Biblical commentary the Old Testament/Volume IV. Poetical Books/Psalms LXII to CL

by Franz Delitzsch

PSALM LXII.

RESIGNATION TO GOD WHEN FOES CROWD IN UPON ONE.

Concerning this Psalm, which is placed next to the preceding Psalm by reason of several points of mutual relationship (cf. Psa 62:8 with Psa 61:4, Psa 61:8; Psa 62:9 with Psa 61:4; Ps 62:13b with Psalms 61:9), as being a product of the time of the persecution by Absalom, and also concerning על־יוּתוּן, we have spoken already in the introduction to Psa 39:1-13, which forms with it a twin pair. The particle אך occurs there four times, and in this Psalm even as many as six times. The strophic structure somewhat resembles that of Psa 39:1-13, in that here we also have longer strophes which are interspersed by tristichs.

Verses 2-5

The poet, although apparently irrecoverably lost, does not nevertheless despair, but opposes one thing to the tumultuous crowding in upon him of his many foes, viz., quiet calm submission - not, however, a fatalistic resignation, but that which gives up everything to God, whose hand (vid., 2Sa 12:7-13) can be distinctly recognised and felt in what is now happening to him. אך (yea, only, nevertheless) is the language of faith, with which, in the face of all assault, established truths are confessed and confirmed; and with which, in the midst of all conflict, resolutions, that are made and are to be firmly kept, are deliberately and solemnly declared and affirmed. There is no necessity for regarding דּוּמיּה (not דּומיּה), which is always a substantive (not only in Psa 22:3; Psa 39:3, but also in this instance and in Psa 65:2), and which is related to דּוּמה, silence, Psa 94:17; Psa 115:17, just as עליליּה, Jer 32:19, is related to עלילה, as an accus. absol.: in silent submission (Hupfeld). Like תּפּלּה in Psa 109:4, it is a predicate: his soul is silent submission, i.e., altogether resigned to God without any purpose and action of its own. His salvation comes from God, yea, God Himself is his salvation, so that, while God is his God, he is even already in possession of salvation, and by virtue of it stands imperturbably firm. We see clearly from Psa 37:24, what the poet means by רבּה. He will not greatly, very much, particularly totter, i.e., not so that it should come to his falling and remaining down. רבּה is an adverb like רבּת, Psa 123:4, and הרבּה, Ecc 5:19.
There is some difficulty about the ἅπαξ λεγομ. תּהותתוּ .לןדו (Psa 62:4). Abulwalîd, whom Parchon, Kimchi, and most others follow, compares the Arabic hatta 'l - rajul, the man brags; but this Arab. ht (intensive form htht) signifies only in a general way to speak fluently, smoothly and rapidly one word after another, which would give too poor an idea here. There is another Arab. htt (cogn. htk , proscindere) which has a meaning that is even better suited to this passage, and one which is still retained in the spoken language of Syria at the present day: hattani is equivalent to “he compromised me” (= hataka es - sitra ‛annı̂, he has pulled my veil down), dishonoured me before the world by speaking evil concerning me; whence in Damascus el - hettât is the appellation for a man who without any consideration insults a person before others, whether he be present or absent at the time. But this Arab. htt only occurs in Kal and with an accusative of the object. The words עד־אנה תהותתו על־אישׁ find their most satisfactory explanation in the Arab. hwwt in common use in Damascus at the present day, which is not used in Kal, but only in the intensive form. The Piel Arab. hwwt ‛lâ flân signifies to rush upon any one, viz., with a shout and raised fist in order to intimidate him.^[1]
From this הוּת, of which even the construction with Arab. ‛lâ, together with the intensive form is characteristic, we here read the Pil. הותת, which is not badly rendered by the lxx ἐπιτίθεσθε, Vulgate irruitis.
In Psa 62:4 it is a question whether the reading תּרצּחוּ of the school of Tiberias or the Babylonian תּרצּחוּ is to be preferred. Certainly the latter; for the former (to be rendered, “may you” or “ye shall be broken in pieces, slain”) produces a thought that is here introduced too early, and one that is inappropriate to the figures that follow. Standing as it still does under the regimen of עד־אנה, תרצחו is to be read as a Piel; and, as the following figures show, is to be taken, after Psa 42:11, in its primary signification contundere (root רץ).^[2]
The sadness of the poet is reflected in the compressed, obscure, and peculiar character of the expression. אישׁ and כּלּכם (a single one-ye all) stand in contrast. כּקיר וגו, sicut parietem = similem parieti (cf. Psa 63:6), forms the object to תּרצּחוּ. The transmitted reading גּדר הדּחוּיה, although not incorrect in itself so far as the gender (Pro 24:31) and the article are concerned (Ges. §111, 2, a), must apparently be altered to גּדרה דחוּיה (Olshausen and others) in accordance with the parallel member of the verse, since both גּדרה and גּדר are words that can be used of every kind of surrounding or enclosure. To them David seems like a bent, overhanging wall, like a wall of masonry that has received the thrust that must ultimately cause its fall; and yet they rush in upon him, and all together they pursue against the one man their work of destruction and ruin. Hence he asks, with an indignation that has a somewhat sarcastic tinge about it, how long this never-satiated self-satisfying of their lust of destruction is meant to last. Their determination (יעץ as in Isa 14:24) is clear. It aims only or entirely (אך, here tantummodo, prorsus) at thrusting down from his high position, that is to say from the throne, viz., him, the man at whom they are always rushing (להדּיח = להדּיחו). No means are too base for them in the accomplishment of their object, not even the mask of the hypocrite. The clauses which assume a future form of expression are, logically at least, subordinate clauses (EW. §341, b). The Old Testament language allows itself a change of number like בּפיו instead of בּפיהם, even to the very extreme, in the hurry of emotional utterance. The singular is distributive in this instance: suo quisque ore, like לו in Isa 2:20, ממּנּו, Isa 5:23, cf. Isa 30:22, Zec 14:12. The pointing יקללוּ follows the rule of יהללו, Psa 22:27, ירננו, Psa 149:5, and the like (to which the only exceptions are הנני, חקקי, רננת).

Verses 5-8

The beginning of the second group goes back and seizes upon the beginning of the first. אך is affirmative both in Psa 62:6 and in Psa 62:7. The poet again takes up the emotional affirmations of Psa 62:2, Psa 62:3, and, firm and defiant in faith, opposes them to his masked enemies. Here what he says to his soul is very similar to what he said of his soul in Psa 62:2, inasmuch as he makes his own soul objective and exalts himself above her; and it is just in this that the secret of personality consists. He here admonishes her to that silence which in Psa 62:2 he has already acknowledged as her own; because all spiritual existence as being living remains itself unchanged only by means of a perpetual “becoming” (mittelst steten Werdens), of continuous, self-conscious renovation. The “hope” in Psa 62:6 is intended to be understood according to that which forms its substance, which here is nothing more nor less than salvation, Psa 62:2. That for which he who resigns himself to God hopes, comes from God; it cannot therfore fail him, for God the Almighty One and plenteous in mercy is surety for it. David renounces all help in himself, all personal avenging of his own honour - his salvation and his honour are על־אלהים (vid., on Psa 7:11). The rock of his strength, i.e., his strong defence, his refuge, is בּאלהים; it is where Elohim is, Elohim is it in person (בּ as in Isa 26:4). By עם, Psa 62:9, the king addresses those who have reamined faithful to him, whose feeble faith he has had to chide and sustain in other instances also in the Psalms belonging to this period. The address does not suit the whole people, who had become for the most part drawn into the apostasy. Moreover it would then have been עמּי (my people). עם frequently signifies the people belonging to the retinue of a prince (Jdg 3:18), or in the service of any person of rank (1Ki 19:21), or belonging to any union of society whatever (2Ki 4:42.). David thus names those who cleave to him; and the fact that he cannot say “my people” just shows that the people as a body had become alienated from him. But those who have remained to him of the people are not therefore to despair; but they are to pour out before God, who will know how to protect both them and their king, whatever may lie heavily upon their heart.

Verses 9-12

Just as all men with everything earthly upon which they rely are perishable, so also the purely earthly form which the new kingship has assumed carries within itself the germ of ruin; and God will decide as Judge, between the dethroned and the usurpers, in accordance with the relationship in which they stand to Him. This is the internal connection of the third group with the two preceding ones. By means of the strophe vv. 10-13, our Psalm is brought into the closest reciprocal relationship with Psa 39:1-13. Concerning בּני־אדם and בּני־אישׁ vid., on Psa 49:3; Psa 4:3. The accentuation divides Psa 62:10 quite correctly. The Athnach does not mark בּמאזנים לעלות as an independent clause: they are upon the balance לעלות, for a going up; they must rise, so light are they (Hengstenberg). Certainly this expression of the periphrastic future is possible (vid., on Psa 25:14; Psa 1:1-6 :17), still we feel the want here of the subject, which cannot be dispensed within the clause as an independent one. Since, however, the combining of the words with what follows is forbidden by the fact that the infinitive with ל in the sense of the ablat. gerund. always comes after the principal clause, not before it (Ew. §280, d), we interpret: upon the balances ad ascendendum = certo ascensuri, and in fact so that this is an attributive that is co-ordinate with כּזב. Is the clause following now meant to affirm that men, one and all, belong to nothingness or vanity (מן partitivum), or that they are less than nothing (מן comparat.)? Umbreit, Stier, and others explain Isa 40:17 also in the latter way; but parallels like Isa 41:24 do not favour this rendering, and such as Isa 44:11 are opposed to it. So also here the meaning is not that men stand under the category of that which is worthless or vain, but that they belong to the domain of the worthless or vain.
The warning in Psa 62:11 does not refer to the Absalomites, but, pointing to these as furnishing a salutary example, to those who, at the sight of the prosperous condition and joyous life on that side, might perhaps be seized with envy and covetousness. Beside בּטח בּ the meaning of הבל בּ is nevertheless not: to set in vain hope upon anything (for the idea of hoping does not exist in this verb in itself, Job 27:12; Jer 2:5, nor in this construction of the verb), but: to be befooled, blinded by something vain (Hitzig). Just as they are not to suffer their heart to be befooled by their own unjust acquisition, so also are they not, when the property of others increases (נוּב, root נב, to raise one's self, to mount up; cf. Arabic nabata, to sprout up, grow; nabara, to raise; intransitive, to increase, and many other verbal stems), to turn their heart towards it, as though it were something great and fortunate, that merited special attention and commanded respect. Two great truths are divinely attested to the poet. It is not to be rendered: once hath God spoken, now twice (Job 40:5; 2Ki 6:10) have I heard this; but after Psa 89:36 : One thing hath God spoken, two things (it is) that I have heard; or in accordance with the interpunction, which here, as in Psa 12:8 (cf. on Psa 9:16), is not to be called in question: these two things have I heard. Two divine utterances actually do follow. The two great truths are: (1) that God has the power over everything earthly, that consequently nothing takes place without Him, and that whatever is opposed to Him must sooner or later succumb; (2) that of this very God, the sovereign Lord (אדני), is mercy also, the energy of which is measured by His omnipotence, and which does not suffer him to succumb upon whom it is bestowed. With כּי the poet establishes these two revealed maxims which God has impressed upon his mind, from His righteous government as displayed in the history of men. He recompenses each one in accordance with his doing, κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, as Paul confesses (Rom 2:6) no less than David, and even (vid., lxx) in the words of David. It shall be recompensed unto every man according to his conduct, which is the issue of his relationship to God. He who rises in opposition to the will and order of God, shall feel God's power (עז) as a power for punishment that dashes in pieces; and he who, anxious for salvation, resigns his own will to the will of God, receives from God's mercy or loving-kindness (חסד), as from an overflowing fulness, the promised reward of faithfulness: his resignation becomes experience, and his hoping attainment. ==Morning Hymn of One Who Is Persecuted, in a Waterless Desert==
Now follows Psa 63:1-11, the morning Psalm of the ancient church with which the singing of the Psalms was always introduced at the Sunday service.^[3]
This Psalm is still more closely related to Psa 61:1-8 than Psa 62:1-12. Here, as in Psa 61:1-8, David gives utterance to his longing for the sanctuary; and in both Psalms he speaks of himself as king (vid., Symbolae, p. 56). All the three Psalms, Psa 61:1, were composed during the time of Absalom; for we must not allow ourselves to be misled by the inscription, A Psalm, by David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah (also lxx, according to the correct reading and the one preferred by Euthymius, τῆς Ἰουδαίας, not τῆς Ἰδουμαίας), into transferring it, as the old expositors do, to the time of Saul. During that period David could not well call himself “the king” and even during the time of his persecution by Absalom, in his flight, before crossing the Jordan, he tarried one or two days בערבות המדבר, in the steppes of the desert (2Sa 15:23, 2Sa 15:28; 2Sa 17:16), i.e., of the wilderness of Judah lying nearest to Jerusalem, that dreary waste that extends along the western shore of the Dead Sea. We see clearly from 2Sa 16:2 (היּעף בּמּדבּר) and 2Sa 16:14 (עיפים, that he there found himself in the condition of a עיף. The inscription, when understood thus, throws light upon the whole Psalm, and verifies itself in the fact that the poet is a king; that he longs for the God on Zion, where he has been so delighted to behold Him, who is there manifest; and that he is persecuted by enemies who have plotted his ruin. The assertion that he is in the wilderness (Psa 63:1) is therefore no mere rhetorical figure; and when, in 2Sa 16:10, he utters the imprecation over his enemies, “let them become a portion for the jackals,” the influence of the desert upon the moulding of his thoughts is clearly seen in it.
We have here before us the Davidic original, or at any rate the counterpart, to the Korahitic pair of Psalms, Psa 42:1-11, Psa 43:1-5. It is a song of the most delicate form and deepest spiritual contents; but in part very difficult of exposition. When we have, approximately at least, solved the riddle of one Psalm, the second meets us with new riddles. It is not merely the poetical classic character of the language, and the spiritual depth, but also this half-transparent and half-opaque covering which lends to the Psalms such a powerful and unvarying attractiveness. They are inexhaustible, there always remains an undeciphered residue; and therefore, though the work of exposition may progress, it does not come to an end. But how much more difficult is it to adopt this choice spiritual love-song as one's own prayer! For this we need a soul that loves after the same manner, and in the main it requires such a soul even to understand it rightly; for, as the saintly Bernard says, lingua amoris non amanti barbara est.

Psalm 63

Verses 1-3

If the words in Psa 63:2 were אלהים אתּה אשׁחרך, then we would render it, with Böttcher, after Gen 49:8 : Elohim, Thee do I seek, even Thee! But אלי forbids this construction; and the assertion that otherwise it ought to be, “Jahve, my God art Thou” (Psa 140:7), rests upon a non-recognition of the Elohimic style. Elohim alone by itself is a vocative, and accordingly has Mehupach legarme. The verb שׁחר signifies earnest, importunate seeking and inquiring (e.g., Psa 78:34), and in itself has nothing to do with שׁחר, the dawn; but since Psa 63:7 looks back upon the night, it appears to be chosen with reference to the dawning morning, just as in Isa 26:9 also, שׁחר stands by the side of אוּה בלּילה. The lxx is therefore not incorrect when it renders it: πρὸς δὲ ὀρθρίζω (cf. ὁ λαὸς ὤρθριζεν πρὸς αὐτὸν, Luk 21:38); and Apollinaris strikes the right note when he begins his paraphrase, Νύκτα μετ ̓ ἀμφιλύκην σὲ μάκαρ μάκαρ ἀμφιχορεύσω -
At night when the morning dawns will I exult around Thee, most blessed One.
The supposition that בּארץ is equivalent to כּאשׁר בּארץ, or even that the Beth is Beth essentiae (“as a,” etc.), are views that have no ground whatever, except as setting the inscription at defiance. What is meant is the parched thirsty desert of sand in which David finds himself. We do not render it: in a dry and languishing land, for ציּה is not an adjective, but a substantive - the transition of the feminine adjective to the masculine primary form, which sometimes (as in 1Ki 19:11) occurs, therefore has no application here; nor: in the land of drought and of weariness, for who would express himself thus? ואיף, referring to the nearest subject בּשׂרי, continues the description of the condition (cf. Gen 25:8). In a region where he is surrounded by sun-burnt aridity and a nature that bears only one uniform ash-coloured tint, which casts its unrefreshing image into his inward part, which is itself in much the same parched condition, his soul thirsts, his flesh languishes, wearied and in want of water (languidus deficiente aqua), for God, the living One and the Fountain of life. כּמהּ (here with the tone drawn back, כּמהּ, like בּחר, 1Ch 28:10, עמד, Hab 3:11) of ardent longing which consumes the last energies of a man (root כם, whence כּמן and כּמס to conceal, and therefore like עטף, עלף, proceeding from the idea of enveloping; Arabic Arab. kamiha, to be blind, dark, pale, and disconcerted). The lxx and Theodotion erroneously read כּמּה (how frequently is this the case!); whereas Aquila renders it ἐπετάθη, and Symmachus still better, ἱμείρεται (the word used of the longing of love). It is not a small matter that David is able to predicate such languishing desire after God even of his felsh; it shows us that the spirit has the mastery within him, and not only forcibly keeps the flesh in subjection, but also, so far as possible, draws it into the realm of its own life - an experience confessedly more easily attained in trouble, which mortifies our carnal nature, than in the midst of the abundance of outward prosperity. The God for whom he is sick [lit. love-sick] in soul and body is the God manifest upon Zion.
Now as to the כּן in Psa 63:3 - a particle which is just such a characteristic feature in the physiognomy of this Psalm as אך is in that of the preceding Psalm - there are two notional definitions to choose from: thus = so, as my God (Ewald), and: with such longing desire (as e.g., Oettinger). In the former case it refers back to the confession, “Elohim, my God art Thou,” which stands at the head of the Psalm; in the latter, to the desire that has just been announced, and that not in its present exceptional character, but in its more general and constant character. This reference to what has immediately gone before, and to the modality, not of the object, but of the disposition of mind, deserves the preference. “Thus” is accordingly equivalent to “longing thus after Thee.” The two כן in Psa 63:3 and Psa 63:5 are parallel and of like import. The alternation of the perfect (Psa 63:3) and of the future (Psa 63:5) implies that what has been the Psalmist's favourite occupation heretofore, shall also be so in the future. Moreover, בארץ ציה and בּקּדשׁ form a direct antithesis. Just as he does not in a dry land, so formerly in the sanctuary he looked forth longingly towards God (חזה with the conjoined idea of solemnity and devotion). We have now no need to take לראות as a gerundive (videndo), which is in itself improbable; for one looks, peers, gazes at anything just for the purpose of seeing what the nature of the object is (Psa 14:2; Isa 42:18). The purpose of his gazing upon God as to gain an insight into the nature of God, so far as it is disclosed to the creature; or, as it is expressed here, to see His power and glory, i.e., His majesty on its terrible and on its light and loving side, to see this, viz., in its sacrificial appointments and sacramental self-attestations. Such longing after God, which is now all the more intense in the desert far removed from the sanctuary, filled and impelled him; for God's loving-kindness is better than life, better than this natural life (vid., on Psa 17:14), which is also a blessing, and as the prerequisite of all earthly blessings a very great blessing. The loving-kindness of God, however, is a higher good, is in fact the highest good and the true life: his lips shall praise this God of mercy, his morning song shall be of Him; for that which makes him truly happy, and after which he even now, as formerly, only and solely longs, is the mercy or loving-kindness (חסד) of this God, the infinite wroth of which is measured by the greatness of His power (עז) and glory (כבוד). It might also be rendered, “Because Thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee;” but if כּי is taken as demonstrative (for), it yields a train of thought that that is brought about not merely by what follows (as in the case of the relative because), but also by what precedes: “for Thy loving-kindness...my lips shall then praise Thee” (ישׁבּחוּנך with the suffix appended to the energetic plural form ûn, as in Isa 60:7, Isa 60:10; Jer 2:24).

Verses 4-8

This strophe again takes up the כּן (Psa 63:3): thus ardently longing, for all time to come also, is he set towards God, with such fervent longing after God will he bless Him in his life, i.e., entirely filling up his life therewith (בּחיּי as in Psa 104:33; Psa 146:2; cf. Baruch 4:20, ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις μου), and in His name, i.e., invoking it and appealing to it, will he lift up his hands in prayer. The being occupied with God makes him, even though as now in the desert he is obliged to suffer bodily hunger, satisfied and cheerful like the fattest and most marrowy food: velut adipe et pinguedine satiatur anima mea. From Lev 3:17; Lev 7:25, Grussetius and Frisch infer that spiritualies epulae are meant. And certainly the poet cannot have had the sacrificial feasts (Hupfeld) in his mind; for the חלב of the shelamim is put upon the altar, and is removed from the part to be eaten. Moreover, however, even the Tôra does not bind itself in its expression to the letter of that prohibition of the fat of animals, vid., Deu 32:14, cf. Jer 31:14. So here also the expression “with marrow and fat” is the designation of a feast prepared from well-fed, noble beasts. He feels himself satisfied in his inmost nature just as after a feast of the most nourishing and dainty meats, and with lips of jubilant songs (accus. instrum. according to Ges. §138, rem. 3), i.e., with lips jubilant and attuned to song, shall his mouth sing praise. What now follows in Psa 63:7 we no longer, as formerly, take as a protasis subsequently introduced (like Isa 5:4.): “when I remembered...meditated upon Thee,” but so that Psa 63:7 is the protasis and Psa 63:7 the apodosis, cf. Psa 21:12; Job 9:16 (Hitzig): When I remember Thee (meminerim, Ew. §355, b) upon my bed (stratis meis, as in Psa 132:3; Gen 49:4, cf. 1Ch 5:1) - says he now as the twilight watch is passing gradually into the morning - I meditate upon Thee in the night-watches (Symmachus, καθ ̓ ἑκάστην φυλακήν), or during, throughout the night-watches (like בּחיּי in Psa 63:5); i.e., it is no passing remembrance, but it so holds me that I pass a great part of the night absorbed in meditation on Thee. He has no lack of matter for his meditation; for God has become a help (auxilio, vid., on Psa 3:3) to him: He has rescued him in this wilderness, and, well concealed under the shadow of His wings (vid., on Psa 17:8; Psa 36:8; Psa 57:2), which affords him a cool retreat in the heat of conflict and protection against his persecutors, he is able to exult (ארנּן, the potential). Between himself and God there subsists a reciprocal relationship of active love. According to the schema of the crosswise position of words (Chiasmus), אחריך and בּי intentionally jostle close against one another: he depends upon God, following close behind Him, i.e., following Him everywhere and not leaving Him when He wishes to avoid him; and on the other side God's right hand holds him fast, not letting him go, not abandoning him to his foes.

Verses 9-11

The closing strophe turns towards these foes. By והמּה he contrasts with his own person, as in Psa 59:16., Psa 56:7., the party of the enemy, before which he has retreated into the desert. It is open to question whether לשׁואה is intended to be referred, according to Psa 35:17, to the persecuted one (to destroy my life), or, with Hupfeld, to the persecutors (to their own destruction, they themselves for destruction). If the former reference to the persecuted be adopted, we ought, in order to give prominence to the evidently designed antithesis to Psa 63:9, to translate: those, however, who..., shall go down into the depths of the earth (Böttcher, and others); a rendering which is hazardous as regards the syntax, after המּה and in connection with this position of the words. Therefore translate: On the other hand, those, to (their own) ruin do they seek my soul. It is true this ought properly to be expressed by לשׁואתם, but the absence of the suffix is less hazardous than the above relative rendering of יבּקּשׁוּ. What follows in Psa 63:10-11 is the expansion of לשׁואה. The futures from יבאוּ onwards are to be taken as predictive, not as imprecatory; the former accords better with the quiet, gentle character of the whole song. It shall be with them as with the company of Korah. תּחתּיּות הארץ is the interior of the earth down into its deepest bottom; this signification also holds good in Psa 139:15; Isa 44:23.^[4]
The phrase הגּיר על־ידי חרב here and in Jer 18:21; Eze 35:5 (Hiph., not of גּרר, to drag, tear away, but נגר, to draw towards, flow), signifies properly to pour upon = into the hands (Job 16:11), i.e., to give over (הסגּיר) into the power of the sword; effundent eum is (much the same as in Job 4:19; Job 18:18, and frequently) equivalent to effundetur. The enallage is like Psa 5:10; Psa 7:2., and frequently: the singular refers to each individual of the homogeneous multitude, or to this multitude itself as a concrete persona moralis. The king, however, who is now banished from Jerusalem to the habitation of jackals, will, whilst they become a portion (מנת = מנות), i.e., prey, of the jackals (vid., the fulfilment in 2Sa 18:7.), rejoice in Elohim. Every one who sweareth by Him shall boast himself. Theodoret understands this of swearing κατὰ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως σωτηρίαν. Hengstenberg compares the oath חי פרעה, Gen 42:15. Ewald also (§217, f) assumes this explanation to be unquestionable. But the Israelite is to swear by the name of Jahve and by no other, Deu 6:13; Isa 65:16, cf. Amo 8:14. If the king were meant, why was it not rather expressed by הנשׁבּע לו, he who swears allegiance to him? The syntax does not help us to decide to what the בּו refers. Neinrich Moeller (1573) says of the בו as referred to the king: peregrinum est et coactum; and A. H. Franke in his Introductio in Psalterium says of it as referred to Elohim: coactum est. So far as the language is concerned, both references are admissible; but as regards the subject-matter, only the latter. The meaning, as everywhere else, is a searing by God. He who, without allowing himself to turn from it, swore by Elohim, the God of Israel, the God of David His anointed, and therefore acknowledged Him as the Being exalted above all things, shall boast himself or “glory,” inasmuch as it shall be practically seen how well-founded and wise was this recognition. He shall glory, for the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped, forcibly closed, viz., those who, together with confidence in the Christ of God, have by falsehood also undermined the reverence which is due to God Himself. Psa 64:1-10 closes very similarly, and hence is placed next in order. Invocation of Divine Protection against the Falseness of Men
Even Hilary begins the exposition of this Psalm with the words Psalmi superscriptio historiam non continet, in order at the outset to give up all attempt at setting forth its historical connection. The Midrash observes that it is very applicable to Daniel, who was cast into the lions' den by the satraps by means of a delicately woven plot. This is indeed true; but only because it is wanting in any specially defined features and cannot with any certainty be identified with one or other of the two great periods of suffering in the life of David.

Psalm 64

Verses 1-4

The Psalm opens with an octostich, and closes in the same way. The infinitive noun שׂיח signifies a complaint, expressed not by the tones of pain, but in words. The rendering of the lxx (here and in Psa 55:3) is too general, ἐν τῷ θέεσθαί με. The “terror” of the enemy is that proceeding from him (gen. obj. as in Deu 2:15, and frequently). The generic singular אויב is at once particularized in a more detailed description with the use of the plural. סוד is a club or clique; רגשׁה (Targumic = המון, e.g., Eze 30:10) a noisy crowd. The perfects after אשׁר affirm that which they now do as they have before done; cf. Psa 140:4 and Psa 58:8, where, as in this passage, the treading or bending of the bow is transferred to the arrow. דּבר מר is the interpretation added to the figure, as in Psa 144:7. That which is bitter is called מר, root מר, stringere, from the harsh astringent taste; here it is used tropically of speech that wounds and inflicts pain (after the manner of an arrow or a stiletto), πικροὶ λόγοι. With the Kal לירות (Psa 11:2) alternates the Hiph. ירהוּ. With פּתאם the description takes a new start. ולא ייראוּ, forming an assonance with the preceding word, means that they do it without any fear whatever, and therefore also without fear of God (Psa 55:20; Psa 25:18).

Verses 5-6

The evil speech is one with the bitter speech in Psa 64:4, the arrow which they are anxious to let fly. This evil speech, here agreement or convention, they make firm to themselves (sibi), by securing, in every possible way, its effective execution. ספּר (frequently used of the cutting language of the ungodly, Psa 59:13; Psa 69:27; cf. Talmudic ספּר לשׁון שׁלישׁי, to speak as with three tongues, i.e., slanderously) is here construed with ל of that at which their haughty and insolent utterances aim. In connection therewith they take no heed of God, the all-seeing One: they say (ask), quis conspiciat ipsis. There is no need to take למו as being for לו (Hitzig); nor is it the dative of the object instead of the accusative, but it is an ethical dative: who will see or look to them, i.e., exerting any sort of influence upon them? The form of the question is not the direct (Psa 59:8), but the indirect, in which מי, seq. fut., is used in a simply future (Jer 44:28) or potential sense (Job 22:17; 1Ki 1:20). Concerning עולת, vid., Psa 58:3. It is doubtful whether תּמּנוּ^[5] is the first person (= תּמּונוּ) as in Num 17:13, Jer 44:18, or the third person as in Lam 3:22 (= תּמּוּ, which first of all resolved is תּנמוּ, and then transposed תּמּנוּ, like מעזניה = מענזיה = מעזּיה, Isa 23:11). The reading טמנוּ, from which Rashi proceeds, and which Luther follows in his translation, is opposed by the lxx and Targum; it does not suit the governing subject, and is nothing but an involuntary lightening of the difficulty. If we take into consideration, that תּמם signifies not to make ready, but to be ready, and that consequently חפשׂ מחפּשׂ is to be taken by itself, then it must be rendered either: they excogitate knavish tricks or villainies, “we are ready, a clever stroke is concocted, and the inward part of man and the heart is deep!” or, which we prefer, since there is nothing to indicate the introduction of any soliloquy: they excogitate knavish tricks, they are ready - a delicately devised, clever stroke (nominative of the result), and (as the poet ironically adds) the inward part of man and the heart is (verily) deep. There is nothing very surprising in the form תּמּנוּ for תּמּוּ, since the Psalms, whenever they depict the sinful designs and doings of the ungodly, delight in singularities of language. On ולב (not ולב) = (אישׁ) ולב = ולבּו, cf. Psa 118:14.

Verses 7-10

Deep is man's heart and inward part, but not too deep for God, who knoweth the heart (Jer 17:9.). And He will just as suddenly surprise the enemies of His anointed with their death-blow, as they had plotted it for him. The futt. consec. that follow represent that which is future, with all the certainty of an historical fact as a retribution springing from the malicious craftiness of the enemies. According to the accentuation, Psa 64:8 is to be rendered: “then will Elohim shoot them, a sudden arrow become their wounds.” Thus at length Hupfeld renders it; but how extremely puzzling is the meaning hidden behind this sentence! The Targum and the Jewish expositors have construed it differently: “Then will Elohim shoot them with arrows suddenly;” in this case, however, because Psa 64:8 then becomes too blunt and bald, פּתאם has to be repeated in thought with this member of the verse, and this is in itself an objection to it. We interpunctuate with Ewald and Hitzig thus: then does Elohim shoot them with an arrow, suddenly arise (become a reality) their wounds (cf. Mic 7:4), namely, of those who had on their part aimed the murderous weapon against the upright for a sudden and sure shot. Psa 64:9 is still more difficult. Kimchi's interpretation, which accords with the accents: et corruere facient eam super se, linguam suam, is intolerable; the proleptic suffix, having reference to לשׁונם (Exo 3:6; Job 33:20), ought to have been feminine (vid., on Psa 22:16), and “to make their own tongue fall upon themselves” is an odd fancy. The objective suffix will therefore refer per enallagen to the enemy. But not thus (as Hitzig, who now seeks to get out of the difficulty by an alteration of the text, formerly rendered it): “and they cause those to fall whom they have slandered [lit. upon whom their tongue came].” This form of retribution does not accord with the context; and moreover the gravely earnest עלימו, like the הוּ-, refers more probably to the enemies than to the objects of their hostility. The interpretation of Ewald and Hengstenberg is better: “and one overthrows him, inasmuch as their tongue, i.e., the sin of their tongue with which they sought to destroy others, comes upon themselves.” The subject to ויּכשׁילהוּ, as in Psa 63:11; Job 4:19; Job 7:3; Luk 12:20, is the powers which are at the service of God, and which are not mentioned at all; and the thought עלימו לשׁונם (a circumstantial clause) is like Psa 140:10, where in a similar connection the very same singularly rugged lapidary, or terse, style is found. In Psa 64:9 we must proceed on the assumption that ראה ב in such a connection signifies the gratification of looking upon those who are justly punished and rendered harmless. But he who tarries to look upon such a scene is certainly not the person to flee from it; התנודד does not here mean “to betake one's self to flight” (Ewald, Hitzig), but to shake one's self, as in Jer 48:27, viz., to shake the head (Psa 44:15; Jer 18:16) - the recognised (vid., Psa 22:8) gesture of malignant, mocking astonishment. The approbation is awarded, according to Psa 64:10, to God, the just One. And with the joy at His righteous interposition, - viz. of Him who has been called upon to interpose, - is combined a fear of the like punishment. The divine act of judicial retribution now set forth becomes a blessing to mankind. From mouth to mouth it is passed on, and becomes an admonitory nota bene. To the righteous in particular it becomes a consolatory and joyous strengthening of his faith. The judgment of Jahve is the redemption of the righteous. Thus, then, does he rejoice in his God, who by thus judging and redeeming makes history into the history of redemption, and hide himself the more confidingly in Him; and all the upright boast themselves, viz., in God, who looks into the heart and practically acknowledges them whose heart is directed unswervingly towards Him, and conformed entirely to Him. In place of the futt. consec., which have a prophetic reference, simple futt. come in here, and between these a perf. consec. as expressive of that which will then happen when that which is prophetically certain has taken place. Thanksgiving Song for Victory and Blessings Bestowed
In this Psalm, the placing of which immediatley after the preceding is at once explicable by reason of the ויּיראוּ so prominent in both (Psa 64:10; Psa 65:9), we come upon the same intermingling of the natural and the historical as in Psa 8:1-9; Psa 19:1-14; Psa 29:1-11. The congregation gathered around the sanctuary on Zion praises its God, by whose mercy its imperilled position in relation to other nations has been rescued, and by whose goodness it again finds itself at peace, surrounded by fields rich in promise. In addition to the blessing which it has received in the bounties of nature, it does not lose sight of the answer to prayer which it has experienced in its relation to the world of nations. His rule in human history and His rule in nature are, to the church, reflected the one in the other. In the latter, as in the former, it sees the almighty and bountiful hand of Him who answers prayer and expiates sins, and through judgment opens up a way for His love. The deliverance which it has experienced redounds to the acknowledgment of the God of its salvation among the most distant peoples; the beneficial results of Jahve's interposition in the events transpiring in the world extend temporally as well as spiritually far beyond the bounds of Israel; it is therefore apparently the relief of Israel and of the peoples in general from the oppression of some worldly power that is referred to. The spring of the third year spoken of in Isa 37:30, when to Judah the overthrow of Assyria was a thing of the past, and they again had the fields ripening for the harvest before their eyes, offers the most appropriate historical basis for the twofold purport of the Psalm. The inscription, To the Precentor, a Psalm, by David, a song (cf. Psa 75:1; Psa 76:1), does not mislead us in this matter. For even we regard it as uncritical to assign to David all the Psalms bearing the inscription לדוד. The Psalm in many MSS (Complutensian, Vulgate), beside the words Εἰς τὸ τέλος ψαλμός τῷ Δαυίδ ᾠδὴ, has the addition ᾠδὴ Ἱιερεμίου καὶ Ἰεζεκιὴλ, (ἐκ) τοῦ λαοῦ τῆς παροικίας ὄτε ἔμελλον ἐκπορεύεσθαι. At the head of the following Psalm it might have some meaning - here, however, it has none.

Psalm 65

Verses 1-4

The praise of God on account of the mercy with which He rules out of Zion. The lxx renders σοὶ πρέπει ὕμνος, but דּומיּה, tibi par est, h. e. convenit laus (Ewald), is not a usage of the language (cf. Psa 33:1; Jer 10:7). דּמיּה signifies, according to Psa 22:3, silence, and as an ethical notion, resignation, Psa 62:2. According to the position of the words it looks like the subject, and תּהלּה like the predicate. The accents at least (Illuj, Shalsheleth) assume the relationship of the one word to the other to be that of predicate and subject; consequently it is not: To Thee belongeth resignation, praise (Hengstenberg), but: To Thee is resignation praise, i.e., resignation is (given or presented) to Thee as praise. Hitzig obtains the same meaning by an alteration of the text: לך דמיה תהלּל; but opposed to this is the fact that הלּל ל is not found anywhere in the Psalter, but only in the writings of the chronicler. And since it is clear that the words לך תהלה belong together (Psa 40:4), the poet had no need to fear any ambiguity when he inserted dmyh between them as that which is given to God as praise in Zion. What is intended is that submission or resignation to God which gives up its cause to God and allows Him to act on its behalf, renouncing all impatient meddling and interference (Exo 14:14). The second member of the sentence affirms that this praise of pious resignation does not remain unanswered. Just as God in Zion is praised by prayer which resigns our own will silently to His, so also to Him are vows paid when He fulfils such prayer. That the answers to prayer are evidently thought of in connection with this, we see from Psa 65:3, where God is addressed as the “Hearer or Answerer of prayer.” To Him as being the Hearer and Answerer of prayer all flesh comes, and in fact, as עדיך implies (cf. Isa 45:24), without finding help anywhere else, it clear a way for itself until it gets to Him; i.e., men, absolutely dependent, impotent in themselves and helpless, both collectively and individually (those only excepted who are determined to perish or despair), flee to Him as their final refuge and help. Before all else it is the prayer for the forgiveness of sin which He graciously answers. The perfect in Psa 65:4 is followed by the future in Psa 65:4. The former, in accordance with the sense, forms a hypothetical protasis: granted that the instances of faults have been too powerful for me, i.e., (cf. Gen 4:13) an intolerable burden to me, our transgressions are expiated by Thee (who alone canst and also art willing to do it). דּברי is not less significant than in Psa 35:20; Psa 105:27; Psa 145:5, cf. 1Sa 10:2; 2Sa 11:18.: it separates the general fact into its separate instances and circumstances. How blessed therefore is the lot of that man whom (supply אשׁר) God chooses and brings near, i.e., removes into His vicinity, that he may inhabit His courts (future with the force of a clause expressing a purpose, as e.g., in Job 30:28, which see), i.e., that there, where He sits enthroned and reveals Himself, he may have his true home and be as if at home (vid., Psa 15:1)! The congregation gathered around Zion is esteemed worthy of this distinction among the nations of the earth; it therefore encourages itself in the blessed consciousness of this its privilege flowing from free grace (בחר), to enjoy in full draughts (שּבע with בּ as in Psa 103:5) the abundant goodness or blessing (טוּב) of God's house, of the holy (ἅγιον) of His temple, i.e., of His holy temple (קדשׁ as in Psa 46:5, cf. Isa 57:15). For for all that God's grace offers us we can give Him no better thanks than to hunger and thirst after it, and satisfy our poor soul therewith.

Verses 5-8

The praise of God on account of the lovingkindness which Israel as a people among the peoples has experienced. The future תּעננוּ confesses, as a present, a fact of experience that still holds good in all times to come. נוראות might, according to Psa 20:7, as in Psa 139:14, be an accusative of the more exact definition; but why not, according to 1Sa 20:10; Job 9:3, a second accusative under the government of the verb? God answers the prayer of His people superabundantly. He replies to it גוראות, terrible deeds, viz., בּצדק, by a rule which stringently executes the will of His righteousness (vid., on Jer 42:6); in this instance against the oppressors of His people, so that henceforth everywhere upon earth He is a ground of confidence to all those who are oppressed. “The sea (ים construct state, as is frequently the case, with the retention of the å) of the distant ones” is that of the regions lying afar off (cf. Psa 56:1). Venema observes, Significatur, Deum esse certissimum praesidium, sive agnoscatur ab hominibus et ei fidatur, sive non (therefore similar to γνόντες, Rom 1:21; Psychol. S. 347; tr. p. 408). But according to the connection and the subjective colouring the idea seems to have, מבטח וגו is to be understood of the believing acknowledgment which the God of Israel attains among all mankind by reason of His judicial and redemptive self-attestation (cf. Isa 33:13; 2Ch 32:22.). In the natural world and among men He proves Himself to be the Being girded with power to whom everything must yield. He it is who setteth fast the mountains (cf. Jer 10:12) and stilleth the raging of the ocean. In connection with the giant mountains the poet may have had even the worldly powers (vid., Isa 41:15) in his mind; in connection with the seas he gives expression to this allegorical conjunction of thoughts. The roaring of the billows and the wild tumult of the nations as a mass in the empire of the world, both are stilled by the threatening of the God of Israel (Isa 17:12-14). When He shall overthrow the proud empire of the world, whose tyranny the earth has been made to feel far and wide, then will reverential fear of Him and exultant joy at the end of the thraldom (vid., Isa 13:4-8) become universal. אותת (from the originally feminine אות = ăwăjat, from אוה, to mark, Num 34:10), σημεῖα, is the name given here to His marvellous interpositions in the history of our earth. קצוי, Psa 65:6 (also in Isa 26:15), out of construction is קצות. “The exit places of the morning and of the evening” are the East and West with reference to those who dwell there. Luther erroneously understands מוצאי as directly referring to the creatures which at morning and evening “sport about (webern), i.e., go safely and joyfully out and in.” The meaning is, the regions whence the morning breaks forth and where the evening sets. The construction is zeugmatic so far as בּוא, not יצא, is said of the evening sun, but only to a certain extent, for neither does one say נבוא ערב (Ewald). Perret-Gentil renders it correctly: les lieux d'où surgissent l'aube et le crepuscule. God makes both these to shout for joy, inasmuch as He commands a calm to the din of war.

Verses 9-13

The praise of God on account of the present year's rich blessing, which He has bestowed upon the land of His people. In Psa 65:10, Psa 65:11 God is thanked for having sent down the rain required for the ploughing (vid., Commentary on Isaiah, ii. 522) and for the increase of the seed sown, so that, as vv. 12-14 affirm, there is the prospect of a rich harvest. The harvest itself, as follows from v. 14b, is not yet housed. The whole of Psa 65:10, Psa 65:11 is a retrospect; in vv. 12-14 the whole is a description of the blessing standing before their eyes, which God has put upon the year now drawing to a close. Certainly, if the forms רוּה and נחת were supplicatory imperatives, then the prayer for the early or seed-time rain would attach itself to the retrospect in Psa 65:11, and the standpoint would be not about the time of the Passover and Pentecost, both festivals belonging to the beginning of the harvest, but about the time of the feast of Tabernacles, the festival of thanksgiving for the harvest, and vv. 12-14 would be a glance into the future (Hitzig). But there is nothing to indicate that in Psa 65:11 the retrospect changes into a looking forward. The poet goes on with the same theme, and also arranges the words accordingly, for which reason רוּה and נחת are not to be understood in any other way. שׁקק beside העשׁיר (to enrich) signifies to cause to run over, overflow, i.e., to put anything in a state of plenty or abundance, from שׁוּק (Hiph. Joe 2:24, to yield in abundance), Arab, sâq, to push, impel, to cause to go on in succession and to follow in succession. רבּת (for which we find רבּה in Psa 62:3) is an adverb, copiously, richly (Psa 120:6; Psa 123:4; Psa 129:1), like מאת, a hundred times (Ecc 8:12). תּעשׁרנּה is Hiph. with the middle syllable shortened, Ges. §53, 3, rem. 4. The fountain (פּלג) of God is the name given here to His inexhaustible stores of blessing, and more particularly the fulness of the waters of the heavens from which He showers down fertilizing rain. כּן, “thus thoroughly,” forms an alliteration with הכין, to prepare, and thereby receives a peculiar twofold colouring. The meaning is: God, by raising and tending, prepared the produce of the field which the inhabitants of the land needed; for He thus thoroughly prepared the land in conformity with the fulness of His fountain, viz., by copiously watering (רוּה infin. absol. instead of רוּה, as in 1Sa 3:12; 2Ch 24:10; Exo 22:22; Jer 14:19; Hos 6:9) the furrows of the land and pressing down, i.e., softening by means of rain, its ridges (גּדוּדה, defective plural, as e.g., in Rth 2:13), which the ploughshare has made. תּלם (related by root with Arab. tll , tell, a hill, prop. that which is thrown out to a place, that which is thrown up, a mound) signifies a furrow as being formed by casting up or (if from Arab. ṯlm , ébrécher, to make a fracture, rent, or notch in anything) by tearing into, breaking up the ground; גּדוּד (related by root with uchdûd and chaṭṭ, the usual Arabic words for a furrow^[6] as being formed by cutting into the ground.
In Psa 65:12 the year in itself appears as a year of divine goodness (טובה, bonitas), and the prospective blessing of harvest as the crown which is set upon it. For Thou hast crowned “the year of Thy goodness” and “with Thy goodness” are different assertions, with which also different (although kindred as to substance) ideas are associated. The futures after עטרתּ depict its results as they now lie out to view. The chariot-tracks (vid., Deu 33:26) drop with exuberant fruitfulness, even the meadows of the uncultivated and, without rain, unproductive pasture land (Job 38:26.). The hills are personified in Psa 65:13 in the manner of which Isaiah in particular is so fond (e.g., Psa 44:23; Psa 49:13), and which we find in the Psalms of his type (Psa 96:11., Psa 98:7., cf. Psa 89:13). Their fresh, verdant appearance is compared to a festive garment, with which those which previously looked bare and dreary gird themselves; and the corn to a mantle in which the valleys completely envelope themselves (עטף with the accusative, like Arab. t‛ṭṭf with b of the garment: to throw it around one, to put it on one's self). The closing words, locking themselves as it were with the beginning of the Psalm together, speak of joyous shouting and singing that continues into the present time. The meadows and valleys (Böttcher) are not the subject, of which it cannot be said that they sing; nor can the same be said of the rustling of the waving corn-fields (Kimchi). The expression requires men to be the subject, and refers to men in the widest and most general sense. Everywhere there is shouting coming up from the very depths of the breast (Hithpal.), everywhere songs of joy; for this is denoted by שׁיר in distinction from קנן. Thanksgiving for a National and Personal Deliverance
From Psa 65:1-13 onwards we find ourselves in the midst of a series of Psalms which, with a varying arrangement of the words, are inscribed both מזמור and שׁיר (Ps 65-68). The two words שׁיר מזמור stand according to the accents in the stat. constr. (Psa 88:1), and therefore signify a Psalm-song.^[7]
This series, as is universally the case, is arranged according to the community of prominent watchwords. In Psa 65:2 we read: “To Thee is the vow paid,” and in Psa 66:13: “I will pay Thee my vows;” in Psa 66:20 : “Blessed be Elohim,” and in Psalms 67:8: “Elohim shall bless us.” Besides, Ps 66 and Psa 67:1-7 have this feature in common, that למנצח, which occurs fifty-five times in the Psalter, is accompanied by the name of the poet in every instance, with the exception of these two anonymous Psalms. The frequently occurring Sela of both Psalms also indicates that they were intended to have a musical accompaniment. These annotations referring to the temple-music favour the pre-exilic rather than the post-exilic origin of the two Psalms. Both are purely Elohimic; only in one instance (Psa 6:1-10 :18) does אדני, equally belonging to this style of Psalm, alternate with Elohim.
On the ground of some deliverance out of oppressive bondage that has been experienced by Israel arises in Psalms 66 the summons to the whole earth to raise a shout of praise unto God. The congregation is the subject speaking as far as Psa 66:12. From Psa 66:13 the person of the poet appears in the foreground; but that which brings him under obligation to present a thank-offering is nothing more nor less than that which the whole congregation, and he together with it, has experienced. It is hardly possible to define this event more minutely. The lofty consciousness of possessing a God to whom all the world must bow, whether cheerfully or against its will, became strong among the Jewish people more especially after the overthrow of Assyria in the reign of Hezekiah. But there is no ground for conjecturing either Isaiah or Hezekiah to be the composer of this Psalm. If עולם in Psa 66:7 signified the world (Hitzig), then he would be (vid., Psa 24:9) one of the latest among the Old Testament writers; but it has the same meaning here that it has everywhere else in Old Testament Hebrew.
In the Greek Church this Psalm is called Ψαλμὸς ἀναστάσεως; the lxx gives it this inscription, perhaps with reference to Psa 66:12, ἐξήγαγες ἡμᾶς εἰς ἀναψυχήν.

