Hallel,* but expressly distinguished from the Hallel to be reoited at the Passover and other feasts, which is called "the Egyptian Hallel." In distinction from this, Krochmal calls these five Psalms the Greek Hallel. But there is nothing to oblige us to come down beyond the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. The agreement between 1 Mace. ii. 63 (earpe-tyev eU tov yovv avrov, /cat 6 StaXoyMrfJibs avrov airaikero) and ver. 4 of our Psalm, which Hitzig has turned to good account, does not decide anything concerning the age of the Psalm, but only shows that it was in existence at the time of the author of the First Book of Maccabees,— a point in favour of which we were not in need of any proof. But there was just as much ground for dissuading against putting confidence in princes in the time of the Persians as in that of the Grecian domination.

Vers. 1-4. Instead of " bless," as in ciii. 1, civ. 1, the poet of this Psalm says " praise." When he attunes his soul to the praise of God, he puts himself personally into this mood of mind, and therefore goes on to say " I will praise." He will, however, not only praise God in the song which he is beginning, but ^.nn (vid. on lxiii. 5), filling up his life with it, or Hty? (prop. " in my yet-being," with the suffix of the noun, whereas "p)V with the verbal suffix is u I still am "), so that his continued life is also a constant continued praising, viz. (and this is in the mind of the poet here, even at the commencement of the Psalm) of the God and King who, as being the Almighty, Eternal, and unchangeably Faithful One, is the true ground of confidence. The warning against putting trust in princes calls to mind cxviii. 8 sq. The clause: the son of man, who has no help that he could afford, is to be understood according to lx. 13. The following inpiN? shows that the poet by the expression D1S"|3 combines the thoughts of Gen. ii. 7 and iii. 19. If his breath goes forth, he says, basing the untrustworthiness and feebleness of the son of Adam upon the inevitable final destiny of the son of Adam taken out of the ground, then he returns to his earth, i.e. the earth of his first beginning; cf. the more exact expression D^DJT^K, after which the eh ttjv yrju avrov of the LXX. is exchanged for eh rbv xovV avrov in 1 Mace. ii. 63: On the hypothetical relation of the first future clause to the second, cf. exxxix. 8-10, 18; Ew. § 357, b. In that day, the inevitable day of death, the projects or plans of man are at once and for ever at an end. The air. \ey. nJhBty describes these with the collateral notion of subtleness and magnitude.

Ver3. 5-7a. Man's help is of no avail; blessed is he (this is the last of the twenty-five *nw$ of the Psalter), on the contrary, who has the God of Jacob pXB' like rtrPBJ in cxliv. 15) as Him in whom is his succour (ftJJS with Beth essentice, vid. on xxxv. 2), — he, whose confidence (">3K> as in cxix. 116) rests on Jahve, whom he can by faith call his God. Men often are not able to give help although they might be willing to do so: He, however, is the Almighty, the Creator of the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and of all living things that fill these three (cf. Neh. ix. 6). Men easily change their mind and do not keep their word: He, however, is He who keepeth truth or faithfulness, inasmuch as He unchangeably adheres to the fulfilling of His promises. n»S 1D^ is in form equivalent substantially to IDn TOP and nnan W. And that which He is able to do as being the Almighty, and cannot as being the Truthful One leave undone, is also really His mode of active manifestation made evident in practical proofs: He obtains right for the oppressed, gives bread to the hungry, and consequently proves Himself to be the succour of those who suffer wrong without doing wrong, and as the provider for those who look for their daily bread from His gracious hand. With TO"), the only determinate participle, the faithfulness of God to His promises is made especially prominent.

Vers. 7&-10. The five lines beginning with Jahve belong together. Each consists of three words, which in the main is also the favourite measure of the lines in the Book of Job. The expression is as brief as possible. WSJ is transferred from the yoke and chains to the person himself who is bound, and npa is transferred from the eyes of the blind to the person himself. The five lines celebrate the God of the five-divisioned Tora, which furnishes abundant examples for these celebrations, and is directed with most considerate tenderness towards the strangers, orphans, and widows in particular. The orphan and the widow, says the sixth line, doth He recover, strengthen (with reference to TrtP see xx. 9, xxxi. 12). Val'de gratus miJii est hie PsalmuSy Bakius observes, ob Trifolium Mud Dei: Advenas, Pupillos, et Viduas, versu uno luculentissime depiction, id quod in toto Psalterio nullibi fit. Whilst Jahve, however, makes the manifold sorrows of His saints to have a blessed issue, He bends (fl$R) the way of the wicked, so that it leads into error and ends in the abyss (i. 6). This judicial manifestation of Jahve has only one line devoted to it. For He rules in love and in wrath, but delights most of all to rule in love. Jahve is, however, the God of "Zion. The eternal duration of His kingdom is also the guarantee for its future glorious completion, for the victory of love. Hallelujah!