Psalm 66

Verses 1-4

The phrase שׂים כבוד ל signifies “to give glory to God” in other passages (Jos 7:19; Isa 42:12), here with a second accusative, either (1) if we take תּהלּתו as an accusative of the object: facite laudationem ejus gloriam = gloriosam (Maurer and others), or (2) if we take כבוד as an accusative of the object and the former word as an accusative of the predicate: reddite honorem laudem ejus (Hengstenberg), or (3) also by taking תהלתו as an apposition: reddite honorem, scil. laudem ejus (Hupfeld). We prefer the middle rendering: give glory as His praise, i.e., to Him as or for praise. It is unnecessary, with Hengstenberg, to render: How terrible art Thou in Thy works! in that case אתּה ought not to be wanting. מעשׂיך might more readily be singular (Hupfeld, Hitzig); but these forms with the softened Jod of the root dwindle down to only a few instances upon closer consideration. The singular of the predicate (what a terrible affair) here, as frequently, e.g., Psa 119:137, precedes the plural designating things. The song into which the Psalmist here bids the nations break forth, is essentially one with the song of the heavenly harpers in Rev 15:3., which begins, Μεγάλα καὶ θαυμαστὰ τὰ ἔργα σου.

Verses 5-7

Although the summons: Come and see... (borrowed apparently from Psa 46:9), is called forth by contemporary manifestations of God's power, the consequences of which now lie open to view, the rendering of Psa 66:6, “then will we rejoice in Him,” is nevertheless unnatural, and, rightly looked at, neither grammar nor the matter requires it. For since שׁם in this passage is equivalent to אז, and the future after אז takes the signification of an aorist; and since the cohortative form of the future can also (e.g., after עד, Psa 73:7, and in clauses having a hypothetical sense) be referred to the past, and does sometimes at least occur where the writer throws himself back into the past (2Sa 22:38), the rendering: Then did we rejoice in Him, cannot be assailed on syntactical grounds. On the “we,” cf. Jos 5:1, Chethîb, Hos 12:1-14 :54. The church of all ages is a unity, the separate parts being jointly involved in the whole. The church here directs the attention of all the world to the mighty deeds of God at the time of the deliverance from Egypt, viz., the laying of the Red Sea and of Jordan dry, inasmuch as it can say in Psa 66:7, by reason of that which it has experienced ibn the present, that the sovereign power of God is ever the same: its God rules in His victorious might עולם, i.e., not “over the world,” because that ought to be בּעולם, but “in eternity” (accusative of duration, as in Psa 89:2., Psa 45:7), and therefore, as in the former days, so also in all time to come. His eyes keep searching watch among the peoples; the rebellious, who struggle agaisnt His yoke and persecute His people, had better not rise, it may go ill with them. The Chethîb runs ירימוּ, for which the Kerî is ירוּמוּ. The meaning remains the same; הרים can (even without יד, ראשׁ, קרן, Psa 65:5) mean “to practise exaltation,” superbire. By means of למו this proud bearing is designated as being egotistical, and as unrestrainedly boastful. Only let them not imagine themselves secure in their arrogance! There is One more exalted, whose eye nothing escapes, and to whose irresistible might whatever is not conformed to His gracious will succumbs.

Verses 8-12

The character of the event by which the truth has been verified that the God who redeemed Israel out of Egypt still ever possesses and exercises to the full His ancient sovereign power, is seen from this reiterated call to the peoples to share in Israel's Gloria. God has averted the peril of death and overthrow from His people: He has put their soul in life (בּחיּים, like בּישׁע in Psa 12:6), i.e., in the realm of life; He has not abandoned their foot to tottering unto overthrow (mowT the substantive, as in Psa 121:3; cf. the reversed construction in Psa 55:23). For God has cast His people as it were into a smelting-furnace or fining-pot in order to purify and to prove them by suffering; - this is a favourite figure with Isaiah and Jeremiah, but is also found in Zec 13:9; Mal 3:3. Eze 19:9 is decisive concerning the meaning of מצוּדה, where הביא במצודות signifies “to bring into the holds or prisons;” besides, the figure of the fowling-net (although this is also called מצוּדה as well as מצודה) has no footing here in the context. מצוּדה (vid., Psa 18:3) signifies specula, and that both a natural and an artificial watch-post on a mountain; here it is the mountain-hold or prison of the enemy, as a figure of the total loss of freedom. The laying on of a heavy burden mentioned by the side of it in Psa 66:11 also accords well with this. מוּעקה, a being oppressed, the pressure of a burden, is a Hophal formation, like מטּה, a being spread out, Isa 8:8; cf. the similar masculine forms in Psa 69:3; Isa 8:13; Isa 14:6; Isa 29:3. The loins are mentioned because when carrying heavy loads, which one has to stoop down in order to take up, the lower spinal region is called into exercise. אנושׁ is frequently (Psa 9:20., Psa 10:18; Psa 56:2, Isa 51:12; 2Ch 14:10) the word used for tyrants as being wretched mortals, perishable creatures, in contrast with their all the more revolting, imperious, and self-deified demeanour. God so ordered it, that “wretched men” rode upon Israel's head. Or is it to be interpreted: He caused them to pass over Israel (cf. Psa 129:3; Isa 51:23)? It can scarcely mean this, since it would then be in dorso nostro, which the Latin versions capriciously substitute. The preposition ל instead of על is used with reference to the phrase ישׁב ל: sitting upon Israel's head, God caused them to ride along, so that Israel was not able to raise its head freely, but was most ignominiously wounded in its self-esteem. Fire and water are, as in Isa 43:2, a figure of vicissitudes and perils of the most extreme character. Israel was nigh to being burnt up and drowned, but God led it forth לרויה, to an abundant fulness, to abundance and superabundance of prosperity. The lxx, which renders εἰς ἀναψυχήν (Jerome absolutely: in refrigerium), has read לרוחה; Symmachus, εἰς εὐρυχωρίαν, probably reading לרחבה (Psa 119:45; Psa 18:20). Both give a stronger antithesis. But the state of straitness or oppression was indeed also a state of privation.

Verses 13-15

From this point onwards the poet himself speaks, but, as the diversity and the kind of the sacrifices show, as being a member of the community at large. The עולות stand first, the girts of adoring homage; בּ is the Beth of the accompaniment, as in Lev 16:3; 1Sa 1:24, cf. Heb 9:25. “My vows” refer more especially to פּצה פּה ׃שׁלמי נדר also occurs elsewhere of the involuntary vowing to do extraordinary things urged from one by great distress (Jdg 11:35). אשׁר is an accusative of the object relating to the vows, quae aperuerunt = aperiendo nuncupaverunt labia mea (Geier). In Psa 66:15 עשׂה, used directly (like the Aramaic and Phoenician עבד) in the signification “to sacrifice” (Exo 29:36-41, and frequently), alternates with העלה, the synonym of הקטיר. The sacrifices to be presented are enumerated. מיחים (incorrect for מחים) are marrowy, fat lambs; lambs and bullocks (בּקר) have the most universal appropriation among the animals that were fit for sacrifices. The ram (איל), on the contrary, is the animal for the whole burnt-offering of the high priest, of the princes of the tribes, and of the people; and appears also as the animal for the shelamim only in connection with the shelamim of Aaron, of the people, of the princes of the tribes, and, in Num 6:14, of the Nazarite. The younger he-goat (עתּוּד) is never mentioned as an animal for the whole burnt-offering; but, indeed, as an animal for the shelamim of the princes of the tribes in Num. 7. It is, therefore, probable that the shelamim which were to be offered in close connection with the whole burnt-offerings are introduced by עם, so that קטרת signifies the fat portions of the shelamim upon the altar smoking in the fire. The mention of “rams” renders it necessary that we should regard the poet as here comprehending himself among the people when he speaks thus.

Verses 16-20

The words in Psa 66:16 are addressed in the widest extent, as in Psa 66:5 and Psa 66:2, to all who fear God, wheresoever such are to be found on the face of the earth. To all these, for the glory of God and for their own profit, he would gladly relate what God has made him to experience. The individual-looking expression לנפשׁי is not opposed to the fact of the occurrence of a marvellous answering of prayer, to which he refers, being one which has been experienced by him in common with the whole congregation. He cried unto God with his mouth (that is to say, not merely silently in spirit, but audibly and importunately), and a hymn (רומם,^[8] something that rises, collateral form to רומם, as עולל and שׁובב to עולל and שׁובב) was under my tongue; i.e., I became also at once so sure of my being heard, that I even had the song of praise in readiness (vid., Psa 10:7), with which I had determined to break forth when the help for which I had prayed, and which was assured to me, should arrive. For the purpose of his heart was not at any time, in contradiction to his words, און, God-abhorred vileness or worthlessness; ראה with the accusative, as in Gen 20:10; Psa 37:37 : to aim at, or design anything, to have it in one's eye. We render: If I had aimed at evil in my heart, the Lord would not hear; not: He would not have heard, but: He would not on any occasion hear. For a hypocritical prayer, coming from a heart which has not its aim sincerely directed towards Him, He does not hear. The idea that such a heart was not hidden behind his prayer is refuted in Psa 66:19 from the result, which is of a totally opposite character. In the closing doxology the accentuation rightly takes תּפלּתי וחסדּו as belonging together. Prayer and mercy stand in the relation to one another of call and echo. When God turns away from a man his prayer and His mercy, He commands him to be silent and refuses him a favourable answer. The poet, however, praises God that He has deprived him neither of the joyfulness of prayer nor the proof of His favour. In this sense Augustine makes the following practical observation on this passage: Cum videris non a te amotam deprecationem tuam, securus esto, quia non est a te amota misericordia ejus.

Psalm 67

==Harvest Thanksgiving Song== Like Psa 65:1-13, this Psalm, inscribed To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, a song-Psalm (מזמור שׁיר), also celebrates the blessing upon the cultivation of the ground. As Psa 65:1-13 contemplated the corn and fruits as still standing in the fields, so this Psalm contemplates, as it seems, the harvest as already gathered in, in the light of the redemptive history. Each plentiful harvest is to Israel a fulfilment of the promise given in Lev 26:4, and a pledge that God is with His people, and that its mission to the whole world (of peoples) shall not remain unaccomplished. This mission-tone referring to the end of God's work here below is unfortunately lost in the church's closing strain, “God be gracious and merciful unto us,” but it sounds all the more distinctly and sweetly in Luther's hymn, “Es woll uns Gott genädig sein,” throughout.
There are seven stanzas: twice three two-line stanzas, having one of three lines in the middle, which forms the clasp or spangle of the septiad, a circumstance which is strikingly appropriate to the fact that this Psalm is called “the Old Testament Paternoster” in some of the old expositors.^[9]
The second half after the three-line stanza beings in Psa 67:6 exactly as the first closed in Psa 67:4. יברכנוּ is repeated three times, in order that the whole may bear the impress of the blessing of the priest, which is threefold.

Verses 1-2

The Psalm begins (Psa 67:1) with words of the priest's benediction in Num 6:24-26. By אתּנוּ the church desires for itself the unveiled presence of the light-diffusing loving countenance of its God. Here, after the echo of the holiest and most glorious benediction, the music strikes in. With Psa 67:2 the Beracha passes over into a Tephilla. לדעת is conceived with the most general subject: that one may know, that may be known Thy way, etc. The more graciously God attests Himself to the church, the more widely and successfully does the knowledge of this God spread itself forth from the church over the whole earth. They then know His דּרך, i.e., the progressive realization of His counsel, and His ישׁוּעה, the salvation at which this counsel aims, the salvation not of Israel merely, but of all mankind.

Verses 3-4

Now follows the prospect of the entrance of all peoples into the kingdom of God, who will then praise Him in common with Israel as their God also. His judging (שׁפט) in this instance is not meant as a judicial punishment, but as a righteous and mild government, just as in the christological parallels Psa 72:12., Isa 11:3. מישׁר in an ethical sense for מישׁרים, as in Psa 45:7; Isa 11:4; Mal 2:6. הנחה as in Psa 31:4 of gracious guidance (otherwise than in Job 12:23).

Verses 5-7

The joyous prospect of the conversion of heathen, expressed in the same words as in Psa 67:5, here receives as its foundation a joyous event of the present time: the earth has just yielded its fruit (cf. Psa 85:13), the fruit that had been sown and hoped for. This increase of corn and fruits is a blessing and an earnest of further blessing, by virtue of which (Jer 33:9; Isa 60:3; cf. on the contrary Joe 2:17) it shall come to pass that all peoples unto the uttermost bounds of the earth shall reverence the God of Israel. For it is the way of God, that all the good that He manifests towards Israel shall be for the well-being of mankind.

Psalm 68

==Hymn of War and Victory in the Style of Deborah==

Is it not an admirably delicate tact with which the collector makes the מזמור שׁיר Psa 68:1 follow upon the מזמור שׁיר Psa 67:1? The latter began with the echo of the benediction which Moses puts into the mouth of Aaron and his sons, the former with a repetition of those memorable words in which, at the breaking up of the camp, he called upon Jahve to advance before Israel (Num 10:35). “It is in reality,” says Hitzig of Psalms 68, “no easy task to become master of this Titan.” And who would not agree with him in this remark? It is a Psalm in the style of Deborah, stalking along upon the highest pinnacle of hymnic feeling and recital; all that is most glorious in the literature of the earlier period is concentrated in it: Moses' memorable words, Moses' blessing, the prophecies of Balaam, the Deuteronomy, the Song of Hannah re-echo here. But over and above all this, the language is so bold and so peculiarly its own, that we meet with no less than thirteen words that do no occur anywhere else. It is so distinctly Elohimic in its impress, that the simple Elohim occurs twenty-three times; but in addition to this, it is as though the whole cornucopia of divine names were poured out upon it: יהוה in Psa 68:17; אדני six times; האל twice; שׁדּי in Psa 68:15; יהּ in Psa 68:5; אדני יהוה in Psa 68:21; אלהים yh in Psa 68:19; so that this Psalm among all the Elohimic Psalms is the most resplendent. In connection with the great difficulty that is involved in it, it is no wonder that expositors, more especially the earlier expositors, should differ widely in their apprehension of it as a whole or in separate parts. This circumstance has been turned to wrong account by Ed. Reuss in his essay, “Der acht-und-sechzigste Psalm, Ein Denkmal exegetischer Noth und Kunst zu Ehren unsrer ganzen Zunft, Jena, 1851,” for the purpose of holding up to ridicule the uncertainty of Old Testament exegesis, as illustrated in this Psalm.
The Psalm is said, as Reuss ultimately decides, to have been written between the times of Alexander the Great and the Maccabees, and to give expression to the wish that the Israelites, many of whom were far removed from Palestine and scattered abroad in the wide earth, might soon be again united in their fatherland. But this apprehension rests entirely upon violence done to the exegesis, more particularly in the supposition that in v. 23 the exiles are the persons intended by those whom God will bring back. Reuss makes out those who are brought back out of Bashan to be the exiles in Syria, and those who are brought back out of the depths of the sea he makes out to be the exiles in Egypt. He knows nothing of the remarkable concurrence of the mention of the Northern tribes (including Benjamin) in Psa 68:28 with the Asaphic Psalms: Judah and Benjamin, to his mind, is Judaea; and Zebulun and Naphtali, Galilee in the sense of the time after the return from exile. The “wild beast of the reed” he correctly takes to be an emblem of Egypt; but he makes use of violence in order to bring in a reference to Syria by the side of it. Nevertheless Olshausen praises the services Reuss has rendered with respect to this Psalm; but after incorporating two whole pages of the “Denkmal” in his commentary he cannot satisfy himself with the period between Alexander and the Maccabees, and by means of three considerations arrives, in this instance also, at the common refuge of the Maccabaean period, which possesses such an irresistible attraction for him.
In opposition to this transplanting of the Psalm into the time of the Maccabees we appeal to Hitzig, who is also quick-sighted enough, when there is any valid ground for it, in finding out Maccabaean Psalms. He refers the Psalm to the victorious campaign of Joram against faithless Moab, undertaking in company with Jehoshaphat. Böttcher, on the other hand, sees in it a festal hymn of triumph belonging to the time of Hezekiah, which was sung antiphonically at the great fraternizing Passover after the return home of the young king from one of his expeditions against the Assyrians, who had even at that time fortified themselves in the country east of the Jordan (Bashan). Thenius (following the example of Rödiger) holds a different view. He knows the situation so very definitely, that he thinks it high time that the discussion concerning this Psalm was brought to a close. It is a song composed to inspirit the army in the presence of the battle which Josiah undertook against Necho, and the prominent, hateful character in Psa 68:22 is Pharaoh with his lofty artificial adornment of hair upon his shaven head. It is, however, well known what a memorably tragical issue for Israel that battle had; the Psalm would therefore be a memorial of the most lamentable disappointment.
All these and other recent expositors glory in hot advancing any proof whatever in support of the inscribed לדוד. And yet there are two incidents in David's life, with regard to which the Psalm ought first of all to be accurately looked at, before we abandon this לדוד to the winds of conjecture. The first is the bringing home of the Ark of the covenant to Zion, to which, e.g., Franz Volkmar Reinhard (in vol. ii. of the Velthusen Commentationes Theol. 1795), Stier, and Hofmann refer the Psalm. But the manner in which the Psalm opens with a paraphrase of Moses' memorable words is at once opposed to this; and also the impossibility of giving unity to the explanation of its contents by such a reference is against it. Jahve has long since taken up His abode upon the holy mountain; the poet in this Psalm, which is one of the Psalms of war and victory describes how the exalted One, who now, however, as in the days of old, rides along through the highest heavens at the head of His people, casts down all powers hostile to Him and to His people, and compels all the world to confess that the God of Israel rules from His sanctuary with invincible might. A far more appropriate occasion is, therefore, to be found in the Syro-Ammonitish war of David, in which the Ark was taken with them by the people (2Sa 11:11); and the hymn was not at that time first of all composed when, at the close of the war, the Ark was brought back to the holy mountain (Hengstenberg, Reinke), but when it was set in motion from thence at the head of Israel as they advanced against the confederate kings and their army (2Sa 10:6). The war lasted into the second year, when a second campaign was obliged to be undertaken in order to bring it to an end; and this fact offers at least a second possible period for the origin of the Psalm. It is clear that in Psa 68:12-15, and still more clear that in Psa 68:20-24 (and from a wider point of view, Psa 68:29-35), the victory over the hostile kings is only hoped for, and in Psa 68:25-28, therefore, the pageantry of victory is seen as it were beforehand. It is the spirit of faith, which here celebrates beforehand the victory of Jahve, and sees in the single victory a pledge of His victory over all the nations of the earth. The theme of the Psalm, generalized beyond its immediate occasion, is the victory of the God of Israel over the world. Regarded as to the nature of its contents, the whole divides itself into two halves, vv. 2-19, 20-35, which are on the whole so distinct that the first dwells more upon the mighty deed God has wrought, the second upon the impressions it produces upon the church and upon the peoples of the earth; in both parts it is viewed now as future, now as past, inasmuch as the longing of prayer and the confidence of hope soar aloft to the height of prophecy, before which futurity lies as a fulfilled fact. The musical Sela occurs three times (Psa 68:8, Psa 68:20, Psa 68:33). These three forte passages furnish important points of view for the apprehension of the collective meaning of the Psalm.
But is David after all the author of this Psalm? The general character of the Psalm is more Asaphic than Davidic (vid., Habakkuk, S. 122). Its references to Zalmon, to Benjamin and the Northern tribes, to the song of Deborah, and in general to the Book of Judges (although not in its present form), give it an appearance of being Ephraimitish. Among the Davidic Psalms it stands entirely alone, so that criticism is quite unable to justify the לדוד. And if the words in Psa 68:29 are addressed to the king, it points to some other poet than David. But is it to a contemporary poet? The mention of the sanctuary on Zion in Psa 68:30, 36, does not exclude such an one. Only the threatening of the “wild beast of the sedge” (Psa 68:31) seems to bring us down beyond the time of David; for the inflammable material of the hostility of Egypt, which broke out into a flame in the reign of Rehoboam, was first gathering towards the end of Solomon's reign. Still Egypt was never entirely lost sight of from the horizon of Israel; and the circumstance that it is mentioned in the first rank, where the submission of the kingdoms of this world to the God of Israel is lyrically set forth in the prophetic prospect of the future, need not astonish one even in a poet of the time of David. And does not Psa 68:28 compel us to keep on this side of the division of the kingdom? It ought then to refer to the common expedition of Jehoram and Jehoshaphat against Moab (Hitzig), the indiscriminate celebration of which, however, was no suitable theme for the psalmist.

Verses 1-6

The Psalm begins with the expression of a wish that the victory of God over all His foes and the triumphant exultation of the righteous were near at hand. Ewald and Hitzig take יקום אלהים hypothetically: If God arise, He enemies will be scattered. This rendering is possible in itself so far as the syntax is concerned, but here everything conspires against it; for the futures in Psa 68:2-4 form an unbroken chain; then a glance at the course of the Psalm from Psa 68:20 onwards shows that the circumstances of Israel, under which the poet writes, urged forth the wish: let God arise and humble His foes; and finally the primary passage, Num 10:35, makes it clear that the futures are the language of prayer transformed into the form of the wish. In Psa 68:3 the wish is addressed directly to God Himself, and therefore becomes petition. הנדּן is inflected (as vice versâ ירדף, Psa 7:6, from ירדּף) from הנּדף (like הנּתן, Jer 32:4); it is a violation of all rule in favour of the conformity of sound (cf. הקצות for הקצות, Lev 14:43, and supra on Psa 51:6) with תּנדּף, the object of which is easily supplied (dispellas, sc. hostes tuos), and is purposely omitted in order to direct attention more stedfastly to the omnipotence which to every creature is so irresistible. Like smoke, wax (דּונג, root דג, τηκ, Sanscrit tak, to shoot past, to run, Zend taḱ, whence vitaḱina, dissolving, Neo-Persic gudâchten; causative: to cause to run in different directions = to melt or smelt) is an emblem of human feebleness. As Bakiuds observes, Si creatura creaturam non fert, quomodo creatura creatoris indignantis faciem ferre possit? The wish expressed in Psa 68:4 forms the obverse of the preceding. The expressions for joy are heaped up in order to describe the transcendency of the joy that will follow the release from the yoke of the enemy. לפני is expressively used in alternation with מפני in Psa 68:2, Psa 68:3 : by the wrathful action, so to speak, that proceeds from His countenance just as the heat radiating from the fire melts the wax the foes are dispersed, whereas the righteous rejoice before His gracious countenance.
As the result of the challenge that has been now expressed in Psa 68:2-4, Elohim, going before His people, begins His march; and in Psa 68:5 an appeal is made to praise Him with song, His name with the music of stringed instrument, and to make a way along which He may ride בּערבות. In view of Psa 68:34 we cannot take צרבות, as do the Targum and Talmud (B. Chagiga 12b), as a name of one of the seven heavens, a meaning to which, apart from other considerations, the verb ערב, to be effaced, confused, dark, is not an appropriate stem-word; but it must be explained according to Isa 40:3. There Jahve calls in the aid of His people, here He goes forth at the head of His people; He rides through the steppes in order to right against the enemies of His people. Not merely the historical reference assigned to the Psalm by Hitzig, but also the one adopted by ourselves, admits of allusion being made to the “steppes of Moab;” for the way to Mêdebâ, where the Syrian mercenaries of the Ammonites had encamped (1Ch 19:7), lay through these steppes, and also the way to Rabbath Ammon (2Sa 10:7.). סלּוּ calls upon them to make a way for Him, the glorious, invincible King (cf. Isa 57:14; Isa 62:10); סלל signifies to cast up, heap up or pave, viz., a raised and suitable street or highway, Symmachus katastroo'sate. He who thus rides along makes the salvation of His people His aim: “ä is His name, therefore shout with joy before Him.” The Beth in בּיהּ (Symmachus, Quinta: ἴα) is the Beth essentiae, which here, as in Isa 26:4, stands beside the subject: His name is (exists) in יה, i.e., His essential name is yh, His self-attestation, by which He makes Himself capable of being known and named, consists in His being the God of salvation, who, in the might of free grace, pervades all history. This Name is a fountain of exultant rejoicing to His people.
This Name is exemplificatively unfolded in Psa 68:6. The highly exalted One, who sits enthroned in the heaven of glory, rules in all history here below and takes an interest in the lowliest more especially, in all circumstances of their lives following after His own to succour them. He takes the place of a father to the orphan. He takes up the cause of the widow and contests it to a successful issue. Elohim is one who makes the solitary or isolated to dwell in the house; בּיתה with He locale, which just as well answers the question where? as whither? בּית, a house = family bond, is the opposite of יהיד, solitarius, recluse, Psa 25:16. Dachselt correctly renders it, in domum, h.e. familiam numerosam durabilemque eos ut patres-familias plantabit. He is further One who brings forth (out of the dungeon and out of captivity) those who are chained into abundance of prosperity. כּושׁרות, occurring only here, is a pluralet. from כּשׁר morf .tela, synonym אשׁר, to be straight, fortunate. Psa 68:7 briefly and sharply expresses the reverse side of this His humanely condescending rule among mankind. אך is here (cf. Gen 9:4; Lev 11:4) restrictive or adversative (as is more frequently the case with אכן); and the preterite is the preterite of that which is an actual matter of experience. The סוררים, i.e., (not from סוּר, the apostate ones, Aquila afista'menoi, but as in Psa 66:7, from סרר) the rebellious, Symmachus ἀπειθεῖς, who were not willing to submit to the rule of so gracious a God, had ever been excluded from these proofs of favour. These must inhabit צחיחה (accusative of the object), a sun-scorched land; from צחח, to be dazzlingly bright, sunny, dried or parched up. They remain in the desert without coming into the land, which, fertilized by the waters of grace, is resplendent with a fresh verdure and with rich fruits. If the poet has before his mind in connection with this the bulk of the people delivered out of Egypt, ὧν τὰ κῶλα ἔπεσαν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμω (Heb 3:17), then the transition to what follows is much more easily effected. There is, however, no necessity for any such intermediation. The poet had the march through the desert to Canaan under the guidance of Jahve, the irresistible Conqueror, in his mind even from the beginning, and now he expressly calls to mind that marvellous divine leading in order that the present age may take heart thereat.

Verses 7-10

In Psa 68:7. the poet repeats the words of Deborah (Jdg 5:4.), and her words again go back to Deu 33:2, cf. Exo 19:15.; on the other hand, our Psalm is the original to Hab. 3. The martial verb יצא represents Elohim as, coming forth from His heavenly dwelling-place (Isa 26:21), He places Himself at the head of Israel. The stately verb צעד represents Him as He accompanies the hosts of His people with the step of a hero confident of victory; and the terrible name for the wilderness, ישׁימון, is designedly chosen in order to express the contrast between the scene of action and that which they beheld at that time. The verb to זה סיני is easily supplied; Dachselt's rendering according to the accents is correct: hic mons Sinai (sc. in specie ita tremuit). The description fixes our attention upon Sinai as the central point of all revelations of God during the period of deliverance by the hand of Moses, as being the scene of the most gloriously of them all (vid., on Hab. p. 136f.). The majestic phenomena which proclaimed the nearness of God are distributed over the whole journeying, but most gloriously concentrated themselves at the giving of the Law of Sinai. The earth trembled throughout the extended circuit of this vast granite range, and the heavens dropped, inasmuch as the darkness of thunder clouds rested upon Sinai, pierced by incessant lightnings (Ex. 19). There, as the original passages describe it, Jahve met His people; He came from the east, His people from the west; there they found themselves together, and shaking the earth, breaking through the heavens, He gave them a pledge of the omnipotence which should henceforth defend and guide them. The poet has a purpose in view in calling Elohim in this passage “the God of Israel;” the covenant relationship of God to Israel dates from Sinai, and from this period onwards, by reason of the Tôra, He became Israel's King (Deu 33:5). Since the statement of a fact of earlier history has preceded, and since the preterites alternate with them, the futures that follow in Psa 68:10, Psa 68:11 are to be understood as referring to the synchronous past; but hardly so that Psa 68:10 should refer to the miraculous supply of food, and more especially the rain of manna, during the journeyings through the wilderness. The giving of the Law from Sinai has a view to Israel being a settled, stationary people, and the deliverance out of the land of bondage only finds its completion in the taking and maintaining possession of the Land of Promise. Accordingly Psa 68:10, Psa 68:11 refer to the blessing and protection of the people who had taken up their abode there.
The נחלהּ of God (genit. auctoris, as in 2 Macc. 2:4) is the land assigned by Him to Israel as an inheritance; and גּשׁם נדבות an emblem of the abundance of gifts which God has showered down upon the land since Israel took up its abode in it. נדבה is the name given to a deed and gift springing from an inward impulse, and in this instance the intensive idea of richness and superabundance is associated therewith by means of the plural; גּשׁם נדבות is a shower-like abundance of good gifts descending from above. The Hiphil הניף here governs a double accusative, like the Kal in Pro 7:17, in so far, that is, as נחלתך is drawn to Psa 68:10; for the accentuation, in opposition to the Targum, takes נחלתך ונלאה together: Thine inheritance and that the parched one (Waw epexeget. as in 1Sa 28:3; Amo 3:11; Amo 4:10). But this “and that” is devoid of aim; why should it not at once be read הנּלאה? The rendering of Böttcher, “Thy sickened and wearied,” is inadmissible, too, according to the present pointing; for it ought to be נחלתך or נחלתך. And with a suffix this Niphal becomes ambiguous, and more especially so in this connection, where the thought of נחלה, an inherited possession, a heritage, lies so naturally at hand. נחלתך is therefore to be drawn to Psa 68:10, and Psa 68:10 must begin with ונלאה, as in the lxx, καὶ ἠσθένησε σὺ δὲ κατεερτίσω αὐτήν. It is true נלאה is not a hypothetical preteriet equivalent to ונלאתה; but, as is frequently the case with the anarthrous participle (Ew. §341, b), it has the value of a hypothetical clause: “and if it (Israel's inheritance) were in a parched, exhausted condition (cf. the cognate root להה, Gen 47:13), then hast Thou always made it again firm” (Psa 8:4; Psa 15:1-5 :17), i.e., strengthened, enlivened it. Even here the idea of the inhabitants is closely associated with the land itself; in Psa 68:11 they are more especially thought of: “They creatures dwelt therein.” Nearly all modern expositors take חיּה either according to 2Sa 23:11, 2Sa 23:13 (cf. 1Ch 11:15), in the signification tent-circle, ring-camp (root חו, Arab. ḥw, to move in a circle, to encircle, to compass), or in the signification of Arab. ḥayy (from Arab. ḥayiya = חיי, חיה), a race or tribe, i.e., a collection of living beings (cf. חיּי, 1Sa 18:18). But the Asaphic character of this Psalm, which is also manifest in other points, is opposed to this rendering. This style of Psalm is fond of the comparison of Israel to a flock, so that also in Psa 74:19 חית עניין signifies nothing else than “the creatures [Getheir, collective] of Thy poor, Thy poor creatures.” This use of חיה is certainly peculiar; but not so remarkable as if by the “creatures of God” we had to understand, with Hupfeld, the quails (Ex. 16). The avoiding of בּהמה on account of the idea of brutum (Psa 73:22) which is inseparable from this word, is sufficient to account for it; in חיה, ζῷον, there is merely the notion of moving life. We therefore are to explain it according to Mic 7:14, where Israel is called a flock dwelling in a wood in the midst of Carmel: God brought it to pass, that the flock of Israel, although sorely persecuted, nevertheless continued to inhabit the land. בּהּ, as in Mic 7:15, refers to Canaan. עני in Psa 68:11 is the ecclesia pressa surrounded by foes on every side: Thou didst prepare for Thy poor with Thy goodness, Elohim, i.e., Thou didst regale or entertain Thy poor people with Thy possessions and Thy blessings. הכין ל, as in Gen 43:16; 1Ch 12:39, to make ready to eat, and therefore to entertain; טובה as in Psa 65:12, טוּב ה, Jer 31:12. It would be quite inadmissible, because tautological, to refer תּכין to the land according to Psa 65:10 (Ewald), or even to the desert (Olshausen), which the description has now left far behind.

Verses 11-14

The futures that now follow are no longer to be understood as referring to previous history; they no longer alternate with preterites. Moreover the transition to the language of address in Psa 68:14 shows that the poet here looks forth from his present time and circumstances into the future; and the introduction of the divine name אדני, after Elohim has been used eleven times, is an indication of a new commencement. The prosperous condition in which God places His church by giving it the hostile powers of the world as a spoil is depicted. The noun אמר, never occurring in the genitival relationship, and never with a suffix, because the specific character of the form would be thereby obliterated, always denotes an important utterance, more particularly God's word of promise (Psa 77:9), or His word of power (Hab 3:9), which is represented elsewhere as a mighty voice of thunder (Psa 68:34, Isa 30:30), or a trumpet-blast (Zec 9:14); in the present instance it is the word of power by which the Lord suddenly changes the condition of His oppressed church. The entirely new state of things which this omnipotent behest as it were conjures into existence is presented to the mind in v. 12b: the women who proclaim the tidings of victory - a great host. Victory and triumph follow upon God's אמר, as upon His creative יהי. The deliverance of Israel from the army of Pharaoh, the deliverance out of the hand of Jabin by the defeat of Sisera, the victory of Jephthah over the Ammonites, and the victorious single combat of David with Goliath were celebrated by singing women. God's decisive word shall also go forth this time, and of the evangelists, like Miriam (Mirjam) and Deborah, there shall be a great host.
Psa 68:12 describes the subject of this triumphant exultation. Hupfeld regards Psa 68:13-15 as the song of victory itself, the fragment of an ancient triumphal ode (epinikion) reproduced here; but there is nothing standing in the way that should forbid our here regarding these verses as a direct continuation of Psa 68:12. The “hosts” are the numerous well-equipped armies which the kings of the heathen lead forth to the battle against the people of God. The unusual expression “kings of hosts” sounds very much like an ironically disparaging antithesis to the customary “Jahve of Hosts” (Böttcher). He, the Lord, interposes, and they are obliged to flee, staggering as they go, to retreat, and that, as the anadiplosis (cf. Jdg 5:7; Jdg 19:20) depicts, far away, in every direction. The fut. energicum with its ultima-accentuation gives intensity to the pictorial expression. The victors then turn homewards laden with rich spoils. נות בּית, here in a collective sense, is the wife who stays at home (Jdg 5:24) while the husband goes forth to battle. It is not: the ornament (נוה as in Jer 6:2) of the house, which Luther, with the lxx, Vulgate, and Syriac, adopts in his version,^[10] but: the dweller or homely one (cf. נות, a dwelling-lace, Job 8:6) of the house, ἡ οἰκουρός. The dividing of the spoil elsewhere belongs to the victors; what is meant here is the distribution of the portions of the spoil that have fallen to the individual victors, the further distribution of which is left for the housewife (Jdg 5:30., 2Sa 1:24). Ewald now recognises in Psa 68:14. the words of an ancient song of victory; but v. 13b is unsuitable to introduce them. The language of address in Psa 68:14 is the poet's own, and he here describes the condition of the people who are victorious by the help of their God, and who again dwell peaceably in the land after the war. אם passes out of the hypothetical signification into the temporal, as e.g., in Job 14:14 (vid., on Psa 59:16). The lying down among the sheep-folds (שׁפתּים = משׁפּתים, cf. שׁפט, משׁפּט, the staked-in folds or pens consisting of hurdles standing two by two over against one another) is an emblem of thriving peace, which (like Psa 68:8, Psa 68:28) points back to Deborah's song, Jdg 5:16, cf. Gen 49:14. Just such a time is now also before Israel, a time of peaceful prosperity enhanced by rich spoils. Everything shall glitter and gleam with silver and gold. Israel is God's turtle-dove, Psa 74:19, cf. Psa 56:1, Hos 7:11; Hos 11:11. Hence the new circumstances of ease and comfort are likened to the varied hues of a dove disporting itself in the sun. Its wings are as though overlaid with silver (נחפּה, not 3. praet, but part. fem. Niph. as predicate to כּנפי, cf. 1Sa 4:15; Mic 4:11; Mic 1:9; Ew. §317 a), therefore like silver wings (cf. Ovid, Metam. ii. 537: Niveis argentea pennis Ales); and its pinions with gold-green, ^[11] and that, as the reduplicated form implies, with the iridescent or glistening hue of the finest gold (חרוּץ, not dull, but shining gold).
Side by side with this bold simile there appears in v. 15 an equally bold but contrastive figure, which, turning a step or two backward, likewise vividly illustrates the results of their God-given victory. The suffix of בּהּ refers to the land of Israel, as in Isa 8:21; Isa 65:9. צלמום, according to the usage of the language so far as it is now preserved to us, is not a common noun: deep darkness (Targum = צלמות), it is the name of a mountain in Ephraim, the trees of which Abimelech transported in order to set fire to the tower of Shechem (Jdg 9:48.). The Talmudic literature was acquainted with a river taking its rise there, and also somewhat frequently mentions a locality bearing a similar name to that of the mountain. The mention of this mountain may in a general way be rendered intelligible by the consideration that, like Shiloh (Gen 49:10), it is situated about in the centre of the Holy Land.^[12] השׁליג signifies to bring forth snow, or even, like Arab. aṯlj, to become snow-white; this Hiph. is not a word descriptive of colour, like הלבּין. Since the protasis is בּפרשׂ, and not בּפרשׂך, תּשׁלג is intended to be impersonal (cf. Psa 50:3; Amo 4:7, Mich. Psa 3:6); and the voluntative form is explained from its use in apodoses of hypothetical protases (Ges. §128, 2). It indicates the issue to which, on the supposition of the other, it must and shall come. The words are therefore to be rendered: then it snows on Zalmon; and the snowing is either an emblem of the glistening spoil that falls into their hands in such abundance, or it is a figure of the becoming white, whether from bleached bones (cf. Virgil, Aen. v. 865: albi ossibus scopuli; xii. 36: campi ossibus albent; Ovid, Fasti i. 558: humanis ossibus albet humus) or even from the naked corpses (2Sa 1:19, על־בּמותיך חלל). Whether we consider the point of comparison to lie in the spoil being abundant as the flakes of snow, and like to the dazzling snow in brilliancy, or in the white pallid corpses, at any rate בּצלמון is not equivalent to כּבצלמון, but what follows “when the Almighty scatters kings therein” is illustrated by Zalmon itself. In the one case Zalmon is represented as the battle-ground (cf. Psa 110:6), in the other (which better corresponds to the nature of a wooded mountain) as a place of concealment. The protasis בפרשׂ וגו favours the latter; for פּרשׂ signifies to spread wide apart, to cause a compact whole - and the host of “the kings” is conceived of as such - to fly far asunder into many parts (Zec 2:10, cf. the Niph. in Eze 17:21). The hostile host disperses in all directions, and Zalmon glitters, as it were with snow, from the spoil that is dropped by those who flee. Homer also (Iliad, xix. 357-361) likens the mass of assembled helmets, shields, armour, and lances to the spectacle of a dense fall of snow. In this passage of the Psalm before us still more than in Homer it is the spectacle of the fallen and far seen glistening snow that also is brought into the comparison, and not merely that which is falling and that which covers everything (vid., Iliad, xii. 277ff.). The figure is the pendant of the figure of the dove.^[13]

Verses 15-18

This victory of Israel over the kings of the Gentiles gives the poet the joyful assurance that Zion is the inaccessible dwelling-place of Elohim, the God of the heavenly hosts. The mention of Zalmon leads him to mention other mountains. He uses the mountains of Bashan as an emblem of the hostile powers east of Jordan. These stand over against the people of God, as the mighty mountains of Bashan rising in steep, only slightly flattened peaks, to little hill-like Zion. In the land on this side Jordan the limestone and chalk formation with intermingled strata of sandstone predominates; the mountains of Bashan, however, are throughout volcanic, consisting of slag, lava, and more particularly basalt (basanites), which has apparently taken its name from Bashan (Basan).^[14]
As a basalt range the mountains of Bashan are conspicuous among other creations of God, and are therefore called “the mountain of Elohim:” the basalt rises in the form of a cone with the top lopped off, or even towers aloft like so many columns precipitous and rugged to sharp points; hence the mountains of Bashan are called הר גּבננּים, i.e., a mountain range (for הר, as is well known, signifies both the single eminence and the range of summits) of many peaks = a many-peaked mountain; גּבנן is an adjective like רענן, אמלל. With this boldly formed mass of rock so gloomily majestic, giving the impression of antiquity and of invincibleness, when compared with the ranges on the other side of unstable porous limestone and softer formations, more particularly with Zion, it is an emblem of the world and its powers standing over against the people of God as a threatening and seemingly invincible colossus. The poet asks these mountains of Bashan “why,” etc.? רצד is explained from the Arabic rṣd, which, in accordance with its root Arab. rṣ, signifies to cleave firmly to a place (firmiter inhaesit loco), properly used of a beast of prey couching down and lying in wait for prey, of a hunter on the catch, and of an enemy in ambush; hence then: to lie in wait for, lurk, ἐνεδρεύειν, craftily, insidiose (whence râṣid, a lier-in-wait, tarraṣṣud, an ambush), here: to regard enviously, invidiose. In Arabic, just as in this instance, it is construed as a direct transitive with an accusative of the object, whereas the original signification would lead one to look for a dative of the object (רצד ל), which does also really occur in the common Arabic. Olewejored is placed by גבננים, but what follows is not, after all, the answer: “the mountain - Elohim has chosen it as the seat of His throne,” but ההר is the object of the interrogative clause: Quare indiviose observatis, montes cacuminosi, hunc montem (δεικτικῶς: that Zion yonder), quem, etc. (an attributive clause after the determinate substantive, as in Psa 52:9; Psa 89:50, and many other instances, contrary to the Arabic rule of style). Now for the first time, in Psa 68:17, follows that which is boastfully and defiantly contrasted with the proud mountains: “Jahve will also dwell for ever;” not only that Elohim has chosen Zion as the seat of His throne, it will also continue to be the seat of His throne, Jahve will continue to dwell [there] for ever. Grace is superior to nature, and the church superior to the world, powerful and majestic as this may seem to be. Zion maintains its honour over against the mountains of Bashan.

Verse 18

Psa 68:18 now describes the kind of God, so to speak, who sits enthroned on Zion. The war-chariots of the heavenly hosts are here collectively called רכב, as in 2Ki 6:17. רבּתים (with Dechî, not Olewejored) is a dual from רבּות; and this is either an abstract noun equivalent to רבּוּת (from which comes the apocopated רבּו = רבּוּ), a myriad, consequently רבּתים, two myriads, or a contracted plural out of רבּאחת, Ezr 2:69, therefore the dual of a plural (like הומותים, לוּהותים): an indefinite plurality of myriads, and this again doubled (Hofmann). With this sense, in comparison with which the other is poor and meagre, also harmonies the expression אלפי שׂנאן, thousands of repetition (ἅπαξ λεγομ = שׂנין), i.e., thousands and again thousands, numberless, incalculable thousands; cf. the other and synonymous expression in Dan 7:10.^[15]
It is intended to give a conception of the “hosts” which Elohim is to set in array against the “kings of hosts,” i.e., the martial power of the kingdom of the world, for the protection and for the triumph of His own people. Chariots of fire and horses of fire appear in 2Ki 2:11; 2Ki 6:17 as God's retinue; in Dan 7:10 it is angelic forces that thus make themselves visible. They surround Him on both sides in many myriads, in countless thousands. אדני בם (with Beth raphatum ),^[16] the Lord is among them (cf. Isa 45:14), i.e., they are round about Him, He has them with Him (Jer 41:15), and is present with them. It now becomes clear why Sinai is mentioned, viz., because at the giving of the Law Jahve revealed Himself on Sinai surrounded by “ten thousands of saints” (Deu 33:2.). But in what sense is it mentioned? Zion, the poet means, presents to the spiritual eye now a spectacle such as Sinai presented in the earlier times, although even Sinai does not belong to the giants among the mountains:^[17]
God halts there with His angel host as a protection and pledge of victory to His people. The conjectures בא מסיני and בם מסיני (Hitzig) are of no use to us. We must either render it: Sinai is in the sanctuary, i.e., as it were transferred into the sanctuary of Zion; or: a Sinai is it in holiness, i.e., it presents a spectacle such as Sinai presented when God by His appearing surrounded it with holiness. The use of the expression בּקּדשׂ in Psa 68:25, Psa 77:14; Exo 15:11, decides in favour of the latter rendering.
With Psa 68:19 the Psalm changes to prayer. According to Psa 7:8; Psa 47:6, למּרום appears to be the height of heaven; but since in Psa 68:16-18 Zion is spoken of as Jahve's inaccessible dwelling-place, the connection points to מרום ציּון, Jer 31:12, cf. Eze 17:23; Eze 20:40. Moreover the preterites, which under other circumstances we should be obliged to take as prophetic, thus find their most natural explanation as a retrospective glance at David's storming of “the stronghold of Zion” (2Sa 5:6-10) as the deed of Jahve Himself. But we should exceed the bounds of legitimate historical interpretation by referring לקחתּ מתּנות בּאדם to the Nethı̂nim, Ezr 8:20 (cf. Num 17:6), those bondmen of the sanctuary after the manner of the Gibeonites, Jos 9:23. The Beth of באדם is not Beth substantiae: gifts consisting of men, so that these themselves are the thing given (J. D. Michaelis, Ewald), but the expression signifies inter homines, as in Psa 78:60; 2Sa 23:3; Jer 32:20. עלית למּרום mentions the ascending of the triumphant One; שׁבית שּׁבי (cf. Jdg 5:12), the subjugation of the enemy; לקחתּ וגו, the receiving of the gifts betokening homage and allegiance (Deu 28:38, and frequently), which have been presented to Him since He has taken possession of Zion - there He sits enthroned henceforth over men, and receives gifts like to the tribute which the vanquished bring to the victor. These He has received among men, and even (ואף, atque etiam, as in Lev 26:29-32) among the rebellious ones. Or does a new independent clause perhaps begin with ואף סוררים? This point will be decided by the interpretation of the words that follow. Side by side with an infinitive with ל expressing a purpose, the one following noun (here a twofold name) has the assumption against it of being the subject. Is יה אלהים then consequently the object, or is it an apostrophe? If it be taken as the language of address, then the definition of the purpose, לשׁכן, ought, as not being suited to what immediately precedes, to refer back to עלית; but this word is too far off. Thus, therefore, the construction of יה אלהים with לשכן, as its object, is apparently intended (Ewald, Hupfeld): and even the rebellious are to dwell (Ges. §132, rem. 1) with Jāh Elohim descend and dwell; the Syriac version: and even the rebellious will (“not” is probably to be crossed out) dwell before God (יעמדון קדם אלהא); and Jerome: insuper et non credentes inhabitare Dominum Deum. Thus Theodoret also understands the versions of the lxx and of Aquila: “Thou hast not regarded their former disobedience, but notwithstanding their rebellion hast Thou continually been gracious to them ἕως αὐτοὺς oikeetee'rion oikei'on ape'feenas.” The expression, however, sounds too grand to have “the rebellious ones” as its subject, and more particularly in view of Psa 68:7. Hence we take ואף סוררים with בּאדם: and even among rebellious ones (hast Thou received gifts), or: and even rebellious ones (give Thee); and לשׁכן as a clause denoting the purpose, followed by the subject (as e.g., in 2Sa 19:20): in order that Jāh Elohim may dwell, i.e., continue to dwell (as in Psa 68:17, cf. Isa 57:15).
The first half of the Psalm ends here. With the words Jāh Elohim the Psalm has reached a summit upon which it takes its rest. God has broken forth on behalf of His people against their enemies, and He now triumphs over and on behalf of men. The circumstance of Elohim arising is the raise of the final glory, and His becoming manifest as Jāh Elohim is its zenith. Paul (Eph 4:8) gathers up the meaning of Psa 68:19, without following the lxx, in the following manner: ἀναβὰς εἰς ὕψος ᾐχμαλώτευσεν αιχμαλωσίαν καὶ ἔδωκε δόματα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. Might he perhaps have had the Targum, with which the Syriac version agrees, in his mind at the time: יחבתּא להון מתנן לבני נשׂא? He interprets in the light and in the sense of the history that realizes it. For the ascension of Elohim in its historical fulfilment is none other than the ascension of Christ. This latter was, however, as the Psalm describes it, a triumphal procession (Col 2:15); and what the Victor has gained over the powers of darkness and of death, He has gained not for His own aggrandisement, but for the interests of men. It is מתּנות בּאדם, gifts which He now distributes among men, and which benefit even the erring ones. So the apostle takes the words, inasmuch as he changes ἔλαβες into ἔδωκε. The gifts are the charismata which come down from the Exalted One upon His church.^[18]
It is a distribution of gifts, a dispensing of blessing, which stands related to His victory as its primary cause; for as Victor He is also the possessor of blessing, His gifts are as it were the spoils of the victory He has gained over sin, death, and Satan.^[19]
The apostle is the more warranted in this interpretation, since Elohim in what follows is celebrated as the Lord who also brings out of death. This praise in the historical fulfilment applies to Him, who, as Theodoret observes on Psa 68:21, has opened up the prison-house of death, which for us had no exit, and burst the brazen doors, and broken asunder the iron bolts,^[20] viz., to Jesus Christ, who now has the keys of Death and of Hades.

Verses 19-27

Now begins the second circuit of the hymn. Comforted by the majestic picture of the future that he has beheld, the poet returns to the present, in which Israel is still oppressed, but yet not forsaken by God. The translation follows the accentuation, regular and in accordance with the sense, which has been restored by Baer after Heidenheim, viz., אדני has Zarka, and יעמס לנוּ Olewejored preceded by the sub-distinctive Rebia parvum; it is therefore: Benedictus Dominator: quotidie bajulat nobis, - with which the Targum, Rashi, and Kimchi agree.^[21] עמס, like נשׂא and סבל, unites the significations to lay a burden upon one (Zec 12:3; Isa 46:1, Isa 46:3), and to carry a burden; with על it signifies to lay a burden upon any one, here with ל to take up a burden for any one and to bear it for him. It is the burden or pressure of the hostile world that is meant, which the Lord day by day helps His church to bear, inasmuch as He is mighty by His strength in her who of herself is so feeble. The divine name אל, as being the subject of the sentence, is האל: God is our salvation. The music here again strikes in forte, and the same thought that is emphasized by the music in its turn, is also repeated in Psa 68:21 with heightened expression: God is to us a God למושׁעות, who grants us help in rich abundance. The pluralet. denotes not so much the many single proofs of help, as the riches of rescuing power and grace. In Psa 68:21 למּות corresponds to the לנוּ; for it is not to be construed תּוצאות למּות: Jahve's, the Lord, are the outgoings to death (Böttcher), i.e., He can command that one shall not fall a prey to death. תוצאות, the parallel word to מושׁעות, signifies, and it is the most natural meaning, the escapings; יצא, evadere, as in 1Sa 14:41; 2Ki 13:5; Ecc 7:18. In Jahve's power are means of deliverance for death, i.e., even for those who are already abandoned to death. With אך a joyously assuring inference is drawn from that which God is to Israel. The parallelism of the correctly divided verse shows that ראשׁ here, as in Psa 110:6, signifies caput in the literal sense, and not in the sense of princeps. The hair-covered scalp is mentioned as a token of arrogant strength, and unhumbled and impenitent pride, as in Deu 32:42, and as the Attic koma'n directly signifies to strut along, give one's self airs. The genitival construction is the same as in Isa 28:1, Isa 32:13. The form of expression refers back to Num 24:17, and so to speak inflects this primary passage very similarly to Jer 48:45. If קדקד שׂער be an object, then ראשׁ ought also to be a second object (that of the member of the body); the order of the words does not in itself forbid this (cf. Psa 3:8 with Deu 33:11), but would require a different arrangement in order to avoid ambiguities.
In Psa 68:23 the poet hears a divine utterance, or records one that he has heard: “From Bashan will I bring back, I will bring back from the eddies of the sea (from צוּל = צלל, to whiz, rattle; to whirl, eddy), i.e., the depths or abysses of the sea.” Whom? When after the destruction of Jerusalem a ship set sail for Rome with a freight of distinguished and well-formed captives before whom was the disgrace of prostitution, they all threw themselves into the sea, comforting themselves with this passage of Scripture (Gittin 57b, cf. Echa Rabbathi 66a). They therefore took Psa 68:23 to be a promise which has Israel as its object;^[22] but the clause expressing a purpose, Psa 68:24, and the paraphrase in Amo 9:2., show that the foes of Israel are conceived of as its object. Even if these have hidden themselves in the most out-of-the-way places, God will fetch them back and make His own people the executioners of His justice upon them. The expectation is that the flight of the defeated foes will take a southernly direction, and that they will hide themselves in the primeval forests of Bashan, and still farther southward in the depths of the sea, i.e., of the Dead Sea (ים as in Isa 16:8; 2Ch 20:2). Opposite to the hiding in the forests of the mountainous Bashan stands the hiding in the abyss of the sea, as the extreme of remoteness, that which is in itself impossible being assumed as possible. The first member of the clause expressing the purpose, Psa 68:24, becomes more easy and pleasing if we read תּרחץ (lxx, Syriac, and Vulgate, ut intingatur), according to Psa 58:11. So far as the letters are concerned, the conjecture תּחמץ (from which תמחץ, according to Chajug', is transposed), after Isa 63:1, is still more natural (Hitzig): that thy foot may redden itself in blood. This is certainly somewhat tame, and moreover מדּם would be better suited to this rendering than בּדם. As the text now stands, תּמחץ^[23] is equivalent to תּמחצם (them, viz., the enemies), and רגלך בּדם is an adverbial clause (setting or plunging thy foot in blood). It is, however, also possible that מחץ is used like Arab. machaḍa (vehementer commovere): ut concutias s. agites pedem tuam in sanguine. Can it now be that in Psa 68:24 from among the number of the enemies of the one who goes about glorying in his sins, the רשׁע κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν (cf. Isa 11:4; Hab 3:13, and other passages), is brought prominently forward by מנּהוּ? Hardly so; the absence of תּלק (lambat) cannot be tolerated, cf. 1Ki 21:19; 1Ki 22:38. It is more natural, with Simonis, to refer מנּהוּ back to לשׁון (a word which is usually fem., but sometimes perhaps is masc., Psa 22:16; Pro 26:28); and, since side by side with ממּנוּ only מנהוּ occurs anywhere else (Ew. §263, b), to take it in the signification pars ejus (מן from מנן = מגה, after the form גּז, חן, קץ, of the same meaning as מגה, מנת, Psa 63:11), in favour of which Hupfeld also decides.
What is now described in Psa 68:25-28, is not the rejoicing over a victory gained in the immediate past, nor the rejoicing over the earlier deliverance at the Red Sea, but Israel's joyful celebration when it shall have experienced the avenging and redemptive work of its God and King. According to Psa 77:14; Hab 3:6, הליכות appears to be God's march against the enemy; but what follows shows that the pompa magnifica of God is intended, after He has overcome the enemy. Israel's festival of victory is looked upon as a triumphal procession of God Himself, the King, who governs in holiness, and has now subjugated and humbled the unholy world; בּקּדשׁ as in Psa 68:18. The rendering “in the sanctuary' is very natural in this passage, but Exo 15:11; Psa 77:14, are against it. The subject of ראוּ is all the world, more especially those of the heathen who have escaped the slaughter. The perfect signifies: they have seen, just as קדּמוּ, they have occupied the front position. Singers head the procession, after them (אחר,^[24] an adverb as in Gen 22:13; Exo 5:1) players upon citherns and harps (נגנים, participle to נגּן), and on either side virgins with timbrels (Spanish adufe); תּופפות, apocopated part. Poel with the retension of ē (cf. שׁוקקה, Psa 107:9), from תּפף, to strike the תּף (Arab. duff). It is a retrospective reference to the song at the Sea, now again come into life, which Miriam and the women of Israel sang amidst the music of timbrels. The deliverance which is now being celebrated is the counterpart of the deliverance out of Egypt. Songs resound as in Psa 68:27, “in gatherings of the congregation (and, so to speak, in full choirs) praise ye Elohim.” מקהלות (מקהלים, Psa 26:12) is the plural to קהל (Psa 22:23), which forms none of its own (cf. post-biblical קהלּות from קהלּה). Psa 68:27 is abridged from ברכו אדני אשׁר אתם ממקור ישראל, praise ye the Lord, ye who have Israel for your fountainhead. אדני, in accordance with the sense, has Mugrash. Israel is here the name of the patriarch, from whom as from its fountainhead the nation has spread itself abroad; cf. Isa 48:1; Isa 51:1, and as to the syntax ממּך, those who descend from thee, Isa 58:12. In the festive assembly all the tribes of Israel are represented by their princes. Two each from the southern and northern tribes are mentioned. Out of Benjamin was Israel's first king, the first royal victor over the Gentiles; and in Benjamin, according to the promise (Deu 33:12) and according to the accounts of the boundaries (Jos 18:16., Jos 15:7.), lay the sanctuary of Israel. Thus, therefore, the tribe which, according both to order of birth (Gen 43:29.) and also extent of jurisdiction and numbers (1Sa 9:21), was “little,” was honoured beyond the others.^[25]
Judah, however, came to the throne in the person of David, and became for ever the royal tribe. Zebulun and Naphtali are the tribes highly praised in Deborah's song of victory (Jdg 5:18, cf. Psa 4:6) on account of their patriotic bravery. רדם, giving no sense when taken from the well-known verb רדם, falls back upon רדה, and is consequently equivalent to רדם (cf. Lam 1:13), subduing or ruling them; according to the sense, equivalent to רדה בם (1 Kings 5:30; 1Ki 9:23; 2Ch 8:10), like המּצלם, not “their leader up,” but ὁ ἀναγαγὼν αὐτοὺς, Isa 63:11, not = רדיהם (like עשׂיהם, ראיהם), which would signify their subduer or their subduers. The verb רדה, elsewhere to subjugate, oppress, hold down by force, Eze 34:4; Lev 25:53, is here used of the peaceful occupation of the leader who maintains the order of a stately and gorgeous procession. For the reference to the enemies, “their subduer,” is without any coherence. But to render the parallel word רגמתם “their (the enemies') stoning” (Hengstenberg, Vaihinger, and others, according to Böttcher's “Proben”), is, to say nothing more, devoid of taste; moreover רגם does not mean to throw stones with a sling, but to stone as a judicial procedure. If we assign to the verb רגם the primary signification congerere, accumulare, after Arab. rajama VIII, and rakama, then רגמתם signifies their closely compacted band, as Jewish expositors have explained it (קהלם או קבוצם). Even if we connect רגם with רקם, variegare, or compare the proper name regem = Arab. rajm , socius (Böttcher), we arrive at much the same meaning. Hupfeld's conjecture רגשׁתם is consequently unnecessary.

Verses 28-35

The poet now looks forth beyond the domain of Israel, and describes the effects of Jahve's deed of judgment and deliverance in the Gentile world. The language of Psa 68:29 is addressed to Israel, or rather to its king (Psa 86:16; Psa 110:2): God, to whom everything is subject, has given Israel עז, victory and power over the world. Out of the consciousness that He alone can preserve Israel upon this height of power upon which it is placed, who has placed it thereon, grows the prayer: establish (עוּזּה with וּ for ŭ, as is frequently the case, and with the accent on the ultima on account of the following Aleph, vid., on Psa 6:5), Elohim, that which Thou hast wrought for us; עזז, roborare, as in Pro 8:28; Ecc 7:19, lxx δυνάμωσον, Symmachus ἐνίσχυσον. It might also be interpreted: show Thyself powerful (cf. רוּמה, 21:14), Thou who (Isa 42:24) hast wrought for us (פּעל as in Isa 43:13, with ל, like עשׂה ל, Isa 64:3); but in the other way of taking it the prayer attaches itself more sequentially to what precedes, and Psa 62:12 shows that זוּ can also represent the neuter. Hitzig has a still different rendering: the powerful divine help, which Thou hast given us; but although - instead of -ת in the stat. construct. is Ephraimitish style (vid., on Psa 45:5), yet עוּזּה for עז is an unknown word, and the expression “from Thy temple,” which is manifestly addressed to Elohim, shows that פּעלתּ is not the language of address to the king (according to Hitzig, to Jehoshaphat). The language of prayerful address is retained in Psa 68:30. From the words מהיכלך על ירושׁלם there is nothing to be transported to Psa 68:29 (Hupfeld); for Psa 68:30 would thereby become stunted. The words together are the statement of the starting-point of the oblations belonging to יובילוּ: starting from Thy temple, which soars aloft over Jerusalem, may kings bring Thee, who sittest enthroned there in the Holy of holies, tributary gifts (שׁי as in Psa 76:12; Psa 18:7). In this connection (of prayer) it is the expression of the desire that the Temple may become the zenith or cynosure, and Jerusalem the metropolis, of the world. In this passage, where it introduces the seat of religious worship, the taking of מן as expressing the primary cause, “because or on account of Thy Temple” (Ewald), is not to be entertained.
In Psa 68:31 follows a summons, which in this instance is only the form in which the prediction clothes itself. The “beast of the reed” is not the lion, of which sojourn among the reeds is not a characteristic (although it makes its home inter arundineta Mesopotamiae, Ammianus, Psa 18:7, and in the thickets of the Jordan, Jer 49:19; Jer 50:44; Zec 11:3). The reed is in itself an emblem of Egypt (Isa 36:6, cf. Psa 19:6), and it is therefore either the crocodile, the usual emblem of Pharaoh and of the power of Egypt (Eze 29:3, cf. Psa 74:13.) that is meant, or even the hippopotamus (Egyptian p - ehe - môut), which also symbolizes Egypt in Isa 30:6 (which see), and according to Job 40:21 is more appropriately than the crocodile (התנין אשׁר בּיּם, Isa 27:1) called היּת קנה. Egypt appears here as the greatest and most dreaded worldly power. Elohim is to check the haughty ones who exalt themselves over Israel and Israel's God. אבּירים, strong ones, are bulls (Psa 22:13) as an emblem of the kings; and עגלי explains itself by the genit. epexeg. עמּים .gexep: together with (Beth of the accompaniment as in Psa 68:31, Psa 66:13, and beside the plur. humanus, Jer 41:15) the calves, viz., the peoples, over whom those bulls rule. With the one emblem of Egypt is combined the idea of defiant self-confidence, and with the other the idea of comfortable security (vid., Jer 46:20.). That which is brought prominently forward as the consequence of the menace is moulded in keeping with these emblems. מתרפּס, which has been explained by Flaminius substantially correctly: ut supplex veniat, is intended to be taken as a part. fut. (according to the Arabic grammar, ḥâl muqaddar, lit., a predisposed condition). It thus comprehensively in the singular (like עבר in Psa 8:9) with one stroke depicts thoroughly humbled pride; for רפס (cf. רמס) signifies to stamp, pound, or trample, to knock down, and the Hithpa. either to behave as a trampling one, Pro 6:3, or to trample upon one's self, i.e., to cast one's self violently upon the ground. Others explain it as conculcandum se praebere; but such a meaning cannot be shown to exist in the sphere of the Hebrew Hithpael; moreover this “suffering one's self to be trampled upon” does not so well suit the words, which require a more active sense, viz., בּרצּי־כסףcep, in which is expressed the idea that the riches which the Gentiles have hitherto employed in the service of God-opposed worldliness, are no offered to the God of Israel by those who both in outward circumstances and in heart are vanquished (cf. Isa 60; 9). רץ־כּסף (from רצץ, confringere) is a piece of uncoined silver, a bar, wedge, or ingot of silver. In בּזּר there is a wide leap from the call גּער to the language of description. This rapid change is also to be found in other instances, and more especially in this dithyrambic Psalm we may readily give up any idea of a change in the pointing, as בּזּר or בּזּר (lxx διασκόρπισον); בּזּר, as it stands, cannot be imperative (Hitzig), for the final vowel essential to the imperat. Piel is wanting. God hath scattered the peoples delighting in war; war is therefore at an end, and the peace of the world is realized.
In Psa 68:32, the contemplation of the future again takes a different turn: futures follow as the most natural expression of that which is future. The form יאתיוּ, more usually found in pause, here stands pathetically at the beginning, as in Job 12:6. השׁמנּים, compared with the Arabic chšm (whence Arab. chaššm, a nose, a word erroneously denied by Gesenius), would signify the supercilious, contemptuous (cf. Arab. âšammun , nasutus, as an appellation of a proud person who will put up with nothing). On the other hand, compared with Arab. ḥšm, it would mean the fat ones, inasmuch as this verbal stem (root Arab. ḥšš , cf. השׁרת, 2Sa 22:12), starting from the primary signification “to be pressed together,” also signifies “to be compressed, become compact,” i.e., to regain one's plumpness, to make flesh and fat, applied, according to the usage of the language, to wasted men and animals. The commonly compared Arab. ḥšı̂m , vir magni famulitii, is not at all natural, - a usage which is brought about by the intransitive signification proper to the verb starting from its radical signification, “to become or be angry, to be zealous about any one or anything,” inasmuch as the nomen verbale Arab. hạšamun signifies in the concrete sense a person, or collectively persons, for whose maintenance, safety, and honour one is keenly solicitous, such as the members of the family, household attendants, servants, neighbours, clients or protègés, guest-friends; also a thing which one ardently seeks, and over the preservation of which one keeps zealous watch (Fleischer). Here there does not appear to be any connecting link whatever in the Arabic which might furnish some hold for the Hebrew; hence it will be more advisable, by comparison of השׁמל and חשׁן, to understand by חשׁמנים, the resplendent, most distinguished ones, perillustres. The dignitaries of Egypt come to give glory to the God of Israel, and Aethiopia, disheartened by fear before Jahve (cf. Hab 3:7), causes his hands to run to Elohim, i.e., hastens to stretch them out. Thus it is interpreted by most expositors. But if it is ידיו, why is it not also יריץ? We reply, the Hebrew style, even in connection with words that stand close beside one another, does not seek to avoid either the enallage generis (e.g., Job 39:3, Job 39:16), or the enall. numeri (e.g., Psa 62:5). But “to cause the hands to run” is a far-fetched and easily misunderstood figure. We may avoid it, if, with Böttcher and Olshausen, we disregard the accentuation and interpret thus, “Cush - his hands cause to hasten, i.e., bring on in haste (1Sa 17:17; 2Ch 35:13), to Elohim,” viz., propitiating gifts; תּריץ being the predicate to ידיו, according to Ges. §146, 3.

Verses 32-34

The poet stands so completely in the midst of this glory of the end, that soaring onwards in faith over all the kingdoms of the world, he calls upon them to render praise to the God of Israel. לרכב attaches itself to the dominating notion of שׁירוּ in Psa 68:33. The heavens of heavens (Deu 10:14) are by קדם described as primeval (perhaps, following the order of their coming into existence, as extending back beyond the heavens that belong to our globe, of the second and fourth day of Creation). God is said to ride along in the primeval heavens of the heavens (Deu 33:26), when by means of the cherub (Psa 18:11) He extends His operations to all parts of these infinite distances and heights. The epithet “who rideth along in the heavens of heavens of the first beginning” denotes the exalted majesty of the superterrestrial One, who on account of His immanency in history is called “He who rideth along through the steppes” (רכב בּערבות, Psa 68:5). In יתּן בּקולו we have a repetition of the thought expressed above in Psa 68:12 by יתּן אמר; what is intended is God's voice of power, which thunders down everything that contends against Him. Since in the expression נתן בּקול (Psa 46:7; Jer 12:8) the voice, according to Ges. §138, rem. 3, note, is conceived of as the medium of the giving, i.e., of the giving forth from one's self, of the making one's self heard, we must take קול עז not as the object (as in the Latin phrase sonitum dare), but as an apposition:^[26] behold, He maketh Himself heard with His voice, a powerful voice. Thus let them then give God עז, i.e., render back to Him in praise that acknowledges His omnipotence, the omnipotence which He hath, and of which He gives abundant proof. His glory (גּאוה) rules over Israel, more particularly as its guard and defence; His power (עז), however, embraces all created things, not the earth merely, but also the loftiest regions of the sky. The kingdom of grace reveals the majesty and glory of His redemptive work (cf. Eph 1:6), the kingdom of nature the universal dominion of His omnipotence. To this call to the kingdoms of the earth they respond in v. 36: “Awful is Elohim out of thy sanctuaries.” The words are addressed to Israel, consequently מקדּשׁים is not the heavenly and earthly sanctuary (Hitzig), but the one sanctuary in Jerusalem (Ezek. 21:72) in the manifold character of its holy places (Jer 51:51, cf. Amo 7:9). Commanding reverence - such is the confession of the Gentile world - doth Elohim rule from thy most holy places, O Israel, the God who hath chosen thee as His mediatorial people. The second part of the confession runs: the God of Israel giveth power and abundant strength to the people, viz., whose God He is, equivalent to לעמּו, Psa 29:11. Israel's might in the omnipotence of God it is which the Gentile world has experienced, and from which it has deduced the universal fact of experience, v. 36b. All peoples with their gods succumb at last to Israel and its God. This confession of the Gentile world closes with בּרוּך אלהים (which is preceded by Mugrash transformed out of Athnach). That which the psalmist said in the name of Israel in Psa 68:20, “Blessed be the Lord,” now re-echoes from all the world, “Blessed be Elohim.” The world is overcome by the church of Jahve, and that not merely in outward form, but spiritually. The taking up of all the kingdoms of the world into the kingdom of God, this the great theme of the Apocalypse, is also after all the theme of this Psalm. The first half closed with Jahve's triumphant ascension, the second closes with the results of His victory and triumph, which embrace the world of peoples. ==Prayer out of the Depth of Affliction Borne for the Sake of the Truth==

This Psalm follows Ps 68 because in vv. 36f. the very same thought is expressed in unfigurative language, that we found in Psa 68:11 represented under a figure, viz., Thy creatures dwelt therein. In other respects the two Psalms are as different as day and night. Psalms 69 is not a martial and triumphal Psalm, but a Psalm of affliction which does not brighten until near the close; and it is not the church that is the speaker here, as in the preceding Psalm, but an individual. This individual, according to the inscription, is David; and if David, it is not the ideal righteous man (Hengstenberg), but David the righteous, and that when he was unjustly persecuted by Saul. The description of suffering harmonizes in many points with the Psalms belonging to the time of Saul, even the estrangement of his nearest adherents, Psa 69:9; Psa 31:12 (cf. Psa 27:10); the fasting till he is thoroughly enfeebled, Psa 69:11; Psa 109:24; the curse upon his foes, in which respect Ps 35; Ps 69, and Ps 109 form a fearful gradation; and the inspiriting call to the saints who are his companions in suffering, Psa 69:33; Psa 22:27; Ps 31:25. Were there no doubt about Ps 40 being Davidic, then the Davidic origin of Ps 69 would at the same time be firmly established; but instead of their inscriptions לדוד being mutually confirmatory, they tend, on the contrary, to shake our confidence. These two Psalms are closely related as twin-Psalms: in both the poet describes his suffering as a sinking into a miry pit; in both we meet with the same depreciation of ceremonial sacrifice; the same method of denoting a great multitude, “more than the hairs of my head,” Psa 69:5; Psa 40:13; and the same prospect of the faith of the saints being strengthened, Psa 69:33, Psa 69:7; Psa 40:17, Psa 40:4.
But whilst in Ps 40 it is more the style and in general the outward form than the contents that militate against its Davidic authorship, in Ps 69 it is not so much in form as in subject-matter that we find much that does not accord with David's authorship. For this reason Clericus and Vogel (in his dissertation Inscriptiones Psalmorum serius demum additas videri, 1767) have long ago doubted the correctness of the לדוד; and Hitzig has more fully supported the conjecture previously advanced by Seiler, von Bengel, and others, that Psalms 69, as also Ps 40, is by Jeremiah. The following points favour this view: (1) The martyrdom which the author endured in his zeal for the house of God, in his self-mortification, and in this consuming of himself with the scorn and deadly hostility of his foes; we may compare more particularly Jer 15:15-18, a confession on the part of the prophet very closely allied in spirit to both these Psalms. (2) The murderous animosity which the prophet had to endure from the men of Anathoth, Jer 11:18., with which the complaint of the psalmist in Psa 69:9 fully accords. (3) The close of the Psalm, vv. 35-37, which is like a summary of that which Jeremiah foretells in the Book of the Restoration, Psa 30:1. (4) The peculiar character of Jeremiah's sufferings, who was cast by the princes, as being an enemy to his country, into the waterless but muddy cistern of prince Malchiah (Malkîja) in the court of the guard, and there as it were buried alive. It is true, in Jer 38:6 it is said of this cistern that there was “no water, but only mire,” which seems to contradict the language of the Psalm; but since he sank into the mud, the meaning is that just then there was no water standing in it as at other times, otherwise he must at once have been drowned. Nevertheless, that he was in peril of his life is clear to us from the third kı̂nah (Lam. 3), which in other respects also has many points of close contact with Psalms 69; ; for there in Lam 3:53 he says: “They cut off my life in the pit and cast stones at me. Waters flowed over my head; I thought: I am undone. I called upon Thy name, Jahve, out of the lowest pit. Thou didst hear my cry: Hide not Thine ear from the outpouring of my heart, from my cry for help! Thou didst draw near in the day that I cried, Thou saidst: Fear not." The view of Hitzig, that in Psalms 69 we have this prayer out of the pit, has many things in its favour, and among them, (5) the style, which on the whole is like that of Jeremiah, and the many coincidences with the prophet's language and range of thought visible in single instance. But how could this Psalm have obtained the inscription לדוד? Could it be on account of the similarity between the close of Psalms 69 and the close of Ps 22? And why should not Ps 71, which is to all appearance by Jeremiah, also have the inscription לדוד? Psalms 69 is wanting in that imitative character by which Ps 71 so distinctly points to Jeremiah. Therefore we duly recognise the instances and considerations brought forward against the Jeremianic authorship by Keil (Luth. Zeitschrift, 1860, S. 485f.) and Kurtz (Dorpater Zeitschrift, 1865, S. 58ff.), whilst, on the contrary, we still maintain, as formerly, that the Psalm admits of being much more satisfactorily explained from the life of Jeremiah than that of David.
The passion Psalms are the part of the Old Testament Scriptures most frequently cited in the New Testament; and after Ps 22 there is no Psalm referred to in so many ways as Ps 69. (1) The enemies of Jesus hated Him without a cause: this fact, according to Joh 15:25, is foretold in Psa 69:5. It is more probable that the quotation by John refers to Psa 69:5 than to Psa 35:19. (2) When Jesus drove the buyers and sellers out of the Temple, Psa 35:10 received its fulfilment, according to Joh 2:17 : the fierce flame of zeal against the profanation of the house of God consumes Him, and because of this zeal He is hated and despised. (3) He willingly bore this reproach, being an example to us; Joh 2:10 of our Psalm being, according to Rom 15:3, fulfilled in Him. (4) According to Act 1:20, the imprecation in Psa 69:26 has received its fulfilment in Judas Iscariot. The suffixes in this passage are plural; the meaning can therefore only be that indicated by J. H. Michaelis, quod ille primus et prae reliquis hujus maledictionis se fecerit participem. (5) According to Rom 11:9., Psa 69:23. of the Psalm have been fulfilled in the present rejection of Israel. The apostle does not put these imprecations directly into the mouth of Jesus, just as in fact they are not appropriate to the lips of the suffering Saviour; he only says that what the psalmist there, in the zealous ardour of the prophetic Spirit - a zeal partaking of the severity of Sinai and of the spirit of Elias - invokes upon this enemies, has been completely fulfilled in those who wickedly have laid violent hands upon the Holy One of God. The typically prophetic hints of the Psalm are far from being exhausted by these New Testament quotations. One is reminded, in connection with Psa 69:12, of the mockery of Jesus by the soldiers in the praetorium, Mat 27:27-30; by Psa 69:21, of the offer of vinegar mingled with gall (according to Mar 15:23, wine mingled with myrrh) which Jesus refused, before the crucifixion, Mat 27:34, and of the sponge dipped in vinegar which they put to the mouth of the crucified One by means of a stalk of hyssop, Joh 19:29. When John there says that Jesus, freely and consciously preparing Himself to die, only desired a drink in order that, according to God's appointment, the Scripture might receive its utmost fulfilment, he thereby points back to Psa 22:16 and Psa 69:22. And what an amount of New Testament light, so to speak, falls upon Psa 69:27 when we compare with it Isa 53:1-12 and Zec 13:7! The whole Psalm is typically prophetic, in as far as it is a declaration of a history of life and suffering moulded by God into a factual prediction concerning Jesus the Christ, whether it be the story of a king or a prophet; and in as far as the Spirit of prophecy has even moulded the declaration itself into the language of prophecy concerning the future One.
The Psalm falls into three parts, consisting of the following strophes: (1) 3. 5. 6. 6. 7; (2) 5. 6. 7; (3) 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. Does שׁושׁנּים perhaps point to the preponderating six-line strophes under the emblem of the six-leaved lily? This can hardly be the case. The old expositors said that the Psalm was so inscribed because it treats of the white rose of the holy innocence of Christ, and of the red rose of His precious blood. שׁושׁן properly does not signify a rose; this flower was altogether unknown in the Holy Land at the time this Psalm was written. The rose was not transplanted thither out of Central Asia until much later, and was called ורד (ῥόδον); שׁושׁן, on the other hand, is the white, and in the Holy Land mostly red, lily - certainly, as a plant, a beautiful emblem of Christ. Propter me, says Origen, qui in convalle eram, Sponsus descendit et fit lilium.

Psalm 69

Verses 1-13

Out of deep distress, the work of his foes, the complaining one cries for help; he thinks upon his sins, which is sufferings bring to his remembrance, but he is also distinctly conscious that he is an object of scorn and hostility for God's sake, and from His mercy he looks for help in accordance with His promises. The waters are said to rush in unto the soul (עד־נפשׁ), when they so press upon the imperilled one that the soul, i.e., the life of the body, more especially the breath, is threatened; cf. Jon 2:6; Jer 4:10. Waters are also a figure of calamities that come on like a flood and drag one into their vortex, Psa 18:17; Psa 32:6; Psa 124:5, cf. Psa 66:12; Psa 88:8, Psa 88:18; here, however, the figure is cut off in such a way that it conveys the impression of reality expressed in a poetical form, as in Ps 40, and much the same as in Jonah's psalm. The soft, yielding morass is called יון, and the eddying deep מצוּלה. The Nomen Hophal. מעמד signifies properly a being placed, then a standing-place, or firm standing (lxx ὑπόστασις), like מטּה, that which is stretched out, extension, Isa 8:8. שׁבּלת (Ephraimitish סבּלת) is a streaming, a flood, from שׁבל, Arab. sbl, to stream, flow (cf. note on Psa 58:9). בּוא בּ, to fall into, as in Psa 66:12, and שׁטף with an accusative, to overflow, as in Psa 124:4. The complaining one is nearly drowned in consequence of his sinking down, for he has long cried in vain for help: he is wearied by continual crying (יגע בּ, as in Psa 6:7, Jer 45:3), his throat is parched (נחר from חרר; lxx and Jerome: it is become hoarse), his eyes have failed (Jer 14:6) him, who waits upon his God. The participle מיחל, equal to a relative clause, is, as in 18:51, 1Ki 14:6, attached to the suffix of the preceding noun (Hitzig). Distinct from this use of the participle without the article is the adverbially qualifying participle in Gen 3:8; Sol 5:2, cf. חי, 2Sa 12:21; 2Sa 18:14. There is no necessity for the correction of the text מיּחל (lxx apo' τοῦ elpi'zein me). Concerning the accentuation of רבּוּ vid., on Psa 38:20. Apart from the words “more than the hairs of my head” (Psa 40:13), the complaint of the multitude of groundless enemies is just the same as in Psa 38:20; Psa 35:19, cf. Psa 109:3, both in substance and expression. Instead of מצמיתי, my destroyers, the Syriac version has the reading מעצמותי (more numerous than my bones), which is approved by Hupfeld; but to reckon the multitude of the enemy by the number of one's own bones is both devoid of taste and unheard of. Moreover the reading of our text finds support, if it need any, in Lam 3:52. The words, “what I have not taken away, I must then restore,” are intended by way of example, and perhaps, as also in Jer 15:10, as a proverbial expression: that which I have not done wrong, I must suffer for (cf. Jer 15:10, and the similar complaint in Psa 35:11). One is tempted to take אז in the sense of “nevertheless” (Ewald), a meaning, however, which it is by no means intended to convey. In this passage it takes the place of זאת (cf. οὕτως for ταῦτα, Mat 7:12), inasmuch as it gives prominence to the restitution desired, as an inference from a false assumption: then, although I took it not away, stole it not.
The transition from the bewailing of suffering to a confession of sin is like Psa 40:13. In the undeserved persecution which he endures at the hand of man, he is obliged nevertheless to recognise well-merited chastisement from the side of God. And whilst by אתּה ידעתּ (cf. Psa 40:10, Jer 15:15; Jer 17:16; Jer 18:23, and on ל as an exponent of the object, Jer 16:16; Jer 40:2) he does not acknowledge himself to be a sinner after the standard of his own shortsightedness, but of the divine omniscience, he at the same time commends his sinful need, which with self-accusing modesty he calls אוּלת (Psa 38:6) and אשׁמות (2Ch 28:10), to the mercy of the omniscient One. Should he, the sinner, be abandoned by God to destruction, then all those who are faithful in their intentions towards the Lord would be brought to shame and confusion in him, inasmuch as they would be taunted with this example. קויך designates the godly from the side of the πίστις, and מבקשׁיךa from the side of the ἀγάπη. The multiplied names of God are so many appeals to God's honour, to the truthfulness of His covenant relationship. The person praying here is, it is true, a sinner, but that is no justification of the conduct of men towards him; he is suffering for the Lord's sake, and it is the Lord Himself who is reviled in him. It is upon this he bases his prayer in Psa 69:8. עליך, for thy sake, as in Psa 44:23; Jer 15:15. The reproach that he has to bear, and ignominy that has covered his face and made it quite unrecognisable (Psa 44:16, cf. Psa 83:17), have totally estranged (Psa 38:12, cf. Psa 88:9, Job 19:13-15; Jer 12:6) from him even his own brethren (אחי, parallel word בּני אמּי, as in Psa 50:20; cf. on the other hand, Gen 49:8, where the interchange designedly takes another form of expression); for the glow of his zeal (קנאהּ from קנא, according to the Arabic, to be a deep or bright red) for the house of Jahve, viz., for the sanctity of the sanctuary and of the congregation gathered about it (which is never directly called “the house of Jahve” in the Old Testament, vid., Köhler on Zec 9:8, but here, as in Num 12:7; Hos 8:1, is so called in conjunction with the sanctuary), as also for the honour of His who sits enthroned therein, consumes him, like a fire burning in his bones which incessantly breaks forth and rages all through him (Jer 20:9; Jer 23:9), and therefore all the malice of those who are estranged from God is concentrated upon and against him.
He now goes on to describe how sorrow for the sad condition of the house of God has brought noting but reproach to him (cf. Psa 109:24.). It is doubtful whether נפשׁי is an alternating subject to ואבכּה (fut. consec. without being apocopated), cf. Jer 13:17, or a more minutely defining accusative as in Isa 26:9 (vid., on Psa 3:5), or whether, together with בּצּום, it forms a circumstantial clause (et flevi dum in jejunio esset anima mea), or even whether it is intended to be taken as an accusative of the object in a pregnant construction (= בּכה ושׁפך נפשׁו, Psa 42:5; 1Sa 1:15): I wept away my soul in fasting. Among all these possible renderings, the last is the least probable, and the first, according to Psa 44:3; 83:19, by far the most probable, and also that which is assumed by the accentuation.^[27]
The reading of the lxx ואענּה, καὶ συνέκαψα (Olshausen, Hupfeld, and Böttcher), is a very natural (Psa 35:13) exchange of the poetically bold expression for one less choice and less expressive (since ענּה נפשׁ is a phrase of the Pentateuch equivalent to צוּם). The garb of mourning, like the fasting, is an expression of sorrow for public distresses, not, as in Psa 35:13, of personal condolence; concerning ואתּנה, vid., on Psa 3:6. On account of this mourning, reproach after reproach comes upon him, and they fling gibes and raillery at him; everywhere, both in the gate, the place where the judges sit and where business is transacted, and also at carousals, he is jeered at and traduced (Lam 3:14, cf. Lam 5:14; Job 30:9). שׂיח בּ signifies in itself fabulari de... without any bad secondary meaning (cf. Pro 6:22, confabulabitur tecum); here it is construed first with a personal and then a neuter subject (cf. Amo 8:3), for in Psa 69:13 neither הייתי (Job 30:9; Lam 3:14) nor אני (Lam 3:63) is to be supplied. Psa 69:14 tells us how he acts in the face of such hatred and scorn; ואני, as in Psa 109:4, sarcasmis hostium suam opponit in precibus constantiam (Geier). As for himself, his prayer is directed towards Jahve at the present time, when his affliction as a witness for God gives him the assurance that He will be well-pleased to accept it (עת רצון = בעת רצון, Isa 49:8). It is addressed to Him who is at the same time Jahve and Elohim, - the revealed One in connection with the history of redemption, and the absolute One in His exaltation above the world, - on the ground of the greatness and fulness of His mercy: may He then answer him with or in the truth of His salvation, i.e., the infallibility with which His purpose of mercy verifies itself in accordance with the promises given. Thus is Psa 69:14 to be explained in accordance with the accentuation. According to Isa 49:8, it looks as though עת רצון must be drawn to ענני (Hitzig), but Psa 32:6 sets us right on this point; and the fact that ברב־חסדך is joined to Psa 69:14 also finds support from Psa 5:8. But the repetition of the divine name perplexes one, and it may be asked whether or not the accent that divides the verse into its two parts might not more properly stand beside רצון, as in Psa 32:6 beside מצא; so that Psa 69:14 runs: Elohim, by virtue of the greatness of Thy mercy hear me, by virtue of the truth of Thy salvation.

Verses 14-21

In this second part the petition by which the first is as it were encircled, is continued; the peril grows greater the longer it lasts, and with it the importunity of the cry for help. The figure of sinking in the mire or mud and in the depths of the pit (בּאר, Ps 55:24, cf. בור, Psa 40:3) is again taken up, and so studiously wrought out, that the impression forces itself upon one that the poet is here describing something that has really taken place. The combination “from those who hate me and from the depths of the waters” shows that “the depths of the waters” is not a merely rhetorical figure; and the form of the prayer: let not the pit (the well-pit or covered tank) close (תּאטּר with Dagesh in the Teth, in order to guard against its being read תּאטר; cf. on the signification of אטּר, clausus = claudus, scil. manu) its mouth (i.e., its upper opening) upon me, exceeds the limits of anything that can be allowed to mere rhetoric. “Let not the water-flood overflow me” is intended to say, since it has, according to Psa 69:3, already happened, let it not go further to my entire destruction. The “answer me” in Psa 69:17 is based upon the plea that God's loving-kindness is טּוב, i.e., good, absolutely good (as in the kindred passion-Psalm, Psa 109:21), better than all besides (Psa 63:4), the means of healing or salvation from all evil. On Psa 69:17 cf. Psa 51:3, Lam 3:32. In Psa 69:18 the prayer is based upon the painful situation of the poet, which urgently calls for speedy help (מהר beside the imperative, Psa 102:3; Psa 143:7; Gen 19:22; Est 6:10, is certainly itself not an imperative like הרב, Psa 51:4, but an adverbial infinitive as in Psa 79:8). קרבה, or, in order to ensure the pronunciation ḳorbah in distinction from ḳārbah, Deu 15:9, קרבה (in Baer,^[28] is imperat. Kal; cf. the fulfilment in Lam 3:57. The reason assigned, “because of mine enemies,” as in Psa 5:9; Psa 27:11, and frequently, is to be understood according to Psa 13:5 : the honour of the all-holy One cannot suffer the enemies of the righteous to triumph over him.^[29]
The accumulation of synonyms in Psa 69:20 is Jeremiah's custom, Jer 13:14; Jer 21:5, Jer 21:7; Jer 32:37, and is found also in Ps 31 (Psa 31:10) and Ps 44 (Psa 44:4, Psa 44:17, Psa 44:25). On הרפּה שׁברה לבּי, cf. Psa 51:19, Jer 23:9. The ἅπαξ γεγραμ, ואנוּשׁה (historical tense), from נוּשׁ, is explained by ענוּשׁ from אנשׁ, sickly, dangerously ill, evil-disposed, which is a favourite word in Jeremiah. Moreover נוּד in the signification of manifesting pity, not found elsewhere in the Psalter, is common in Jeremiah, e.g., Psa 15:5; it signifies originally to nod to any one as a sign of a pity that sympathizes with him and recognises the magnitude of the evil. “To give wormwood for meat and מי־ראשׁ to drink” is a Jeremianic (Jer 8:14; Jer 9:14; Jer 23:15) designation for inflicting the extreme of pain and anguish upon one. ראשׁ (רושׁ) signifies first of all a poisonous plant with an umbellated head of flower or a capitate fruit; but then, since bitter and poisonous are interchangeable notions in the Semitic languages, it signifies gall as the bitterest of the bitter. The lxx renders: καὶ ἔδωκαν εἰς τὸ βρῶμά μου χολήν, καὶ εἰς τὴν δίψαν μου ἐπότισάν με ὄξος. Certainly נתן בּ can mean to put something into something, to mix something with it, but the parallel word לצמאי (for my thirst, i.e., for the quenching of it, Neh 9:15, Neh 9:20) favours the supposition that the בּ of בּברוּתי is Beth essentiae, after which Luther renders: “they give me gall to eat.” The ἅπαξ γεγραμ. בּרוּת (Lam 4:10 בּרות) signifies βρῶσις, from בּרה, βιβρώσκειν (root βορ, Sanscrit gar, Latin vor-are).