For it is good to celebrate our God in song, For it is lovely, comely is a hymn of praise,

3 He healeth the broken in heart, And bindeth up their wounds;

4 Telling the number of the stars, He calleth them all by names.

5 Great is our Lord and rich in strength, To His understanding there is no number.

8 Who covereth the heaven with clouds, Who preparetli rain for the earth,

10 Not in the strength of the horse doth He delight, Not in the legs of a man doth He take pleasure —

11 Jahve hath pleasure in those who fear llim, In those who hope in His mercy.

14 He it is who giveth thy border peace, He satisfieth thee with the fat of wheat;

15 Who sendeth forth His commandment to the earth, His word runneth very swiftly;

17 He casteth down His ice like morsels — Before His cold, who can stand?!

18 He sendeth forth His word and causeth everything to melt, He causeth His wind to blow, forthwith the waters flow.

19 He made known His word unto Jacob, His statutes and His judgments unto Israel.

20 He hath not dealt so with any nation;

It is the tone of the restoration-period of Ezra and Nehemiah that meets us sounding forth out of this and the two following Psalms, even more distinctly and recognisably than out of the nearly related preceding Psalm (cf. ver. 6 with cxlvi. 9). In Ps. cxlvii. thanksgiving is rendered to God for the restoration of Jerusalem, which is now once more a city with walls and gates; in Ps. cxlviii. for the restoration of the national independence; and in Ps. cxlix. for the restoration of the capacity of joyously and triumphantly defending themselves to the people so long rendered defenceless and so ignominiously enslaved.

In the seventh year of Artachshasta (Artaxerxes I. Longimanus) Ezra the priest entered Jerusalem, after a journey of five months, with about two thousand exiles, mostly out of the families of the Levites (458 B.C.). In the twentieth year of this same clement king, that is to say, thirteen years later (445 B.C.), came Nehemiah, his cup-bearer, in the capacity of a Tirshdtha (via1. Isaiah, vol. i. 2). Whilst Ezra did everything for introducing the Mosaic Law again into the mind and commonwealth of the nation, Nehemiah furthered the building of the city, and more particularly of the walls and gates. We hear from his own mouth, in ch. ii.-vii. of the Book that is extracted from his memoirs, how indefatigably and cautiously he laboured to accomplish this work. Ch. xii. 27-45 is closely connected with these notes of Nehemiah's own hand. After having been again in the meanwhile in Susa, and there neutralized the slanderous reports that had reached the court of Persia, he appointed, at his second stay in Jerusalem, a feast in dedication of the walls. The Levite musicians, who had settled down for the most part round about Jerusalem, were summoned to appear in Jerusalem. Then the priests and Levites were purified; and they purified the people, the gates, and the walls, the bones of the dead (as we must with Herzfeld picture this to ourselves) being taken out of all the tombs within the city and buried before the city; and then came that sprinkling, according to the Law, with the sacred lye of the red heifer, which is said (Para iii. 5) to have been introduced again by Ezra for the first time after the Exile. Next the princes of Judah, the priests, and Levite musicians were placed in the west of the city in two great choirs (rilin *) and processions

* The word has been so understood by Menahem, Juda ben Koreish, and Abulwalid; whereas Herzfeld is thinking of hecatombs for a thankoffering, which might have formed the beginning of both festive processions.

(nb?nn). The one festal choir, which was led by the one half of the princes, and among the priests of which Ezra went on in front, marched round the right half of the city, and the other round the left, whilst the people looked down from the walls and towers. The two processions met on the east side of the city and drew up in the Temple, where the festive sacrifices were offered amidst music and shouts of joy.

The supposition that Ps. cxlvii.-cl. were all sung at this dedication of the walls under Nehemiah (Hengstenberg) cannot be supported; but as regards Ps. cxlvii., the composition of which in the time of Nehemiah is acknowledged by the most diverse parties (Keil, Ewald, Dillmann, Zunz), the reference to the Feast of the Dedication of the walls is very probable. The Psalm falls into two parts, vers. 1-11, 12-20, which exhibit a progression both in respect of the building of the walls (vers. 2, 13), and in respect of the circumstances of the weather, from which the poet takes occasion to sing the praise of God (vers. 8 sq., 16-18). It is a double Psalm, the first part of which seems to have been composed, as Hitzig suggests, on the appearing of the November rain, and the second in the midst of the rainy part of the winter, when the mild spring breezes and a thaw were already in prospect.