Verses 22-36

The description of the suffering has reached its climax in Psa 69:22, at which the wrath of the persecuted one flames up and bursts forth in imprecations. The first imprecation joins itself upon Psa 69:22. They have given the sufferer gall and vinegar; therefore their table, which was abundantly supplied, is to be turned into a snare to them, from which they shall not be able to escape, and that לפניהם, in the very midst of their banqueting, whilst the table stands spread out before them (Eze 23:41). שׁלומים (collateral form of שׁלמים) is the name given to them as being carnally secure; the word signifies the peaceable or secure in a good (Psa 55:21) and in a bad sense. Destruction is to overtake them suddenly, “when they say: Peace and safety” (1Th 5:3). The lxx erroneously renders: καὶ εἰς ἀνταπόδοσιν = וּלשׁלּוּמים. The association of ideas in Psa 69:24 is transparent. With their eyes they have feasted themselves upon the sufferer, and in the strength of their loins they have ill-treated him. These eyes with their bloodthirsty malignant looks are to grow blind. These loins full of defiant self-confidence are to shake (המעד, imperat. Hiph. like הרחק, Job 13:21, from המעיד, for which in Eze 29:7, and perhaps also in Dan 11:14, we find העמיד). Further: God is to pour out His wrath upon them (Psa 79:6; Hos 5:10; Jer 10:25), i.e., let loose against them the cosmical forces of destruction existing originally in His nature. זעמּך has the Dagesh in order to distinguish it in pronunciation from זעמך. In Psa 69:26 טירה (from טוּר, to encircle) is a designation of an encamping or dwelling-place (lxx ἔπαυλις) taken from the circular encampments (Arabic ṣı̂rât , ṣirât, and dwâr , duâr) of the nomads (Gen 25:16). The laying waste and desolation of his own house is the most fearful of all misfortunes to the Semite (Job, note to Psa 18:15). The poet derives the justification of such fearful imprecations from the fact that they persecute him, who is besides smitten of God. God has smitten him on account of his sins, and that by having placed him in the midst of a time in which he must be consumed with zeal and solicitude for the house of God. The suffering decreed for him by God is therefore at one and the same time suffering as a chastisement and as a witnessing for God; and they heighten this suffering by every means in their power, not manifesting any pity for him or any indulgence, but imputing to him sins that he has not committed, and requiting him with deadly hatred for benefits for which they owed him thanks.
There are also some others, although but few, who share this martyrdom with him. The psalmist calls them, as he looks up to Jahve, חלליך, Thy fatally smitten ones; they are those to whom God has appointed that they should bear within themselves a pierced or wounded heart (vid., Psa 109:22, cf. Jer 8:18) in the face of such a godless age. Of the deep grief (אל, as in Psa 2:7) of these do they tell, viz., with self-righteous, self-blinded mockery (cf. the Talmudic phrase ספר בלשׁון הרע or ספר לשׁון הרע, of evil report or slander). The lxx and Syriac render יוסיפוּ (προσέθηκαν): they add to the anguish; the Targum, Aquila, Symmachus, and Jerome follow the traditional text. Let God therefore, by the complete withdrawal of His grace, suffer them to fall from one sin into another - this is the meaning of the da culpam super culpam eorum - in order that accumulated judgment may correspond to the accumulated guilt (Jer 16:18). Let the entrance into God's righteousness, i.e., His justifying and sanctifying grace, be denied to them for ever. Let them be blotted out of ספר חיּים (Exo 32:32, cf. Isa 4:3; Dan 12:1), that is to say, struck out of the list of the living, and that of the living in this present world; for it is only in the New Testament that we meet with the Book of Life as a list of the names of the heirs of the ζωὴ αἰώνιος. According to the conception both of the Old and of the New Testament the צדיקים are the heirs of life. Therefore Psa 69:29 wishes that they may not be written by the side of the righteous, who, according to Hab 2:4, “live,” i.e., are preserved, by their faith. With ואני the poet contrasts himself, as in Ps 40:18, with those deserving of execration. They are now on high, but in order to be brought low; he is miserable and full of poignant pain, but in order to be exalted; God's salvation will remove him from his enemies on to a height that is too steep for them (Psa 59:2; Psa 91:14). Then will he praise (הלּל) and magnify (גּדּל) the Name of God with song and thankful confession. And such spiritual תּודה, such thank-offering of the heart, is more pleasing to God than an ox, a bullock, i.e., a young ox (= פּר השּׁור, an ox-bullock, Jdg 6:25, according to Ges. §113), one having horns and a cloven hoof (Ges. §53, 2). The attributives do not denote the rough material animal nature (Hengstenberg), but their legal qualifications for being sacrificed. מקרין is the name for the young ox as not being under three years old (cf. 1Sa 1:24, lxx ἐν μόσχῳ τριετίζοντι); מפריס as belonging to the clean four-footed animals, viz., those that are cloven-footed and chew the cud, Lev. 11. Even the most stately, full-grown, clean animal that may be offered as a sacrifice stands in the sight of Jahve very far below the sacrifice of grateful praise coming from the heart.
When now the patient sufferers (ענוים) united with the poet by community of affliction shall see how he offers the sacrifice of thankful confession, they will rejoice. ראוּ is a hypothetical preterite; it is neither וראוּ (perf. consec.), nor יראוּ (Psa 40:4; Psa 52:8; Psa 107:42; Job 22:19). The declaration conveying information to be expected in Psa 69:33 after the Waw apodoseos changes into an apostrophe of the “seekers of Elohim:” their heart shall revive, for, as they have suffered in company with him who is now delivered, they shall now also refresh themselves with him. We are at once reminded of Psa 22:27, where this is as it were the exhortation of the entertainer at the thank-offering meal. It would be rash to read שׁמע in Psa 69:23, after Psa 22:25, instead of שׁמע (Olshausen); the one object in that passage is here generalized: Jahve is attentive to the needy, and doth not despise His bound ones (Psa 107:10), but, on the contrary, He takes an interest in them and helps them. Starting from this proposition, which is the clear gain of that which has been experienced, the view of the poet widens into the prophetic prospect of the bringing back of Israel out of the Exile into the Land of Promise. In the face of this fact of redemption of the future he calls upon (cf. Isa 44:23) all created things to give praise to God, who will bring about the salvation of Zion, will build again the cities of Judah, and restore the land, freed from its desolation, to the young God-fearing generation, the children of the servants of God among the exiles. The feminine suffixes refer to ערי (cf. Jer 2:15; Jer 22:6 Chethîb). The tenor of Isa 65:9 is similar. If the Psalm were written by David, the closing turn from Psa 69:23 onwards might be more difficult of comprehension than Psa 14:7; 51:20f. If, however, it is by Jeremiah, then we do not need to persuade ourselves that it is to be understood not of restoration and re-peopling, but of continuance and completion (Hofmann and Kurtz). Jeremiah lived to experience the catastrophe he foretold; but the nearer it came to the time, the more comforting were the words with which he predicted the termination of the Exile and the restoration of Israel. Jer 34:7 shows us how natural to him, and to him in particular, was the distinction between Jerusalem and the cities of Judah. The predictions in Jer 32:1, which sound so in accord with Psa 69:36., belong to the time of the second siege. Jerusalem was not yet fallen; the strong places of the land, however, already lay in ruins.

Psalm 70

Cry of a Persecuted One for Help

This short Psalm, placed after Ps 69 on account of the kindred nature of its contents (cf. more especially v. 6 with Psa 69:30), is, with but few deviations, a repetition of Psa 40:14. This portion of the second half of Ps 40 is detached from it and converted into the Elohimic style. Concerning להזכּיר, at the presentation of the memorial portion of the mincha, vid., Psa 38:1. It is obvious that David himself is not the author of the Psalm in this stunted form. The לדוד is moreover justified, if he composed the original Psalm which is here modified and appropriated to a special liturgical use.

Verses 1-3

We see at once at the very beginning, in the omission of the רצה (Psa 40:14), that what we have here before us is a fragment of Ps 40, and perhaps a fragment that only accidentally came to have an independent existence. The להצּילני, which was under the government of רצה, now belongs to הוּשׁה, and the construction is without example elsewhere. In Psa 70:3 (= Psa 40:15) יחד and לספּותהּ are given up entirely; the original is more full-toned and soaring. Instead of ישׁמּוּ, torpescant, Psa 70:4 has ישׁוּבוּ, recedant (as in Ps 6:11, cf. Psa 9:18), which is all the more flat for coming after יסגו אחור. In Psa 70:4, after ויאמרים the לי, which cannot here (cf. on the contrary, Psa 35:21) be dispensed with, is wanting.

Verses 4-5

Psa 70:4-5 ויאמרו instead of יאמרו is unimportant. But since the divine name Jahve is now for once chosen side by side with Elohim, it certainly had a strong claim to be retained in Psa 70:5. Instead of תּשׁועתך we have ישׁועתך here; instead of עזרתי, here עזרי. And instead of אדני יחשׁב לי we have here אלהים חוּשׁה־לּי - the hope is turned into petition: make haste unto me, is an innovation in expression that is caused by the taking over of the לי.

Prayer of a Grey-Headed Servant of God for Further Divine Aid

The Davidic Psa 70:1-5 is followed by an anonymous Psalm which begins like Ps 31 and closes like Ps 35, in which Psa 71:12, just like Psa 70:2, is an echo of Psa 40:14. The whole Psalm is an echo of the language of older Psalms, which is become the mental property, so to speak, of the author, and is revived in him by experiences of a similar character. Notwithstanding the entire absence of any thorough originality, it has an individual, and in fact a Jeremianic, impress.
The following reasons decide us in considering the Psalm as coming from the pen of Jeremiah: - (1) Its relationship to Psalms of the time of David and of the earlier times of the kings, but after David, leads us down to somewhere about the age of Jeremiah. (2) This anthological weaving together of men's own utterances taken from older original passages, and this skilful variation of them by merely slight touches of his own, is exactly Jeremiah's manner. (3) In solitary instances the style of Ps 69, slow, loose, only sparingly adorned with figures, and here and there prosaic, closely resembles Jeremiah; also to him corresponds the situation of the poet as one who is persecuted; to him, the retrospect of a life rich in experience and full of miraculous guidings; to him, whose term of active service extended over a period of more than thirty years under Zedekiah, the transition to hoary age in which the poet finds himself; to him, the reference implied in Psa 71:21 to some high office; and to him, the soft, plaintive strain that pervades the Psalm, from which it is at the same time clearly seen that the poet has attained a degree of age and experience, in which he is accustomed to self-control and is not discomposed by personal misfortune. To all these correspondences there is still to be added an historical testimony. The lxx inscribes the Psalm τῷ Δαυίδ υἱῷν Ἰωναδάβ καὶ τῶν πρώτων αἰχμαλωτισθέντων. According to this inscription, the τῷ Δαυίδ of which is erroneous, but the second part of which is so explicit that it must be based upon tradition, the Psalm was a favourite song of the Rechabites and of the first exiles. The Rechabites are that tribe clinging to a homely nomad life in accordance with the will of their father, which Jeremiah (Jer 35) holdsup before the men of his time as an example of self-denying faithful adherence to the law of their father which puts them to shame. If the Psalm is by Jeremiah, it is just as intelligible that the Rechabites, to whom Jeremiah paid such a high tribute of respect, should appropriate it to their own use, as that the first exiles should do so. Hitzig infers from Psa 71:20, that at the time of its composition Jerusalem had already fallen; whereas in Ps 69 it is only the cities of Judah that as yet lie in ashes. But after the overthrow of Jerusalem we find no circumstances in the life of the prophet, who is no more heard of in Egypt, that will correspond to the complaints of the psalmist of violence and mockery. Moreover the foe in Psa 71:4 is not the Chaldaean, whose conduct towards Jeremiah did not merit these names. Nor can Psa 71:20 have been written at the time of the second siege and in the face of the catastrophe.

Psalm 71

Verses 1-6

Stayed upon Jahve, his ground of trust, from early childhood up, the poet hopes and prays for deliverance out of the hand of the foe. The first of these two strophes (Psa 71:1-3) is taken from Psa 31:2-4, the second (Psa 71:4-6, with the exception of Psa 71:4 and Psa 71:6) from Psa 22:10-11; both, however, in comparison with Psa 70:1-5 exhibit the far more encroaching variations of a poet who reproduces the language of others with a freer hand. Olshausen wishes to read מעוז in Psa 71:3, Psa 90:1; Psa 91:9, instead of מעון, which he holds to be an error in writing. But this old Mosaic, Deuteronomial word (vid., on Psa 90:1) - cf. the post-biblical oath המעון (by the Temple!) - is unassailable. Jahve, who is called a rock of refuge in Psa 31:3, is here called a rock of habitation, i.e., a high rock that cannot be stormed or scaled, which affords a safe abode; and this figure is pursued still further with a bold remodelling of the text of Psa 31:3 : לבוא תּמיד, constantly to go into, i.e., which I can constantly, and therefore always, as often as it is needful, betake myself for refuge. The additional צוּית is certainly not equivalent to צוּה; it would more likely be equivalent to אשׁר צוית; but probably it is an independent clause: Thou hast (in fact) commanded, i.e., unalterably determined (Psa 44:5; Psa 68:29; Psa 133:3), to show me salvation, for my rock, etc. To the words לבוא תמיד צוית corresponds the expression לבית מצודות in Psa 31:3, which the lxx renders καὶ εἰς οἶκον καταφυγῆς, whereas instead of the former three words it has καὶ εἰς τόπον ὀχυρόν, and seems to have read לבית מבצרות, cf. Dan 11:15 (Hitzig). In Psa 71:5, Thou art my hope reminds one of the divine name מקוה ישׂראל in Jer 17:13; Jer 50:7 (cf. ἡ ἐλπίς ἡμῶν used of Christ in 1Ti 1:1; Col 1:27). נסמכתּי is not less beautiful than השׁלכתּי in Psa 22:11. In its incipient slumbering state (cf. Psa 3:6), and in its self-conscious continuance. He was and is the upholding prop and the supporting foundation, so to speak, of my life. And גוזי instead of גּחי in Psa 22:10, is just such another felicitous modification. It is impracticable to define the meaning of this גוזי according to גּזה = גּזה, Arab. jz ', retribuere (prop. to cut up, distribute), because גּמל is the representative of this Aramaeo-Arabic verb in the Hebrew. Still less, however, can it be derived from גּוּז, transire, the participle of which, if it would admit of a transitive meaning = מוציאי (Targum), ought to be גּזי. The verb גּזה, in accordance with its radical signification of abscindere (root גז, synon. קץ, קד, קט, and the like), denotes in this instance the separating of the child from the womb of the mother, the retrospect going back from youth to childhood, and even to his birth. The lxx σκεπαστής (μου) is an erroneous reading for ἐκσπαστής, as is clear from Psa 22:10, ὁ ἐκσπάσας με. הלּל בּ, Psa 44:9 (cf. שׂיח בּ, Psa 69:13), is at the bottom of the expression in Psa 71:6. The God to whom he owes his being, and its preservation thus far, is the constant, inexhaustible theme of his praise.

Verses 7-12

Brought safely through dangers of every kind, he is become כּמופת, as a wonder, a miracle (Arabic aft from afata, cognate afaka, הפך, to bend, distort: a turning round, that which is turned round or wrenched, i.e., that which is contrary to what is usual and looked for) to many, who gaze upon him as such with astonishment (Psa 40:4). It is his God, however, to whom, as hitherto so also in time to come, he will look to be thus wonderfully preserved: מחסי־עז, as in 2Sa 22:33. עז is a genitive, and the suffix is thrown back (vid., supra, p 171) in order that what God is to, and does for, the poet may be brought forward more clearly and independently [lit. unalloyed]. Psa 71:8 tells us what it is that he firmly expects on the ground of what he possesses in God. And on this very ground arises the prayer of Psa 71:9 also: Cast me not away (viz., from Thy presence, Psa 51:13; Jer 7:15, and frequently) in the time (לעת, as in Gen 8:11) of old age - he is therefore already an old man (זקן), though only just at the beginning of the זקנה. He supplicates favour for the present and for the time still to come: now that my vital powers are failing, forsake me not! Thus he prays because he, who has been often wondrously delivered, is even now threatened by foes. Psa 71:11, introduced by means of Psa 71:10, tells us what their thoughts of him are, and what they purpose doing. לי, Psa 71:10, does not belong to אויבי, as it dies not in Psa 27:2 also, and elsewhere. The ל is that of relation or of reference, as in Psa 41:6. The unnecessary לאמר betrays a poet of the later period; cf. Psa 105:11; Psa 119:82 (where it was less superfluous), and on the contrary, Psa 83:5. The later poet also reveals himself in Psa 71:12, which is an echo of very similar prayers of David in Psa 22:12, Psa 22:20 (Psa 40:14, cf. Psa 70:2), Psa 35:22; Psa 38:22. The Davidic style is to be discerned here throughout in other points also. In place of הישׁה the Kerî substitutes חוּשׁה, which is the form exclusively found elsewhere.

Verses 13-18

In view of Psa 40:15 (Psa 70:3), Psa 35:4, Psa 35:26; Psa 109:29, and other passages, the reading of יכּלמוּ, with the Syriac, instead of יכלוּ in Psa 71:13 commends itself; but there are also other instances in this Psalm of a modification of the original passages, and the course of the thoughts is now climactic: confusion, ruin (cf. Ps 6:11), and in fact ruin accompanied by reproach and shame. This is the fate that the poet desires for his deadly foes. In prospect of this he patiently composes himself, Psa 71:14 (cf. 31:25); and when righteous retribution appears, he will find new matter and ground and motive for the praise of God in addition to all such occasion as he has hitherto had. The late origin of the Psalm betrays itself again here; for instead of the praet. Hiph. הוסיף (which is found only in the Books of Kings and in Ecclesiastes), the older language made use of the praet. Ka. Without ceasing shall his mouth tell (ספּר, as in Jer 51:10) of God's righteousness, of God's salvation for he knows not numbers, i.e., the counting over or through of them (Psa 139:17.);^[30] the divine proofs of righteousness or salvation עצמוּ מסּפּר (Psa 40:6), they are in themselves endless, and therefore the matter also which they furnish for praise is inexhaustible. He will tell those things which cannot be so reckoned up; he will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord Jahve, and with praise acknowledge His righteousness, Him alone. Since גּברות, like the New Testament δυνάμεις, usually signifies the proofs of the divine גּבוּרה (e.g., Psa 20:7), the Beth is the Beth of accompaniment, as e.g., in Psa 40:8; Psa 66:13. בּוא בּ, vernire cum, is like Arab. j'â 'b (atâ), equivalent to afferre, he will bring the proofs of the divine power, this rich material, with him. It is evident from Psa 71:18. that בגברות does not refer to the poet (in the fulness of divine strength), but, together with צדקתך, forms a pair of words that have reference to God. לבדּך, according to the sense, joins closely upon the suffix of צדקתך (cf. Ps 83:19): Thy righteousness (which has been in mercy turned towards me), Thine alone (te solum = tui solius). From youth up God has instructed him, viz., in His ways (Psa 25:4), which are worthy of all praise, and hitherto (עד־הנּה, found only in this passage in the Psalter, and elsewhere almost entirely confined to prose) has he, “the taught of Jahve” (למּוּד ה), had to praise the wonders of His rule and of His leadings. May God, then, not forsake him even further on עד־זקנה ושׂיבה. The poet is already old (זקן), and is drawing ever nearer to שׂיבה, silvery, hoary old age (cf. 1Sa 12:2). May God, then, in this stage of life also to which he has attained, preserve him in life and in His favour, until (עד = עד־אשׁר, as in Psa 132:5; Gen 38:11, and frequently) he shall have declared His arm, i.e., His mighty interposition in human history, to posterity (דּור), and to all who shall come (supply אשׁר), i.e., the whole of the future generation, His strength, i.e., the impossibility of thwarting His purposes. The primary passage for this is Psa 22:31.

Verses 19-24

The thought of this proclamation so thoroughly absorbs the poet that he even now enters upon the tone of it; and since to his faith the deliverance is already a thing of the past, the tender song with its uncomplaining prayer dies away into a loud song of praise, in which he pictures it all to himself. Without Psa 71:19-21 being subordinate to עד־אגיד in Psa 71:18, וצדקתך is coupled by close connection with בגורתך. Psa 71:19 is an independent clause; and עד־מרום takes the place of the predicate: the righteousness of God exceeds all bounds, is infinite (Psa 36:6., Psa 57:11). The cry כמוך מי, as in Psa 35:10; Psa 69:9, Jer 10:6, refers back to Exo 15:11. According to the Chethîb, the range of the poet's vision widens in Psa 71:20 from the proofs of the strength and righteousness of God which he has experienced in his own case to those which he has experienced in common with others in the history of his own nation. The Kerî (cf. on the other hand Psa 60:5; Psa 85:7; Deu 31:17) rests upon a failing to discern how the experiences of the writer are interwoven with those of the nation. תּשׁוּב in both instances supplies the corresponding adverbial notion to the principal verb, as in Psa 85:7 (cf. Psa 51:4). תּהום, prop. a rumbling, commonly used of a deep heaving of waters, here signifies an abyss. “The abysses of the earth” (lxx ἐκ τῶν ἀβύσσων τῆς γῆς, just as the old Syriac version renders the New Testament ἄβυσσος, e.g., in Luk 8:31, by Syr. tehūmā') are, like the gates of death (Psa 9:14), a figure of extreme perils and dangers, in the midst of which one is as it were half hidden in the abyss of Hades. The past and future are clearly distinguished in the sequence of the tenses. When God shall again raise His people out of the depth of the present catastrophe, then will He also magnify the גּדלּה of the poet, i.e., in the dignity of his office, by most brilliantly vindicating him in the face of his foes, and will once more (תּסּוב, fut. Niph. like תּשׁוּב ekil .h above) comfort him. He on his part will also (cf. Job 40:14) be grateful for this national restoration and this personal vindication: he will praise God, will praise His truth, i.e., His fidelity to His promises. בּכלי נבל instead of בּנבל sounds more circumstantial than in the old poetry. The divine name “The Holy One of Israel” occurs here for the third time in the Psalter; the other passages are Psa 78:41; Psa 89:19, which are older in time, and older also than Isaiah, who uses it thirty times, and Habakkuk, who uses it once. Jeremiah has it twice (Jer 50:29; Jer 51:5), and that after the example of Isaiah. In Psa 71:23, Psa 71:24 the poet means to say that lips and tongue, song and speech, shall act in concert in the praise of God. תּרנּנּה with Dagesh also in the second Nun, after the form תּקוננּה, תּשׁכּנּה, side by side with which we also find the reading תּרנּנּה, and the reading תּרנּנה, which is in itself admissible, after the form תּאמנה, תּעגנה, but is here unattested.^[31]
The cohortative after כּי (lxx ὅταν) is intended to convey this meaning: when I feel myself impelled to harp unto Thee. In the perfects in the closing line that which is hoped for stands before his soul as though it had already taken place. כי is repeated with triumphant emphasis. =Psalm 72= == Prayer for the Dominion of Peace of the Anointed One of God==
This last Psalm of the primary collection, united to Ps 71 by community of the prominent word tsdqtk, appears, as we look to the superscription, Psa 72:20, to be said to be a Psalm of David; so that consequently לשׁלמה designates Solomon as the subject, not the author. But the Lamed of לשׁלמה here and in Psa 127:1 cannot have any other meaning than that which the Lamed always has at the head of the Psalms when it is joined to proper names; it is then always the expression denoting that the Psalm belongs to the person named, as its author. Then in style and general character the Psalm has not the least kinship with the Psalms of David. Characteristic of Solomon, on the other hand, are the movement proverb-like, and for the most part distichic, which has less of original freshness and directness than of an artificial, reflective, and almost sluggish manner, the geographic range of view, the richness in figures drawn from nature, and the points of contact with the Book of Job, which belongs incontrovertibly to the circle of the Salomonic literature: these are coincident signs which are decisive in favour of Solomon. But if Solomon is the author, the question arises, who is the subject of the Psalm? According to Hitzig, Ptolemy Philadelphus; but no true Israelite could celebrate him in this manner, and there is no reliable example of carmina of this character having found their way into the song-book of Israel. The subject of the Psalm is either Solomon (lxx εἰς Σαλωμών) or the Messiah (Targum, “O God, give Thy regulations of right to the King Messiah, למלכּא משׁיחא"). Both are correct. It is Solomon himself to whom the intercession and desires of blessing of this Psalm refer. Solomon, just as David with Psa 20:1-9 and Psa 20:1, put it into the heart and mouth of the people, probably very soon after his accession, it being as it were a church-prayer on behalf of the new, reigning king. But the Psalm is also none the less Messianic, and with perfect right the church has made it the chief Psalm of the festival of Epiphany, which has received its name of festum trium regum out of it.
Solomon was in truth a righteous, benign, God-fearing ruler; he established and also extended the kingdom; he ruled over innumerable people, exalted in wisdom and riches above all the kings of the earth; his time was the most happy, the richest in peace and joy that Israel has ever known. The words of the Psalm were all fulfilled in him, even to the one point of the universal dominion that is wished for him. But the end of his reign was not like the beginning and the middle of it. That fair, that glorious, that pure image of the Messiah which he had represented waxed pale; and with this fading away its development in relation to the history of redemption took a new turn. In the time of David and of Solomon the hope of believers, which was attached to the kingship of David, had not yet fully broken with the present. At that time, with few exceptions, nothing was known of any other Messiah than the Anointed One of God, who was David or Solomon himself. When, however, the kingship in these its two most glorious impersonations had proved itself unable to bring to full realization the idea of the Messiah or of the Anointed One of God, and when the line of kings that followed thoroughly disappointed the hope which clung to the kingship of the present, - a hope which here and there, as in the reign of Hezekiah, blazed up for a moment and then totally died out, and men were driven from the present to look onward into the future, - then, and not until then, did any decided rupture take place between the Messianic hope and the present. The image of the Messiah is now painted on the pure ethereal sky of the future (though of the immediate future) in colours which were furnished by older unfulfilled prophecies, and by the contradiction between the existing kingship and its idea; it becomes more and more, so to speak, an image, super-earthly, super-human, belonging to the future, the invisible refuge and invisible goal of a faith despairing of the present, and thereby rendered relatively more spiritual and heavenly (cf. the Messianic image painted in colours borrowed from our Psalm in Isa. 11, Mic 5:3, Mic 5:6; Zec 9:9.). In order rightly to estimate this, we must free ourselves from the prejudice that the centre of the Old Testament proclamation of salvation [or gospel] lies in the prophecy of the Messiah. Is the Messiah, then, anywhere set forth as the Redeemer of the world? The Redeemer of the world if Jahve. The appearing (parusia) of Jahve is the centre of the Old Testament proclamation of salvation. An allegory may serve to illustrate the way in which the Old Testament proclamation of salvation unfolds itself. The Old Testament in relation to the Day of the New Testament is Night. In this Night there rise in opposite directions two stars of Promise. The one describes its path from above downwards: it is the promise of Jahve who is about to come. The other describes its path from below upwards: it is the hope which rests on the seed of David, the prophecy of the Son of David, which at the outset assumes a thoroughly human, and merely earthly character. These two stars meet at last, they blend together into one star; the Night vanishes and it is Day. This one Star is Jesus Christ, Jahve and the Son of David in one person, the King of Israel and at the same time the Redeemer of the world, - in one word, the God-man.

Verses 1-4

The name of God, occurring only once, is Elohim; and this is sufficient to stamp the Psalm as an Elohimic Psalm. מלך (cf. Psa 21:2) and בּן־מלך are only used without the article according to a poetical usage of the language. The petition itself, and even the position of the words, show that the king's son is present, and that he is king; God is implored to bestow upon him His משׁפּטים, i.e., the rights or legal powers belonging to Him, the God of Israel, and צדקה, i.e., the official gift in order that he may exercise those rights in accordance with divine righteousness. After the supplicatory teen the futures which now follow, without the Waw apodoseos, are manifestly optatives. Mountains and hills describe synecdochically the whole land of which they are the high points visible afar off. נשׂא is used in the sense of נשׂא פּרי Eze 17:8 : may שׁלום be the fruit which ripens upon every mountain and hill; universal prosperity satisfied and contented within itself. The predicate for Psa 72:3 is to be taken from Psa 72:3, just as, on the other hand, בּצדקה, “in or by righteousness,” the fruit of which is indeed peace (Isa 32:17), belongs also to Psa 72:3; so that consequently both members supplement one another. The wish of the poet is this: By righteousness, may there in due season be such peaceful fruit adorning all the heights of the land. Psa 72:3, however, always makes one feel as though a verb were wanting, like תּפרחנה suggested by Böttcher. In Psa 72:4 the wishes are continued in plain unfigurative language. הושׁיע in the signification to save, to obtain salvation for, has, as is frequently the case, a dative of the object. בּני־אביון are those who are born to poverty, just like בּן־מלך, one who is born a king. Those who are born to poverty are more or less regarded, by an unrighteous government, as having no rights.

Verses 5-8

The invocation of Psa 72:1 is continued in the form of a wish: may they fear Thee, Elohim, עם־שׁמשׁ, with the sun, i.e., during its whole duration (עם in the sense of contemporary existence, as in Dan. 3:33). לפני־ירח, in the moonlight (cf. Job 8:16, לפני־שׁמשׁ, in the sunshine), i.e., so long as the moon shines. דּור דּורים (accusative of the duration of time, cf. Psa 102:25), into the uttermost generation which outlasts the other generations (like שׁמי השּׁמים of the furthest heavens which surround the other heavens). The first two periphrastic expressions for unlimited time recur in Psa 89:37., a Psalm composed after the time of Solomon; cf. the unfigurative expression in Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the Temple in 1Ki 8:40. The continuance of the kingship, from the operation of which such continuance of the fear of God is expected, is not asserted until Psa 72:17. It is capricious to refer the language of address in Psa 72:5 to the king (as Hupfeld and Hitzig do), who is not directly addressed either in Psa 72:4, or in Psa 72:6, or anywhere in the Psalm. With respect to God the desire is expressed that the righteous and benign rule of the king may result in the extension of the fear of God from generation to generation into endless ages. The poet in Psa 72:6 delights in a heaping up of synonyms in order to give intensity to the expression of the thoughts, just as in Psa 72:5; the last two expressions stand side by side one another without any bond of connection as in Psa 72:5. רביבים (from רבב, Arab. rbb , densum , spissum esse, and then, starting from this signification, sometimes multum and sometimes magnum esse) is the shower of rain pouring down in drops that are close together; nor is זרזיף a synonym of גּז, but (formed from זרף, Arab. ḏrf, to flow, by means of a rare reduplication of the first two letters of the root, Ew. §157, d) properly the water running from a roof (cf. B. Joma 87a: “when the maid above poured out water, זרזיפי דמיא came upon his head”). גּז, however, is not the meadow-shearing, equivalent to a shorn, mown meadow, any more than גּז, גּזּה, Arabic ǵizza, signifies a shorn hide, but, on the contrary, a hide with the wool or feathers (e.g., ostrich feathers) still upon it, rather a meadow, i.e., grassy plain, that is intended to be mown. The closing word ארץ (accus. loci as in Psa 147:15) unites itself with the opening word ירד: descendat in terram. In his last words (2 Sam. 23) David had compared the effects of the dominion of his successor, whom he beheld as by vision, to the fertilizing effects of the sun and of the rain upon the earth. The idea of Psa 72:6 is that Solomon's rule may prove itself thus beneficial for the country. The figure of the rain in Psa 72:7 gives birth to another: under his rule may the righteous blossom (expanding himself unhindered and under the most favourable circumsntaces), and (may there arise) salvation in all fulness עד־בּלי ירח, until there is no more moon (cf. the similar expression in Job 14:12). To this desire for the uninterrupted prosperity and happiness of the righteous under the reign of this king succeeds the desire for an unlimited extension of his dominion, Psa 72:8. The sea (the Mediterranean) and the river (the Euphrates) are geographically defined points of issue, whence the definition of boundary is extended into the unbounded. Solomon even at his accession ruled over all kingdoms from the Euphrates as far as the borders of Egypt; the wishes expressed here are of wider compass, and Zechariah repeats them predictively (Psa 9:10) with reference to the King Messiah.

Verses 9-11

This third strophe contains prospects, the ground of which is laid down in the fourth. The position of the futures here becomes a different one. The contemplation passes from the home relations of the new government to its foreign relations, and at the same time the wishes are changed into hopes. The awe-commanding dominion of the king shall stretch even into the most distant corners of the desert. ציּים is used both for the animals and the men who inhabit the desert, to be determined in each instance by the context; here they are men beyond all dispute, but in Psa 74:14; Isa 23:13, it is matter of controversy whether men or beasts are meant. Since the lxx, Aquila, Symmachus, and Jerome here, and the lxx and Jerome in Psa 74:14, render Αἰθίοπες, the nomadic tribes right and left of the Arabian Gulf seem traditionally to have been associated in the mind with this word, more particularly the so-called Ichthyophagi. These shall bend the knee reverentially before him, and those who contend against him shall be compelled at last to veil their face before him in the dust. The remotest west and south become subject and tributary to him, viz., the kings of Tartessus in the south of Spain, rich in silver, and of the islands of the Mediterranean and the countries on its coasts, that is to say, the kings of the Polynesian portion of Europe, and the kings of the Cushitish or of the Joktanitish שׁבא and of the Cushitish סבא, as, according to Josephus, the chief city of Meroë was called (vid., Genesis, S. 206). It was a queen of that Joktanitish, and therefore South Arabian Sheba, - perhaps, however, more correctly (vid., Wetzstein in my Isaiah, ii. 529) of the Cushitish (Nubian) Sheba, - whom the fame of Solomon's wisdom drew towards him, 1 Kings 10. The idea of their wealth in gold and in other precious things is associated with both peoples. In the expression השׁיב מנחה (to pay tribute, 2Ki 17:3, cf. Psa 3:4) the tribute is not conceived of as rendered in return for protection afforded (Maurer, Hengstenberg, and Olshausen), nor as an act repeated periodically (Rödiger, who refers to 2Ch 27:5), but as a bringing back, i.e., repayment of a debt, referre s . reddere debitum (Hupfeld), after the same idea according to which obligatory incomings are called reditus (revenues). In the synonymous expression הקריב אשׁכּר the presentation appears as an act of sacrifice. אשׁכּר signifies in Eze 27:15 a payment made in merchandise, here a rent or tribute due, from שׂכר, which in blending with the Aleph prostheticum has passed over into שׂכר by means of a shifting of the sound after the Arabic manner, just as in אשׁכּל the verb שׂכל, to interweave, passes over into שׂכל (Rödiger in Gesenius' Thesaurus). In Psa 72:11 hope breaks through every bound: everything shall submit to his world-subduing sceptre.

Verses 12-15

The confirmation of these prospects is now given. Voluntative forms are intermingled because the prospect extending into the future is nevertheless more lyrical than prophetic in its character. The elevation of the king to the dominion of the world is the reward of his condescension; he shows himself to be the helper and protecting lord of the poor and the oppressed, who are the especial object upon which God's eye is set. He looks upon it as his task to deal most sympathizingly and most considerately (יחס) just with those of reduced circumstances and with the poor, and their blood is precious in his eyes. Psa 72:12 is re-echoed in Job 29:12. The meaning of Psa 72:14 is the same as Psa 116:15. Instead of יקר, by a retention of the Jod of the stem it is written ייקר. Just as in Psa 49:10, ייקר here also is followed by ויחי. The assertion is individualized: and he (who was threatened with death) shall live (voluntative, having reference to the will of the king). But who is now the subject to ויתּן-? Not the rescued one (Hitzig), for after the foregoing designations (Psa 72:11.) we cannot expect to find “the gold of Sheba” (gold from Jeman or Aethiopia) in his possession. Therefore it is the king, and in fact Solomon, of whom the disposal of the gold of Sheba (Saba) is characteristic. The king's thought and endeavour are directed to this, that the poor man who has almost fallen a victim shall live or revive, and not only will he maintain his cause, he will also bestow gifts upon him with a liberal hand, and he (the poor one who has been rescued and endowed from the riches of the king) shall pray unceasingly for him (the king) and bless him at all times. The poor one is he who is restored to life and endowed with gifts, and who intercedes and blesses; the king, however, is the beneficent giver. It is left for the reader to supply the right subjects in thought to the separate verbs. That clearly marked precision which we require in rhetorical recital is alien to the Oriental style (vid., my Geschichte der jüdischen Poesie, S. 189). Maurer and Hofmann also give the same interpretation as we have done.

Verses 16-17

Here, where the futures again stand at the head of the clauses, they are also again to be understood as optatives. As the blessing of such a dominion after God's heart, not merely fertility but extraordinary fruitfulness may be confidently desired for the land פּסּה (ἁπ. λεγ..), rendered by the Syriac version sugo, abundance, is correctly derived by the Jewish lexicographers from פּסס = פּשׂה (in the law relating to leprosy), Mishnic פּסה, Aramaic פּסא, Arabic fšâ, but also fšš (vid., Job, at Psa 35:14-16), to extend, expandere; so that it signifies an abundance that occupies a broad space. בּראשׁ, unto the summit, as in Psa 36:6; Psa 19:5. The idea thus obtained is the same as when Hofmann (Weissagung und Erfüllung, i. 180f.) takes פסּה (from פּסס = אפס) in the signification of a boundary line: “close upon the summit of the mountain shall the last corn stand,” with reference to the terrace-like structure of the heights. פּריו does not refer back to בארץ (Hitzig, who misleads one by referring to Joe 2:3), but to בּר: may the corn stand so high and thick that the fields, being moved by the wind, shall shake, i.e., wave up and down, like the lofty thick forest of Lebanon. The lxx, which renders huperarthee'setai, takes ירעשׁ for יראשׁ, as Ewald does: may its fruit rise to a summit, i.e., rise high, like Lebanon. But a verb ראשׁ is unknown; and how bombastic is this figure in comparison with that grand, but beautiful figure, which we would not willingly exchange even for the conjecture יעשׁר (may it be rich)! The other wish refers to a rapid, joyful increase of the population: may men blossom out of this city and out of that city as the herb of the earth (cf. Job 5:25, where צאצאיך also accords in sound with יציצוּ), i.e., fresh, beautiful, and abundant as it. Israel actually became under Solomon's sceptre as numerous “as the sand by the sea” (1Ki 4:20), but increase of population is also a settled feature in the picture of the Messianic time (Psa 110:3, Isa 9:2; Isa 49:20, Zec 2:8 [4]; cf. Sir. 44:21). If, however, under the just and benign rule of the king, both land and people are thus blessed, eternal duration may be desired for his name. May this name, is the wish of the poet, ever send forth new shoots (ינין Chethib), or receive new shoots (ינּון Kerî, from Niph. ננון), as long as the sun turns its face towards us, inasmuch as the happy and blessed results of the dominion of the king ever afford new occasion for glorifying his name. May they bless themselves in him, may all nations call him blessed, and that, as ויתבּרכוּ בו^[32] implies, so blessed that his abundance of blessing appears to them to be the highest that they can desire for themselves. To et benedicant sibi in eo we have to supply in thought the most universal, as yet undefined subject, which is then more exactly defined as omnes gentes with the second synonymous predicate. The accentuation (Athnach, Mugrash, Silluk) is blameless.

Verses 18-19

Closing Beracha of the Second Book of the Psalter. It is more full-toned than that of the First Book, and God is intentionally here called Jahve Elohim the God of Israel because the Second Book contains none but Elohim-Psalms, and not, as there, Jahve the God of Israel. “Who alone doeth wonders” is a customary praise of God, Psa 86:10; Psa 136:4, cf. Job 9:8. שׁם כּבודו is a favourite word in the language of divine worship in the period after the Exile (Neh 9:5); it is equivalent to the שׁם כּבוד מלכוּתו in the liturgical Beracha, God's glorious name, the name that bears the impress of His glory. The closing words: and let the whole earth be full, etc., are taken from Num 14:21. Here, as there, the construction of the active with a double accusative of that which fills and that which is to be filled is retained in connection with the passive; for כבודו is also accusative: let be filled with His glory the whole earth (let one make it full of it). The אמן coupled by means of Waw is, in the Old Testament, exclusively peculiar to these doxologies of the Psalter.

Verse 20

Superscription of the primary collection. The origin of this superscription cannot be the same as that of the doxology, which is only inserted between it and the Psalm, because it was intended to be read with the Psalm at the reading in the course of the service (Symbolae, p. 19). כּלוּ = כּלּוּ, like דּחוּ in Ps 36:13, כּסּוּ, Psa 80:11, all being Pual forms, as is manifest in the accented ultima. A parallel with this verse is the superscription “are ended the words of Job” in Job 31:40, which separates the controversial speeches and Job's monologue from the speeches of God. No one taking a survey of the whole Psalter, with the many Psalms of David that follow beyond Ps 72, could possibly have placed this key-stone here. If, however, it is more ancient than the doxological division into five books, it is a significant indication in relation to the history of the rise of the collection. It proves that the collection of the whole as it now lies before us was at least preceded by one smaller collection, of which we may say that it extended to Ps 72, without thereby meaning to maintain that it contained all the Psalms up to that one, since several of them may have been inserted into it when the redaction of the whole took place. But it is possible for it to have contained Ps 72, wince at the earliest it was only compiled in the time of Solomon. The fact that the superscription following directly upon a Psalm of Solomon is thus worded, is based on the same ground as the fact that the whole Psalter is quoted in the New Testament as Davidic. David is the father of the שׁיר ה, 2Ch 29:27, and hence all Psalms may be called Davidic, just as all משׁלים may be called Salomonic, without meaning thereby that they are all composed by David himself. ==Temptation to Apostasy Overcome== =Psalm 73=

After the one Asaph Psalm of the Second Book, Ps 50, follow eleven more of them from Psalms 73-83. They are all Elohimic, whereas the Korah Psalms divide into an Elohimic and a Jehovic group. Psa 84:1-12 forms the transition from the one to the other. The Elohim-Psalms extend from Psalms 42-84, and are fenced in on both sides by Jahve-Psalms.
In contents Psalms 73 is the counterpart of pendant of Ps 50. As in that Psalm the semblance of a sanctity based upon works is traced back to its nothingness, so here the seeming good fortune of the ungodly, by which the poet felt himself tempted to fall away, not into heathenism (Hitzig), but into that free-thinking which in the heathen world does not less cast off the deisidaimoni'a than it does the belief in Jahve within the pale of Israel. Nowhere does there come to light in the national history any back ground that should contradict the לאסף, and the doubts respecting the moral order of the world are set at rest in exactly the same way as in Ps 37; Ps 49, and in the Book of Job. Theodicy, or the vindication of God's ways, does not as yet rise from the indication of the retribution in this present time which the ungodly do not escape, to a future solution of all the contradictions of this present world; and the transcendent glory which infinitely outweighs the suffering of this present time, still remains outside the range of vision. The stedfast faith which, gladly renouncing everything, holds fast to God, and the pure love to which this possession is more than heaven and earth, is all the more worthy of admiration in connection with such defective knowledge.
The strophe schema of the Psalm is predominantly octastichic: 4. 8. 8. 8; 8. 8. 5. Its two halves are Psa 73:1, Psa 73:15.

Verses 1-2

Psa 73:1-2 אך, belonging to the favourite words of the faith that bids defiance to assault, signifies originally “thus = not otherwise,” and therefore combines an affirmative and restrictive, or, according to circumstances, even an adversative signification (vid., on Psa 39:6). It may therefore be rendered: yea good, assuredly good, or: only good, nothing but good; both renderings are an assertion of a sure, infallible relation of things. God appears to be angry with the godly, but in reality He is kindly disposed towards them, though He send affliction after affliction upon them (Lam 3:25). The words ישראל אלהים are not to be taken together, after Gal 6:16 (τὸν Ἰσραήλ τοῦ Θεοῦ); not, “only good is it with the Israel of Elohim,” but “only good to Israel is Elohim,” is the right apprehension of the truth or reality that is opposed to what seems to be the case. The Israel which in every relationship has a good and loving God is limited in Psa 73:1 to the pure in heart (Psa 24:4; Mat 5:8). Israel in truth are not all those who are descended from Jacob, but those who have put away all impurity of disposition and all uncleanness of sin out of their heart, i.e., out of their innermost life, and by a constant striving after sanctification (Psa 73:13) maintain themselves in such purity. In relation to this, which is the real church of God, God is pure love, nothing but love. This it is that has been confirmed to the poet as he passed through the conflict of temptation, but it was through conflict, for he almost fell by reason of the semblance of the opposite. The Chethîb נטוּי רגלי (cf. Num 24:4) or נטוּי (cf. 2Sa 15:32) is erroneous. The narration of that which is past cannot begin with a participial clause like this, and כּמעט, in such a sense (non multum abfuit quin, like כּאין, nihil abfuit quin), always has the perfect after it, e.g., Psa 94:17; Psa 119:87. It is therefore to be read נטיוּ (according to the fuller form for נטוּ, which is used not merely with great distinctives, as in Psa 36:8; Psa 122:6; Num 24:6, but also with conjunctives out of pause, e.g., Psa 57:2, cf. Psa 36:9, Deu 32:37; Job 12:6): my feet had almost inclined towards, had almost slipped backwards and towards the side. On the other hand the Chethîb שׁפּכה is unassailable; the feminine singular is frequently found as predicate both of a plural subject that has preceded (Psa 18:35, cf. Deu 21:7; Job 16:16) and also more especially of one that is placed after it, e.g., Psa 37:31; Job 14:19. The footsteps are said to be poured out when one “flies out or slips” and falls to the ground.

Verses 3-6

Now follows the occasion of the conflict of temptation: the good fortune of those who are estranged from God. In accordance with the gloominess of the theme, the style is also gloomy, and piles up the full-toned suffixes amo and emo (vid., Psa 78:66; Psa 80:7; Psa 83:12, Psa 83:14); both are after the example set by David. קנּא with Beth of the object ion which the zeal or warmth of feeling is kindled (Psa 37:1; Pro 3:31) here refers to the warmth of envious ill-feeling. Concerning הולל vid., Psa 5:6. Psa 73:3 tells under what circumsntaces the envy was excited; cf. so far as the syntax is concerned, Psa 49:6; Psa 76:11. In Psa 73:4 חרצצבּות (from חרצב = חצּב from חצב, cognate עצב, whence עצב, pain, Arabic ‛aṣâbe, a snare, cf. חבל, ὠδίς, and חבל σχοινίον), in the same sense as the Latin tormenta (from torquere), is intended of pains that produce convulsive contractions. But in order to give the meaning “they have no pangs (to suffer) till their death,” להם (למו) could not be omitted (that is, assuming also that ל, which is sometimes used for עד, vid., Psa 59:14, could in such an exclusive sense signify the terminus ad quem). Also “there are no pangs for their death, i.e., that bring death to them,” ought to be expressed by להם למּות. The clause as it stands affirms that their dying has no pangs, i.e., it is a painless death; but not merely does this assertion not harmonize with Psa 73:18., but it is also introduced too early here, since the poet cannot surely begin the description of the good fortune of the ungodly with the painlessness of their death, and then for the first time come to speak of their healthy condition. We may therefore read, with Ewald, Hitzig, Böttcher, and Olshausen: כי אין חרצבות למו תּם ובריא אולם i.e., they have (suffer) no pangs, vigorous (תּם like תּם, Job 21:23, תמים, Pro 1:12) and well-nourished is their belly; by which means the difficult למותם is got rid of, and the gloomy picture is enriched by another form ending with mo. אוּל, here in a derisive sense, signifies the body, like the Arabic allun , âlun (from âl , coaluit , cohaesit, to condense inwardly, to gain consistency).^[33]
The observation of Psa 73:4 is pursued further in Psa 73:5 : whilst one would have thought that the godly formed an exception to the common wretchedness of mankind, it is just the wicked who are exempt from all trouble and calamity. It is also here to be written אינמו, as in Psa 59:14, not אינימו. Therefore is haughtiness their neck-chain, and brutishness their mantle. ענק is a denominative from ענק = αὐχήν: to hang round the neck; the neck is the seat of pride (αὐχεῖν): haughtiness hangs around their neck (like ענק, a neck-ornament). Accordingly in Psa 73:6 המס is the subject, although the interpunction construes it differently, viz., “they wrap round as a garment the injustice belonging to them,” in order, that is, to avoid the construction of יעטף (vid., Ps 65:14) with למו; but active verbs can take a dative of the object (e.g., אהב ל ,, רפא ל) in the sense: to be or to grant to any one that which the primary notion of the verb asserts. It may therefore be rendered: they put on the garment of violence (שׁית חמס like בּגדי נקם, Isa 59:17), or even by avoiding every enallage numeri: violence covers them as a garment; so that שׁית is an apposition which is put forth in advance.

Verses 7-10

The reading עונמו, ἡ ἀδικία αὐτῶν (lxx (cf. in Zec 5:6 the עינם, which is rendered by the lxx in exactly the same way), in favour of which Hitzig, Böttcher, and Olshausen decide, “their iniquity presses forth out of a fat heart, out of a fat inward part,” is favoured by Psa 17:10, where חלב obtains just this signification by combination with סגר, which it would obtain here as being the place whence sin issues; cf. ἐξέρχεσθαι ἐκ τῆς καρδίας, Mat 15:18.; and the parallelism decides its superiority. Nevertheless the traditional reading also gives a suitable sense; not (since the fat tends to make the eyes appear to be deeper in) “their eyes come forward prae adipe,” but, “they stare forth ex adipe, out of the fat of their bloated visage,” מחלב being equivalent to מחלב פּניהם, Job 15:27. This is a feature of the character faithfully drawn after nature. Further, just as in general τὸ περίσσευμα τῆς καρδίας wells over in the gestures and language (Mat 12:34), so is it also with their “views or images of the heart” (from שׂכה, like שׂכוי, the cock with its gift of divination as speculator): the illusions of their unbounded self-confidence come forth outwardly, they overflow after the manner of a river,^[34] viz., as Psa 73:8 says, in words that are proud beyond measure (Jer 5:28). Luther: “they destroy everything” (synon. they make it as or into rottenness, from מקק). But חמיק is here equivalent to the Aramaic מיּק (μωκᾶσθαι): they mock and openly speak ברע (with ā in connection with Munach transformed from Dechî), with evil disposition (cf. Exo 32:12), oppression; i.e., they openly express their resolve which aims at oppression. Their fellow-man is the sport of their caprice; they speak or dictate ממּרום, down from an eminence, upon which they imagine themselves to be raised high above others. Even in the heavens above do they set (שׁתּוּ as in Psa 49:15 instead of שׁתוּ, - there, in accordance with tradition, Milel; here at the commencement of the verse Milra) their mouth; even these do not remain untouched by their scandalous language (cf. Jud 1:16); the Most High and Holy One, too, is blasphemed by them, and their tongue runs officiously and imperiously through the earth below, everywhere disparaging that which exists and giving new laws. תּהלך, as in Exo 9:23, a Kal sounding much like Hithpa., in the signification grassari. In Psa 73:10 the Chethîb ישׁיב (therefore he, this class of man, turns a people subject to him hither, i.e., to himself) is to be rejected, because הלם is not appropriate to it. עמּו is the subject, and the suffix refers not to God (Stier), whose name has not been previously mentioned, but to the kind of men hitherto described: what is meant is the people which, in order that it may turn itself hither (שׁוּב, not: to turn back, but to turn one's self towards, as e.g., in Jer 15:19)^[35] becomes his, i.e., this class's people (cf. for this sense of the suffix as describing the issue or event, Psa 18:24; Psa 49:6; Psa 65:12). They gain adherents (Psa 49:14) from those who leave the fear of God and turn to them; and מי מלא, water of fulness, i.e., of full measure (cf. Psa 74:15, streams of duration = that do not dry up), which is here an emblem of their corrupt principles (cf. Job 15:16), is quaffed or sucked in (מצה, root מץ, whence first of all מצץ, Arab. mṣṣ, to suck) by these befooled ones (למו, αὐτοῖς = ὑπ ̓ αὐτῶν). This is what is meant to be further said, and not that this band of servile followers is in fulness absorbed by them (Sachs). Around the proud free-thinkers there gathers a rabble submissive to them, which eagerly drinks in everything that proceeds from them as though it were the true water of life. Even in David's time (Psa 10:4; Psa 14:1; Psa 36:2) there were already such stout spirits (Isa 46:12) with a servûm imitatorum pecus. A still far more favourable soil for these לצים was the worldly age of Solomon.

Verses 11-14

The persons speaking are now those apostates who, deluded by the good fortune and free-thinking of the ungodly, give themselves up to them as slaves. concerning the modal sense of ידע, quomodo sciverit, vid., Psa 11:3, cf. Job 22:13. With וישׁ the doubting question is continued. Böttcher renders thus: nevertheless knowledge is in the Most High (a circumstantial clause like Pro 3:28; Mal 1:14; Jdg 6:13); but first of all they deny God's actual knowledge, and then His attributive omniscience. It is not to be interpreted: behold, such are (according to their moral nature) the ungodly (אלּה, tales, like זה, Ps 48:15, Deu 5:26, cf. המּה, Isa 56:11); nor, as is more in accordance with the parallel member Psa 73:12 and the drift of the Psalm: behold, thus it befalleth the ungodly (such as they according to their lot, as in Job 18:21, cf. Isa 20:6); but, what forms a better connection as a statement of the ground of the scepticism in Psa 73:11, either, in harmony with the accentuation: behold, the ungodly, etc., or, since it is not הרשׁעים: behold, these are ungodly, and, ever reckless (Jer 12:1), they have acquired great power. With the bitter הנּה, as Stier correctly observes, they bring forward the obvious proof to the contrary. How can God be said to be the omniscient Ruler of the world? - the ungodly in their carnal security become very powerful and mighty, but piety, very far from being rewarded, is joined with nothing but misfortune. My striving after sanctity (cf. Pro 20:9), my abstinence from all moral pollution (cf. Pro 26:6), says he who has been led astray, has been absolutely (אך as in 1Sa 25:21) in vain; I was notwithstanding (Ew. §345, a) incessantly tormented (cf. Psa 73:5), and with every morning's dawn (לבּקרים, as in Psa 101:8, cf. לבקרים in Job 7:18) my chastitive suffering was renewed. We may now supply the conclusion in thought in accordance with Psa 73:10 : Therefore have I joined myself to those who never concern themselves about God and at the same time get on better.

Verses 15-18

To such, doubt is become the transition to apostasy. The poet has resolved the riddle of such an unequal distribution of the fortunes of men in a totally different way. Instead of כּמו in Psa 73:15, to read כּמוהם (Böttcher), or better, by taking up the following הנה, which even Saadia allows himself to do, contrary to the accents (Arab. mṯl hḏâ), כּמו הנּה (Ewald), is unnecessary, since prepositions are sometimes used elliptically (כּעל, Isa 59:18), or even without anything further (Hos 7:16; Hos 11:7) as adverbs, which must therefore be regarded as possible also in the case of כּמו (Aramaic, Arabic כּמא, Aethiopic kem). The poet means to say, If I had made up my mind to the same course of reasoning, I should have faithlessly forsaken the fellowship of the children of God, and should consequently also have forfeited their blessings. The subjunctive signification of the perfects in the hypothetical protasis and apodosis, Psa 73:15 (cf. Jer 23:22), follows solely from the context; futures instead of perfects would signify si dicerem...perfide agerem. דּור בּניך is the totality of those, in whom the filial relationship in which God has placed Isreal in relation to Himself is become an inward or spiritual reality, the true Israel, Psa 73:1, the “righteous generation,” Psa 14:5. It is an appellative, as in Deu 14:1; Hos 2:1. For on the point of the uhiothesi'a the New Testament differs from the Old Testament in this way, viz., that in the Old Testament it is always only as a people that Israel is called בן, or as a whole בנים, but that the individual, and that in his direct relationship to God, dared not as yet call himself “child of God.” The individual character is not as yet freed from its absorption in the species, it is not as yet independent; it is the time of the minor's νηπιότης, and the adoption is as yet only effected nationally, salvation is as yet within the limits of the nationality, its common human form has not as yet appeared. The verb בּגד with בּ signifies to deal faithlessly with any one, and more especially (whether God, a friend, or a spouse) faithlessly to forsake him; here, in this sense of malicious desertion, it contents itself with the simple accusative.
On the one side, by joining in the speech of the free-thinkers he would have placed himself outside the circle of the children of God, of the truly pious; on the other side, however, when by meditation he sought to penetrate it (לדעת), the doubt-provoking phenomenon (זאת) still continued to be to him עמל, trouble, i.e., something that troubled him without any result, an unsolvable riddle (cf. Ecc 8:17). Whether we read הוּא or היא, the sense remains the same; the Kerî הוּא prefers, as in Job 31:11, the attractional gender. Neither here nor in Job 30:26 and elsewhere is it to be supposed that ואחשׁבה is equivalent to ואחשׁבה (Ewald, Hupfeld). The cohortative from of the future here, as frequently (Ges. §128, 1), with or without a conditional particle (Psa 139:8; 2Sa 22:38; Job 16:6; Job 11:17; Job 19:18; Job 30:26), forms a hypothetical protasis: and (yet) when I meditated; Symmachus (according to Montfaucon), ει ̓ ἐλογιζόμην. As Vaihinger aptly observes, “thinking alone will give neither the right light nor true happiness.” Both are found only in faith. The poet at last struck upon the way of faith, and there he found light and peace. The future after עד frequently has the signification of the imperfect subjunctive, Job 32:11; Ecc 2:3, cf. Pro 12:19 (donec nutem = only a moment); also in an historical connection like Jos 10:13; 2Ch 29:34, it is conceived of as subjunctive (donec ulciseretur, se sanctificarent), sometimes, however, as indicative, as in Exo 15:16 (donec transibat) and in our passage, where אד introduces the objective goal at which the riddle found its solution: until I went into the sanctuary of God, (purposely) attended to (ל as in the primary passage Deu 32:29, cf. Job 14:21) their life's end. The cohortative is used here exactly as in ואבינה, but with the collateral notion of that which is intentional, which here fully accords with the connection. He went into God's dread sanctuary (plural as in Ps 68:36, cf. מקדּשׁ in the Psalms of Asaph, Psa 67:7; Psa 78:69); here he prayed for light in the darkness of his conflict, here were his eyes opened to the holy plans and ways of God (Psa 77:14), here the sight of the sad end of the evil-doers was presented to him. By “God's sanctuaries” Ewald and Hitzig understand His secrets; but this meaning is without support in the usage of the language. And is it not a thought perfectly in harmony with the context and with experience, that a light arose upon him when he withdrew from the bustle of the world into the quiet of God's dwelling - place, and there devoutly gave his mind to the matter?
The strophe closes with a summary confession of the explanation received there. שׁית is construed with Lamed inasmuch as collocare is equivalent to locum assignare (vid., Psa 73:6). God makes the evil-doers to stand on smooth, slippery places, where one may easily lose one's footing (cf. Psa 35:6; Jer 23:12). There, then, they also inevitably fall; God casts them down למשּׁוּאות, into ruins, fragores = ruinae, from שׁוא = שׁאה, to be confused, desolate, to rumble. The word only has the appearance of being from נשׁא: ensnarings, sudden attacks (Hitzig), which is still more ill suited to Psa 74:3 than to this passage; desolation and ruin can be said even of persons, as הרס, Psa 28:5, ונשׁבּרוּ, Isa 8:15, נפּץ, Jer 51:21-23. The poet knows no other theodicy but this, nor was any other known generally in the pre-exilic literature of Israel (vid., Ps 37; Psa 39:1-13, Jer. 12, and the Job 1:1). The later prophecy and the Chokma were much in advance of this, inasmuch as they point to a last universal judgment (vid., more particularly Mal 3:13.), but not one that breaks off this present state; the present state and the future state, time and eternity, are even there not as yet thoroughly separated.

Verses 19-22

The poet calms himself with the solution of the riddle that has come to him; and it would be beneath his dignity as a man to allow himself any further to be tempted by doubting thoughts. Placing himself upon the standpoint of the end, he sees how the ungodly come to terrible destruction in a moment: they come to an end (ספוּ from סוּף, not ספה), it is all over with them (תּמּוּ) in consequence of (מן as in Psa 76:7, and unconnected as in Psa 18:4; Psa 30:4; Psa 22:14) frightful occurrences (בּלּהות, a favourite word, especially in the Book of Job), which clear them out of the way. It is with them as with a dream, after (מן as in 1Ch 8:8) one is awoke. One forgets the vision on account of its nothingness (Job 20:8). So the evil-doers who boast themselves μετὰ πολλῆς φαντασίας (Act 25:23) are before God a צלם, a phantom or unsubstantial shadow. When He, the sovereign Lord, shall awake, i.e., arouse Himself to judgment after He has looked on with forbearance, then He will despise their shadowy image, will cast it contemptuously from Him. Luther renders, So machstu Herr jr Bilde in der Stad verschmecht (So dost Thou, Lord, make their image despised in the city). But neither has the Kal בּזה this double transitive signification, “to give over to contempt,” nor is the mention of the city in place here. In Hos 11:9 also בּעיר in the signification in urbem gives no right sense; it signifies heat of anger or fury, as in Jer 15:8, heat of anguish, and Schröder maintains the former signification (vid., on Psa 139:20), in fervore (irae), here also; but the pointing בּעיר is against it. Therefore בּעיר is to be regarded, with the Targum, as syncopated from בּהעיר (cf. לביא, Jer 39:7; 2Ch 31:10; בּכּשׁלו, Pro 24:17, and the like); not, however, to be explained, “when they awake,” viz., from the sleep of death (Targum),^[36] or after Psa 78:38, “when Thou awakest them,” viz., out of their sleep of security (De Wette, Kurtz), but after Psa 35:23, “when Thou awakest,” viz., to sit in judgment.
Thus far we have the divine answer, which is reproduced by the poet after the manner of prayer. Hengstenberg now goes on by rendering it, “for my heart was incensed;” but we cannot take יתחמּץ according to the sequence of tenses as an imperfect, nor understand כּי as a particle expression the reason. On the contrary, the poet, from the standpoint of the explanation he has received, speaks of a possible return (כּי seq. fut. = ἐάν) of his temptation, and condemns it beforehand: si exacerbaretur animus meus atque in renibus meis pungerer. התחמּץ, to become sour, bitter, passionate; השׁתּונן, with the more exactly defining accusative כּליותי, to be pricked, piqued, irritated. With ואני begins the apodosis: then should I be... I should have become (perfect as in Psa 73:15, according to Ges. §126, 5). Concerning לא ידע, non sapere, vid., Psa 14:4. בּהמות can be taken as compar. decurtata for כּבהמות; nevertheless, as apparently follows from Job 40:15, the poet surely has the p - ehe - mou, the water ox, i.e., the hippopotamus, in his mind, which being Hebraized is בּהמות,^[37] and, as a plump colossus of flesh, is at once an emblem of colossal stupidity (Maurer, Hitzig). The meaning of the poet is, that he would not be a man in relation to God, over against God (עם, as in Psa 78:37; Job 9:2, cf. Arab. ma‛a, in comparison with), if he should again give way to the same doubts, but would be like the most stupid animal, which stands before God incapable of such knowledge as He willingly imparts to earnestly inquiring man.

Verses 23-26

But he does not thus deeply degrade himself: after God has once taken him by the right hand and rescued him from the danger of falling (Psa 73:2), he clings all the more firmly to Him, and will not suffer his perpetual fellowship with Him to be again broken through by such seizures which estrange him from God. confidently does he yield up himself to the divine guidance, though he may not see through the mystery of the plan (עצה) of this guidance. He knows that afterwards (אחר with Mugrash: adverb as in Psa 68:26), i.e., after this dark way of faith, God will כבוד receive him, i.e., take him to Himself, and take him from all suffering (לקח as in Psa 49:16, and of Enoch, Gen 5:24). The comparison of Zec 2:12 [8] is misleading; there אחר is rightly accented as a preposition: after glory hath He sent me forth (vid., Köhler), and here as an adverb; for although the adverbial sense of אחר would more readily lead one to look for the arrangement of the words ואחר תקחני כבוד, still “to receive after glory” (cf. the reverse Isa 58:8) is an awkward thought. כבוד, which as an adjective “glorious” (Hofmann) is alien to the language, is either accusative of the goal (Hupfeld), or, which yields a form of expression that is more like the style of the Old Testament, accusative of the manner (Luther, “with honour”). In אחר the poet comprehends in one summary view what he looks for at the goal of the present divine guidance. The future is dark to him, but lighted up by the one hope that the end of his earthly existence will be a glorious solution of the riddle. Here, as elsewhere, it is faith which breaks through not only the darkness of this present life, but also the night of Hades. At that time there was as yet no divine utterance concerning any heavenly triumph of the church, militant in the present world, but to faith the Jahve-Name had already a transparent depth which penetrated beyond Hades into an eternal life. The heaven of blessedness and glory also is nothing without God; but he who can in love call God his, possesses heaven upon earth, and he who cannot in love call God his, would possess not heaven, but hell, in the midst of heaven. In this sense the poet says in Psa 73:25 : whom have I in heaven? i.e., who there without Thee would be the object of my desire, the stilling of my longing? without Thee heaven with all its glory is a vast waste and void, which makes me indifferent to everything, and with Thee, i.e., possessing Thee, I have no delight in the earth, because to call Thee mine infinitely surpasses every possession and every desire of earth. If we take בּארץ still more exactly as parallel to בּשּׁמים, without making it dependent upon חפצתּי: and possessing Thee I have no desire upon the earth, then the sense remains essentially the same; but if we allow בארץ to be governed by חפצתי in accordance with the general usage of the language, we arrive at this meaning by the most natural way. Heaven and earth, together with angels and men, afford him no satisfaction - his only friend, his sole desire and love, is God. The love for God which David expresses in Psa 16:2 in the brief utterance, “Thou art my Lord, Thou art my highest good,” is here expanded with incomparable mystical profoundness and beauty. Luther's version shows his master-hand. The church follows it in its “Herzlich lieb hab' ich dich” when it sings - “The whole wide world delights me not,
For heaven and earth, Lord, care I not,
If I may but have Thee;” and following it, goes on in perfect harmony with the text of our Psalm - “Yea, though my heart be like to break,
Thou art my trust that nought can shake;”^[38] or with Paul Gerhard, [in his Passion-hymn “Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld der Welt und ihrer Kinder,” “Light of my heart, that shalt Thou be;
And when my heart in pieces breaks,
Thou shalt my heart remain.”
For the hypothetical perfect כּלה expresses something in spite of which he upon whom it may come calls God his God: licet defecerit. Though his outward and inward man perish, nevertheless God remains ever the rock of his heart as the firm ground upon which he, with his ego, remains standing when everything else totters; He remains his portion, i.e., the possession that cannot be taken from him, if he loses all, even his spirit-life pertaining to the body, - and God remains to him this portion לעולם, he survives with the life which he has in God the death of the old life. The poet supposes an extreme case, - one, that is, it is true, impossible, but yet conceivable, - that his outward and inward being should sink away; even then with the merus actus of his ego he will continue to cling to God. In the midst of the natural life of perishableness and of sin, a new, individual life which is resigned to God has begun within him, and in this he has the pledge that he cannot perish, so truly as God, with whom it is closely united, cannot perish. It is just this that is also the nerve of the proof of the resurrection of the dead which Jesus advances in opposition to the Sadducees (Mat 22:32).

Verses 27-28

The poet here once more gives expression to the great opposites into which good fortune and misfortune are seemingly, but only seemingly, divided in a manner so contradictory to the divine justice. The central point of the confirmation that is introduced with כּי lies in Psa 73:28. “Thy far removing ones” was to be expressed with רחק, which is distinct from רחוק. זנה has מן instead of מתּחת or מאחרי after it. Those who remove themselves far from the primary fountain of life fall a prey to ruin; those who faithlessly abandon God, and choose the world with its idols rather than His love, fall a prey to destruction. Not so the poet; the nearness of God, i.e., a state of union with God, is good to him, i.e., (cf. Psa 119:71.) he regards as his good fortune. קרבה is nom. act. after the form יקהה, Arab. waqhat, obedience, and נצּרה, a watch, Psa 141:3, and of essentially the same signification with ḳurba (קרבה), the Arabic designation of the unio mystica; cf. Jam 4:8, ἐγγίσατε τῷ Θεῷ καὶ ἐγγιεῖ ὑμῖν. Just as קרבת אלהים stands in antithesis to רחקיך, so לי טּוב stands in antithesis to יאבדו and הצמתה. To the former their alienation from God brings destruction; he finds in fellowship with God that which is good to him for the present time and for the future. Putting his confidence (מחסּי, not מחסי) in Him, he will declare, and will one day be able to declare, all His מלאכות, i.e., the manifestations or achievements of His righteous, gracious, and wise government. The language of assertion is quickly changed into that of address. The Psalm closes with an upward look of grateful adoration to God beforehand, who leads His own people, ofttimes wondrously indeed, but always happily, viz., through suffering to glory. ==Appeal to God against Religious Persecution, in Which the Temple Is Violated==
The מזמור 73 is here followed by a Maskı̂l (vid., Psa 32:1) which, in common with the former, has the prominent, rare word משּׁוּאות (Psa 74:3; Psa 73:18), but also the old Asaphic impress. We here meet with the favourite Asaphic contemplation of Israel as a flock, and the predilection of the Asaphic Psalms for retrospective references to Israel's early history (Psa 74:13-15). We also find the former of these two characteristic features in Psa 79:1-13, which reflects the same circumstances of the times. Moreover Jeremiah stands in the same relationship to both Psalms. In Jer 10:25; Psa 79:6. is repeated almost word for word. And one is reminded of Psalms 74 by Lam 2:2 (cf. Psa 74:7), Psa 2:7 (cf. Psa 74:4), and other passages. The lament “there is no prophet any more” (Psa 74:9) sounds very much like Lam 2:9. In connection with Jeremiah's reproductive manner, and his habit of allowing himself to be prompted to new thoughts by the original passages by means of the association of ideas (cf. כּיום מועד, Lam 2:7, with בּקרב מועדך of the Psalm), it is natural to assign the priority in age to the two Asaphic national lamentation Psalms.
But the substance of both Psalms, which apparently brings us down not merely into the Chaldaean, but even into the Maccabaean age, rises up in opposition to it. After his return from the second Egyptian expedition (170 b.c.) Antiochus Epiphanes chastised Jerusalem, which had been led into revolt by Jason, in the most cruel manner, entered the Temple accompanied by the court high priest Menalaus, and carried away the most costly vessels, and even the gold of the walls and doors, with him. Myriads of the Jews were at that time massacred or sold as slaves. Then during the fourth Egyptian expedition (168) of Antiochus, when a party favourably disposed towards the Ptolemies again arose in Jerusalem, he sent Apollonius to punish the offenders (167), and his troops laid the city waste with fire and sword, destroyed houses and walls, burnt down several of the Temple-gates and razed many of its apartments. Also on this occasion thousands were slain and led away captive. Then began the attempt of Antiochus to Hellenize the Jewish nation. An aged Athenian was entrusted with the carrying out of this measure. Force was used to compel the Jews to accept the heathen religion, and in fact to serve Olympian Zeus (Jupiter): on the 15th of Chislev a smaller altar was erected upon the altar of burnt-offering in the Temple, and on the 25th of Chislev the first sacrifice was offered to Olympian Zeus in the Temple of Jahve, now dedicated to him. Such was the position of affairs when a band of faithful confessors rallied around the Asmonaean (Hasmonaean) priest Mattathias.
How strikingly does much in both Psalms, more particularly in Ps 74, harmonize with this position of affairs! At that time it was felt more painfully than ever that prophecy had become dumb, 1 Macc. 4:46; 9:27; 14:41. The confessors and martyrs who bravely declared themselves were called, as in Psa 79:2, חסידים, Ἀσιδαῖοι. At that time “they saw,” as 1 Macc. 4:38 says, “the sanctuary desolate, and the altar profaned, and the gates burnt up, and shrubs growing in the courts as in a forest, or as in one of the mountains, yea, and the priests' chambers pulled down.” the doors of the Temple-gates were burned to ashes (cf. 2 Macc. 8:33; 1:8). The religious אותות (Psa 74:4) of the heathen filled the place where Jahve was wont to reveal Himself. Upon the altar of the court stood the βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως; in the courts they had planted trees, and likewise the “signs” of heathendom; and the לשׁכות (παστοφόρια) lay in ruins. When later on, under Demetrius Stoer (161), Alcimus (an apostate whom Antiochus had appointed high priest) and Bacchides advanced with promises of peace, but with an army at the same time, a band of scribes, the foremost of the Asidai'oi of Israel, went forth to meet them to intercede for their nation. Alcimus, however, seized sixty of them, slaughtered them in one day, and that, as it is added in 1 Macc. 7:16f., “according to the word which he wrote: The flesh of Thy saints and their blood have they shed round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them.” The formula of citation κατὰ τὸν λόγον ὃν (τοὺς λόγου οὓς) ἔγραψε, and more particularly the ἔγραψε - which as being the aorist cannot have the Scripture (ἡ γραφή), and, since the citation is a prayer to god, not God, but only the anonymous psalmist, as its subject (vid., however, the various readings in Grimm on this passage) - sounds as though the historian were himself conscious that he was quoting a portion of Scripture that had taken its rise among the calamities of that time. In fact, no age could be regarded as better warranted in incorporating some of its songs in the Psalter than the Maccabaean, the sixty-third week predicted by Daniel, the week of suffering bearing in itself the character of the time of the end, this strictly martyr age of the Old Covenant, to which the Book of Daniel awards a high typical significance in relation to the history of redemption.
But unbiassed as we are in the presence of the question whether there are Maccabaean Psalms, still there is, on the other hand, much, too, that is against the referring of the two Psalms to the Maccabaean age. In Psa 79:1-13 there is nothing that militates against referring it to the Chaldaean age, and Psa 79:11 (cf. Psa 102:21; Psa 69:34) is even favourable to this. And in Psalms 74, in which Psa 74:4, Psa 74:8, Psa 74:9 are the most satisfactorily explained from the Maccabaean age, there are, again, other parts which are better explained from the Chaldaean. For what is said in Psa 74:7, “they have set Thy Temple on fire,” applies just as unconditionally as it runs to the Chaldaeans, but not to the Syrians. And the cry of prayer, Psa 74:3, “lift up Thy footsteps to the eternal ruins,” appears to assume a laying waste that has taken place within the last few years at least, such as the Maccabaean age cannot exhibit, although at the exaltation of the Maccabees Jerusalem was ἀοίκητος ὡς ἔρημος (1 Macc. 3:45). Hitzig, it is true, renders: raise Thy footsteps for sudden attacks without end; but both the passages in which משּׁוּאות occurs mutually secure to this word the signification “desolations” (Targum, Symmachus, Jerome, and Saadia). If, however, the Chaldaean catastrophe were meant, then the author of both Psalms, on the ground of Ezr 2:41; Neh 7:44 (cf. Neh 11:22), might be regarded as an Asaphite of the time of the Exile, although they might also be composed by any one in the Asaphic style. And as regards their relation to Jeremiah, we ought to be contented with the fact that Jeremiah, whose peculiarity as a writer is otherwise so thoroughly reproductive, is, notwithstanding, also reproduced by later writers, and in this instance by the psalmist.
Nothing is more certain than that the physiognomy of these Psalms does not correspond to any national misfortune prior to the Chaldaean catastrophe. Vaihinger's attempt to comprehend them from the time of Athaliah's reign of terror, is at issue with itself. In the history of Israel instances of the sacking of Jerusalem and of the Temple are not unknown even prior to the time of Zedekiah, as in the reign of Jehoram, but there is no instance of the city being reduced to ashes. Since even the profanation of the Temple by the Persian general Bagoses (Josephus, Ant. xi. 7), to which Ewald formerly referred this Psalm, was not accompanied by any injury of the building itself, much less its reduction to ashes, there remains only the choice between the laying waste of Jerusalem and of the Temple in the year 588 and in the year 167. We have reserved to ourselves the liberty of acknowledging some insertions from the time of the Maccabees in the Psalter; supra, pp. 6-8. Now since in both Psalms, apart from the משׁאות נצח, everything accords with the Maccabaean age, whilst when we refer them to the Chaldaean period the scientific conscience is oppressed by many difficulties (more especially in connection with Psa 74:4, Psa 74:8-9; Psa 79:2-3), we yield to the force of the impression and base both Psalms upon the situation of the Jewish nation under Antiochus and Demetrius. Their contents coincide with the prayer of Judas Maccabaeus in 2 Macc. 8:1-4.

Psalm 74

Verses 1-3

The poet begins with the earnest prayer that God would again have compassion upon His church, upon which His judgment of anger has fallen, and would again set up the ruins of Zion. Why for ever (Psa 74:10, Psa 79:5; Psa 89:47, cf. Psa 13:2)? is equivalent to, why so continually and, as it seems, without end? The preterite denotes the act of casting off, the future, Psa 74:1, that lasting condition of this casting off. למה, when the initial of the following word is a guttural, and particularly if it has a merely half-vowel (although in other instances also, Gen 12:19; Gen 27:45; Sol 1:7), is deprived of its Dagesh and accented on the ultima, in order (as Mose ha-Nakdan expressly observes) to guard against the swallowing up of the ah; cf. on Psa 10:1. Concerning the smoking of anger, vid., Psa 18:9. The characteristically Asaphic expression צאן מרעיתו is not less Jeremianic, Jer 23:1. In Psa 74:2 God is reminded of what He has once done for the congregation of His people. קדם, as in Psa 44:2, points back into the Mosaic time of old, to the redemption out of Egypt, which is represented in קנה (Exo 15:17) as a purchasing, and in גאל (Psa 77:15; Psa 78:35, Exo 15:13) as a ransoming (redemptio). שׁבט נחלתך is a factitive object; שׁבט is the name given to the whole nation in its distinctness of race from other peoples, as in Jer 10:16; Jer 51:19, cf. Isa 63:17. זה (Psa 74:2) is rightly separated from הר־ציון (Mugrash); it stands directly for אשׁר, as in Psa 104:8, Psa 104:26; Pro 23:22; Job 15:17 (Ges. §122, 2). The congregation of the people and its central abode are, as though forgotten of God, in a condition which sadly contrasts with their election. משּׁאות נצח are ruins (vid., Psa 73:18) in a state of such total destruction, that all hope of their restoration vanishes before it; נצח here looks forward, just as עולם (חרבות), Isa 63:12; Psa 61:4, looks backwards. May God then lift His feet up high (פּעמים poetical for רגלים, cf. Psa 58:11 with Psa 68:24), i.e., with long hurried steps, without stopping, move towards His dwelling - lace that now lies in ruins, that by virtue of His interposition it may rise again. Hath the enemy made merciless havoc - he hath ill-treated (הרע, as in Psa 44:3) everything (כּל, as in Psa 8:7, Zep 1:2, for חכּל or את־כּל) in the sanctuary - how is it possible that this sacrilegious vandalism should remain unpunished!

Verses 4-8

The poet now more minutely describes how the enemy has gone on. Since קדשׁ in Psa 74:3 is the Temple, מועדיך in Psa 74:4 ought likewise to mean the Temple with reference to the several courts; but the plural would here (cf. Psa 74:8) be misleading, and is, too, only a various reading. Baer has rightly decided in favour of מועדך;^[39] מועד, as in Lam 2:6., is the instituted (Num 17:19 [4]) place of God's intercourse with His congregation (cf. Arab. mı̂‛âd, a rendezvous). What Jeremiah says in Lam 2:7 (cf. שׁאג, Jer 2:15) is here more briefly expressed. By אותתם (Psa 74:4) we must not understand military insignia; the scene of the Temple and the supplanting of the Israelitish national insignia to be found there, by the substitution of other insignia, requires that the word should have the religious reference in which it is used of circumcision and of the Sabbath (Exo 31:13); such heathen אתות, which were thrust upon the Temple and the congregation of Jahve as henceforth the lawful ones, were those which are set forth in 1 Macc. 1:45-49, and more particularly the so-called abomination of desolation mentioned in v. 54 of the same chapter. With יוּדע (Psa 74:5) the terrible scene which was at that time taking place before their eyes (Psa 79:10) is introduced. כּמביא is the subject; it became visible, tangible, noticeable, i.e., it looked, and one experienced it, as if a man caused the axe to enter into the thicket of the wood, i.e., struck into or at it right and left. The plural קדּמּות forces itself into the simile because it is the many heathen warriors who are, as in Jer 46:22., likened to these hewers of wood. Norzi calls the Kametz of בסבך־עץ Kametz chatuph; the combining form would then be a contraction of סבך (Ewald, Olshausen), for the long ā of סבך does not admit of any contraction. According to another view it is to be read bi - sbāch - etz, as in Est 4:8 kethāb - hadāth with counter-tone Metheg beside the long vowel, as e.g., עץ־הגּן, Gen 2:16). The poet follows the work of destruction up to the destroying stroke, which is introduced by the ועת (perhaps ועת, Kerî ועתּה), which arrests one's attention. In Psa 74:5 the usual, unbroken quiet is depicted, as is the heavy Cyclopean labour in the Virgilian illi inter sese, etc.; in jahalomûn, Psa 74:6 (now and then pointed jahlomûn), we hear the stroke of the uplifted axes, which break in pieces the costly carved work of the Temple. The suffix of פּתּוּחיה (the carved works thereof) refers, according to the sense, to מועדך. The lxx, favouring the Maccabaean interpretation, renders: ἐξέκοψαν τάς θύρας αὐτῆς (פּתחיה). This shattering of the panelling is followed in Psa 74:7 by the burning, first of all, as we may suppose, of this panelling itself so far as it consists of wood. The guaranteed reading here is מקדשׁך, not מקדשׁיך. שׁלּח בּאשׁ signifies to set on fire, immittere igni, differing from שׁלּח אשׁ בּ, to set fire to, immittere ignem. On לארץ חלּלוּ, cf. Lam 2:2; Jer 19:13. Hitzig, following the lxx, Targum, and Jerome, derives the exclamation of the enemies נינם from נין: their whole generation (viz., we will root out)! But נין is posterity, descendants; why therefore only the young and not the aged? And why is it an expression of the object and not rather of the action, the object of which would be self-evident? נינם is fut. Kal of ינה, here = Hiph. הונה, to force, oppress, tyrannize over, and like אנס, to compel by violence, in later Hebrew. נינם (from יינה, like ייפה) is changed in pause into נינם; cf. the future forms in Num 21:30; Exo 34:19, and also in Psa 118:10-12. Now, after mention has been made of the burning of the Temple framework, מועדי־אל cannot denote the place of the divine manifestation after its divisions (Hengstenberg), still less the festive assemblies (Böttcher), which the enemy could only have burnt up by setting fire to the Temple over their heads, and כל does not at all suit this. The expression apparently has reference to synagogues (and this ought not to be disputed), as Aquila and Symmachus render the word. For there is no room for thinking of the separate services conducted by the prophets in the northern kingdom (2Ki 4:23), because this kingdom no longer existed at the time this Psalm was written; nor of the בּמות, the burning down of which no pious Israelite would have bewailed; nor of the sacred places memorable from the early history of Israel, which are nowhere called מועדים, and after the founding of the central sanctuary appear only as the seats of false religious rites. The expression points (like בּית ועד, Sota ix. 15) to places of assembly for religious purposes, to houses for prayer and teaching, that is to say, to synagogues - a weighty instance in favour of the Maccabaean origin of the Psalm.

Verses 9-11

The worst thing the poet has to complain of is that God has not acknowledged His people during this time of suffering as at other times. “Our signs” is the direct antithesis to “their sings” (Psa 74:4), hence they are not to be understood, after Psa 86:17, as signs which God works. The suffix demands, besides, something of a perpetual character; they are the instituted ordinances of divine worship by means of which God is pleased to stand in fellowship with His people, and which are now no longer to be seen because the enemies have set them aside. The complaint “there is not prophet any more” would seem strange in the period immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem, for Jeremiah's term of active service lasted beyond this. Moreover, a year before (in the tenth year of Zedekiah's reign) he had predicted that the Babylonian domination, and relatively the Exile, would last seventy years; besides, six years before the destruction Ezekiel appeared, who was in communication with those who remained behind in the land. The reference to Lam 2:9 (cf. Eze 7:26) does not satisfy one; for there it is assumed that there were prophets, a fact which is here denied. Only perhaps as a voice coming out of the Exile, the middle of which (cf. Hos 3:4; 2Ch 15:3, and besides Canticum trium puerorum, Psa 74:14 : καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ καιρῷ τούτῳ ἄρχων καὶ προφήτης καὶ ἡγούμενος) was truly thus devoid of signs or miracles, and devoid of the prophetic word of consolation, can Psa 74:9 be comprehended. The seventy years of Jeremiah were then still a riddle without any generally known solution (Dan. 9). If, however, synagogues are meant in Psa 74:8, Psa 74:9 now too accords with the like-sounding lament in the calamitous times of Antiochus (1 Macc. 4:46; 9:27; 14:41). In Psa 74:10 the poet turns to God Himself with the question “How long?” how long is this (apparently) endless blaspheming of the enemy to last? Why dost Thou draw back (viz., ממּנוּ, from us, not עלינוּ, Psa 81:15) Thy hand and Thy right hand? The conjunction of synonyms “Thy hand and Thy right hand” is, as in Psa 44:4, Sirach 33:7, a fuller expression for God's omnipotent energy. This is now at rest; Psa 74:11 calls upon it to give help by an act of judgment. “Out of the midst of Thy bosom, destroy,” is a pregnant expression for, “drawing forth out of Thy bosom the hand that rests inactive there, do Thou destroy.” The Chethîb חוקך has perhaps the same meaning; for חוק, Arab. ḥawq, signifies, like חיק, Arab. ḥayq, the act of encompassing, then that which encompasses. Instead of מחיקך (Exo 4:7) the expression is מקּרב חיקך, because there, within the realm of the bosom, the punitive justice of God for a time as it were slumbers. On the כלּה, which outwardly is without any object, cf. Psa 59:14.

Verses 12-17

With this prayer for the destruction of the enemies by God's interposition closes the first half of the Psalm, which has for its subject-matter the crying contradiction between the present state of things and God's relationship to Israel. The poet now draws comfort by looking back into the time when God as Israel's King unfolded the rich fulness of His salvation everywhere upon the earth, where Israel's existence was imperilled. בּקרב הארץ, not only within the circumference of the Holy Land, but, e.g., also within that of Egypt (Exo 8:18-22). The poet has Egypt directly in his mind, for there now follows first of all a glance at the historical (Psa 74:13-15), and then at the natural displays of God's power (Psa 74:16, Psa 74:17). Hengstenberg is of opinion that Psa 74:13-15 also are to be understood in the latter sense, and appeals to Job 26:11-13. But just as Isaiah (Isa 51:9, cf. Psa 27:1) transfers these emblems of the omnipotence of God in the natural world to His proofs of power in connection with the history of redemption which were exhibited in the case of a worldly power, so does the poet here also in Psa 74:13-15. The תּנּיּן (the extended saurian) is in Isaiah, as in Ezekiel (התּנּים, Psa 29:3; Psa 32:2), an emblem of Pharaoh and of his kingdom; in like manner here the leviathan is the proper natural wonder of Egypt. As a water-snake or a crocodile, when it comes up with its head above the water, is killed by a powerful stroke, did God break the heads of the Egyptians, so that the sea cast up their dead bodies (Exo 14:30). The ציּים, the dwellers in the steppe, to whom these became food, are not the Aethiopians (lxx, Jerome), or rather the Ichthyophagi (Bocahrt, Hengstenberg), who according to Agatharcides fed ἐκ τῶν ἐκριπτομένων εἰς τὴν χέρσον κητῶν, but were no cannibals, but the wild beasts of the desert, which are called עם, as in Pro 30:25. the ants and the rock-badgers. לציים is a permutative of the notion לעם, which was not completed: to a (singular) people, viz., to the wild animals of the steppe. Psa 74:15 also still refers not to miracles of creation, but to miracles wrought in the course of the history of redemption; Psa 74:15 refers to the giving of water out of the rock (Psa 78:15), and Psa 74:15 to the passage through the Jordan, which was miraculously dried up (הובשׁתּ, as in Jos 2:10; Jos 4:23; Jos 5:1). The object מעין ונחל is intended as referring to the result: so that the water flowed out of the cleft after the manner of a fountain and a brook. נהרות are the several streams of the one Jordan; the attributive genitive איתן describe them as streams having an abundance that does not dry up, streams of perennial fulness. The God of Israel who has thus marvellously made Himself known in history is, however, the Creator and Lord of all created things. Day and night and the stars alike are His creatures. In close connection with the night, which is mentioned second, the moon, the מאור of the night, precedes the sun; cf. Psa 8:4, where כּונן is the same as הכין in this passage. It is an error to render thus: bodies of light, and more particularly the sun; which would have made one expect מאורות before the specializing Waw. גּבוּלות are not merely the bounds of the land towards the sea, Jer 5:22, but, according to Deu 32:8; Act 17:26, even the boundaries of the land in themselves, that is to say, the natural boundaries of the inland country. קיץ וחרף are the two halves of the year: summer including spring (אביב), which begins in Nisan, the spring-month, about the time of the vernal equinox, and autumn including winter (צתו), after the termination of which the strictly spring vegetation begins (Sol 2:11). The seasons are personified, and are called God's formations or works, as it were the angels of summer and of winter.

Verses 18-23

The poet, after he has thus consoled himself by the contemplation of the power of God which He has displayed for His people's good as their Redeemer, and for the good of the whole of mankind as the Creator, rises anew to prayer, but all the more cheerfully and boldly. Since ever present facts of creation have been referred to just now, and the historical mighty deeds of God only further back, זאת refers rather forwards to the blaspheming of the enemies which He suffers now to go on unpunished, as though He took no cognizance of it. חרף has Pasek after it in order to separate the word, which signifies reviling, from the most holy Name. The epithet עם־נבל reminds one of Deu 32:21. In Psa 74:19 according to the accents חיּת is the absolute state (the primary form of חיּה, vid., on Psa 61:1): give not over, abandon not to the wild beast (beasts), the soul of Thy turtle-dove. This is probably correct, since לחיּת נפשׁ, “to the eager wild beast,” this inversion of the well-known expression נפשׁ חיּה, which on the contrary yields the sense of vita animae, is an improbable and exampleless expression. If נפשׁ were intended to be thus understood, the poet might have written אל־תתן לנפשׁ חיּה תורך, “give not Thy turtle-dove over to the desire of the wild beast.” Hupfeld thinks that the “old, stupid reading” may be set right at one stroke, inasmuch as he reads אל תתן לנפש חית תורך, and renders it “give not to rage the life Thy turtle-dove;” but where is any support to be found for this לנפשׁ, “to rage,” or rather (Psychology, S. 202; tr. p. 239) “to eager desire?” The word cannot signify this in such an isolated position. Israel, which is also compared to a dove in Psa 68:14, is called a turtle-dove (תּור). In Psa 74:19 חיּת has the same signification as in Psa 74:19, and the same sense as Psa 68:11 (cf. Ps 69:37): the creatures of Thy miserable ones, i.e., Thy poor, miserable creatures - a figurative designation of the ecclesia pressa. The church, which it is the custom of the Asaphic Psalms to designate with emblematical names taken from the animal world, finds itself now like sheep among wolves, and seems to itself as if it were forgotten by God. The cry of prayer הבּט לבּרית comes forth out of circumstances such as were those of the Maccabaean age. בּרית is the covenant of circumcision (Gen. 17); ); the persecution of the age of the Seleucidae put faith to the severe test, that circumcision, this sign which was the pledge to Israel of God's gracious protection, became just the sign by which the Syrians knew their victims. In the Book of Daniel, Dan 11:28, Dan 11:30, cf. Ps. 22:32, ברית is used directly of the religion of Israel and its band of confessors. The confirmatory clause Psa 74:20 also corresponds to the Maccabaean age, when the persecuted confessors hid themselves far away in the mountains (1 Macc. 2:26ff., 2 Macc. 6:11), but were tracked by the enemy and slain, - at that time the hiding-places (κρύφοι, 1 Macc. 1:53) of the land were in reality full of the habitations of violence. The combination נאות חמס is like נאות השׁלום, Jer 25:37, cf. Gen 6:11. From this point the Psalm draws to a close in more familiar Psalm - strains. אל־ישׁב, Psa 74:21, viz., from drawing near to Thee with their supplications. “The reproach of the foolish all the day” is that which incessantly goes forth from them. עלה תּמיד, “going up (1Sa 5:12, not: increasing, 1Ki 22:35) perpetually,” although without the article, is not a predicate, but attributive (vid., on Psa 57:3). The tone of the prayer is throughout temperate; this the ground upon which it bases itself is therefore all the more forcible.

Psalm 75

The Nearness of the Judge with the Cup of Wrath

Verses 1-5

That for which Ps 74 prays: Arise, Jahve, plead Thine own cause (Psa 74:22.), Psa 75:1-10 beholds; the judgment of God upon the proud sinners becomes a source of praise and of a triumphant spirit to the psalmist. The prophetic picture stands upon a lyrical groundwork of gold; it emerges out of the depth of feeling, and it is drawn back again into it. The inscription: To the Precentor, (after the measure:) Destroy not (vid., on Psa 57:1), a Psalm by Asaph, a Song, is fully borne out. The Sela shows that the Psalm, as מזמור שׁיר says, is appointed to be sung with musical accompaniment; and to the לאסף corresponds its thoroughly Asaphic character, which calls Ps 50 to mind with especial force. But from this Psalm Psa 75:1-10 differs, however, in this particular, viz., that a more clearly defined situation of affairs manifests itself through the hope of the judicial interposition of God which is expressed in it with prophetic certainty. According to appearances it is the time of the judgment of the nations in the person of Assyria; not, however, the time immediately following the great catastrophe, but prior to this, when Isaiah's prophecy concerning the shattering of the Assyrian power against Jerusalem had gone forth, just as Hengstenberg also regards this Psalm as the lyrical companion of the prophecies which Isaiah uttered in the presence of the ruin which threatened from Assyria, and as a testimony to the living faith with which the church at that time received the word of God. Hitzig, however, assigns both Psa 75:1-10 and Psa 76:1-12 to Judas Maccabaeus, who celebrates the victory over Apollonius in the one, and the victory over Seron in the other: “we may imagine that he utters the words of Ps 75:11 whilst he brandishes the captured sword of the fallen Apollonius.” But the probability that it refers to the Assyrian period is at least equally balanced with the probability that it refers to the Maccabaean (vid., Psa 75:7; Psa 76:5-7); and if the time of Hezekiah were to be given up, then we might sooner go back to the time of Jehoshaphat, for both songs are too original to appear as echoes and not much rather as models of the later prophecy. The only influence that is noticeable in Psa 75:1-10 is that of the Song of Hannah.