Vers. 1-6. The Hallelujah, as in cxxxv. 3, is based upon the fact, that to sing of our God, or to celebrate our God in song ("i£? with an accusative of the object, as in xxx. 13, and frequently), is a discharge of duty that reacts healthfully and beneficially upon ourselves: " comely is a hymn of praise" (taken from xxxiii. 1), both in respect of the worthiness of God to be praised, and of the gratitude that is due to Him. Instead of IB? or "W3P, xcii. 2, the expression is Fnt^ a form of the infin. Piel, which at least can still be proved to be possible by n^Dv in Lev. xxvi. 18. The two *3 are co-ordinate, and D^W^s no more refers to God here than in cxxxv. 3, as Hitzig supposes when he alters ver. 1 so that it reads: u Praise ye Jah because He is good, play unto our God because He is lovely." Ps. xcii. 2 shows that 3iD",3 can refer to God; but B^3 said 0f Q0d js contrary to the custom and spirit of the Old Testament, whereas 2)D and B^y: are also in cxxxiii. 1 neuter predicates of a subject that is set forth in the infinitive form. In ver. 2 the praise begins, and at the same time the confirmation of the delightful duty. Jahve is the builder up of Jerusalem, He brings together (D33 as in Ezekiel, the later word for *!?£ and Tri?) the outcasts of Israel (as in Isa. xi. 12, lvi. 8); the building of Jerusalem is therefore intended of the rebuilding up, and to the dispersion of Israel corresponds the holy city laid in ruins. Jahve healeth the heartbroken, as He has shown in the case of the exiles, and bindeth up their pains (xvi. 4), i.e. smarting wounds; K£H, which is here followed by ^?n? also takes to itself a dative object in other instances, both in an active and (Isa. vi. 10) an impersonal application; but for X> VTQ^ the older language says J? ^3fi?3, xxxiv. 19, Isa. lxi. 1. The connection of the thoughts, which the poet now brings to the stars, becomes clear from the primary passage, Isa. xl. 26, cf. 27. To be acquainted with human woe and to relieve it is an easy and small matter to Him who allots a number to the stars, that are to man innumerable (Gen. xv. 5), i.e. who has called them into being by His creative power in whatever number He has pleased, and yet a number known to Him (nJ£, the part, prces., which occurs frequently in descriptions of the Creator), and calls to them all names, i.e. names them all by names which are the expression of their true nature, which is well known to Him, the Creator. What Isaiah says (ch. xl. 26) with the words, " because of the greatness of might, and as being strong in power," and (ver. 28) " His understanding is unsearchable," is here asserted in ver. 5 (cf. cxlv. 3): great is our Lord, and capable of much (as in Job xxxvii. 23, nb NW), and to His understanding there is no number, i.e. in its depth and fulness it cannot be defined by any number. What a comfort for the church as it traverses its ways, that are often so labyrinthine and entangled! Its Lord is the Omniscient as well as the Almighty One. Its history, like the universe, is a work of God's infinitely profound and rich understanding. It is a mirror of gracious love and righteous anger. The patient sufferers (&W) He strengthens (TttjJD as in cxlvi. 9); malevolent sinners (CW"|), on the other hand, He casts down to the earth (HT^, cf. Isa. xxvi. 5), casting deep down to the ground those who exalt themselves to the skies.

Vers. 7-11. With vex. 7 the song takes a new flight, r nJV signifies to strike up or sing in honour of any one, Num. xxi. 27, ha. xwii. 2. The ohject of the action is conceived of in rnina us the medium of it (cf. e.g. Job xvi. 4). The participles in vers. 8 sq. are attributive clauses that are attached in a free manner to UV&IO. Ppn signifies to prepare, procure, a& e.g. in Job xxxviii. 41 — a passage which the psalmist has had in his mind in connection with ver. 9. Tpro, as being the causative of a verb, crescendi, is construed with a double accusative: " making mountains (whither human agriculture does not reach) to bring forth grass;" and the advance to the thought that God gives to the cattle the bread that they need is occasioned by the a He causeth grass to grow for the cattle " of the model passage civ. 14, just as the only hinting WTjP IP'S, which is said of the young of the raven (which are forsaken and cast off by their mothers very early), is explained from W)W\ s&'^X V"6* in Job loc, cit. The verb fcHjJ, Kpd^eiv (cf. Kpco^eiv), is still more expressive for the cry of the raven, Kopa^, Sanscrit kdrava, than that WW; Kopdrreiv and KopaKeveaOcu signify directly to implore incessantly, without taking any refusal. Towards Him, the gracious Sustainer of all beings, are the ravens croaking for their food pointed (cf. Luke xii. 24, u Consider the ravens"), just like the earth that thirsts for rain. He is the all-conditioning One* Man, who is able to know that which the irrational creature unconsciously acknowledges, is in the feeling of his dependence to trust in Him and not in himself. In all those things to which the God-estranged self-confidence of man so readily clings, God has no delight (yBn*, pausal form like $2rp) and no pleasure, neither in the strength of the horse, whose rider imagines himself invincible, and, if he is obliged to flee, that he cannot be overtaken, nor in the legs of a man, upon which he imagines himself so firm that he cannot be thrown down, and which, when he is pursued, will presumptively carry him far enough away into safety, pit£>, ^Lo, is the leg from the knee to the foot, from j;Lj, root (j^, to drive, urge forward, more particularly to urge on to a gallop (like cms, according to Pott, from the root car, to go). What is meant here is, not that the strength of the horse and muscular power are of no avail when God wills to destroy a man (xxxiii. 16 sq., Amos ii. 14 sq.) but only that God has no pleasure in the warrior's horse and in athletic strength. Those who fear Him, i.e. with a knowledge of the impotency of all power possessed by the creature in itself, and in humble trust feel themselves dependent upon His omnipotence — these are they in whom He takes pleasure (nyj with the accusative), those who, renouncing all carnal defiance and self-confident self-working, hope in His