Verse 2-6

The church in anticipation gives thanks for the judicial revelation of its God, the near approach of which He Himself asserts to it. The connection with ו in וקרוב שׁמך presents a difficulty. Neither here nor anywhere else is it to be supposed that ו is synonymous with כּי; but at any rate even כי might stand instead of it. For Hupfeld's attempt to explain it: and “near is Thy name” Thy wonders have declared; and Hitzig's: and Thou whose Name is near, they declare Thy wondrous works - are past remedy. Such a personification of wonders does not belong to the spirit of Hebrew poetry, and such a relative clause lies altogether beyond the bounds of syntax. If we would, however, take וקרוב שׁמך, after Psa 50:23, as a result of the thanksgiving (Campensis), then that for which thanks are rendered would remain undefined; neither will it do to take קרוב as referring to the being inwardly present (Hengstenberg), since this, according to Jer 12:2 (cf. Deu 30:14), would require some addition, which should give to the nearness this reference to the mouth or to the heart. Thus, therefore, nothing remains for us but to connect the nearness of the Name of God as an outward fact with the earnest giving of thanks. The church has received the promise of an approaching judicial, redemptive revelation of God, and now says, “We give Thee thanks, we give thanks and near is Thy Name;” it welcomes the future act of God with heartfelt thanksgiving, all those who belong to it declare beforehand the wonders of God. Such was really the position of matters when in Hezekiah's time the oppression of the Assyrians had reached its highest point - Isaiah's promises of a miraculous divine deliverance were at that time before them, and the believing ones saluted beforehand, with thanksgiving, the “coming Name of Jahve” (Isa 30:27). The כּי which was to be expected after הודינו (cf. e.g., Psa 100:4.) does not follow until Psa 75:3. God Himself undertakes the confirmation of the forthcoming thanksgiving and praise by a direct announcement of the help that is hailed and near at hand (Psa 85:10). It is not to be rendered, “when I shall seize,” etc., for Psa 75:3 has not the structure of an apodosis. כּי is confirmatory, and whatever interpretation we may give to it, the words of the church suddenly change into the words of God. מועד in the language of prophecy, more especially of the apocalyptic character, is a standing expression fore the appointed time of the final judgment (vid., on Hab 2:3). When this moment or juncture in the lapse of time shall have arrived, then God will seize or take possession of it (לקח in the unweakened original sense of taking hold of with energy, cf. Psa 18:17; Gen 2:15): He Himself will then interpose and hold judgment according to the strictly observed rule of right (מישׁרים, adverbial accusative, cf. במישׁרים, Psa 9:9, and frequently). If it even should come to pass that the earth and all its inhabitants are melting away (cf. Isa 14:31; Exo 15:15; Jos 2:9), i.e., under the pressure of injustice (as is to be inferred from Psa 75:3), are disheartened, scattered asunder, and are as it were in the act of dissolution, then He (the absolute I, אנכי) will restrain this melting away: He setteth in their places the pillars, i.e., the internal shafts (Job 9:6), of the earth, or without any figure: He again asserts the laws which lie at the foundation of its stability. תכּנתּי is a mood of certainty, and Psa 75:4 is a circumstantial clause placed first, after the manner of the Latin ablative absolute. Hitzig appropriately compares Pro 29:9; Isa 23:15 may also be understood according to this bearing of the case.
The utterance of God is also continued after the Sela. It is not the people of God who turn to the enemies with the language of warning on the ground of the divine promise (Hengstenberg); the poet would then have said אמרנוּ, or must at least have said על־כּן אמרתּי. God Himself speaks, and His words are not yet peremptorily condemning, as in Psa 50:16., cf. Psa 46:11, but admonitory and threatening, because it is not He who has already appeared for the final judgment who speaks, but He who announces His appearing. With אמרתּי He tells the braggarts who are captivated with the madness of supposed greatness, and the evil-doers who lift up the horn or the head,^[40] hat He will have once for all said to them, and what they are to suffer to be said to them for the short space of time till the judgment. The poet, if we have assigned the right date to the Psalm, has Rabshakeh and his colleagues before his mind, cf. Isa 37:23. The ל, as in that passage, and like אל in Zec 2:4 (vid., Köhler), has the idea of a hostile tendency. אל rules also over Psa 75:6: “speak not insolence with a raised neck.” It is not to be construed עתק בצוּאר, with a stiff neck. Parallel passages like Psa 31:19; Psa 94:4, and more especially the primary passage 1Sa 5:3, show that עתק is an object-notion, and that בצוּאר by itself (with which, too, the accentuation harmonizes, since Munach here is the vicarius of a distinctive), according to Job 15:26, has the sense of τραχηλιῶτες or ὑπεραυχοῦντες.

Verses 6-8

The church here takes up the words of God, again beginning with the כּי of Psa 75:3 (cf. the כּי in 1Sa 2:3). A passage of the Midrash says הרים חוץ מזה כל הרים שׁבמקרא (everywhere where harim is found in Scripture it signifies harim, mountains, with the exception of this passage), and accordingly it is explained by Rashi, Kimchi, Alshêch, and others, that man, whithersoever he may turn, cannot by strength and skill attain great exaltation and prosperity.^[41]
Thus it is according to the reading ממּדבּר, although Kimchi maintains that it can also be so explained with the reading ממּדבּר, by pointing to מרמס (Isa 10:6) and the like. It is, however, difficult to see why, in order to express the idea “from anywhere,” three quarters of the heavens should be used and the north left out. These three quarters of the heavens which are said to represent the earthly sources of power (Hupfeld), are a frame without the picture, and the thought, “from no side (viz., of the earth) cometh promotion” - in itself whimsical in expression - offers a wrong confirmation for the dissuasive that has gone before. That, however, which the church longs for is first of all not promotion, but redemption. On the other hand, the lxx, Targum, Syriac, and Vulgate render: a deserto montium (desertis montibus); and even Aben-Ezra rightly takes it as a Palestinian designation of the south, when he supplements the aposiopesis by means of מי שׁיושׁיעם (more biblically יבע עזרנוּ, cf. Psa 121:1.). The fact that the north is not mentioned at all shows that it is a northern power which arrogantly, even to blasphemy, threatens the small Israelitish nation with destruction, and against which it looks for help neither from the east and west, nor from the reed-staff of Egypt (Isa 36:6) beyond the desert of the mountains of Arabia Petraea, but from Jahve alone, according to the watchword of Isaiah: שׁפטנוּ ה (Isa 33:22). The negative thought is left unfinished, the discourse hurrying on to the opposite affirmative thought. The close connection of the two thoughts is strikingly expressed by the rhymes הרים and ידים. The כּי of Psa 75:8 gives the confirmation of the negation from the opposite, that which is denied; the כּי of Psa 75:9 confirms this confirmation. If it were to be rendered, “and the wine foams,” it would then have been היּין; מסך, which is undoubtedly accusative, also shows that yayin is also not considered as anything else: and it (the cup) foams (חמר like Arab. ‘chtmr, to ferment, effervesce) with wine, is full of mixture. According to the ancient usage of the language, which is also followed by the Arabic, this is wine mixed with water in distinction from merum, Arabic chamr memzûg'e. Wine was mixed with water not merely to dilute it, but also to make it more pleasant; hence מסך signifies directly as much as to pour out (vid., Hitzig on Isa 5:22). It is therefore unnecessary to understand spiced wine (Talmudic קונדיטון, conditum), since the collateral idea of weakening is also not necessarily associated with the admixture of water. מזּה refers to כּוס, which is used as masculine, as in Jer 25:15; the word is feminine elsewhere, and changes its gender even here in שׁמריה (cf. Eze 23:34). In the fut. consec. ויּגּר the historical signification of the consecutive is softened down, as is frequently the case. אך affirms the whole assertion that follows. The dregs of the cup - a dira necessitas - all the wicked of the earth shall be compelled to sip (Isa 51:17), to drink out: they shall not be allowed to drink and make a pause, but, compelled by Jahve, who has appeared as Judge, they shall be obliged to drink it out with involuntary eagerness even to the very last (Eze 23:34). We have here the primary passage of a figure, which has been already hinted at in Psa 60:5, and is filled in on a more and more magnificent and terrible scale in the prophets. Whilst Obadiah (Oba 1:16, cf. Job 21:20) contents himself with a mere outline sketch, it is found again, in manifold applications, in Isaiah, Habakkuk, and Ezekiel, and most frequently in Jeremiah (Jer 25:27., Jer 48:26; Jer 49:12), where in Psa 25:15. it is embodied into a symbolical act. Jahve's cup of intoxication (inasmuch as חמה and חמר, the burning of anger and intoxicating, fiery wine, are put on an equality) is the judgment of wrath which is meted out to sinners and given them to endure to the end.

Verses 9-10

The poet now turns back thankfully and cheerfully from the prophetically presented future to his own actual present. With ואני he contrasts himself as a member of the now still oppressed church with its proud oppressors: he will be a perpetual herald of the ever memorable deed of redemption. לעולם, says he, for, when he gives himself up so entirely to God the Redeemer, for him there is no dying. If he is a member of the ecclesia pressa, then he will also be a member of the ecclesia triumphans; for ει ̓ ὑπομένομεν, καὶ συμβασιλεύσομεν (2Ti 2:12). In the certainty of this συμβασιλεύειν, and in the strength of God, which is even now mighty in the weak one, he measures himself in v. 11 by the standard of what he expresses in Psa 75:8 as God's own work. On the figure compare Deu 33:17; Lam 2:3, and more especially the four horns in the second vision of Zechariah, Zec 2:1. Zec 1:18.. The plural is both קרנות and קרני, because horns that do not consist of horn are meant. Horns are powers for offence and defence. The spiritual horns maintain the sovereignty over the natural. The Psalm closes as subjectively as it began. The prophetic picture is set in a lyric frame.

Psalm 76

Praise of God after His Judgment Has Gone Forth

No Psalm has a greater right to follow Psa 75:1-10 than this, which is inscribed To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments (vid., Psa 4:1), a Psalm by Asaph, a song. Similar expressions (God of Jacob, Psa 75:10; Psa 76:7; saints, wicked of the earth, Psa 75:9; Psa 76:10) and the same impress throughout speak in favour of unity of authorship. In other respects, too, they form a pair: Psa 75:1-10 prepares the way for the divine deed of judgment as imminent, which Psa 76:1-12 celebrates as having taken place. For it is hardly possible for there to be a Psalm the contents of which so exactly coincide with an historical situation of which more is known from other sources, as the contents of this Psalm confessedly (lxx πρὸς τὸν Ἀσσύριον) does with the overthrow of the army of Assyria before Jerusalem and its results. The Psalter contains very similar Psalms which refer to a similar event in the reign of Jehoshaphat, viz., to the defeat at that time of the allied neighbouring peoples by a mutual massacre, which was predicted by the Asaphite Jahaziel (vid., on Psa 46:1-11 and Ps 83). Moreover in Psa 76:1-12 the “mountains of prey,” understood of the mountains of Seir with their mounted robbers, would point to this incident. But just as in Psa 75:1-10 the reference to the catastrophe of Assyria in the reign of Hezekiah was indicated by the absence of any mention of the north, so in Psa 76:1-12 both the שׁמּה in Psa 76:4 and the description of the catastrophe itself make this reference and no other natural. The points of contact with Isaiah, and in part with Hosea (cf. Psa 76:4 with Hos 2:20) and Nahum, are explicable from the fact that the lyric went hand in hand with the prophecy of that period, as Isaiah predicts for the time when Jahve shall discharge His fury over Assyria, Isa 30:29, “Your song shall re-echo as in the night, in which the feast is celebrated.”
The Psalm is hexastichic, and a model of symmetrical strophe-structure.

Verses 1-3

In all Israel, and more especially in Judah, is Elohim known (here, according to Psa 76:2, participle, whereas in Psa 9:17 it is the finite verb), inasmuch as He has made Himself known (cf. דּעוּ, Isa 33:13). His Name is great in Israel, inasmuch as He has proved Himself to be a great One and is praised as a great One. In Judah more especially, for in Jerusalem, and that upon Zion, the citadel with the primeval gates (Psa 24:7), He has His dwelling-place upon earth within the borders of Israel. שׁלם is the ancient name of Jerusalem; for the Salem of Melchizedek is one and the same city with the Jerusalem of Adonizedek, Jos 10:1. In this primeval Salem God has סוּכּו, His tabernacle (= שׂכּו, Lam 2:6, = סכּתו, as in Psa 27:5), there מעונתו, His dwelling-place, - a word elsewhere used of the lair of the lion (Psa 104:22, Amo 3:4); cf. on the choice of words, Isa 31:9. The future of the result ויהי is an expression of the fact which is evident from God's being known in Judah and His Name great in Israel. Psa 76:4 tells what it is by which He has made Himself known and glorified His Name. שׁמּה, thitherwards, in that same place (as in fact the accusative, in general, is used both in answer to the question where? and whither?), is only a fuller form for שׁם, as in Isa 22:18; Isa 65:9; 2Ki 23:8, and frequently; Arab. ta̱mma ( tu̱mma ) and תּמּן (from תּמּה) confirm the accusative value of the ah. רשׁפי־קשׁת (with Phe raphatum, cf. on the other hand, Sol 8:6)^[42] are the arrows swift as lightning that go forth (Job 41:20-28) from the bow; side by side with these, two other weapons are also mentioned, and finally everything that pertains to war is gathered up in the word מלחמה (cf. Hos 2:18). God has broken in pieces the weapons of the worldly power directed against Judah, and therewith this power itself (Isa 14:25), and consequently (in accordance with the prediction Hos 1:7, and Isa 10, 14, Isa 17:1-14, 29, Isa 31:1-9, 33, 37, and more particularly Psa 31:8) has rescued His people by direct interposition, without their doing anything in the matter.

Verses 4-6

The “mountains of prey,” for which the lxx has ὀρέων αἰωνίων (טרם?), is an emblematical appellation for the haughty possessors of power who also plunder every one that comes near them,^[43] or the proud and despoiling worldly powers. Far aloft beyond these towers the glory of God. He is נאור, illustris, prop. illumined; said of God: light-encircled, fortified in light, in the sense of Dan 2:22; 1Ti 6:16. He is the אדּיר, to whom the Lebanon of the hostile army of the nations must succumb (Isa 10:34) According to Solinus (ed. Mommsen, p. 124) the Moors call Atlas Addirim. This succumbing is described in Psa 76:6. The strong of heart or stout-hearted, the lion-hearted, have been despoiled, disarmed, exuti; אשׁתּוללוּ^[44] is an Aramaizing praet. Hithpo. (like אתחבּר, 2Ch 20:35, cf. Dan 4:16; Isa 63:3) with a passive signification. From Psa 76:6 we see that the beginning of the catastrophe is described, and therefore נמוּ (perhaps on that account accented on the ult.) is meant inchoatively: they have fallen into their sleep, viz., the eternal sleep (Jer 51:39, Jer 51:57), as Nahum says (Nah 3:18): thy shepherds sleep, O king of Assyria, thy valiant ones rest. In Psa 76:6 we see them lying in the last throes of death, and making a last effort to spring up again. But they cannot find their hands, which they have lifted up threateningly against Jerusalem: these are lamed, motionless, rigid and dead; cf. the phrases in Jos 8:20; 2Sa 7:27, and the Talmudic phrase, “he did not find his hands and feet in the school-house,” i.e., he was entirely disconcerted and stupefied.^[45]
This field of corpses is the effect of the omnipotent energy of the word of the God of Jacob; cf. וגער בּו, Isa 17:13. Before His threatening both war-chariot and horse (ו - ו) are sunk into motionlessness and unconsciousness an allusion to Ex. 15, as in Isa 43:17 : who bringeth out chariot and horse, army and heroes - together they faint away, they shall never rise; they have flickered out, like a wick they are extinguished.

Verses 7-9

Nahum also (Psa 1:6) draws the same inference from the defeat of Sennacherib as the psalmist does in Psa 76:8. מאז אפּך (cf. Rth 2:7; Jer 44:18), from the decisive turning-point onwards, from the אז in Psa 2:5, when Thine anger breaks forth. God sent forth His judiciary word from heaven into the midst of the din of war of the hostile world: immediately (cf. on the sequence of the tenses Psa 48:6, and on Hab 3:10) it was silenced, the earth was seized with fear, and its tumult was obliged to cease, when, namely, God arose on behalf of His disquieted, suffering people, when He spoke as we read in Isa 33:10, and fulfilled the prayer offered in extreme need in Isa 33:2.

Verses 10-12

The fact that has just been experienced is substantiated in Psa 76:10 from a universal truth, which has therein become outwardly manifest. The rage of men shall praise Thee, i.e., must ultimately redound to Thy glory, inasmuch as to Thee, namely (Psa 76:1 as to syntax like Psa 73:3), there always remains a שׁארית, i.e., a still unexhausted remainder, and that not merely of חמה, but of חמת, with which Thou canst gird, i.e., arm, Thyself against such human rage, in order to quench it. שׁארית חמת is the infinite store of wrath still available to God after human rage has done its utmost. Or perhaps still better, and more fully answering to the notion of שׁארית: it is the store of the infinite fulness of wrath which still remains on the side of God after human rage (חמה) has spent itself, when God calmly, and laughing (Psa 2:4), allows the Titans to do as they please, and which is now being poured out. In connection with the interpretation: with the remainder of the fury (of hostile men) wilt Thou gird Thyself, i.e., it serves Thee only as an ornament (Hupfeld), the alternation of חמה and חמת is left unexplained, and תּחגּר is alienated from its martial sense (Isa 59:17; Isa 51:9, Wisd. 5:21 [20]), which is required by the context. Ewald, like the lxx, reads תּחגּך, ἑορτάσει σοι, in connection with which, apart from the high-sounding expression, שׁארית חמת (ἐγκατάλειμμα ἐνθυμίου) must denote the remainder of malignity that is suddenly converted into its opposite; and one does not see why what Psa 76:11 says concerning rage is here limited to its remainder. Such an inexhaustiveness in the divine wrath-power has been shown in what has just recently been experienced. Thus, then, are those who belong to the people of God to vow and pay, i.e., (inasmuch as the preponderance falls upon the second imperative) to pay their vows; and all who are round about Him, i.e., all the peoples dwelling round about Him and His people (כּל־סביביו, the subject to what follows, in accordance with which it is also accented), are to bring offerings (Psa 68:30) to God, who is מורא, i.e., the sum of all that is awe-inspiring. Thus is He called in Isa 8:13; the summons accords with Isaiah's prediction, according to which, in consequence of Jahve's deed of judgment upon Assyria, Aethiopia presents himself to Him as an offering (Isa 18:1-7), and with the fulfilment in 2Ch 32:23. Just so does v. 13a resemble the language of Isaiah; cf. Isa 25:1-12; Isa 33:1; Isa 18:5 : God treats the snorting of the princes, i.e., despots, as the vine-dresser does the wild shoots or branches of the vine-stock: He lops it, He cuts it off, so that it is altogether ineffectual. It is the figure that is sketched by Joe 3:13, then filled in by Isaiah, and embodied as a vision in Rev 14:17-20, which is here indicated. God puts an end to the defiant, arrogant bearing of the tyrants of the earth, and becomes at last the feared of all the kings of the earth - all kingdoms finally becomes God's and His Christ's.

Psalm 77

==Comfort Derived from the History of the Past during Years of Affliction== “The earth feared and became still,” says Psa 76:9; the earth trembled and shook, says Psa 77:19 : this common thought is the string on which these two Psalms are strung. In a general way it may be said of Psalms 77, that the poet flees from the sorrowful present away into the memory of the

years of olden times, and consoles himself more especially with the deliverance out of Egypt, so rich in wonders. As to the rest, however, it remains obscure what kind of national affliction it is which drives him to find his refuge from the God who is now hidden in the God who was formerly manifest. At any rate it is not a purely personal affliction, but, as is shown by the consolation sought in the earlier revelations of power and mercy in connection with the national history, an affliction shared in company with the whole of his people. In the midst of this hymnic retrospect the Psalm suddenly breaks off, so that Olshausen is of opinion that it is mutilated, and Tholuck that the author never completed it. But as Psalms 77 and Ps 81 show, it is the Asaphic manner thus to close with an historical picture without the line of thought recurring to its commencement. Where our Psalm leaves off, Hab. 3 goes on, taking it up from that point like a continuation. For the prophet begins with the prayer to revive that deed of redemption of the Mosaic days of old, and in the midst of wrath to remember mercy; and in expression and figures which are borrowed from our Psalm, he then beholds a fresh deed of redemption by which that of old is eclipsed. Thus much, at least, is therefore very clear, that Psalms 77 is older than Habakkuk. Hitzig certainly calls the psalmist the reader and imitator of Hab. 3; ; and Philippson considers even the mutual relationship to be accidental and confined to a general similarity of certain expressions. We, however, believe that we have proved in our Commentary on Habakkuk (1843), S. 118-125, that the mutual relationship is one that is deeply grounded in the prophetic type of Habakkuk, and that the Psalm is heard to re-echo in Habakkuk, not Habakkuk in the language of the psalmist; just as in general the Asaphic Psalms are full of boldly sketched outlines to be filled in by later prophetic writers. We also now further put this question: how was it possible for the gloomy complaint of Psalms 77, which is turned back to the history of the past, to mould itself after Hab. 3, that joyous looking forward into a bright and blessed future? Is not the prospect in Hab. 3 rather the result of that retrospect in Psalms 77, the confidence in being heard which is kindled by this Psalm, the realizing as present, in the certainty of being heard, of a new deed of God in which the deliverances in the days of Moses are antitypically revived?
More than this, viz., that the Psalm is older than Habakkuk, who entered upon public life in the reign of Josiah, or even as early as in the reign of Manasseh, cannot be maintained. For it cannot be inferred from Psa 77:16 and Psa 77:3, compared with Gen 37:35, that one chief matter of pain to the psalmist was the fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes which took place in his time. Nothing more, perhaps, than the division of the kingdom which had already taken place seems to be indicated in these passages. The bringing of the tribes of Joseph prominently forward is, however, peculiar to the Asaphic circle of songs.
The task of the precentor is assigned by the inscription to Jeduthun (Chethîb: Jeduthun), for ל (Psa 39:1) alternates with על (Psa 62:1); and the idea that ידותון denotes the whole of the Jeduthunites (“overseer over...”) might be possible, but is without example.
The strophe schema of the Psalm is 7. 12. 12. 12. 2. The first three strophes or groups of stichs close with Sela.

Verses 1-3

The poet is resolved to pray without intermission, and he prays; fore his soul is comfortless and sorely tempted by the vast distance between the former days and the present times. According to the pointing, והאזין appears to be meant to be imperative after the form הקטיל, which occurs instead of הקטל and הקתילה, cf. Psa 94:1; Isa 43:8; Jer 17:18, and the mode of writing הקטיל, Psa 142:5, 2Ki 8:6, and frequently; therefore et audi = ut audias (cf. 2Sa 21:3). But such an isolated form of address is not to be tolerated; והאזין has been regarded as perf. consec. in the sense of ut audiat, although this modification of האזין into האזין in connection with the appearing of the Waw consec. cannot be supported in any other instance (Ew. §234, e), and Kimchi on this account tries to persuade himself to that which is impossible, viz., that והאזין in respect of sound stands for ויאזין. The preterites in Psa 77:3 express that which has commenced and which will go on. The poet labours in his present time of affliction to press forward to the Lord, who has withdrawn from him; his hand is diffused, i.e., stretched out (not: poured out, for the radical meaning of נגר, as the Syriac shows, is protrahere), in the night-time without wearying and leaving off; it is fixedly and stedfastly (אמוּנה, as it is expressed in Exo 17:12) stretched out towards heaven. His soul is comfortless, and all comfort up to the present rebounds as it were from it (cf. Gen 37:35; Jer 31:15). If he remembers God, who was once near to him, then he is compelled to groan (cf. Psa 55:18, Psa 55:3; and on the cohortative form of a Lamed He verb, cf. Ges. §75, 6), because He has hidden Himself from him; if he muses, in order to find Him again, then his spirit veils itself, i.e., it sinks into night and feebleness (התעטּף as in Psa 107:5; Psa 142:4; Psa 143:4). Each of the two members of Psa 77:4 are protasis and apodosis; concerning this emotional kind of structure of a sentence, vid., Ewald, §357, b.

Verses 4-9

He calls his eyelids the “guards of my eyes.” He who holds these so that they remain open when they want to shut together for sleep, is God; for his looking up to Him keeps the poet awake in spite of all overstraining of his powers. Hupfeld and others render thus: “Thou hast held, i.e., caused to last, the night-watches of mine eyes,” - which is affected in thought and expression. The preterites state what has been hitherto and has not yet come to a close. He still endures, as formerly, such thumps and blows within him, as though he lay upon an anvil (פּעם), and his voice fails him. Then silent soliloquy takes the place of audible prayer; he throws himself back in thought to the days of old (Psa 143:5), the years of past periods (Isa 51:9), which were so rich in the proofs of the power and loving-kindness of the God who was then manifest, but is now hidden. He remembers the happier past of his people and his own, inasmuch as he now in the night purposely calls back to himself in his mind the time when joyful thankfulness impelled him to the song of praise accompanied by the music of the harp (בּלּילה belongs according to the accents to the verb, not to נגינתי, although that construction certainly is strongly commended by parallel passages like Psa 16:7; Psa 42:9; Psa 92:3, cf. Job 35:10), in place of which, crying and sighing and gloomy silence have now entered. He gives himself up to musing “with his heart,” i.e., in the retirement of his inmost nature, inasmuch as he allows his thoughts incessantly to hover to and fro between the present and the former days, and in consequence of this (fut. consec. as in Psa 42:6) his spirit betakes itself to scrupulizing (what the lxx reproduces with σκάλλειν, Aquila with σκαλεύειν) - his conflict of temptation grows fiercer. Now follow the two doubting questions of the tempted one: he asks in different applications, Psa 77:8-10 (cf. Psa 85:6), whether it is then all at an end with God's loving-kindness and promise, at the same time saying to himself, that this nevertheless is at variance with the unchangeableness of His nature (Mal 3:6) and the inviolability of His covenant. אפס (only occurring as a 3. praet.) alternates with גּמר (Psa 12:2). חנּות is an infinitive construct formed after the manner of the Lamed He verbs, which, however, does also occur as infinitive absolute (שׁמּות, Eze 36:3, cf. on Psa 17:3); Gesenius and Olshausen (who doubts this infinitive form, §245, f) explain it, as do Aben-Ezra and Kimchi, as the plural of a substantive חנּה, but in the passage cited from Ezekiel (vid., Hitzig) such a substantival plural is syntactically impossible. קפץ רחמים is to draw together or contract and draw back one's compassion, so that it does not manifest itself outwardly, just as he who will not give shuts (יקפּץ) his hand (Deu 15:7; cf. supra, Psa 17:10).

Verses 10-15

With ואמר the poet introduces the self-encouragement with which he has hitherto calmed himself when such questions of temptation were wont to intrude themselves upon him, and with which he still soothes himself. In the rendering of הלּותי (with the tone regularly drawn back before the following monosyllable) even the Targum wavers between מרעוּתי (my affliction) and בּעוּתי (my supplication); and just in the same way, in the rendering of Psa 77:11, between אשׁתּניו (have changed) and שׁנין (years). שׁנות cannot possibly signify “change” in an active sense, as Luther renders: “The right hand of the Most High can change everything,” but only a having become different (lxx and the Quinta ἀλλοίωσις, Symmachus ἐπιδευτέρωσις), after which Maurer, Hupfeld, and Hitzig render thus: my affliction is this, that the right hand of the Most High has changed. But after we have read שׁנות in Psa 77:6 as a poetical plural of שׁנה, a year, we have first of all to see whether it may not have the same signification here. And many possible interpretations present themselves. It can be interpreted: “my supplication is this: years of the right hand of the Most High” (viz., that years like to the former ones may be renewed); but this thought is not suited to the introduction with ואמר. We must either interpret it: my sickness, viz., from the side of God, i.e., the temptation which befalls me from Him, the affliction ordained by Him for me (Aquila ἀῤῥωστία μου), is this (cf. Jer 10:19); or, since in this case the unambiguous חלותי would have been used instead of the Piel: my being pierced, my wounding, my sorrow is this (Symmachus τρῶσίς μου, inf. Kal from חלל, Psa 109:22, after the form חנּות from חנן) - they are years of the right hand of the Most High, i.e., those which God's mighty hand, under which I have to humble myself (1Pe 5:6), has formed and measured out to me. In connection with this way of taking Psa 77:11, Psa 77:12 is now suitably and easily attached to what has gone before. The poet says to himself that the affliction allotted to him has its time, and will not last for ever. Therein lies a hope which makes the retrospective glance into the happier past a source of consolation to him. In Psa 77:12 the Chethîb אזכיר is to be retained, for the כי in Psa 77:12 is thus best explained: “I bring to remembrance, i.e., make known with praise or celebrate (Isa 63:7), the deeds of Jāh, for I will remember Thy wondrous doing from days of old.” His sorrow over the distance between the present and the past is now mitigated by the hope that God's right hand, which now casts down, will also again in His own time raise up. Therefore he will now, as the advance from the indicative to the cohortative (cf. Psa 17:15) imports, thoroughly console and refresh himself with God's work of salvation in all its miraculous manifestations from the earliest times. יהּ is the most concise and comprehensive appellation for the God of the history of redemption, who, as Habakkuk prays, will revive His work of redemption in the midst of the years to come, and bring it to a glorious issue. To Him who then was and who will yet come the poet now brings praise and celebration. The way of God is His historical rule, and more especially, as in Hab 3:6, הליכות, His redemptive rule. The primary passage Exo 15:11 (cf. Psa 68:25) shows that בּקּדשׁ is not to be rendered “in the sanctuary” (lxx ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ), but “in holiness” (Symmachus ἐν ἁγιασμῷ). Holy and glorious in love and in anger. God goes through history, and shows Himself there as the incomparable One, with whose greatness no being, and least of all any one of the beingless gods, can be measured. He is האל, the God, God absolutely and exclusively, a miracle-working (עשׂה פלא, not עשׂה פלא cf. Gen 1:11)^[46]
God, and a God who by these very means reveals Himself as the living and supra-mundane God. He has made His omnipotence known among the peoples, viz., as Exo 15:16 says, by the redemption of His people, the tribes of Jacob and the double tribe of Joseph, out of Egypt, - a deed of His arm, i.e., the work of His own might, by which He has proved Himself to all peoples and to the whole earth to be the Lord of the world and the God of salvation (Exo 9:16; Exo 15:14). בּזרוע, brachio scil. extenso (Exo 6:6; Deu 4:34, and frequently), just as in Psa 75:6, בּצוּאר, collo scil. erecto. The music here strikes in; the whole strophe is an overture to the following hymn in celebration of God, the Redeemer out of Egypt.

Verses 16-19

When He directed His lance towards the Red Sea, which stood in the way of His redeemed, the waters immediately fell as it were into pangs of travail (יחילוּ, as in Hab 3:10, not ויּחילו), also the billows of the deep trembled; for before the omnipotence of God the Redeemer, which creates a new thing in the midst of the old creation, the rules of the ordinary course of nature become unhinged. There now follow in Psa 77:18, Psa 77:19 lines taken from the picture of a thunder-storm. The poet wishes to describe how all the powers of nature became the servants of the majestic revelation of Jahve, when He executed judgment on Egypt and delivered Israel. זרם, Poel of זרם (cognate זרב, זרף, Aethiopic זנם, to rain), signifies intensively: to stream forth in full torrents. Instead of this line, Habakkuk, with a change of the letters of the primary passage, which is usual in Jeremiah more especially, has זרם מים עבר. The rumbling which the שׁחקים^[47] cause to sound forth (נתנוּ, cf. Psa 68:34) is the thunder. The arrows of God (חצציך, in Habakkuk חצּיך) are the lightnings. The Hithpa. (instead of which Habakkuk has יחלּכוּ) depicts their busy darting hither and thither in the service of the omnipotence that sends them forth. It is open to question whether גּלגּל denotes the roll of the thunder (Aben-Ezra, Maurer, Böttcher): the sound of Thy thunder went rolling forth (cf. Psa 29:4), - or the whirlwind accompanying the thunder-storm (Hitzig); the usage of the language (Psa 83:14, also Eze 10:13, Syriac golgolo) is in favour of the latter. On Psa 77:19 cf. the echo in Psa 97:4. Amidst such commotions in nature above and below Jahve strode along through the sea, and made a passage for His redeemed. His person and His working were invisible, but the result which attested His active presence was visible. He took His way through the sea, and cut His path (Chethîb plural, שׁביליך, as in Jer 18:15) through great waters (or, according to Habakkuk, caused His horses to go through), without the =Psalm 78=

The Warning-Mirror of History from Moses to David

GIVE ear, O my people, to my teaching,

Incline your ear to the utterances of my mouth.

I will open my mouth with a parable,

I will pour forth riddles out of the days of old.

What we have heard, and become conscious of,

And our fathers have told us,

We will not hide from their children ;

Telling to the generation to come the glorious deeds of

Jahve, And His proof of power and His wonders, which He hath

done.

He hath established a testimony in Jacob

And laid down a law in Israel,

Which He hath commanded our fathers

To make it known unto their children ;

In order that the generation to come might know it, the

children born afterwards, That they might arise and tell it again to their children, And might place their confidence in Elohim, And might not forget the deeds of God, And might keep His command

=Psalm 78=

The Warning-Mirror of History from Moses to David

GIVE ear, O my people, to my teaching,

Incline your ear to the utterances of my mouth.

I will open my mouth with a parable,

I will pour forth riddles out of the days of old.

What we have heard, and become conscious of,

And our fathers have told us,

We will not hide from their children ;

Telling to the generation to come the glorious deeds of

Jahve, And His proof of power and His wonders, which He hath

done.

He hath established a testimony in Jacob

And laid down a law in Israel,

Which He hath commanded our fathers

To make it known unto their children ;

In order that the generation to come might know it, the

children born afterwards, That they might arise and tell it again to their children, And might place their confidence in Elohim, And might not forget the deeds of God, And might keep His command ments — 8 And might not become as their fathers a stubborn and re-

bellious generation, A generation that set not its heart aright, And whose spirit was not faithful towards God.

9 The sons of Ephraim, the bow-equipped archers, Turned back in the day of battle.

10 They kept not the covenant of Elohim, And in His law they refused to walk.

11 And they forgot His works

And His wonders, which He showed them.

12 In the sight of their fathers He proved Himself to be a

m i racl e-worker, In the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.

13 He divided the sea, and led them through, And piled the waters up as a heap ;

14 And led them in the cloud by day, And the whole night in a fiery light.

15 He clave rocks in the desert,

And gave them as it were the floods of the sea to drink abundantly,

16 And brought forth streams out of the rock, And caused the waters to flow down like rivers.

17 They, however, continued further to sin against Him,

To act rebelliously towards the Most High in a parched land.

18 They tempted God in their heart To desire food for their soul,

19 And spake against Elohim, they said :

" Will God be able to prepare a table in the desert?

20 Behold He smote rock, and waters gushed out, And streams d ashed along — 23 Nevertheless He commanded the clouds above, And the doors of heaven He opened;

24 He rained upon them manna to eat, And corn of heaven gave He unto them.

25 Bread of angels did man eat,

Meat He sent them in superabundance.

26 He caused the east wind to blow in the heaven, And by His power brought on the south wind,

27 And rained flesh upon them like the dust, And winged fowls as the sand of the seas.

28 And it fell within the circuit of its camp, Eound about its tents.

29 Then they did eat and were well filled, And their desire He fulfilled to tliem.

30 Still they were not estranged from their desire, The food was still in their mouth,

31 Then the anger of Elohim went up against them, And slew among their fat ones,

And smote down the young men of Israel.

32 For all this they sinned still more, And believed not in His wonders.

33 Then He made their days vanish in a breath, And their years in sudden haste.

34 When He slew them, they inquired after Him, They turned back and sought God diligently,

35 And remembered that Elohim was their rock, And God the Most High their Eedeemer.

36 They appeased Hiin with their mouth, And with their tongue they lied unto Him ;

37 But their heart was not stedfast with Him,

And they did not prove faithful in His covenant.

38 Nevertheless He is full of compassion — He forgiveth iniquity and doth not destroy. And hath ofttimes restrained His anger, And stirred not up all His fury.

39 He remembered that they were flesh,

A breath of wind that passeth by and returneth. not.

40 How oft did they provoke Him in the desert, Did they grieve Him in the wilderness !

11 And again and again they sought God, And vexed the Holy One of Israel.

42 They remembered not His hand,

The day when He delivered them from the oppressor,

43 When He set His signs in Egypt

And His remarkable deeds in the field of Zoan.

44 He turned their Niles into blood,

And their running waters they could not drink.

45 He sent gad-flies against them, which devoured them, And frogs, which brought destruction upon them.

46 He gave the fruit of their field to the cricket, And their labour to the locust ;

47 He smote down their vine with hail, And their sycamore-trees with hail-stones ;

18 And He gave over their cattle to the hail, And their flocks to the lightnings.

49 He let loose upon them the burning of His anger, Indignation and fury and distress,

An embassy of angels of misfortune ;

50 He made plain a way for His anger, He spared not their soul from death,

And their life He gave over to the pestilence.

51 He smote all the first-born in Egypt,

The firstlings of manly strength in the tents of Ham.

52 Then He made His own people to go forth like sheep, And guided them like a flock in the desert;

53 And He led them safely without fear, But their enemies the sea covered.

54 He brought them to His holy border,

To the mountain, which His right hand had acquired;

55 He drove out nations before them,

And allotted them as a marked out inheritance, And settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

56 Nevertheless they tempted and provoked Elohim the Most

High, And His testimonies they kept not.

57 They turned back and fell away like their fathers, They turned aside like a deceitful bow.

58 They incensed Him by their high places, And by their idols they excited His jealousy.

59 Elohim heard and was wroth,

And became greatly wearied with Israel.

60 Then He cast off the tabernacle of Shiloh, The tent which He had pitched among men ;

61 He gave His might into captivity,

And His glory into the oppressor's hand.

62 He gave over His people to the sword, And was wroth concerning His inheritance.

63 Their young men fire devoured,

And for their maidens they sang no bridal song.

64 Their priests, by the sword they fell, And their widows could not mourn.

65 Then the Lord awaked as one sleeping, As a hero, shouting from wine,

66 And smote their oppressors behind, Eternal reproach did He put upon them —

67 And He despised the tent of Joseph, And the tribe of Ephraim He chose not.

68 He chose the tribe of Judah,

The mount Zion, which He hath loved.

69 And He built, as the heights of heaven, His sanctuary, Like the earth which He hath founded for ever.

70 And He chose David His servant, And took him from the sheep-folds ;

71 Following the ewes that gave suck He took him away To pasture Jacob His people,

And Israel His inheri tance.

72 And he pastured them according to the Integrity of his heart, And with judicious hands he led them.
In the last verse of Ps 77 Israel appears as a flock which is led by Moses and Aaron; in the last verse of Psalms 78 as a flock which is led by David, of a pure heart, with judicious hands. Both Psalms also meet in thoughts and expressions, just as the לאסף of both leads one to expect. Psalms 78 is called Maskı̂l, a meditation. The word would also be appropriate here in the signification “a didactic poem.” For the history of Israel is recapitulated here from the leading forth out of Egypt through the time of the Judges down to David, and that with the practical application for the present age that they should cleave faithfully to Jahve, more faithfully than the rebellious generation of the fathers. After the manner of the Psalms of Asaph the Ephraimites are made specially prominent out of the whole body of the people, their disobedience as well as the rejection of Shiloh and the election of David, by which it was for ever at an end with the supremacy of Ephraim and also of his brother-tribe of Benjamin.
The old Asaphic origin of the Psalm has been contested: - (1) Because Psa 78:9 may be referred to the apostasy of Ephraim and of the other tribes, that is to say, to the division of the kingdom. But this reference is capriciously imagined to be read in Psa 78:9. (2) Because the Psalm betrays a malice, indeed a national hatred against Ephraim, such as is only explicable after the apostasy of the ten tribes. But the alienation and jealousy between Ephraim and Judah is older than the rupture of the kingdom. The northern tribes, in consequence of their position, which was more exposed to contact with the heathen world, had already assumed a different character from that of Judah living in patriarchal seclusion. They could boast of a more excited, more martial history, one richer in exploit; in the time of the Judges especially, there is scarcely any mention of Judah. Hence Judah was little thought of by them, especially by powerful Ephraim, which regarded itself as the foremost tribe of all the tribes. From the beginning of Saul's persecution of David, however, when the stricter principle of the south came first of all into decisive conflict for the mastery with the more lax principle of the Ephraimites, until the rebellion of Jeroboam against Solomon, there runs through the history of Israel a series of acts which reveal a deep reft between Judah and the other tribes, more especially Benjamin and Ephraim. Though, therefore, it were true that a tone hostile to Ephraim is expressed in the Psalm, this would not be any evidence against its old Asaphic origin, since the psalmist rests upon facts, and, without basing the preference of Judah upon merit, he everywhere contemplates the sin of Ephraim, without any Judaean boasting, in a connection with the sin of the whole nation, which involves all in the responsibility. Nor is Psa 78:69 against Asaph the contemporary of David; for Asaph may certainly have seen the building of the Temple of Solomon as it towered upwards to the skies, and Caspari in his Essay on the Holy One of Israel (Luther. Zeitschrift, 1844, 3) has shown that even the divine name קדושׁ ישׂראל does not militate against him. We have seen in connection with Psa 76:1-12 how deeply imbued Isaiah's language is with that of the Psalms of Asaph. It cannot surprise us of Asaph is Isaiah's predecessor in the use of the name “the Holy One of Isreal.” The fact, however, that the writer of the Psalm takes the words and colours of his narration from all five books of the Pentateuch, with the exception of Leviticus, is not opposed to our view of the origin of the Pentateuch, but favourable to it. The author of the Book of Job, with whom in Psa 78:64 he verbally coincides, is regarded by us as younger; and the points of contact with other Psalms inscribed “by David,” “by the sons of Korah,” and “by Asaph,” do not admit of being employed for ascertaining his time, since the poet is by no means an unindependent imitator.
The manner of representation which characterizes the Psalm becomes epical in its extension, but is at the same time concise after the sententious style. The separate historical statements have a gnome-like finish, and a gem-like elegance. The whole falls into two principal parts, vv. 1-37, vv. 38-72; the second part passes over from the God-tempting unthankfulness of the Israel of the desert to that of the Israel of Canaan. Every three strophes form one group.

Psalm 78

Verses 1-11

The poet begins very similarly to the poet of Ps 49. He comes forward among the people as a preacher, and demands for his tôra a willing, attentive hearing. תּורה is the word for every human doctrine or instruction, especially for the prophetic discourse which sets forth and propagates the substance of the divine teaching. Asaph is a prophet, hence Psa 78:2 is quoted in Mat 13:34. as ῥηθὲν διὰ τοῦ προφήτου.^[48]
He here recounts to the people their history מנּי־קדם, from that Egyptaeo-Sinaitic age of yore to which Israel's national independence and specific position in relation to the rest of the world goes back. It is not, however, with the external aspect of the history that he has to do, but with its internal teachings. משׁל is an allegory or parable, παραβολή, more particularly the apophthegm as the characteristic species of poetry belonging to the Chokma, and then in general a discourse of an elevated style, full of figures, thoughtful, pithy, and rounded. חידה is that which is entangled, knotted, involved, perlexe dictum. The poet, however, does not mean to say that he will literally discourse gnomic sentences and propound riddles, but that he will set forth the history of the fathers after the manner of a parable and riddle, so that it may become as a parable, i.e., a didactic history, and its events as marks of interrogation and nota-bene's to the present age. The lxx renders thus: ἀνοίξω ἐν παραβολαῖς τὸ στόμα μου, φθέγξομαι προβλήματα ἀπ ̓ ἀρχῆς. Instead of this the Gospel by Matthew has: ἀνοίξω ἐν παραβολαῖς τὸ στόμα μου, ἐρεύξομαι κεκρυμμένα ἀπὸ καταβολῆς (κόσμου), and recognises in this language of the Psalm a prophecy of Christ; because it is moulded so appropriately for the mouth of Him who is the Fulfiller not only of the Law and of Prophecy, but also of the vocation of the prophet. It is the object-clause to נכחד, and not a relative clause belonging to the “riddles out of the age of yore,” that follows in Psa 78:3 with אשׁר, for that which has been heard only becomes riddles by the appropriation and turn the poet gives to it. Psa 78:3 begins a new period (cf. Psa 69:27; Jer 14:1, and frequently): What we have heard, and in consequence thereof known, and what our fathers have told us (word for word, like Psa 44:1; Jdg 6:13), that will we not hide from their children (cf. Job 15:18). The accentuation is perfectly correct. The Rebı̂a by מבניהם has a greater distinctive force than the Rebı̂a by אחרון (לדור); it is therefore to be rendered: telling to the later generation (which is just what is intended by the offspring of the fathers) the glorious deeds of Jahve, etc. The fut. consec. ויּקם joins on to אשׁר עשׂה. Glorious deeds, proofs of power, miracles hath He wrought, and in connection therewith set up an admonition in Jacob, and laid down an order in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, viz., to propagate by tradition the remembrance of those mighty deeds (Exo 13:8, Exo 13:14; Deu 4:9, and other passages). להודיעם has the same object as והודעתּם in Deu 4:9; Jos 4:22. The matter in question is not the giving of the Law in general, as the purpose of which, the keeping of the laws, ought then to have been mentioned before anything else, but a precept, the purpose of which was the further proclamation of the magnalia Dei, and indirectly the promotion of trust in god and fidelity to the Law; cf. Psa 81:5., where the special precept concerning the celebration of the Feast of the Passover is described as a עדוּת laid down in Joseph. The following generation, the children, which shall be born in the course of the ages, were to know concerning His deeds, and also themselves to rise up (יקוּמוּ, not: come into being, like the יבאוּ of the older model-passage Ps 22:32) and to tell them further to their children, in order that these might place their confidence in god (שׂים כּסל, like שׁית מחסה in Psa 73:28), and might not forget the mighty deeds of God (Psa 118:17), and might keep His commandments, being warned by the disobedience of the fathers. The generation of the latter is called סורר וּמרה, just as the degenerate son that is to be stoned is called in Deu 21:18. הכין לבּו, to direct one's heart, i.e., to give it the right direction or tendency, to put it into the right state, is to be understood after Psa 78:37, 2Ch 20:33, Sir. 2:17.
Psa 78:9, which comes in now in the midst of this description, is awkward and unintelligible. The supposition that “the sons of Ephraim” is an appellation for the whole of Israel is refuted by Psa 78:67. The rejection of Ephraim and the election of Judah is the point into which the historical retrospect runs out; how then can “the sons of Ephraim” denote Israel as a whole? And yet what is here said of the Ephraimites also holds good of the Israelites in general, as Psa 78:57 shows. The fact, however, that the Ephraimites are made specially conspicuous out of the “generation” of all Israel, is intelligible from the special interest which the Psalms of Asaph take in the tribes of Joseph, and here particularly from the purpose of practically preparing the way for the rejection of Shiloh and Ephraim related further on. In Psa 78:10 and Psa 78:11 the Ephraimites are also still spoken of; and it is not until Psa 78:12, with the words “in sight of their fathers,” that we come back again to the nation at large. The Ephraimites are called נושׁקי רומי־קשׁת in the sense of נושׁקי קשׁת רומי קשׁת; the two participial construct forms do not stand in subordination but in co-ordination, as in Jer 46:9; Deu 33:19; 2Sa 20:19, just as in other instances also two substantives, of which one is the explanation of the other, are combined by means of the construct, Job 20:17, cf. 2Ki 17:13 Kerî. It is therefore: those who prepare the bow, i.e., those arming themselves therewith (נשׁק as in 1Ch 12:2; 2Ch 17:17), those who cast the vow, i.e., those shooting arrows from the bow (Jer 4:29), cf. Böttcher, §728. What is predicated of them, viz., “they turned round” (הפך as in Jdg 20:39, Jdg 20:41), stands in contrast with this their ability to bear arms and to defend themselves, as a disappointed expectation. Is what is meant thereby, that the powerful warlike tribe of Ephraim grew weary in the work of the conquest of Canaan (Judg. 1), and did not render the services which might have been expected from it? Since the historical retrospect does not enter into details until Psa 78:12 onwards, this especial historical reference would come too early here; the statement consequently must be understood more generally and, according to Psa 78:57, figuratively: Ephraim proved itself unstable and faint-hearted in defending and in conducting the cause of God, it gave it up, it abandoned it. They did not act as the covenant of God required of them, they refused to walk (ללכת, cf. ללכת, Ecc 1:7) within the limit and track of His Tôra, and forgot the deeds of God of which they had been eye-witnesses under Moses and under Joshua, their comrades of the same family.