Vers. 12-20. In the LXX. this strophe is a Psalm (Lauda Jerusalem) of itself. The call goes forth to the church again on the soil of the land of promise assembled round about Jerusalem. The holy city has again risen out of its ruins; it now once more has gates which can stand open in the broad daylight, and can be closed and bolted when the darkness comes on for the security of the municipality that is only just growing into power (Neh. vii. 1-4). The blessing of God again rests upon the children of the sacred metropolis. Its territory, which has experienced all the sufferings of war, and formerly resounded with the tumult of arms and cries of woe and destruction, God has now, from being an arena of conflict, made into peace (the accusative of the effect, and therefore different from Isa. Ix. 17); and since the land can now again be cultivated in peace, the ancient promise (lxxxi. 17) is fulfilled, that God would feed His people, if they would only obey Him, with the fat of wheat. The God of Israel is the almighty Governor of nature. It is He who sends His fiat (to"|£X after the manner of the ^VW) of the history of creation, cf. xxxiii. 9) earthwards (p.?, the accusative of the direction). The word is His messenger (via1. on cvii. 20), nnnD""^ i.e. it runs as swiftly as possible, viz. in order to execute the errand on which it is sent. He it is who sends down snow-flakes like flocks of wool, so that the fields are covered with snow as with a white-woollen warming covering.* He' scatters hoar-frost ("»te3 from "»S3, to cover over) about like ashes, so that trees, roofs, etc., are crusted over with the fine frozen dew or mist as though they were powdered with ashes that the wind had blown about. Another time He casts His

1 Bochart in his Ilierozoicon on this passage compares an observation of Eustathiuson Dionysius Periegetes: rw yctivtt, epialsg vlup ccorsiug oi vrxKutol tKcc'Aovif.

ice * (to"ip from n*ip; or according to another reading, StTlJ) from Tip) down like morsels, fragments, D^i?3, viz. as hail-stones, or as sleet. The question: before His cold — who can stand % is formed as in Nah. i. G, cf. cxxx. 3. It further comes to pass that God sends forth His word and causes them (snow, hoarfrost, and ice) to melt away: He makes His thawing wind blow, waters flow; i.e. as soon as the one comes about, the other also takes place forthwith. This God now, who rules all things by His word and moulds all things according to His will, is the God of the revelation pertaining to the history of salvation, which is come to Israel, and as the bearer of which Israel takes the place of honour among the nations, Deut. iv. 7 sq., 32-34. Since the poet says TJD and not Tin, he is thinking not only of the Tora, but also of prophecy as the continuous self-attestation of God, the Lawgiver. The Keri VTyi, occasioned by the plurals of the parallel member of the verse, gives an unlimited indistinct idea. We must keep to VOT, with the LXX., Aquila, Theodotion, the Quinta, Sexta, and Jerome. The word, which is the medium of God's cosmical rule, is gone forth as a word of salvation to Israel, and, unfolding itself in statutes and judgments, has raised Israel to a legal state founded upon a positive divine law or judgment such as no Gentile nation possesses. The Hallelujah does not exult over the fact that these other nations are not acquainted with any such positive divine law, but (cf. Deut. iv. 7 sq., Baruch iv. 4) over the fact that Israel is put into possession of such a law. It is frequently attested elsewhere that this possession of Israel is only meant to be a means of making salvation a common property of the' world at large.

1 PRAISE ye Jahve from the heavens, Praise ye Him in the heights.

* LXX. (Italic, Vulgate) Kpvarci'k'Kov, i.e. ice, from the root xpv, to freeze, to congeal (Jerome glaciem). Quid est crystallum? asks Augustine, and replies: Nix est glacie durataper multos annos ita ut a sole vel igne acile dissolvi nonpossit.

2 Praise ye Him, all His angels, Praise ye Him, all His host.

3 Praise ye Him, sun and moon, Praise Him all ye stars of light.

6 And He set them there for ever and ever; He gave a law, and not one transgresseth it.

7 Praise ye Jahve from the earth, Sea-monsters and all deeps;

8 Fire and hail, snow and vapour, Stormy wind fulfilling His word;

9 Ye mountains and all hills, Fruit-trees and all cedars;

11 Kings of the earth and all tribes, Princes and all judges of the earth;

14 And He hath raised a horn for His people, For a praise for all His saints,

After the Psalmist in the foregoing Hallelujah has made the gracious self-attestation of Jahve in the case of the people of revelation, in connection with the general government of the almighty and all-benevolent One in the world, the theme of his praise, he calls upon all creatures in heaven and on earth, and more especially mankind of all peoples and classes and races and ages, to join in concert in praise of the Name of Jahve, and that on the ground of the might and honour which He has bestowed upon His people, i.e. has bestowed upon them once more now when they are gathered together again out of exile and Jerusalem has risen again out of the ruins of its overthrow. The hymn of the three in the fiery furnace, which has been interpolated in ch. iii. of the Book of Daniel in the LXX., is for the most part an imitation of this Psalm. In the language of the liturgy this Psalm has the special name of Laudes among the twenty Psalmi alleluiaticiy and all the three Psalms cxlviii.-cl. which close the Psalter are called alpoc} Syriac shabchuh (praise ye Him).

In this Psalm the loftiest consciousness of faith is united with the grandest contemplation of the world. The church appears here as the choir-leader of the universe. It knows that its experiences have a central and universal significance for the whole life of creation; that the loving-kindness which has fallen to its lot is worthy to excite joy among all beings in heaven and on earth. And it calls not only upon everything in heaven and on earth that stands in fellowship of thought, of word, and of freedom with it to praise God, but also the sun, moon, and stars, water, earth, fire, and air, mountains, trees, and beasts, yea even such natural phenomena as hail, snow, and mist. How is this to be explained? The easiest way of explaining is to say that it is a figure of speech (Hupfeld); but this explanation explains nothing. Does the invitation in the exuberance of feeling, without any clearness of conception, here overstep the boundary of that which is possible? Or does the poet, when he calls upon these lifeless and unconscious things to praise God, mean that we are to praise God on their behalf — acpopav et? tclvtcl, as Theodoret says, kcli tov Seov rrjv ao^iav Kara^avQaveiv kcu Bia irdvrcov avro) irXe/ceiv rrjv vjivcvhlav^. Or does the " praise ye " in its reference to these things of nature proceed on the assumption that they praise God when they redound to the praise of God, and find its justification in the fact that the human will enters into this matter of fact which relates to things, and is devoid of any will, and seizes it and drags it into the concert of angels and men? All these explanations are unsatisfactory. The call to praise proceeds rather from the wish that all creatures, by becoming after their own manner an echo and reflection of the divine glory, may participate in the joy at the glory which God has bestowed upon His people after their deep humiliation. This wish, however, after all rests upon the great truth, that the way through suffering to glory which the church is traversing, has not only the glorifying of God in itself, but by means of this glorifying, the glorifying of God in all creatures and by all creatures, too, as its final aim, and that these, finally transformed (glorified) in the likeness of transformed (glorified) humanity, will become the bright mirror of the divine doxa and an embodied hymn of a thousand voices. The calls also in Isa. xliv. 23, xlix. 13, cf. lii. 9, and the descriptions in Isa. xxxv. 1 sq., xli. 19, lv. 12 sq., proceed from the view to which Paul gives clear expression from the stand-point of the New Testament in Rom. viii. 18 sqq.

Vers. 1-6. The call does not rise step by step from below upwards, but begins forthwith from above in the highest and outermost spheres of creation. The place whence, before all others, the praise is to resound is the heavens; it is to resound in the heights, viz. the heights of heaven (Job xvi. 19, xxv. 2, xxxi. 2). The \0 might, it is true, also denote the birth or origin: ye of the heavens, i.e. ye celestial beings (cf. lxviii. 27), but the parallel D^Dhea renders the immediate construction with *kbn more natural. Vers. 2-4 tell who are to praise Jahve there: first of all, all His angels, the messengers of the Ruler of the world — all His host, i.e. angels and stars, for iN3* (Chethib) or VfcGV (Keii as in ciii. 21) is the name of the heavenly host armed with light which God Tsebaoth commands (vid. on Gen. ii. 1), — a name including both stars (e.g. in Deut. iv. 19) and angels (e.g. in Josh. v. 14 sq*, 1 Kings xxii. 19); angels and stars are also united in the Scriptures in other instances (e.g. Job xxxviii. 7). When the psalmist calls upon these beings of light to praise Jahve, he does not merely express his delight in that which they do under any circumstances (Hengstenberg), but comprehends the heavenly world with the earthly, the church above with the church here below (vid. on Ps. xxix., ciii.), and gives a special turn to the praise of the former, making it into an echo of the praise of the latter, and blending both harmoniously together. The heavens of heavens are, as in Deut. x. 14, 1 Kings viii. 27, Sir. xvi. 18, and frequently, those which lie beyond the heavens of the earth which were created on the fourth day, therefore they are the outermost and highest spheres. The waters which are above the heavens are, according to Ilupfeld, "a product of the fancy, like the upper heavens and the whole of the inhabitants of heaven.1' But if in general the other world is not a notion to which there is no corresponding entity, this notion may also have things for its substance which lie beyond our knowledge of nature. The Scriptures, from the first page to the last, acknowledge the existence of celestial waters, to which the rain-waters stand in the relation as it were of a finger-post pointing upwards (see Gen. i. 7). All these beings belonging to the suoerterrestrial world are to praise the Name of Jahve, for He, the God of Israel, it is by whose fiat (^V, like "T?N in xxxiii. 9*) the heavens and all their host are created (xxxiii. 6). He has set them, which did not previously exist, up ("IHDJW1 as e.g. in Neh. vi. 7, the causative to '"JEV in xxxiii. 9, cf. cxix. 91), and that for ever and ever (cxi. 8), i.e. in order for ever to maintain the position in the whole of creation which He has assigned to them. He hath given a law (ph) by which its distinctive characteristic is stamped upon each of these heavenly beings, and a fixed bound is set to the nature and activity of each in its mutual relation to all, and not one transgresses (the individualizing singular) this law given to it. Thus "OJP to) is to be understood, according to Job xiv. 5, cf. Jer. v. 22, Job xxxviii. 10, Ps. civ. 9. Hitzig makes the Creator Himself the subject; but then the poet would have at least been obliged to say top frwpn, and moreover it may be clearly seen from Jer. xxxi. 36, xxxiii. 20, how the thought that God inviolably keeps the orders of nature in check is expressed Oeoirpeirm. Jer. v. 22, by way of example, shows that the law itself is not, with Ewald, Maurer, and others, following the LXX., Syriac, Italic, Jerome, and Kimchi, to be made the subject: a law hath He given, and it passes not away (an imperishable one). In combination with ph, ">?y always signifies " to pass over, transgress."