Verses 12-25

It is now related how wonderfully God led the fathers of these Ephraimites, who behaved themselves so badly as the leading tribe of Israel, in the desert; how they again and again ever indulged sinful murmuring, and still He continued to give proofs of His power and of His loving-kindness. The (according to Num 13:22) very ancient Zoan (Tanis), ancient Egyptian Zane, Coptic G'ane, on the east bank of the Tanitic arm of the Nile, so called therefrom - according to the researches to which the Turin Papyrus No. 112 has led, identical with Avaris (vid., on Isa 19:11)^[49] - was the seat of the Hyksos dynasties that ruled in the eastern Delta, where after their overthrow Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the bondage, in order to propitiate the enraged mass of the Semitic population of Lower Egypt, embraced the worship of Baal instituted by King Apophis. The colossal sitting figure of Rameses II in the pillared court of the Royal Museum in Berlin, says Brugsch (Aus dem Orient ii. 45), is the figure which Rameses himself dedicated to the temple of Baal in Tanis and set up before its entrance. This mighty colossus is a contemporary of Moses, who certainly once looked upon this monument, when, as Ps 78 says, he “wrought wonders in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.” The psalmist, moreover, keeps very close to the Tôra in his reproduction of the history of the Exodus, and in fact so close that he must have had it before him in the entirety of its several parts, the Deuteronomic, Elohimistic, and Jehovistic. Concerning the rule by which it is appointed ‛ā'sa phéle, vid., on Psa 52:5. The primary passage to Psa 78:13 (cf. נוזלים Psa 78:16) is Exo 15:8. נד is a pile, i.e., a piled up heap or mass, as in Psa 33:7. And Psa 78:14 is the abbreviation of Exo 13:21. In Psa 78:15. the writer condenses into one the two instances of the giving of water from the rock, in the first year of the Exodus (Ex. 17) and in the fortieth year (Num. 20). The Piel יבקּע and the plural צרים correspond to this compression. רבּה is not an adjective (after the analogy of תּהום רבּה), but an adverb as in Psa 62:3; for the giving to drink needs a qualificative, but תהמות does not need any enhancement. ויּוצא has ı̂ instead of ē as in Psa 105:43.
The fact that the subject is continued in Psa 78:17 with ויּוסיפוּ without mention having been made of any sinning on the part of the generation of the desert, is explicable from the consideration that the remembrance of that murmuring is closely connected with the giving of water from the rock to which the names Massah u - Merı̂bah and Merı̂bath - Kadesh (cf. Num 20:13 with Num 27:14; Deu 32:51) point back: they went on (עוד) winning against Him, in spite of the miracles they experienced. למרות is syncopated from להמרות as in Isa 3:8. The poet in Psa 78:18 condenses the account of the manifestations of discontent which preceded the giving of the quails and manna (Ex. 16), and the second giving of quails (Num. 11), as he has done the two cases of the giving of water from the rock in Psa 78:15. They tempted God by unbelievingly and defiantly demanding (לשׁאל, postulando, Ew. §280, d) instead of trustfully hoping and praying. בּלבבם points to the evil fountain of the heart, and לנפשׁם describes their longing as a sensual eagerness, a lusting after it. Instead of allowing the miracles hitherto wrought to work faith in them, they made the miracles themselves the starting-point of fresh doubts. The poet here clothes what we read in Exo 16:3; Num 11:4., Psa 21:5, in a poetic dress. In לעמּו the unbelief reaches it climax, it sounds like self-irony. On the co-ordinating construction “therefore Jahve heard it and was wroth,” cf. Isa 5:4; Isa 12:1; Isa 50:2; Rom 6:17. The allusion is to the wrath-burning at Taberah (Tab'eera), Num 11:1-3, which preceded the giving of the quails in the second year of the Exodus. For it is obvious that Psa 78:21 and Num 11:1 coincide, ויתעבר ואשׁ here being suggested by the ותבער־בם אשׁ eht yb d of that passage, and אף עלה being the opposite of ותשׁקע האשׁ in Psa 78:2. A conflagration broke out at that time in the camp, at the same time, however, with the breaking out of God's anger. The nexus between the anger and the fire is here an outward one, whereas in Num 11:1 it is an internal one. The ground upon which the wrathful decree is based, which is only hinted at there, is here more minutely given in Psa 78:22 : they believed not in Elohim (vid., Num 14:11), i.e., did not rest with believing confidence in Him, and trusted not in His salvation, viz., that which they had experienced in the redemption out of Egypt (Exo 14:13; Exo 15:2), and which was thereby guaranteed for time to come. Now, however, when Taberah is here followed first by the giving of the manna, Psa 78:23-25, then by the giving of the quails, Psa 78:26-29, the course of the events is deranged, since the giving of the manna had preceded that burning, and it was only the giving of the quails that followed it. This putting together of the two givings out of order was rendered necessary by the preceding condensation (in Psa 78:18-20) of the clamorous desire for a more abundant supply of food before each of these events. Notwithstanding Israel's unbelief, He still remained faithful: He caused manna to rain down out of the opened gates of heaven (cf. “the windows of heaven,” Gen 7:11; 2Ki 7:2; Mal 3:10), that is to say, in richest abundance. The manna is called corn (as in Psa 105:40, after Exo 16:4, it is called bread) of heaven, because it descended in the form of grains of corn, and supplied the place of bread-corn during the forty years. לחם אבּירים the lxx correctly renders ἄρτον ἀγγέλων (אבּירים = גּבּרי כח, Psa 103:20). The manna is called “bread of angels” (Wisd. 16:20) as being bread from heaven (Psa 78:24, Psa 105:40), the dwelling-place of angels, as being mann es - semâ, heaven's gift, its Arabic name, - a name which also belongs to the vegetable manna which flows out of the Tamarix mannifera in consequence of the puncture of the Coccus manniparus, and is even at the present day invaluable to the inhabitants of the desert of Sinai. אישׁ is the antithesis to אבירים; for if it signified “every one,” אכלוּ would have been said (Hitzig). צידהּ as in Exo 12:39; לשׂבע as in Exo 16:3, cf. Psa 78:8.

Verses 26-37

Passing over to the giving of the quails, the poet is thinking chiefly of the first occasion mentioned in Ex. 16, which directly preceded the giving of the manna. But the description follows the second: יסּע (He caused to depart, set out) after Num 11:31. “East” and “south” belong together: it was a south-east wind from the Aelanitic Gulf. “To rain down” is a figurative expression for a plentiful giving of dispensing from above. “Its camp, its tents,” are those of Israel, Num 11:31, cf. Exo 16:13. The תּעוה, occurring twice, Psa 78:29-30 (of the object of strong desire, as in Psa 21:3), points to Kibroth - hattaavah, the scene of this carnal lusting; הביא is the transitive of the בּוא in Pro 13:12. In Psa 78:30-31 even in the construction the poet closely follows Num 11:33 (cf. also זרוּ with לזרא, aversion, loathing, Num 11:20). The Waw unites what takes place simultaneously; a construction which presents the advantage of being able to give special prominence to the subject. The wrath of God consisted in the breaking out of a sickness which was the result of immoderate indulgence, and to which even the best-nourished and most youthfully vigorous fell a prey. When the poet goes on in Psa 78:32 to say that in spite of these visitations (בּכל־זאת) they went on sinning, he has chiefly before his mind the outbreak of “fat” rebelliousness after the return of the spies, cf. Psa 78:32 with Num 14:11. And Psa 78:33 refers to the judgment of death in the wilderness threatened at that time to all who had come out of Egypt from twenty years old and upward (Num 14:28-34). Their life devoted to death vanished from that time onwards בּהבל, in breath-like instability, and בּבּהלה, in undurable precipitancy; the mode of expression in Psa 31:11; Job 36:1 suggests to the poet an expressive play of words. When now a special judgment suddenly and violently thinned the generation that otherwise was dying off, as in Num 21:6., then they inquired after Him, they again sought His favour, those who were still preserved in the midst of this dying again remembered the God who had proved Himself to be a “Rock” (Deu 32:15, Deu 32:18, Deu 32:37) and to be a “Redeemer” (Gen 48:16) to them. And what next? Psa 78:36-37^[50] tell us what effect they gave to this disposition to return to God. They appeased Him with their mouth, is meant to say: they sought to win Him over to themselves by fair speeches, inasmuch as they thus anthropopathically conceived of God, and with their tongue they played the hypocrite to Him; their heart, however, was not sincere towards Him (עם like את in Psa 78:8), i.e., not directed straight towards Him, and they proved themselves not stedfast (πιστοί, or properly βέβαιοι) in their covenant-relationship to Him.

Verses 38-48

The second part of the Psalm now begins. God, notwithstanding, in His compassion restrains His anger; but Israel's God-tempting conduct was continued, even after the journey through the desert, in Canaan, and the miracles of judgment amidst which the deliverance out of Egypt had been effected were forgotten. With והוּא in Psa 78:38^[51] begins an adversative clause, which is of universal import as far as ישׁהית, and then becomes historical. Psa 78:38 expands what lies in רחוּם: He expiates iniquity and, by letting mercy instead of right take its course, arrests the destruction of the sinner. With והרבּה (Ges. §§142, 2) this universal truth is supported out of the history of Israel. As this history shows, He has many a time called back His anger, i.e., checked it in its course, and not stirred up all His blowing anger (cf. Isa 42:13), i.e., His anger in all its fulness and intensity. We see that Psa 78:38 refers to His conduct towards Israel, then Psa 78:39 follows with the ground of the determination, and that in the form of an inference drawn from such conduct towards Israel. He moderated His anger against Israel, and consequently took human frailty and perishableness into consideration. The fact that man is flesh (which not merely affirms his physical fragility, but also his moral weakness, Gen 6:3, cf. Gen 8:21), and that, after a short life, he falls a prey to death, determines God to be long-suffering and kind; it was in fact sensuous desire and loathing by which Israel was beguiled time after time. The exclamation “how oft!” Psa 78:40, calls attention to the praiseworthiness of this undeserved forbearance.
But with Psa 78:41 the record of sins begins anew. There is nothing by which any reference of this Psa 78:41 to the last example of insubordination recorded in the Pentateuch, Num 35:1-9 (Hitzig), is indicated. The poet comes back one more to the provocations of God by the Israel of the wilderness in order to expose the impious ingratitude which revealed itself in this conduct. התוה is the causative of תּוה = Syriac tewā', תּהא, to repent, to be grieved, lxx παρώξυναν. The miracles of the tie of redemption are now brought before the mind in detail, ad exaggerandum crimen tentationis Deu cum summa ingratitudine conjunctum (Venema). The time of redemption is called יום, as in Gen 2:4 the hexahemeron. שׂים אות (synon. עשׂה, נתן) is used as in Exo 10:2. We have already met with מנּי־צר in Psa 44:11. The first of the plagues of Egypt (Exo 7:14-25), the turning of the waters into blood, forms the beginning in Psa 78:44. From this the poet takes a leap over to the fourth plague, the ערב (lxx κυνόμυια), a grievous and destructive species of fly (Exo 8:20-32), and combines with it the frogs, the second plague (Exo 8:1-15). צפרדּע is the lesser Egyptian frog, Rana Mosaica, which is even now called Arab. ḍfd‛ , ḍofda. Next in Psa 78:46 he comes to the eighth plague, the locusts, חסיל (a more select name of the migratory locusts than ארבּה), Ex 10:1-20; the third plague, the gnats and midges, כּנּים, is left unmentioned in addition to the fourth, which is of a similar kind. For the chastisement by means of destructive living things is now closed, and in Psa 78:47 follows the smiting with hail, the seventh plague, Ex 9:13-35. חנמל (with pausal , not ā, cf. in Eze 8:2 the similarly formed החשׁמלה) in the signification hoar-frost (πάχνη, lxx, Vulgate, Saadia, and Abulwalîd), or locusts (Targum כּזוּבא = חגב), or ants (J. D. Michaelis), does not harmonize with the history; also the hoar-frost is called כּפוּר, the ant נּמלה (collective in Arabic neml). Although only conjecturing from the context, we understand it, with Parchon and Kimchi, of hailstones or hail. With thick lumpy pieces of ice He smote down vines and sycamore-trees (Fayum was called in ancient Egyptian “the district of the sycamore”). הרג proceeds from the Biblical conception that the plant has a life of its own. The description of this plague is continued in Psa 78:48. Two MSS present לדּבר instead of לבּרד; but even supposing that רשׁפים might signify the fever-burnings of the pestilence (vid., on Hab 3:5), the mention of the pestilence follows in Psa 78:50, and the devastation which, according to Exo 9:19-22, the hail caused among the cattle of the Egyptians is in its right place here. Moreover it is expressly said in Exo 9:24 that there was conglomerate fire among the hail; רשׁפים are therefore flaming, blazing lightnings.

Verses 49-59

When these plagues rose to the highest pitch, Israel became free, and removed, being led by its God, into the Land of Promise; but it continued still to behave there just as it had done in the desert. The poet in Psa 78:49-51 brings the fifth Egyptian plague, the pestilence (Exo 9:1-7), and the tenth and last, the smiting of the first-born (מכּת בּכרות), Exo 11:1, together. Psa 78:49 sounds like Job 20:23 (cf. below Psa 78:64). מלאכי רעים are not wicked angels, against which view Hengstenberg refers to the scriptural thesis of Jacobus Ode in his work De Angelis, Deum ad puniendos malos homines mittere bonos angelos et ad castigandos pios usurpare malos, but angels that bring misfortune. The mode of construction belongs to the chapter of the genitival subordination of the adjective to the substantive, like אשׁת רע, Pro 6:24, cf. 1Sa 28:7; Num 5:18, Num 5:24; 1Ki 10:15; Jer 24:2, and the Arabic msjdu 'l - jâm‛, the mosque of the assembling one, i.e., the assembling (congregational) mosque, therefore: angels (not of the wicked ones = wicked angels, which it might signify elsewhere, but) of the evil ones = evil, misfortune-bringing angels (Ew. §287, a). The poet thus paraphrases the המּשׁחית that is collectively conceived in Exo 12:13, Exo 12:23; Heb 11:28. In Psa 78:50 the anger is conceived of as a stream of fire, in Psa 78:50 death as an executioner, and in 50c the pestilence as a foe. ראשׁית אונים (Gen 49:3; Deu 21:17) is that which had sprung for the first time from manly vigour (plur. intensivus). Egypt is called חם as in Ps 105 and Psa 111:1-10 according to Gen 10:6, and is also called by themselves in ancient Egyptian Kemi, Coptic Chêmi, Kême (vid., Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, ch. 33). When now these plagues which softened their Pharaoh went forth upon the Egyptians, God procured for His people a free departure, He guided flock-like (כּעדר like בּעדר, Jer 31:24, with Dag. implicitum), i.e., as a shepherd, the flock of His people (the favourite figure of the Psalms of Asaph) through the desert, - He led them safely, removing all terrors out of the way and drowning their enemies in the Red Sea, to His holy territory, to the mountain which (זה) His right hand had acquired, or according to the accents (cf. supra, p. 104): to the mountain there (זה), which, etc. It is not Zion that is meant, but, as in the primary passage Exo 15:16., in accordance with the parallelism (although this is not imperative) and the usage of the language, which according to Isa 11:9; Isa 57:13, is incontrovertible, the whole of the Holy Land with its mountains and valleys (cf. Deu 11:11). בּחבל נחלה is the poetical equivalent to בּנחלה, Num 34:2; Num 36:2, and frequently. The Beth is Beth essentiae (here in the same syntactical position as in Isa 48:10; Eze 20:41, and also Job 22:24 surely): He made them (the heathen, viz., as in Jos 23:4 their territories) fall to them (viz., as the expression implies, by lot, בגורל) as a line of inheritance, i.e., (as in Psa 105:11) as a portion measured out as an inheritance. It is only in Psa 78:56 (and not so early as Psa 78:41) that the narration passes over to the apostate conduct of the children of the generation of the desert, that is to say, of the Israel of Canaan. Instead of עדוריו from עדוּת, the word here is עדוריו from עדה (a derivative of עוּד, not יעד). Since the apostasy did not gain ground until after the death of Joshua and Eleazar, it is the Israel of the period of the Judges that we are to think of here. קשׁת רמיּה, Psa 78:57, is not: a bow of slackness, but: a bow of deceit; for the point of comparison, according to Hos 7:16, is its missing the mark: a bow that discharges its arrow in a wrong direction, that makes no sure shot. The verb רמה signifies not only to allow to hang down slack (cogn. רפה), but also, according to a similar conception to spe dejicere, to disappoint, deny. In the very act of turning towards God, or at least being inclined towards Him by His tokens of power and loving-kindness, they turned (Jer 2:21) like a vow that misses the mark and disappoints both aim and expectation. The expression in Psa 78:58 is like Deu 32:16, Deu 32:21. שׁמע refers to their prayer to the Ba(a4lim (Jdg 2:11). The word התעבּר, which occurs three times in this Psalm, is a word belonging to Deuteronomy (Deu 3:26). Psa 78:59 is purposely worded exactly like Psa 78:21. The divine purpose of love spurned by the children just as by the fathers, was obliged in this case, as in the former, to pass over into angry provocation.

Verses 60-72

The rejection of Shiloh and of the people worshipping there, but later on, when the God of Israel is again overwhelmed by compassion, the election of Judah, and of Mount Zion, and of David, the king after His own heart. In the time of the Judges the Tabernacle was set up in Shiloh (Jos 18:1); there, consequently, was the central sanctuary of the whole people, - in the time of Eli and Samuel, as follows from 1Sa 1:1, it had become a fixed temple building. When this building was destroyed is not known; according to Jdg 18:30., cf. Jer 7:12-15, it was probably not until the Assyrian period. The rejection of Shiloh, however, preceded the destruction, and practically took place simultaneously with the removal of the central sanctuary to Zion; and was, moreover, even previously decided by the fact that the Ark of the covenant, when given up again by the Philistines, was not brought back to Shiloh, but set down in Kirjath Jearîm (1Sa 7:2). The attributive clause שׁכּן בּאדם uses שׁכּן as השׁכּין is used in Jos 18:1. The pointing is correct, for the words to not suffice to signify “where He dwelleth among men” (Hitzig); consequently שׁכּן is the causative of the Kal, Lev 16:16; Jos 22:19. In Psa 78:61 the Ark of the covenant is called the might and glory of God (ארון עזּו, Psa 132:8, cf. כבוד, 1Sa 4:21.), as being the place of their presence in Israel and the medium of their revelation. Nevertheless, in the battle with the Philistines between Eben-ezer and Aphek, Jahve gave the Ark, which they had fetched out of Shiloh, into the hands of the foe in order to visit on the high-priesthood of the sons of Ithamar the desecration of His ordinances, and there fell in that battle 30,000 footmen, and among them the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests (1 Sam. 4). The fire in Psa 78:63 is the fire of war, as in Num 21:28, and frequently. The incident mentioned in 1Sa 6:19 is reasonably (vid., Keil) left out of consideration. By לא הוּלּלוּ (lxx erroneously, οὐκ ἐπένθησαν = הוללוּ = הילילוּ) are meant the marriage-songs (cf. Talmudic הלּוּלא, the nuptial tent, and בּית הלוּלים the marriage-house). “Its widows (of the people, in fact, of the slain) weep not” (word for word as in Job 27:15) is meant of the celebration of the customary ceremony of mourning (Gen 23:2): they survive their husbands (which, with the exception of such a case as that recorded in 1Sa 14:19-22, is presupposed), but without being able to show them the last signs of honour, because the terrors of the war (Jer 15:8) prevent them.
With Psa 78:65 the song takes a new turn. After the punitive judgment has sifted and purified Israel, God receives His people to Himself afresh, but in such a manner that He transfers the precedence of Ephraim to the tribe of Judah. He awakes as it were from a long sleep (Psa 44:24, cf. Psa 73:20); for He seemed to sleep whilst Israel had become a servant to the heathen; He aroused Himself, like a hero exulting by reason of wine, i.e., like a hero whose courage is heightened by the strengthening and exhilarating influence of wine (Hengstenberg). התרונן is not the Hithpal. of רוּן in the Arabic signification, which is alien to the Hebrew, to conquer, a meaning which we do not need here, and which is also not adapted to the reflexive form (Hitzig, without any precedent, renders thus: who allows himself to be conquered by wine), but Hithpo. of רנן: to shout most heartily, after the analogy of the reflexives התאונן, התנודד, התרועע. The most recent defeat of the enemy which the poet has before his mind is that of the Philistines. The form of expression in Psa 78:66 is moulded after 1Sa 5:6. God smote the Philistines most literally in posteriora (lxx, Vulgate, and Luther). Nevertheless Psa 78:66 embraces all the victories under Samuel, Saul, and David, from 1Sa 5:1-12 and onwards. Now, when they were able to bring the Ark, which had been brought down to the battle against the Philistines, to a settled resting-place again, God no longer chose Shiloh of Ephraim, but Judah and the mountain of Zion, which He had loved (Psa 47:5), of Benjamitish-Judaean (Jos 15:63; Jdg 1:8, Jdg 1:21) - but according to the promise (Deu 33:12) and according to the distribution of the country (vid., on Psa 68:28) Benjamitish - Jerusalem.^[52]
There God built His Temple כּמו־רמים. Hitzig proposes instead of this to read כּמרומים; but if נעימים, Psa 16:6, signifies amaena, then רמים may signify excelsa (cf. Isa 45:2 הדוּרים, Jer 17:6 חררים) and be poetically equivalent to מרומים: lasting as the heights of heaven, firm as the earth, which He hath founded for ever. Since the eternal duration of heaven and of the earth is quite consistent with a radical change in the manner of its duration, and that not less in the sense of the Old Testament than of the New (vid., e.g., Isa 65:17), so the לעולם applies not to the stone building, but rather to the place where Jahve reveals Himself, and to the promise that He will have such a dwelling-place in Israel, and in fact in Judah. Regarded spiritually, i.e., essentially, apart from the accidental mode of appearing, the Temple upon Zion is as eternal as the kingship upon Zion with which the Psalm closes. The election of David gives its impress to the history of salvation even on into eternity. It is genuinely Asaphic that it is so designedly portrayed how the shepherd of the flock of Jesse (Isai) became the shepherd of the flock of Jahve, who was not to pasture old and young in Israel with the same care and tenderness as the ewe-lambs after which he went (עלות as in Gen 33:13, and רעה ב, cf. 1Sa 16:11; 1Sa 17:34, like משׁל בּ and the like). The poet is also able already to glory that he has fulfilled this vocation with a pure heart and with an intelligent mastery. And with this he closes.
From the decease of David lyric and prophecy are retrospectively and prospectively turned towards David.

Psalm 79

Supplicatory Prayer in a Time of Devastation, of Bloodshed, and of Derision

This Psalm is in every respect the pendant of Ps 74. The points of contact are not merely matters of style (cf. Psa 79:5, how long for ever? with Psa 74:1, Psa 74:10; Psa 79:10, יוּדע, with Psa 74:5; Psa 79:2, the giving over to the wild beasts, with Psa 74:19, Psa 74:14; Psa 79:13, the conception of Israel as of a flock, in which respect Psa 79:1-13 is judiciously appended to Psa 78:70-72, with Psa 74:1, and also with Psa 74:19). But the mutual relationships lie still deeper. Both Psalms have the same Asaphic stamp, both stand in the same relation to Jeremiah, and both send forth their complaint out of the same circumstances of the time, concerning a destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem, such as only the age of the Seleucidae (1 Macc. 1:31; 3:45, 2 Macc. 8:3) together with the Chaldaean period^[53] can exhibit, and in conjunction with a defiling of the Temple and a massacre of the servants of God, of the Chasîdîm (1 Macc. 7:13, 2 Macc. 14:6), such as the age of the Seleucidae exclusively can exhibit. The work of the destruction of the Temple which was in progress in Ps 74, appears in Psa 79:1-13 as completed, and here, as in the former Psalm, one receives the impression of the outrages, not of some war, but of some persecution: it is straightway the religion of Israel for the sake of which the sanctuaries are destroyed and the faithful are massacred.
Apart from other striking accords, Psa 79:6-7 are repeated verbatim in Jer 10:25. It is in itself far more probable that Jeremiah here takes up the earlier language of the Psalm than that the reverse is the true relation; and, as Hengstenberg has correctly observed, this is also favoured by the fact that the words immediately before viz., Jer 10:24, originate out of Psa 6:2, and that the connection in the Psalm is a far closer one. But since there is no era of pre-Maccabaean history corresponding to the complaints of the Psalm,^[54]
Jeremiah is to be regarded in this instance as the example of the psalmist; and in point of fact the borrower is betrayed in Psa 79:6-7 of the Psalm by the fact that the correct על of Jeremiah is changed into אל, the more elegant משׁפחות into ממלכות, and the plural אכלוּ into אכל, and the soaring exuberance of Jeremiah's expression is impaired by the omission of some of the words.

Verses 1-4

The Psalm begins with a plaintive description, and in fact one that makes complaint to God. Its opening sounds like Lam 1:10. The defiling does not exclude the reducing to ashes, it is rather spontaneously suggested in Psa 74:7 in company with wilful incendiarism. The complaint in Psa 79:1 reminds one of the prophecy of Micah, Mic 3:12, which in its time excited so much vexation (Jer 26:18); and Psa 79:2, Deu 28:26. עבדיך confers upon those who were massacred the honour of martyrdom. The lxx renders לעיים by εἰς ὀπωροφυλάκιον, a flourish taken from Isa 1:8. Concerning the quotation from memory in 1 Macc. 7:16f., vid., the introduction to Ps 74. The translator of the originally Hebrew First Book of the Maccabees even in other instances betrays an acquaintance with the Greek Psalter (cf. 1 Macc. 1:37, καὶ ἐξέχεαν αἷμα ἀθῷον κύκλῳ τοῦ ἁγιάσματος). “As water,” i.e., (cf. Deu 15:23) without setting any value upon it and without any scruple about it. Psa 44:14 is repeated in Psa 79:4. At the time of the Chaldaean catastrophe this applied more particularly to the Edomites.

Verses 5-8

Out of the plaintive question how long? and whether endlessly God would be angry and cause His jealousy to continue to burn like a fire (Deu 32:22), grows up the prayer (Psa 79:6) that He would turn His anger against the heathen who are estranged from the hostile towards Him, and of whom He is now making use as a rod of anger against His people. The taking over of Psa 79:6-7 from Jer 10:25 is not betrayed by the looseness of the connection of thought; but in themselves these four lines sound much more original in Jeremiah, and the style is exactly that of this prophet, cf. Jer 6:11; Jer 2:3, and frequently, Psa 49:20. The אל, instead of על, which follows שׁפך is incorrect; the singular אכל gathers all up as in one mass, as in Isa 5:26; Isa 17:13. The fact that such power over Israel is given to the heathen world has its ground in the sins of Israel. From Psa 79:8 it may be inferred that the apostasy which raged earlier is now checked. ראשׁנים is not an adjective (Job 31:28; Isa 59:2), which would have been expressed by עונותינו חראשׁנים, but a genitive: the iniquities of the forefathers (Lev 26:14, cf. Psa 39:1-13). On Psa 79:8 of Jdg 6:6. As is evident from Psa 79:9, the poet does not mean that the present generation, itself guiltless, has to expiate the guilt of the fathers (on the contrary, Deu 24:16; 2Ki 14:6; Eze 18:20); he prays as one of those who have turned away from the sins of the fathers, and who can now no longer consider themselves as placed under wrath, but under sin-pardoning and redeeming grace.

Verses 9-12

The victory of the world is indeed not God's aim; therefore His own honour does not suffer that the world of which He has made use in order to chasten His people should for ever haughtily triumph. שׁמך is repeated with emphasis at the end of the petition in Psa 79:9, according to the figure epanaphora. על־דּבר = למען, as in Psa 45:5, cf. Psa 7:1, is a usage even of the language of the Pentateuch. Also the motive, “wherefore shall they say?” occurs even in the Tôra (Exo 32:12, cf. Num 14:13-17; Deu 9:28). Here (cf. Psa 115:2) it originates out of Joe 2:17. The wish expressed in Psa 79:10 is based upon Deu 32:43. The poet wishes in company with his contemporaries, as eye-witnesses, to experience what God has promised in the early times, viz., that He will avenge the blood of His servants. The petition in Deu 32:11 runs like Psa 102:21, cf. Psa 18:7. אסיר individualizingly is those who are carried away captive and incarcerated; בּני תמוּתה are those who, if God does not preserve them by virtue of the greatness (גדל, cf. גּדל Exo 15:16) of His arm, i.e., of His far-reaching omnipotence, succumb to the power of death as to a patria potestas.^[55]
That the petition in Psa 79:12 recurs to the neighbouring peoples is explained by the fact, that these, who might most readily come to the knowledge of the God of Israel as the one living and true God, have the greatest degree of guilt on account of their reviling of God. The bosom is mentioned as that in which one takes up and holds that which is handed to him (Luk 6:38); חיק- (על) אל (שׁלּם) השׁיב, as in Isa 65:7, Isa 65:6; Jer 32:18. A sevenfold requital (cf. Gen 4:15, Gen 4:24) is a requital that is fully carried out as a criminal sentence, for seven is the number of a completed process.

Verse 13

If we have thus far correctly hit upon the parts of which the Psalm is composed (9. 9. 9), then the lamentation closes with this tristichic vow of thanksgiving.

Psalm 80

==PRAYER FOR JAHVE’S VINE.==

With the words We are Thy people and the flock of Thy pasture, Psa 79:1-13 closes; and Psalms 80 begins with a cry to the Shepherd of Israel. Concerning the inscription of the Psalm: To be practised after the “Lilies, the testimony...,” by Asaph, a Psalm, vid., on Psa 45:1, supra, p. 45f. The lxx renders, εἰς τὸ τέλος (unto the end), ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀλλοιωθησομένων (which is unintelligible and ungrammatical = אל־שׁשּׂנים), μαρτύριον τῷ Ἀσάφ (as the accentuation also unites these words closely by Tarcha), ψαλμός ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ἀσσυρίου (cf. Psa 76:1), perhaps a translation of אל־אשׁור, an inscribed note which took the “boar out of the forest” as an emblem of Assyria. This hint is important. It solves the riddle why Joseph represents all Israel in Psa 80:2, and why the tribes of Joseph in particular are mentioned in Psa 80:3, and why in the midst of these Benjamin, whom like descent from Rachel and chagrin, never entirely overcome, on account of the loss of the kingship drew towards the brother-tribes of Joseph. Moreover the tribe of Benjamin had only partially remained to the house of David since the division of the kingdom,^[56] so that this triad is to be regarded as an expansion of the “Joseph” (v. 20. After the northern kingdom had exhausted its resources in endless feuds with Damascene Syria, it succumbed to the world-wide dominion of Assyria in the sixth year of Hezekiah, in consequence of the heavy visitations which are closely associated with the names of the Assyrian kings Pul, Tiglath-pileser, and Shalmaneser. The psalmist, as it seems, prays in a time in which the oppression of Assyria rested heavily upon the kingdom of Ephraim, and Judah saw itself threatened with ruin when this bulwark should have fallen. We must not, however, let it pass without notice that our Psalm has this designation of the nation according to the tribes of Joseph in common with other pre-exilic Psalms of Asaph (Psa 77:16; Psa 78:9; Psa 81:6). It is a characteristic belonging in common to this whole group of Psalms. Was Asaph, the founder of this circle of songs, a native, perhaps, of one of the Levite cities of the province of the tribe of Ephraim or Manasseh?
The Psalm consists of five eight-line strophes, of which the first, second, and fifth close with the refrain, “Elohim, restore us, let Thy countenance shine forth, then shall we be helped!” This prayer grows in earnestness. The refrain begins the first time with Elohim, the second time with Elohim Tsebaôth, and the third time with a threefold Jahve Elohim Tsebaôth, with which the second strophe (Psa 80:5) also opens.

Verses 2-4

The first strophe contains nothing but petition. First of all the nation is called Israel as springing from Jacob; then, as in Psa 81:6, Joseph, which, where it is distinct from Jacob or Judah, is the name of the kingdom of the ten tribes (vid., Caspari on Oba 1:18), or at least of the northern tribes (Psa 77:16; Psa 78:67.). Psa 80:3 shows that it is also these that are pre-eminently intended here. The fact that in the blessing of Joseph, Jacob calls God a Shepherd (רעה), Gen 48:15; Gen 49:24, perhaps has somewhat to do with the choice of the first two names. In the third, the sitting enthroned in the sanctuary here below and in the heaven above blend together; for the Old Testament is conscious of a mutual relationship between the earthly and the heavenly temple (היכל) until the one merges entirely in the other. The cherûbim, which God enthrones, i.e., upon which He sits enthroned, are the bearers of the chariot (מרכבה) of the Ruler of the world (vid., Psa 18:11). With הופיעה (from יפע, Arab. yf‛ , eminere , emicare, as in the Asaph Psa 50:2) the poet prays that He would appear in His splendour of light, i.e., in His fiery bright, judging, and rescuing doxa, whether as directly visible, or even as only recognisable by its operation. Both the comparison, “after the manner of a flock” and the verb נהג are Asaphic, Psa 78:52, cf. Psa 26:1-12. Just so also the names given to the nation. The designation of Israel after the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh attaches itself to the name Joseph; and the two take the brother after the flesh into their midst, of whom the beloved Rachel was the mother as well as of Joseph, the father of Ephraim and Manasseh. In Num. 2 also, these three are not separated, but have their camp on the west side of the Tabernacle. May God again put into activity - which is the meaning of עורר (excitare) in distinction from חעיר (expergefacere) - His גבורה, the need for the energetic intervention of which now makes itself felt, before these three tribes, i.e., by becoming their victorious leader. לכה is a summoning imperative.^[57]
Concerning ישׁעתה vid., on Psa 3:3; the construction with Lamed says as little against the accusative adverbial rendering of the ah set forth there as does the Beth of בּחרשׁה (in the wood) in 1Sa 23:15, vid., Böttcher's Neue Aehrenlese, Nos. 221, 384, 449. It is not a bringing back out of the Exile that is prayed for by השׁתבנוּ, for, according to the whole impression conveyed by the Psalm, the people are still on the soil of their fatherland; but in their present feebleness they are no longer like themselves, they stand in need of divine intervention in order again to attain a condition that is in harmony with the promises, in order to become themselves again. May God then cause His long hidden countenance to brighten and shine upon them, then shall they be helped as they desire (ונוּשׁעה).

Verses 4-7

In the second strophe there issues forth bitter complaint concerning the form of wrath which the present assumes, and, thus confirmed, the petition rises anew. The transferring of the smoking (עשׁן) of God's nostrils = the hard breathing of anger (Psa 74:1, Deu 29:19), to God Himself is bold, but in keeping with the spirit of the Biblical view of the wrath of God (vid., on Psa 18:9), so that there is no need to avoid the expression by calling in the aid of the Syriac word עשׁן, to be strong, powerful (why art Thou hard, why dost Thou harden Thyself...). The perfect after עד־מתי has the sense of a present with a retrospective glance, as in Exo 10:3, cf. עד־אנה, to be understood after the analogy of חרה בּ (to kindle = to be angry against any one), for the prayer of the people is not an object of wrath, but only not a means of turning it aside. While the prayer is being presented, God veils Himself in the smoke of wrath, through which it is not able to penetrate. The lxx translators have read בתפלת עבדיך, for they render ἐπὶ τὴν προσευχήν τῶν δούλων σου (for which the common reading is τοῦ δούλου σου). Bread of tears is, according to Psa 42:4, bread consisting of tears; tears, running down in streams upon the lips of the praying and fasting one, are his meat and his drink. השׁקה with an accusative signifies to give something to drink, and followed by Beth, to give to drink by means of something, but it is not to be translated: potitandum das eis cum lacrymis trientem (De Dieu, von Ortenberg, and Hitzig). שׁלישׁ (Talmudic, a third part) is the accusative of more precise definition (Vatablus, Gesenius, Olshausen, and Hupfeld): by thirds (lxx ἐν μέτρῳ, Symmachus μέτρῳ); for a third of an ephah is certainly a very small measure for the dust of the earth (Isa 40:12), but a large one for tears. The neighbours are the neighbouring nations, to whom Israel is become מדון, an object, a butt of contention. In למו is expressed the pleasure which the mocking gives them.

Verses 8-19

The complaint now assumes a detailing character in this strophe, inasmuch as it contrasts the former days with the present; and the ever more and more importunate prayer moulds itself in accordance therewith. The retrospective description begins, as is rarely the case, with the second modus, inasmuch as “the speaker thinks more of the bare nature of the act than of the time” (Ew. §136, b). As in the blessing of Jacob (Gen 49:22) Joseph is compared to the layer (בּן) of a fruitful growth (פּרת), whose shoots (בּנות) climb over the wall: so here Israel is compared to a vine (Gen 49:22; גּפן פּריּח, Psa 128:3), which has become great in Egypt and been transplanted thence into the Land of Promise. הסּיע, lxx μεταίρειν, as in Job 19:10, perhaps with an allusion to the מסעים of the people journeying to Canaan (Psa 78:52).^[58]
Here God made His vine a way and a place (פּנּהּ, to clear, from פּנה, to turn, turn aside, Arabic fanija, to disappear, pass away; root פן, to urge forward), and after He had secured to it a free soil and unchecked possibility of extension, it (the vine) rooted its roots, i.e., struck them ever deeper and wider, and filled the earth round about (cf. the antitype in the final days, Isa 27:6). The Israelitish kingdom of God extended itself on every side in accordance with the promise. תּשׁלּח (cf. Eze 17:6, and vegetable שׁלח, a shoot) also has the vine as its subject, like תּשׁרשׁ. Psa 80:11-12 state this in a continued allegory, by the “mountains” pointing to the southern boundary, by the “cedars” to the northern, by the “sea” to the western, and by the “river” (Euphrates) to the eastern boundary of the country (vid., Deu 11:24 and other passages). צלּהּ and ענפיה are accusatives of the so-called more remote object (Ges. §143, 1). קציר is a cutting = a branch; יונקת, a (vegetable) sucker = a young, tender shoot; ארזי־אל, the cedars of Lebanon as being living monuments of the creative might of God. The allegory exceeds the measure of the reality of nature, inasmuch as this is obliged to be extended according to the reality of that which is typified and historical. But how unlike to the former times is the present! The poet asks “wherefore?” for the present state of things is a riddle to him. The surroundings of the vine are torn down; all who come in contact with it pluck it (ארה, to pick off, pluck off, Talmudic of the gathering of figs); the boar out of the wood (מיער with עין תלויה, Ajin)^[59] cuts it off (כּרסם, formed out of כּסם = גּזם^[60] viz., with its tusks; and that which moves about the fields (vid., concerning זיז, Psa 50:11), i.e., the untractable, lively wild beast, devours it. Without doubt the poet associates a distinct nation with the wild boar in his mind; for animals are also in other instances the emblems of nations, as e.g., the leviathan, the water-serpent, the behemoth (Isa 30:6), and flies (Isa 7:18) are emblems of Egypt. The Midrash interprets it of Seîr-Edom, and זיז שׂדי, according to Gen 16:12, of the nomadic Arabs.
In Psa 80:15 the prayer begins for the third time with threefold urgency, supplicating for the vine renewed divine providence, and a renewal of the care of divine grace. We have divided the verse differently from the accentuation, since שׁוּב־נא הבּט is to be understood according to Ges. §142. The junction by means of ו is at once opposed to the supposition that וכּנּה in Psa 80:16 signifies a slip or plant, plantam (Targum, Syriac, Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, and others), and that consequently the whole of Psa 80:16 is governed by וּפקד. Nor can it mean its (the vine's) stand or base, כּן (Böttcher), since one does not plant a “stand.” The lxx renders וכנה: καὶ κατάρτισαι, which is imper. aor. 1. med., therefore in the sense of כּוננה.^[61]
But the alternation of על (cf. Pro 2:11, and Arab. jn ‛lâ, to cover over) with the accusative of the object makes it more natural to derive כנה, not from כּנן = כּוּן, but from כּנן Arab. kanna = גּנן, to cover, conceal, protect (whence Arab. kinn, a covering, shelter, hiding-place): and protect him whom...or: protect what Thy right hand has planted. The pointing certainly seems to take כנה as the feminine of כּן (lxx, Dan 11:7, φυτόν); for an imperat. paragog. Kal of the form כּנּה does not occur elsewhere, although it might have been regarded by the punctuists as possible from the form גּל, volve, Psa 119:22. If it is regarded as impossible, then one might read כנּה. At any rate the word is imperative, as the following אשׁר, eum quem, also shows, instead of which, if כנה were a substantive, one would expect to find a relative clause without אשׁר, as in Psa 80:16. Moreover Psa 80:16 requires this, since פּקד על can only be used of visiting with punishment. And who then would the slip (branch) and the son of man be in distinction from the vine? If we take בנה as imperative, then, as one might expect, the vine and the son of man are both the people of God. The Targum renders Psa 80:16 thus: “and upon the King Messiah, whom Thou hast established for Thyself,” after Psa 2:1-12 and Dan 7:13; but, as in the latter passage, it is not the Christ Himself, but the nation out of which He is to proceed, that is meant. אמּץ has the sense of firm appropriation, as in Isa 44:14, inasmuch as the notion of making fast passes over into that of laying firm hold of, of seizure. Rosenmüller well renders it: quem adoptatum tot nexibus tibi adstrinxisti.
The figure of the vine, which rules all the language here, is also still continued in Psa 80:17; for the partt. fem. refer to גּפן ot refer, - the verb, however, may take the plural form, because those of Israel are this “vine,” which combusta igne, succisa (as in Isa 33:12; Aramaic, be cut off, tear off, in Psa 80:13 the Targum word for ארה; Arabic, ksḥ, to clear away, peel off), is just perishing, or hangs in danger of destruction (יאבדוּ) before the threatening of the wrathful countenance of God. The absence of anything to denote the subject, and the form of expression, which still keeps within the circle of the figure of the vine, forbid us to understand this Psa 80:17 of the extirpation of the foes. According to the sense תּהי־ידך על^[62] coincides with the supplicatory כנה על. It is Israel that is called בּן in Psa 80:16, as being the son whom Jahve has called into being in Egypt, and then called out of Egypt to Himself and solemnly declared to be His son on Sinai (Exo 4:22; Hos 11:1), and who is now, with a play upon the name of Benjamin in Psa 80:3 (cf. Psa 80:16), called אישׁ ימינך, as being the people which Jahve has preferred before others, and has placed at His right hand^[63] for the carrying out of His work of salvation; who is called, however, at the same time בּן־אדם, because belonging to a humanity that is feeble in itself, and thoroughly conditioned and dependent. It is not the more precise designation of the “son of man” that is carried forward by ולא־נסוג, “and who has not drawn back from Thee” (Hupfeld, Hitzig, and others), but it is, as the same relation which is repeated in Psa 80:19 shows, the apodosis of the preceding petition: then shall we never depart from Thee; נסוג being not a participle, as in Psa 44:19, but a plene written voluntative: recedamus, vowing new obedience as thanksgiving of the divine preservation. To the prayer in Psa 80:18 corresponds, then, the prayer תּחיּנוּ, which is expressed as future (which can rarely be avoided, Ew. §229), with a vow of thanksgiving likewise following: then will we call with Thy name, i.e., make it the medium and matter of solemn proclamation. In v. 20 the refrain of this Psalm, which is laid out as a trilogy, is repeated for the third time. The name of God is here threefold.