Vers. 7-14. The call to the praise of Jahve is now turned, in the second group of verses, to the earth and everything belonging to it in the widest extent. Here too pKn~|D, like DWrrjp, ver. 1, is intended of the place whence the praise is to resound, and not according to x. 18 of earthly beings. The call

* The interpolated parallel member, uvrog sine xe&l iysvvidmecu, here in the LXX. is taken over from that passage.

is addressed in the first instance to the sea-monsters or dragons (Ixxiv. 13), i.e., as Pindar (Nem. iii. 23 sq.) expresses it, Ofjpas ev 7T€\dyd imepoxovs, and to the surging mass of waters (ntohn) above and within the earth. Then to four phenomena of nature, coming down from heaven and ascending heavenwards, which are so arranged in ver. 8a, after the model of the chiasmus (crosswise position), that fire and smoke pto'i?), more especially of the mountains (Ex. xix. 18), hail and snow stand in reciprocal relation; and to the storm-wind (n"jVD rrn, an appositional construction, as in cvii. 25), which, beside a seeming freeness and untractableness, performs God's word. What is said of this last applies also to the fire, etc.; all these phenomena of nature are messengers and servants of God, civ. 4, cf. ciii. 20. When the poet wishes that they all may join in concert with the rest of the creatures to the praise of God, he excepts the fact that they frequently become destructive powers executing judicial punishment, and only has before his mind their (more especially to the inhabitant of Palestine, to whom the opportunity of seeing hail, snow, and ice was more rare than with us, imposing) grandeur and their relatedness to the whole of creation, which is destined to glorify God and to be itself glorified. He next passes over to the mountains towering towards the skies and to all the heights of earth; to the fruittrees, and to the cedars, the kings among the trees of the forest; to the wild beasts, which are called njnn because they represent the most active and powerful life in the animal world, and to all quadrupeds, which, more particularly the four-footed domestic animals, are called HDH3; to the creeping things (&&"}) which cleave to the ground as they move along; and to the birds, which are named with the descriptive epithet winged (p|33 -risv as in Deut. iv. 17, cf. Gen. vii. 14, Ezek. xxxix. 17, instead of *|» *1W, Gen. i. 21). And just as the call in Ps. ciii. finds its centre of gravity, so to speak, at last in the soul of man, so here it is addressed finally to humanity, and that, because mankind lives in nations and is comprehended under the law of a state commonwealth, in the first instance to its heads: the kings of the earth, i.e. those who rule over the earth by countries, to the princes and all who have the administration of justice and are possessed of supreme power on the earth, then to men of both sexes and of every age.

All the beings mentioned from ver. 1 onwards are to praise the Name of Jahve; for His Name, He (the God of this Name) alone (Isa. ii. 11, Ps. Ixxii. 18) is 3|^J, so high that no name reaches up to Him, not even from afar; His glory (His glorious self-attestation) extends over earth and heaven (vid. viii. 2). *3, without our being able and obliged to decide which, introduces the matter and the ground of the praise; and the fact that the desire of the poet comprehends in vWJJ all the beings mentioned is seen from his saying "earth and heaven," as he glances back from the nearer things mentioned to those mentioned farther off (cf. Gen. ii. 4). In ver. 14 the statement of the object and of the ground of the praise is continued. The motive from "which the call to all creatures to Hallelujah proceeds, viz. the new mercy which God has shown towards His people, is also the final ground of the Hallelujah which is to sound forth; for the church of God on earth is the centralpoint of the universe, the aim of the history of the world, and the glorifying of this church is the turning-point for the transformation of the world. It is not to be rendered: He hath exalted the horn of His people, any more than in cxxxii. 17: I will make the horn of David to shoot forth. The horn in both instances is one such as the person named does not already possess, but which is given him (different from lxxxix. 18, 25, xcii. 11, and frequently). The Israel of the Exile had lost its horn, i.e. its comeliness and its defensive and offensive power. God has now given it a horn again, and that a high one, i,e. has helped Israel to attain again an independence among the nations that commands respect. In Ps. cxxxii., where the horn is an object of the promise, we might directly understand by it the Branch (Zemach). Here, where the poet speaks out of his own present age, this is at least not the meaning which he associates with the words. What now follows is an apposition to toyp p.p. d")St-: He has raised up a horn for His people — praise (we say: to the praise of; cf. the New Testament €t? eiraivov) to all His saints, the children of Israel, the people who stand near Him. Others, as Hengstenberg, take n?nn as a second object, but we cannot say *bnF\ D*"}H. Israel is called inij? Dy, the people of His near = of His nearness or vicinity (Koster), as Jerusalem is called in Eccles. viii. 10 B*friJ DipD instead of VHP ^PP (Ew. § 287, a, b). It might also be said, according to Lev. x. 3, Vjhp D^, the nation of those who are near to Him (as the Targum renders it). In both instances DS> is the governing noun, as, too, surely "»J| is in WPS 133, Zech. xiii. 7, which need not signify, by going back to the abstract primary signification of rvioy, a man of my near fellowship, but can also signify a man of my neighbour, i.e. my nearest man, according to Ew. be. cit. (cf. above on cxliii. 10, lxxviii. 49). As a rule, the principal form of Dy is pointed ay; and it is all the more unnecessary, with Olshausen and Hupfeld, to take the construction as adjectival for *h 3Vip ay. It might, with Hitzig after Aben-Ezra, be more readily regarded as apposition al (to a people, His near, i.e. standing near to Him). We have here an example of the genitival subordination, which is very extensive in Hebrew, instead of an appositional co-ordination: populo propinqui sui, in connection with which propinqui may be referred back to propinquum = propirtquitas, but also to propinquus (literally: a people of the kind of one that is near to Him). Thus is Israel styled in Deut. iv. 7. In the consciousness of the dignity which lies in this name, the nation of the God of the history of salvation comes forward in this Psalm as the leader (choragus) of all creatures, and strikes up a Hallelujah that is to be followed by heaven and earth.

Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King

4 For Jahve taketh pleasure in His people, He adorneth the humble with salvation.

7 To execute vengeance among the nations, Punishments among the peoples;

8 To bind their kings with chains And their nobles with iron fetters,

9 To execute upon them the written judgment — It is glory for all His saints,

This Psalm is also explained, as we have already seen on Ps. cxlvii., from the time of the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah. The new song to which it summons has the supreme power which Israel has attained over the world of nations for its substance. As in cxlviii. 14 the fact that Jahve has raised up a horn for His people is called.VTDjrtop n?nn? so here in cxlix. 9 the fact that Israel takes vengeance upon the nations and their rulers is called VTDrrw Tin. The writer of the two Psalms is one and the same. The fathers are of opinion that it is the wars and victories of the Maccabees that are here prophetically spoken of. But the Psalm is sufficiently explicable from the newly strengthened national self-consciousness of the period after Cyrus. The stand-point is somewhere about the stand-point of the Book of Esther. The New Testament spiritual church cannot pray as the Old Testament national church here prays. Under the illusion that it might be used as a prayer without any spiritual transmutation, Ps. cxlix. has become the watchword of the most horrible errors. It was by means of this Psalm that Caspar Scloppius in his Classicum Belli Sacri, which, as Bakius says, is written not with ink, but with blood, inflamed the Roman Catholic princes to the Thirty Years' religious War. And in the Protestant Church Thomas Munzer stirred up the War of the Peasants by means of this Psalm. We see that the Christian cannot make such a Psalm directly his own without disavowing the apostolic warning, u the weapons of our warfare are not carnal " (2 Cor. x. 4). The praying Christian must therefore transpose the letter of this Psalm into the spirit of the New Covenant; the Christian expositor, however, has to ascertain the literal meaning of this portion of the Scriptures of the Old Testament in its relation to coteraporary history.

Vers. 1-5. A period, in which the church is renewing its youth and drawing nearer to the form it is finally to assume, also of inward necessity puts forth new songs. Such a new era has now dawned for the church of the saints, the Israel that has remained faithful to its God and the faith of its fathers. The Creator of Israel (VfeW, plural, with the plural sirflix, like 'fV in Job xxxv. 10, *$* in Isa. liv. 5, cf. fefr in Job xl. 19; according to Hupfeld and Hitzig, cf. Ew. § 256, b, Ges. § 93, 9, singular; but aj, ajich, aw, are always really plural suffixes) has shown that He is also Israel's Preserver and the King of Zion, that He cannot leave the children of Zion for any length of time under foreign dominion, and has heard the sighing of the exiles (Isa. lxiii. 19, xxvi. 13). Therefore the church newly appropriated by its God and King is to celebrate Him, whose Name shines forth anew out of its history, with festive dance, timbrel, and cithern. For (as the occasion, hitherto only hinted at, is now expressly stated) Jahve takes a pleasure in His people; His wrath in comparison with His mercy is only like a swiftly passing moment (Isa. liv. 7 sq.). The futures that follow state that which is going on at the present time. DW is, as frequently, a designation of the ecclesia pressa, which has hitherto, amidst patient endurance of suffering, waited for God's own act of redemption. He now adorns them with «"W^ help against and victory over the hostile world; now the saints, hitherto enslaved and contemned, exult *ti3^, in honour, or on account of the honour which vindicates them before the world and is anew bestowed upon them (2 of the reason, or, which is more probable in connection with the boldness of the expression, of the state and mood*); they shout for joy upon their beds, upon which they have hitherto poured forth their complaints over the present (cf. Hos. vii. 14), and ardently longed for a better future (Isa xxvi. 8); for the bed is the place of soliloquy (iv. 5), ana the lean shed there (vi. 7) are turned into shouts of joy in the case of Israel.

Vers. 6-9. The glance is here directed to the future. The people of the present have again, in their God, attained to a lofty self-consciousness, the consciousness of their destiny, viz. to subjugate the whole world of nations to the God of Israel. In the presence of the re-exaltation which they have experienced their throat is full of words and songs exalting Jahve (fltDDVl, plural of Boil, or, according to another reading, Don, lvi. 17), and as servants of this God, the rightful Lord of all the heathen (lxxxii. 8), they hold in their hand a many-mouthed, i.e. manyedged sword (yid. supra, p. 28), in order to take the field on behalf of the true religion, as the Maccabees actually did, not long after: rats fjuev ^epalv ayoovi^o/ievot, rals Be icaphlais irp6<; top Qebv ev-^oixevoL (2 Mace. xv. 27). The meaning of ver. 9a becomes a different one, according as we take this line as coordinate or subordinate to what goes before. Subordinated, it would imply the execution of a penal jurisdiction over those whom they carried away, and 3H13 would refer to prescriptive facts such as are recorded in Num. xxxi. 8, 1 Sam. xv. 32 sq. (Hitzig). But it would become the religious lyric poet least of all to entertain such an unconditional prospect of the execution of the conquered worldly rulers. There is just as little ground for thinking of the judgment of extermination pronounced upon the nations of Canaan, which was pronounced upon them for an especial reason. If ver. 9a is taken as co-ordinate, the u written judgment" (Eecht) consists in the complete carrying out of the subjugation; and this is commended by the perfectly valid parallel, Isa. xlv. 14. The poet, however, in connection with the expression " wTritten," has neither this nor that passage of Scripture in his mind, but the testimony of the Law and of prophecy in general, that all kingdoms shall become God's and His Christ's. Subjugation (and certainly not without bloodshed) is the scriptural BSB>D for the execution of which Jahve, makes use of His own nation. Because the God who thus vindicates Himself is Israel's God, this subjugation of the world is *nn, splendour and glory, to all who are in love devoted to Him. The glorifying of Jahve is also the glorifying of Israel.

3 Praise Him with the sound of horns, Praise Him with harp and cithern!

4 Praise Him with timbrel and dance, Praise Him with strings and shalm!

5 Praise Him with clear cymbals, Praise Him with clashing cymbals!

The call to praise Jahve " with dance and with timbrel " in cxlix. 3 is put forth here anew in ver. 4, but with the introduction of all the instruments; and is addressed not merely to Israel, but to every individual soul.

Vers. 1-5. The Synagogue reckons up thirteen divine attributes according to Ex. xxxiv. 6 sq. (rinp rnfc>jj E>V), to which, according to an observation of Kimchi, correspond the thirteen 7pJ} of this Psalm. It is, however, more probable that in the mind of the poet the tenfold ^n encompassed by Hallelujahs is significative; for ten is the number of rounding off, completeness, exclusiveness, and of the extreme of exhaustibleness. The local definitions in ver. 1 are related attributively to God, and designate that which is heavenly, belonging to the other world, as an object of praise. Svhpr (the possible local meaning of which is proved by the Vhp and DW£ Bhj? of the Tabernacle and of the Temple) is in this passage the heavenly?^n; and Sty ppn is the firmament spread out by God's omnipotence and testifying of God's omnipotence (lxviii. 35), not according to its front side, which is turned towards the earth, but according to the reverse or inner side, which is turned towards the celestial world, and which marks it off from the earthly world. The third and fourth hdlalu give as the object of the praise that which is at the same time the ground of the praise: the tokens of His n^3, i.e. of His all-subduing strength, and the plenitude of His greatness (iina = frjj), i.e. His absolute, infinite greatness. The fifth and sixth halalu bring into the concert in praise of God the ram's horn, ~>Bi^, the name of which came to be improperly used as the name also of the metallic n^vyn (vid. on Ixxxi. 4), and the two kinds of stringed instruments (vid. xxxiii. 2), viz. the nabla (i.e. the harp and lyre) and the kinnor (the cithern), the yfraXTr/pLov and the KtOdpa (Kivvpa). The seventh halalu invites to the festive dance, of which the chief instrumental accompaniment is the p)n (Arabic duff, Spanish adufe, derived from the Moorish) or tambourine. The eighth hdlalu brings on the stringed instruments in their widest compass, D^p (cf. xlv. 9) from IP, Syriac merdrty and the shepherd's pipe, M (with the Gimel raphe = 33*17); and the ninth and tenth, the two kinds of castanets C^Sj construct form of ^P*?*, singular?^¥), viz. the smaller clear-sounding, and the larger deeper-toned, more noisy kinds (cf. /cv/jL/3a\ov a\a\d£ov, 1 Cor. xiii. 1), as VP& vraf (pausal form of VP&? = ^^> n^e "'C1? m Deut. xxvii. 15, and frequently, from inD = nnp) and nyrin <&& are, with Schultens, Pfeifer, Burk, Koster, and others, to be distinguished.

Ver. 6. The call to praise has thus far been addressed to persons not mentioned by name, but, as the names of instruments thus heaped up show, to Israel especially. It is now generalized to " the totality of breath," i.e. all the beings wrho are endowed by God with the breath of life (D^n npt^), i.e. to all mankind.

With this full-toned Finale the Psalter closes. Having risen as it were by five steps, in this closing Psalm it hovers over the blissful summit of the end, where, as Gregory of Nyssa says, all creatures, after the disunion and disorder caused by sin have been removed, are harmoniously united for one choral dance (a? /ilav ^opoo-raalav), and the chorus of mankind concerting with the angel chorus are become one cymbal of divine praise, and the final song of victory shall salute God, the triumphant Conqueror (to rpoiraiouxv), with shouts of joy. There is now no need for any special closing beracha. This whole closing Psalm is such. Nor is there any need even of an Amen (cvi. 48, cf. 1 Chron. xvi. 36). The Hallelujah includes it within itself and exceeds it.