Psalm 81

==Easter Festival Salutation and Discourse==

Ps 80, which looks back into the time of the leading forth out of Egypt, is followed by another with the very same Asaphic thoroughly characteristic feature of a retrospective glance at Israel's early history (cf. More particularly Psa 81:11 with Psa 80:9). In Psalms 81 the lyric element of Ps 77 is combined with the didactic element of Ps 78. The unity of these Psalms is indubitable. All three have towards the close the appearance of being fragmentary. Fro the author delights to ascend to the height of his subject and to go down into the depth of it, without returning to the point from which he started. In Ps 77 Israel as a whole was called “the sons of Jacob and Joseph;” in Ps 78 we read “the sons of Ephraim” instead of the whole nation; here it is briefly called “Joseph.” This also indicates the one author. Then Psalms 81, exactly like Psa 79:1-13, is based upon the Pentateuchal history in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Jahve Himself speaks through the mouth of the poet, as He did once through the mouth of Moses - Asaph is κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν the prophet (חזה) among the psalmists. The transition from one form of speech to another which accompanies the rapid alternation of feelings, what the Arabs call talwı̂n el - chitab, “a colouring of a speech by a change of the persons,” is also characteristic of him, as later on of Micah (e.g., Mic 6:15.).
This Psalms 81 is according to ancient custom the Jewish New Year's Psalm, the Psalm of the Feast of Trumpets (Num 29:1), therefore the Psalm of the first (and second) of Tishri; it is, however, a question whether the blowing of the horn (shophar) at the new moon, which it calls upon them to do, does not rather apply to the first of Nisan, to the ecclesiastical New Year. In the weekly liturgy of the Temple it was the Psalm for the Thursday.
The poet calls upon them to give a jubilant welcome to the approaching festive season, and in Psa 81:7. Jahve Himself makes Himself heard as the Preacher of the festival. He reminds those now living of His loving-kindness towards ancient Israel, and admonishes them not to incur the guilt of like unfaithfulness, in order that they may not lose the like tokens of His loving-kindness. What festive season is it? Either the Feast of the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles; for it must be one of these two feasts which begin on the day of the full moon. Because it is one having reference to the redemption of Israel out of Egypt, the Targum, Talmud (more particularly Rosh ha - Shana, where this Psalm is much discussed), Midrash, and Sohar understand the Feast of Tabernacles; because Psa 81:2-4 seem to refer to the new moon of the seventh month, which is celebrated before the other new moons (Num 10:10), as יום התּרוּעה (Num 29:1, cf. Lev 23:24), i.e., to the first of Tishri, the civil New Year; and the blowing of horns at the New Year, is, certainly not according to Scripture, but yet according to tradition (vid., Maimonides, Hilchoth Shophar Psa 1:2), a very ancient arrangement. Nevertheless we must give up this reference of the Psalm to the first of Tishri and to the Feast of Tabernacles, which begins with the fifteenth of Tishri: - (1) Because between the high feast-day of the first of Tishri and the Feast of Tabernacles on the fifteenth to the twenty-first (twenty-second) of Tishri lies the great day of Atonement on the tenth of Tishri, which would be ignored, by greeting the festive season with a joyful noise from the first of Tishri forthwith to the fifteenth. (2) Because the remembrance of the redemption of Israel clings far more characteristically to the Feast of the Passover than to the Feast of Tabernacles. This latter appears in the oldest law-giving (Exo 23:16; Exo 34:22) as חג האסיף, i.e., as a feast of the ingathering of the autumn fruits, and therefore as the closing festival of the whole harvest; it does not receive the historical reference to the journey through the desert, and therewith its character of a feast of booths or arbours, until the addition in Lev 23:39-44, having reference to the carrying out of the celebration of the feasts in Canaan; whereas the feast which begins with the full moon of Nisan has, it is true, not been entirely free of all reference to agriculture, but from the very beginning bears the historical names פּסח and חג המּצּות. (3) Because in the Psalm itself, viz., in Psa 81:6, allusion is made to the fact which the Passover commemorates.
Concerning על־הגּתּית vid., on Psa 8:1. The symmetrical, stichic plan of the Psalm is clear: the schema is 11. 12. 12.

Verses 1-5

The summons in Psa 81:2 is addressed to the whole congregation, inasmuch as הריעוּ is not intended of the clanging of the trumpets, but as in Ezr 3:11, and frequently. The summons in Psa 81:3 is addressed to the Levites, the appointed singers and musicians in connection with the divine services, 2Ch 5:12, and frequently. The summons in Psa 81:4 is addressed to the priests, to whom was committed not only the blowing of the two (later on a hundred and twenty, vid., 2Ch 5:12) silver trumpets, but who appear also in Jos 6:4 and elsewhere (cf. Psa 47:6 with 2Ch 20:28) as the blowers of the shophar. The Talmud observes that since the destruction of the Temple the names of instruments שׁופרא and חצוצרתּא are wont to be confounded one for the other (B. Sabbath 36a, Succa 34a), and, itself confounding them, infers from Num 10:10 the duty and significance of the blowing of the shophar (B. Erachin 3b). The lxx also renders both by σάλπιγξ; but the Biblical language mentions שׁופר and חצצרה, a horn (more especially a ram's horn) and a (metal) trumpet, side by side in Psa 98:6; 1Ch 15:28, and is therefore conscious of a difference between them. The Tôra says nothing of the employment of the shophar in connection with divine service, except that the commencement of every fiftieth year, which on this very account is called שׁנת היּבל, annus buccinae, is to be made known by the horn signal throughout all the land (Lev 25:9). But just as tradition by means of an inference from analogy derives the blowing of the shophar on the first of Tishri, the beginning of the common year, from this precept, so on the ground of the passage of the Psalm before us, assuming that בּחרשׁ, lxx ἐν νεομηνίᾳ, refers not to the first of Tishri but to the first of Nisan, we may suppose that the beginning of every month, but, in particular, the beginning of the month which was at the same time the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, was celebrated by a blowing of the shophar, as, according to Josephus, Bell. iv. 9, 12, the beginning and close of the Sabbath was announced from the top of the Temple by a priest with the salpinx. The poet means to say that the Feast of the Passover is to be saluted by the congregation with shouts of joy, by the Levites with music, and even beginning from the new moon (neomenia) of the Passover month with blowing of shophars, and that this is to be continued at the Feast of the Passover itself. The Feast of the Passover, for which Hupfeld devises a gloomy physiognomy,^[64] was a joyous festival, the Old Testament Christmas. 2Ch 30:21 testifies to the exultation of the people and the boisterous music of the Levite priests, with which it was celebrated. According to Num 10:10, the trumpeting of the priests was connected with the sacrifices; and that the slaying of the paschal lambs took place amidst the Tantaratan of the priests (long-drawn notes interspersed with sharp shrill ones, תקיעה תרועה וקיעה), is expressly related of the post-exilic service at least.^[65]
The phrase נתן תּף proceeds from the phrase נתן קול, according to which נתן directly means: to attune, strike up, cause to be heard. Concerning כּסה (Pro 7:20 כּסא) tradition is uncertain. The Talmudic interpretation (B. Rosh ha-Shana 8b, Betza 16a, and the Targum which is taken from it), according to which it is the day of the new moon (the first of the month), on which the moon hides itself, i.e., is not to be seen at all in the morning, and in the evening only for a short time immediately after sunset, and the interpretation that is adopted by a still more imposing array of authorities (lxx, Vulgate, Menahem, Rashi, Jacob Tam, Aben-Ezra, Parchon, and others), according to which a time fixed by computation (from כּסה = כּסס, computare) is so named in general, are outweighed by the usage of the Syriac, in which Keso denotes the full moon as the moon with covered, i.e., filled-up orb, and therefore the fifteenth of the month, but also the time from that point onwards, perhaps because then the moon covers itself, inasmuch as its shining surface appears each day less large (cf. the Peshîto, 1Ki 12:32 of the fifteenth day of the eighth month, 2Ch 7:10 of the twenty-third day of the seventh month, in both instances of the Feast of Tabernacles), after which, too, in the passage before us it is rendered wa - b - kese, which a Syro-Arabic glossary (in Rosenmüller) explains festa quae sunt in medio mensis. The Peshîto here, like the Targum, proceeds from the reading חגּינוּ, which, following the lxx and the best texts, is to be rejected in comparison with the singular חגּנוּ. If, however, it is to be read chgnw, and כּסה (according to Kimchi with Segol not merely in the second syllable, but with double Segol כּסה, after the form טנא = טנא) signifies not interlunium, but plenilunium (instead of which also Jerome has in medio mense, and in Pro 7:20, in die plenae lunae, Aquila ἡμέρᾳ πανσελήνου), then what is meant is either the Feast of Tabernacles, which is called absolutely החג in 1Ki 8:2 (2Ch 5:3) and elsewhere, or the Passover, which is also so called in Isa 30:29 and elsewhere. Here, as Psa 81:5 will convince us, the latter is intended, the Feast of unleavened bread, the porch of which, so to speak, is ערב פּסח together with the ליל שׁמּרים (Exo 12:42), the night from the fourteenth to the fifteenth of Nisan. In Psa 81:2, Psa 81:3 they are called upon to give a welcome to this feast. The blowing of the shophar is to announce the commencement of the Passover month, and at the commencement of the Passover day which opens the Feast of unleavened bread it is to be renewed. The ל of ליום is not meant temporally, as perhaps in Job 21:30 : at the day = on the day; for why was it not ביום? It is rather: towards the day, but בכסה assumes that the day has already arrived; it is the same Lamed as in Psa 81:2, the blowing of the shophar is to concern this feast-day, it is to sound in honour of it.

Verses 4-5

Psa 81:4-5 now tell whence the feast which is to be met with singing and music has acquired such a high significance: it is a divine institution coming from the time of the redemption by the hand of Moses. It is called חק as being a legally sanctioned decree, משׁפּט as being a lawfully binding appointment, and עדוּת as being a positive declaration of the divine will. The ל in לישׂראל characterizes Israel as the receiver, in לאלהי the God of Israel as the owner, i.e., Author and Lawgiver. By בּצעתו the establishing of the statute is dated back to the time of the Exodus; but the statement of the time of its being established, “when He went out over the land of Egypt,” cannot be understood of the Exodus of the people out of Egypt, natural as this may be here, where Israel has just been called יהוסף (pathetic for יוסף), by a comparison with Gen 41:45, where Joseph is spoken of in the same words. For this expression does not describe the going forth out of a country, perhaps in the sight of its inhabitants, Num 33:3, cf. Exo 14:8 (Hengstenberg), but the going out over a country. Elohim is the subject, and צאת is to be understood according to Exo 11:4 (Kimchi, De Dieu, Dathe, Rosenmüller, and others): when He went out for judgment over the land of Egypt (cf. Mic 1:3). This statement of the time of itself at once decides the reference of the Psalm to the Passover, which commemorates the sparing of Israel at that time (Exo 12:27), and which was instituted on that very night of judgment. The accentuation divides the verse correctly. According to this, שׂפת לא־ידעתּי אשׁמע is not a relative clause to מצרים: where I heard a language that I understood not (Psa 114:1). Certainly ידע שׂפה, “to understand a language,” is an expression that is in itself not inadmissible (cf. ידע ספר, to understand writing, to be able to read, Isa 29:11.), the selection of which instead of the more customary phrase שׁמע לשׁון (Deu 28:49; Isa 33:19; Jer 5:15) might be easily intelligible here beside אשׁמע; but the omission of the שׁם (אשׁר) is harsh, the thought it here purposeless, and excluded with our way of taking בצאתו. From the speech of God that follows it is evident that the clause is intended to serve as an introduction of this divine speech, whether it now be rendered sermonem quem non novi (cf. Psa 18:44, populus quem non novi), or alicujus, quem non novi (Ges. §123, rem. 1), both of which are admissible. It is not in some way an introduction to the following speech of God as one which it has been suddenly given to the psalmist to hear: “An unknown language, or the language of one unknown, do I hear?” Thus Döderlein explains it: Subitanea et digna poetico impetu digressio, cum vates sese divino adflatu subito perculsum sentit et oraculum audire sibi persuadet; and in the same way De Wette, Olshausen, Hupfeld, and others. But the oracle of God cannot appear so strange to the Israelitish poet and seer as the spirit-voice to Eliphaz (Job 4:16); and moreover אשׁמע after the foregoing historical predicates has the presumption of the imperfect signification in its favour. Thus, then, it will have to be interpreted according to Exo 6:2. It was the language of a known, but still also unknown God, which Israel heard in the redemption of that period. It was the God who had been made manifest as יהוה only, so to speak, by way of prelude hitherto, who now appeared at this juncture of the patriarchal history, which had been all along kept in view, in the marvellous and new light of the judgment which was executed upon Egypt, and of the protection, redemption, and election of Israel, as being One hitherto unknown, as the history of salvation actually then, having arrived at Sinai, receives an entirely new form, inasmuch as from this time onwards the congregation or church is a nation, and Jahve the King of a nation, and the bond of union between them a national law educating it for the real, vital salvation that is to come. The words of Jahve that follow are now not the words heard then in the time of the Exodus. The remembrance of the words heard forms only a transition to those that now make themselves heard. For when the poet remembers the language which He who reveals Himself in a manner never before seen and heard of spoke to His people at that time, the Ever-living One Himself, who is yesterday and to-day the same One, speaks in order to remind His people of what He was to them then, and of what He spake to them then.

Verses 6-10

It is a gentle but profoundly earnest festival discourse which God the Redeemer addresses to His redeemed people. It begins, as one would expect in a Passover speech, with a reference to the סבלות of Egypt (Exo 1:11-14; Exo 5:4; Exo 6:6.), and to the duwd, the task-basket for the transport of the clay and of the bricks (Exo 1:14; Exo 5:7.).^[66]
Out of such distress did He free the poor people who cried for deliverance (Exo 2:23-25); He answered them בּסתר רעם, i.e., not (according to Psa 22:22; Isa 32:2): affording them protection against the storm, but (according to Psa 18:12; Psa 77:17.): out of the thunder-clouds in which He at the same time revealed and veiled Himself, casting down the enemies of Israel with His lightnings, which is intended to refer pre-eminently to the passage through the Red Sea (vid., Psa 77:19); and He proved them (אבחנך, with ŏ contracted from ō, cf. on Job 35:6) at the waters of Merîbah, viz., whether they would trust Him further on after such glorious tokens of His power and lovingkindness. The name “Waters of Merı̂bah,” which properly is borne only by Merı̂bath Kadesh, the place of the giving of water in the fortieth year (Num 20:13; Num 27:14; Deu 32:51; Deu 33:8), is here transferred to the place of the giving of water in the first year, which was named Massah u - Merı̂bah (Exo 17:7), as the remembrances of these two miracles, which took place under similar circumstances, in general blend together (vid., on Psa 95:8.). It is not now said that Israel did not act in response to the expectation of God, who had son wondrously verified Himself; the music, as Seal imports, here rises, and makes a long and forcible pause in what is being said. What now follows further, are, as the further progress of Psa 81:12 shows, the words of God addressed to the Israel of the desert, which at the same time with its faithfulness are brought to the remembrance of the Israel of the present. העיד בּ, as in Psa 50:7; Deu 8:19, to bear testimony that concerns him against any one. אם (according to the sense, o si, as in Psa 95:7, which is in many ways akin to this Psalm) properly opens a searching question which wishes that the thing asked may come about (whether thou wilt indeed give me a willing hearing?!). In Psa 81:10 the key-note of the revelation of the Law from Sinai is struck: the fundamental command which opens the decalogue demanded fidelity to Jahve and forbade idol-worship as the sin of sins. אל זר is an idol in opposition to the God of Israel as the true God; and אל נכר, a strange god in opposition to the true God as the God of Israel. To this one God Israel ought to yield itself all the more undividedly and heartily as it was more manifestly indebted entirely to Him, who in His condescension had chosen it, and in His wonder-working might had redeemed it (המּעלך, part. Hiph. with the eh elided, like הפּדך, Deu 13:6, and אכלך, from כּלּה, Exo 33:3); and how easy this submission ought to have been to it, since He desired nothing in return for the rich abundance of His good gifts, which satisfy and quicken body and soul, but only a wide-opened mouth, i.e., a believing longing, hungering for mercy and eager for salvation (Psa 119:131)!

Verses 11-16

The Passover discourse now takes a sorrowful and awful turn: Israel's disobedience and self-will frustrated the gracious purpose of the commandments and promises of its God. “My people” and “Israel” alternate as in the complaint in Isa 1:3. לא־אבה followed by the dative, as in Deu 13:9 ([8], ου ̓ συνθελήσεις αὐτῷ). Then God made their sin their punishment, by giving them over judicially (שׁלּח as in Job 8:4) into the obduracy of their heart, which rudely shuts itself up against His mercy (from שׁרר, Aramaic שׁרר, Arabic sarra, to make firm = to cheer, make glad), so that they went on (cf. on the sequence of tense, Psa 61:8) in their, i.e., their own, egotistical, God-estranged determinations; the suffix is thus accented, as e.g., in Isa 65:2, cf. the borrowed passage Jer 7:24, and the same phrase in Mic 6:16. And now, because this state of unfaithfulness in comparison with God's faithfulness has remained essentially the same even to to-day, the exalted Orator of the festival passes over forthwith to the generation of the present, and that, as is in accordance with the cheerful character of the feast, in a charmingly alluring manner. Whether we take לוּ in the signification of si (followed by the participle, as in 2Sa 18:12), or like אם above in Psa 81:9 as expressing a wish, o si (if but!), Psa 81:15. at any rate have the relation of the apodosis to it. From כּמעט (for a little, easily) it may be conjectured that the relation of Israel at that time to the nations did not correspond to the dignity of the nation of God which is called to subdue and rule the world in the strength of God. השׁיב signifies in this passage only to turn, not: to again lay upon. The meaning is, that He would turn the hand which is now chastening His people against those by whom He is chastening them (cf. on the usual meaning of the phrase, Isa 1:25; Amo 1:8; Jer 6:9; Eze 38:12). The promise in Psa 81:16 relates to Israel and all the members of the nation. The haters of Jahve would be compelled reluctantly to submit themselves to Him, and their time would endure for ever. “Time” is equivalent to duration, and in this instance with the collateral notion of Prosperity, as elsewhere (Isa 13:22) of the term of punishment. One now expects that it should continue with ואאכילהוּ, in the tone of a promise. The Psalm, however, closes with an historical statement. For ויּאכילהו cannot signifyet cibaret eum; it ought to be pronounced ויאכילהו. The pointing, like the lxx, Syriac, and Vulgate, takes v. 17a (cf. Deu 32:13.) as a retrospect, and apparently rightly so. For even the Asaphic Ps 77 and 78 break off with historical pictures. V. 17b is, accordingly, also to be taken as retrospective. The words of the poet in conclusion once more change into the words of God. The closing word runs אשׂבּיעך, as in Psa 50:8, Deu 4:31, and (with the exception of the futt. Hiph. of Lamed He verbs ending with ekka) usually. The Babylonian system of pointing nowhere recognises the suffix-form ekka. If the Israel of the present would hearken to the Lawgiver of Sinai, says v. 17, then would He renew to it the miraculous gifts of the time of the redemption under Moses. God's Judgment upon the Gods of the Earth
As in Ps 81, so also in this Psalm (according to the Talmud the Tuesday Psalm of the Temple liturgy) God is introduced as speaking after the manner of the prophets. Psa 58:1-11 and 94 are similar, but more especially Isa 3:13-15. Asaph the seer beholds how God, reproving, correcting, and threatening, appears against the chiefs of the congregation of His people, who have perverted the splendour of majesty which He has put upon them into tyranny. It is perfectly characteristic of Asaph (Ps 50; Psa 75:1-10; Ps 81) to plunge himself into the contemplation of the divine judgment, and to introduce God as speaking. There is nothing to militate against the Psalm being written by Asaph, David's contemporary, except the determination not to allow to the לאסף of the inscription its most natural sense. Hupfeld, understanding “angels” by the elohim, as Bleek has done before him, inscribes the Psalm: “God's judgment upon unjust judges in heaven and upon earth.” But the angels as such are nowhere called elohim in the Old Testament, although they might be so called; and their being judged here on account of unjust judging, Hupfeld himself says, is “an obscure point that is still to be cleared up.” An interpretation which, like this, abandons the usage of the language in order to bring into existence a riddle that it cannot solve, condemns itself. At the same time the assertion of Hupfeld (of Knobel, Graf, and others), that in Exo 21:5; Exo 22:7., Ex 27,<,^[67] אלהים denotes God Himself, and not directly the authorities of the nation as being His earthly representatives, finds its most forcible refutation in the so-called and mortal elohim of this Psalm (cf. also Psa 45:7; Psa 58:2).
By reference to this Psalm Jesus proves to the Jews (Joh 10:34-36) that when He calls Himself the Son of God, He does not blaspheme God, by an argumentatio a minori ad majus. If the Law, so He argues, calls even those gods who are officially invested with this name by a declaration of the divine will promulgated in time (and the Scripture cannot surely, as in general, so also in this instance, be made invalid), then it cannot surely be blasphemy if He calls Himself the Son of God, whom not merely a divine utterance in this present time has called to this or to that worldly office after the image of God, but who with His whole life is ministering to the accomplishment of a work to which the Father had already sanctified Him when He came into the world. In connection with ἡγίασε one is reminded of the fact that those who are called elohim in the Psalm are censured on account of the unholiness of their conduct. The name does not originally belong to them, nor do they show themselves to be morally worthy of it. With ἡγίασε καὶ ἀπέστειλεν Jesus contrasts His divine sonship, prior to time, with theirs, which began only in this present time.

Psalm 82

Verses 1-4

God comes forward and makes Himself heard first of all as censuring and admonishing. The “congregation of God” is, as in Num 27:17; Num 31:16; Jos 22:16., “the congregation of (the sons of) Israel,” which God has purchased from among the nations (Psa 74:2), and upon which as its Lawgiver He has set His divine impress. The psalmist and seer sees Elohim standing in this congregation of God. The part. Niph. (as in Isa 3:13) denotes not so much the suddenness and unpreparedness, as, rather, the statue-like immobility and terrifying designfulness of His appearance. Within the range of the congregation of God this holds good of the elohim. The right over life and death, with which the administration of justice cannot dispense, is a prerogative of God. From the time of Gen 9:6, however, He has transferred the execution of this prerogative to mankind, and instituted in mankind an office wielding the sword of justice, which also exists in His theocratic congregation, but here has His positive law as the basis of its continuance and as the rule of its action. Everywhere among men, but here pre-eminently, those in authority are God's delegates and the bearers of His image, and therefore as His representatives are also themselves called elohim, “gods” (which the lxx in Exo 21:6 renders τὸ κριτήριον τοῦ Θεοῦ, and the Targums here, as in Exo 22:7-8, Exo 22:27 uniformly, דּיּניּא). The God who has conferred this exercise of power upon these subordinate elohim, without their resigning it of themselves, now sits in judgment in their midst. ישׁפּט of that which takes place before the mind's eye of the psalmist. How long, He asks, will ye judge unjustly? שׁפט עול is equivalent to עשׂה עול בּמּשׁפּט, Lev 19:15, Lev 19:35 (the opposite is שׁפט מישׁרים, Psa 58:2). How long will ye accept the countenance of the wicked, i.e., incline to accept, regard, favour the person of the wicked? The music, which here becomes forte, gives intensity to the terrible sternness (das Niederdonnernde) of the divine question, which seeks to bring the “gods” of the earth to their right mind. Then follow admonitions to do that which they have hitherto left undone. They are to cause the benefit of the administration of justice to tend to the advantage of the defenceless, of the destitute, and of the helpless, upon whom God the Lawgiver especially keeps His eye. The word רשׁ (ראשׁ), of which there is no evidence until within the time of David and Solomon, is synonymous with אביון. דל with ויתום is pointed דל, and with ואביון, on account of the closer notional union, דל (as in Psa 72:13). They are words which are frequently repeated in the prophets, foremost in Isaiah (Isa 1:17), with which is enjoined upon those invested with the dignity of the law, and with jurisdiction, justice towards those who cannot and will not themselves obtain their rights by violence.

Verses 5-7

What now follows in Psa 82:5 is not a parenthetical assertion of the inefficiency with which the divine correction rebounds from the judges and rulers. In connection with this way of taking Psa 82:5, the manner in which the divine language is continued in Psa 82:6 is harsh and unadjusted. God Himself speaks in Psa 82:5 of the judges, but reluctantly alienated from them; and confident of the futility of all attempts to make them better, He tells them their sentence in Psa 82:6. The verbs in Psa 82:5 are designedly without any object: complaint of the widest compass is made over their want of reason and understanding; and ידעו takes the perfect form in like manner to ἐγνώκασι, noverunt, cf. Psa 14:1; Isa 44:18. Thus, then, no result is to be expected from the divine admonition: they still go their ways in this state of mental darkness, and that, as the Hithpa. implies, stalking on in carnal security and self-complacency. The commands, however, which they transgress are the foundations (cf. Psa 11:3), as it were the shafts and pillars (Psa 75:4, cf. Pro 29:4), upon which rests the permanence of all earthly relationships with are appointed by creation and regulated by the Tôra. Their transgression makes the land, the earth, to totter physically and morally, and is the prelude of its overthrow. When the celestial Lord of the domain thinks upon this destruction which injustice and tyranny are bringing upon the earth, His wrath kindles, and He reminds the judges and rulers that it is His own free declaratory act which has clothed them with the god-like dignity which they bear. They are actually elohim, but not possessed of the right of self-government; there is a Most High (עליון) to whom they as sons are responsible. The idea that the appellation elohim, which they have given to themselves, is only sarcastically given back to them in Psa 82:1 (Ewald, Olshausen), is refuted by Psa 82:6, according to which they are really elohim by the grace of God. But if their practice is not an Amen to this name, then they shall be divested of the majesty which they have forfeited; they shall be divested of the prerogative of Israel, whose vocation and destiny they have belied. They shall die off כּאדם, like common men not rising in any degree above the mass (cf. בּני אדם, opp. בּני אישׁ, Psa 4:3; Psa 49:3); they shall fall like any one (Jdg 16:7, Oba 1:11) of the princes who in the course of history have been cast down by the judgment of God (Hos 7:7). Their divine office will not protect them. For although justitia civilis is far from being the righteousness that avails before God, yet injustitia civilis is in His sight the vilest abomination.

Verse 8

The poet closes with the prayer for the realization of that which he has beheld in spirit. He implored God Himself to sit in judgment (שׁפטה as in Lam 3:59), since judgment is so badly exercised upon the earth. All peoples are indeed His נחלה, He has an hereditary and proprietary right among (lxx and Vulgate according to Num 18:20, and frequently), or rather in (בּ as in משׁל בּ, instead of the accusative of the object, Zec 2:11), all nations (ἔθνη) - may He then be pleased to maintain it judicially. The inference drawn from this point backwards, that the Psalm is directed against the possessors of power among the Gentiles, is erroneous. Israel itself, in so far as it acts inconsistently with its theocratic character, belies its sanctified nationality, is a גוי like the גוים, and is put into the same category with these. The judgment over the world is also a judgment over the Israel that is become conformed to the world, and its God-estranged chiefs.

Psalm 83

== Battle-Cry to God against Allied Peoples==

The close of this Psalm is in accord with the close of the preceding Psalm. It is the last of the twelve Psalms of Asaph of the Psalter. The poet supplicates help against the many nations which have allied themselves with the descendants of Lot, i.e., Moab and Ammon, to entirely root out Israel as a nation. Those who are fond of Maccabaean Psalms (Hitzig and Olshausen), after the precedent of van Til and von Bengel, find the circumstances of the time of the Psalm in 1 Macc. 5, and Grimm is also inclined to regard this as correct; and in point of fact the deadly hostility of the ἔθνη κυκλόθεν which we there see breaking forth on all sides,^[68] as it were at a given signal, against the Jewish people, who have become again independent, and after the dedication of the Temple doubly self-conscious, is far better suited to explain the Psalm than the hostile efforts of Sanballat, Tobiah, and others to hinder the rebuilding of Jerusalem, in the time of Nehemiah (Vaihinger, Ewald, and Dillmann). There is, however, still another incident beside that recorded in 1 Macc. 5 to which the Psalm may be referred, viz., the confederation of the nations for the extinction of Judah in the time of Jehoshaphat (2 Chr. 20), and, as it seems to us, with comparatively speaking less constraint. For the Psalm speaks of a real league, whilst in 1 Macc. 5 the several nations made the attack without being allied and not jointly; then, as the Psalm assumes in Psa 83:9, the sons of Lot, i.e., the Moabites and Ammonites, actually were at the head at that time, whilst in 1 Macc. 5 the sons of Esau occupy the most prominent place; and thirdly, at that time, in the time of Jehoshaphat, as is recorded, an Asaphite, viz., Jahaziël, did actually interpose in the course of events, a circumstance which coincides remarkably with the לאסף. The league of that period consisted, according to 2Ch 20:1, of Moabites, Ammonites, and a part of the מעוּנים (as it is to be read after the lxx). But 2Ch 20:2 (where without any doubt מאדם is to be read instead of מארם) adds the Edomites to their number, for it is expressly stated further on (2Ch 20:10, 2Ch 20:22, 2Ch 20:23) that the inhabitants of Mount Seïr were with them. Also, supposing of course that the “Ishmaelites” and “Hagarenes” of the Psalm may be regarded as an unfolding of the מעונים, which is confirmed by Josephus, Antiq. ix. 1. 2; and that Gebäl is to be understood by the Mount Seïr of the chronicler, which is confirmed by the Arab. jibâl still in use at the present day, there always remains a difficulty in the fact that the Psalm also names Amalek , Philistia , Tyre, and Asshur, of which we find no mention there in the reign of Jehoshaphat. But these difficulties are counter-balanced by others that beset the reference to 1 Macc. 5, viz., that in the time of the Seleucidae the Amalekites no longer existed, and consequently, as might be expected, are not mentioned at all in 1 Macc. 5; further, that there the Moabites, too, are no longer spoken of, although some formerly Moabitish cities of Gileaditis are mentioned; and thirdly, that אשׁור = Syria (a certainly possible usage of the word) appears in a subordinate position, whereas it was, however, the dominant power. On the other hand, the mention of Amalek is intelligible in connection with the reference to 2 Chr. 20, and the absence of its express mention in the chronicler does not make itself particularly felt in consideration of Gen 36:12. Philistia, Tyre, and Asshur, however, stand at the end in the Psalm, and might also even be mentioned with the others if they rendered aid to the confederates of the south-east without taking part with them in the campaign, as being a succour to the actual leaders of the enterprise, the sons of Lot. We therefore agree with the reference of Psalms 83 (as also of Psa 48:1-14) to the alliance of the neighbouring nations against Judah in the reign of Jehoshaphat, which has been already recognised by Kimchi and allowed by Keil, Hengstenberg, and Movers.

Verses 1-4

The poet prays, may God not remain an inactive looker-on in connection with the danger of destruction that threatens His people. דּמי (with which יהי is to be supplied) is the opposite of alertness; חרשׁ the opposite of speaking (in connection with which it is assumed that God's word is at the same time deed); שׁקט the opposite of being agitated and activity. The energetic future jehemajûn gives outward emphasis to the confirmation of the petition, and the fact that Israel's foes are the foes of God gives inward emphasis to it. On נשׂא ראשׁ, cf. Psa 110:7. סוד is here a secret agreement; and יערימוּ, elsewhere to deal craftily, here signifies to craftily plot, devise, bring a thing about. צפוּניך is to be understood according to Psa 27:5; Psa 31:21. The Hithpa. התיעץ alternates here with the more ancient Niph. (Psa 83:6). The design of the enemies in this instance has reference to the total extirpation of Israel, of the separatist-people who exclude themselves from the life of the world and condemn it. מגּוי, from being a people = so that it may no longer be a people or nation, as in Isa 7:8; Isa 17:1; Isa 25:2; Jer 48:42. In the borrowed passage, Jer 48:2, by an interchange of a letter it is נכריתנּה. This Asaph Psalm is to be discerned in not a few passages of the prophets; cf. Isa 62:6. with Psa 83:2, Isa 17:12 with Psa 83:3.

Verses 5-8

Instead of לב אחד, 1Ch 12:38, it is deliberant corde unâ, inasmuch as יחדּו on the one hand gives intensity to the reciprocal signification of the verb, and on the other lends the adjectival notion to לב. Of the confederate peoples the chronicler (2 Chr. 20) mentions the Moabites, the Ammonites, the inhabitants of Mount Seïr, and the Me(unim, instead of which Josephus, Antiq. ix. 1. 2, says: a great body of Arabians. This crowd of peoples comes from the other side of the Dead Sea, מאדם (as it is to be read in Psa 83:2 in the chronicler instead of מארם, cf. on Psa 60:2); the territory of Edom, which is mentioned first by the poet, was therefore the rendezvous. The tents of Edom and of the Ishmaelites are (cf. Arab. ahl, people) the people themselves who live in tents. Moreover, too, the poet ranges the hostile nations according to their geographical position. The seven first named from Edom to Amalek, which still existed at the time of the psalmist (for the final destruction of the Amalekites by the Simeonites, 1Ch 4:42., falls at an indeterminate period prior to the Exile), are those out of the regions east and south-east of the Dead Sea. According to Gen 25:18, the Ishmaelites had spread from Higâz through the peninsula of Sinai beyond the eastern and southern deserts as far up as the countries under the dominion of Assyria. The Hagarenes dwelt in tents from the Persian Gulf as far as the east of Gilead (1Ch 5:10) towards the Euphrates. גּבל, Arab. jbâl, is the name of the people inhabiting the mountains situated in the south of the Dead Sea, that is to say, the northern Seïritish mountains. Both Gebâl and also, as it appears, the Amalek intended here according to Gen 36:12 (cf. Josephus, Antiq. ii. 1. 2: Ἀμαληκῖτις, a part of Idumaea), belong to the wide circuit of Edom. Then follow the Philistines and Phoenicians, the two nations of the coast of the Mediterranean, which also appear in Amo 1:1-15 (cf. Joel 3) as making common cause with the Edomites against Israel. Finally Asshur, the nation of the distant north-east, here not as yet appearing as a principal power, but strengthening (vid., concerning זרוע, an arm = assistance, succour, Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 433b) the sons of Lot, i.e., the Moabites and Ammonites, with whom the enterprise started, and forming a powerful reserve for them. The music bursts forth angrily at the close of this enumeration, and imprecations discharge themselves in the following strophe.

Verses 9-12

With כּמדין reference is made to Gideon's victory over the Midianites, which belongs to the most glorious recollections of Israel, and to which in other instances, too, national hopes are attached, Isa 9:3 [4], Isa 10:26, cf. Hab 3:7; and with the asyndeton כּסיסרא כיבין (כּסיסרא, as Norzi states, who does not rightly understand the placing of the Metheg) to the victory of Barak and Deborah over Sisera and the Canaanitish king Jabin, whose general he was. The Beth of בּנחל is like the Beth of בּדּרך in Psa 110:7 : according to Jdg 5:21 the Kishon carried away the corpses of the slain army. ‛Endôr, near Tabor, and therefore situated not far distant from Taanach and Megiddo (Jdg 5:19), belonged to the battle-field. אדמה, starting from the radical notion of that which flatly covers anything, which lies in דם, signifying the covering of earth lying flat over the globe, therefore humus (like ארץ, terra, and תבל, tellus), is here (cf. 2Ki 9:37) in accord with דּמן (from דמן), which is in substance akin to it. In Psa 83:12 we have a retrospective glance at Gideon's victory. ‛Oreb and Zeēb were שׂרים of the Midianites, Jdg 7:25; Zebach and Tsalmunna‛, their kings, Jdg 8:5.^[69]
The pronoun precedes the word itself in שׁיתמו, as in Exo 2:6; the heaped-up suffixes ēmo (êmo) give to the imprecation a rhythm and sound as of rolling thunder. Concerning נסיך, vid., on Psa 2:6. So far as the matter is concerned, 2Ch 20:11 harmonizes with Psa 83:13. Canaan, the land which is God's and which He has given to His people, is called נאות אלהים (cf. Psa 74:20).

Verses 13-16

With the אלהי, which constrains God in faith, the “thundering down” begins afresh. גּלגּל signifies a wheel and a whirling motion, such as usually arises when the wind changes suddenly, then also whatever is driven about in the whirling, Isa 17:13.<ref> Saadia, who renders the גּלגּל in Psa 77:19 as an astronomical expression with Arab. ‘l - frk, the sphere of the heavens, here has professedly Arab. kâlgrâblt, which would be a plural from expanded out of Arab. grâbı̂l, “sieves” or “tambourines;” it is, however, to be read, as in Isa 17:13, Codex Oxon., Arab. kâlgirbâlt. The verb Arab. garbala, “to sift,” is transferred to the wind, e.g., in Mutanabbi (edited with Wahidi's commentary by Dieterici), p. 29, l. 5 and 6: “it is as though the dust of this region, when the winds chase one another therein, were sifted,” Arab. mugarbalu (i.e., caught up and whirled round); and with other notional and constructional applications in Makkarı̂, i. p. 102, l. 18: “it is as though its soil had been cleansed from dust by sifting,” Arab. gurbilat (i.e., the dust thereof swept away by a whirlwind). Accordingly Arab. girbâlat signifies first, as a nom. vicis, a whirling about (of dust by the wind), then in a concrete sense a whirlwind, as Saadia uses it, inasmuch as he makes use of it twice for גּלגּל. So Fleischer in opposition to Ewald, who renders “like the sweepings or rubbish.”</ref> קשׁ (from קשׁשׁ, Arab. qšš , aridum esse) is the cry corn-talks, whether as left standing or, as in this instance, as straw upon the threshing-floor or upon the field. Like a fire that spreads rapidly, laying hold of everything, which burns up the forest and singes off the wooded mountain so that only a bare cone is left standing, so is God to drive them before Him in the raging tempest of His wrath and take them unawares. The figure in Psa 83:15 is fully worked up by Isaiah, Isa 10:16-19; לחט as in Deu 32:22. In the apodosis, Psa 83:16, the figure is changed into a kindred one: wrath is a glowing heat (חרון) and a breath (נשׁמה, Isa 30:33) at the same time. In Psa 83:17 it becomes clear what is the final purpose towards which this language of cursing tends: to the end that all, whether willingly or reluctantly, may give the glory to the God of revelation. Directed towards this end the earnest prayer is repeated once more in the tetrastichic closing strain.

Verses 17-18

The aim of the wish is that they in the midst of their downfall may lay hold upon the mercy of Jahve as their only deliverance: first they must come to nought, and only by giving Jahve the glory will they not be utterly destroyed. Side by side with אתּה, v. 19a, is placed שׁמך as a second subject (cf. Psa 44:3; Psa 69:11). In view of Psa 83:17 וידעוּ (as in Psa 59:14) has not merely the sense of perceiving so far as the justice of the punishment is concerned; the knowledge which is unto salvation is not excluded. The end of the matter which the poet wishes to see brought about is this, that Jahve, that the God of revelation (שׁמך), may become the All-exalted One in the consciousness of the nations.

Psalm 84

==Longing for the House of God, and for the Happiness of Dwelling There==

With Ps 83 the circle of the Asaphic songs is closed (twelve Psalms, viz., one in the Second Book and eleven in the Third), and with Psa 84:1-12 begins the other half of the Korahitic circle of songs, opened by the last of the Korahitic Elohim-Psalms. True, Hengstenberg (transl. vol. iii. Appendix. p. xlv) says that no one would, with my Symbolae, p. 22, regard this Psa 84:1-12 as an Elohimic Psalm; but the marks of the Elohimic style are obvious. Not only that the poet uses Elohim twice, and that in Psa 84:8, where a non-Elohimic Psalm ought to have said Jahve; it also delights in compound names of God, which are so heaped up that Jahve Tsebaoth occurs three times, and the specifically Elohimic Jahve Elohim Tsebaoth once. The origin of this Psalm has been treated of already in connection with its counterpart, Psa 42:1. It is a thoroughly heartfelt and intelligent expression of the love to the sanctuary of Jahve which years towards it out of the distance, and calls all those happy who have the like good fortune to have their home there. The prayer takes the form of an intercession for God's anointed; for the poet is among the followers of David, the banished one.^[70]
He does not pray, as it were, out of his soul (Hengstenberg, Tholuck, von Gerlach), but for him; for loving Jahve of Hosts, the heavenly King, he also loves His inviolably chosen one. And wherefore should he not do so, since with him a new era for the neglected sanctuary had dawned, and the delightful services of the Lord had taken a new start, and one so rich in song? With him he shares both joy and brief. With his future he indissolubly unites his own.To the Precentor upon the Gittith, the inscription runs, by Benê-Korah, a Psalm. Concerning על־הגּתּית, vid., on Psa 8:1. The structure of the Psalm is artistic. It consists of two halves with a distichic ashrê-conclusion. The schema is 3. 5. 2 5. 5. 5. 3. 2.

Verses 1-4

How loved and lovely (ידידות) is the sacred dwelling-place (plur. as in Psa 43:3) of the all-commanding, redemptive God, viz., His dwelling-place here below upon Zion! Thither the poet is drawn by the deeply inward yearning of love, which makes him pale (נכסף from כּסף, to grow pale, Psa 17:12) and consumes him (כּלה as in Job 19:27). His heart and flesh joyfully salute the living God dwelling there, who, as a never-failing spring, quenches the thirst of the soul (Psa 42:3); the joy that he feels when he throws himself back in spirit into the long-denied delight takes possession even of his bodily nature, the bitter-sweet pain of longing completely fills him (Psa 63:2). The mention of the “courts” (with the exception of the Davidic Psa 65:5, occurring only in the anonymous Psalms) does not preclude the reference of the Psalm to the tent-temple on Zion. The Tabernacle certainly had only one חצר; the arrangement of the Davidic tent-temple, however, is indeed unknown to us, and, according to reliable traces,^[71] it may be well assumed that it was more gorgeous and more spacious than the old Tabernacle which remained in Gibeon. In Psa 84:4 the preference must be given to that explanation which makes את־מזבּחותיך dependent upon מצאה, without being obliged to supply an intermediate thought like בּית (with hardening Dagesh like בּן, Gen 19:38, vid., the rule at Psa 52:5) and קן as a more definite statement of the object which the poet has in view. The altars, therefore, or (what this is meant to say without any need for taking את as a preposition) the realm, province of the altars of Jahve - this is the house, this the nest which sparrow and swallow have found for themselves and their young. The poet thereby only indirectly says, that birds have built themselves nests on the Temple-house, without giving any occasion for the discussion whether this has taken place in reality. By the bird that has found a comfortable snug home on the place of the altars of Jahve in the Temple-court and in the Temple-house, he means himself. צפּור (from צפר) is a general name for whistling, twittering birds, like the finch^[72] and the sparrow, just as the lxx here renders it. דּרור is not the turtle-dove (lxx, Targum, and Syriac), but the swallow, which is frequently called even in the Talmud צפור דרור (= סנוּנית), and appears to take its name from its straightforward darting, as it were, radiating flight (cf. Arabic jadurru of the horse: it darts straight forward). Saadia renders dûrı̂je, which is the name of the sparrow in Palestine and Syria (vid., Wetzstein's Excursus I). After the poet has said that his whole longing goes forth towards the sanctuary, he adds that it could not possibly be otherwise (גּם standing at the head of the clause and belonging to the whole sentence, as e.g., in Isa 30:33; Ewald, §352, b): he, the sparrow, the swallow, has found a house, a nest, viz., the altars of Jahve of Hosts, his King and his God (Psa 44:5; Psa 45:7), who gloriously and inaccessibly protects him, and to whom he unites himself with most heartfelt and believing love. The addition “where (אשׁר as in Psa 95:9; Num 20:13) she layeth her young,” is not without its significance. One is here reminded of the fact, that at the time of the second Temple the sons of the priests were called פּרחי כהנּה, and the Levite poet means himself together with his family; God's altars secure to them shelter and sustenance. How happy, blessed, therefore, are those who enjoy this good fortune, which he now longs for again with pain in a strange country, viz., to be able to make his home in the house of such an adorable and gracious God! עוד here signifies, not “constantly” (Gen 46:29), for which תּמיד would have been used, but “yet,” as in Psa 42:6. The relation of Psa 84:5 to Psa 84:5 is therefore like Psa 41:2. The present is dark, but it will come to pass even yet that the inmates of God's house (οἰκεῖοι τοῦ Θεοῦ, Eph 2:10) will praise Him as their Helper. The music here strikes in, anticipating this praise.

Verses 5-12

This second half takes up the “blessed” of the distichic epode (epoodo's) of the first, and consequently joins member to member chain-like on to it. Many hindrances must be cleared away if the poet is to get back to Zion, his true home; but his longing carries the surety within itself of its fulfilment: blessed, yea in himself blessed, is the man, who has his strength (עוז only here plene) in God, so that, consequently, the strength of Him to whom all things are possible is mighty in his weakness. What is said in Psa 84:6 is less adapted to be the object of the being called blessed than the result of that blessed relationship to God. What follows shows that the “high-roads” are not to be understood according to Isa 40:3., or any other passage, as an ethical, notional figure (Venema, Hengstenberg, Hitzig, and others), but according to Isa 33:8 (cf. Jer 31:21), with Aben-Ezra, Vatablus, and the majority of expositors, of the roads leading towards Zion; not, however, as referring to the return from the Exile, but to the going up to a festival: the pilgrim-high-roads with their separate halting-places (stations) were constantly present to the mind of such persons. And though they may be driven never so far away from them, they will nevertheless reach the goal of their longing. The most gloomy present becomes bright to them: passing through even a terrible wilderness, they turn it (ישׁיתהו) into a place of springs, their joyous hope and the infinite beauty of the goal, which is worth any amount of toil and trouble, afford them enlivening comfort, refreshing strengthening in the midst of the arid steppe. עמק הבּכא does not signify the “Valley of weeping,” as Hupfeld at last renders it (lxx κοιλάδα τοῦ κλαυθμῶνος), although Burckhardt found a [Arab.] wâdı̂ 'l - bk’ (Valley of weeping) in the neighbourhood of Sinai. In Hebrew “weeping” is בּכי, בּכה, בּכוּת, not בּכא, Rénan, in the fourth chapter of his Vie de Jésus, understands the expression to mean the last station of those who journey from northern Palestine on this side of the Jordan towards Jerusalem, viz., Ain el - Haramı̂je, in a narrow and gloomy valley where a black stream of water flows out of the rocks in which graves are dug, so that consequently עמק הככא signifies Valley of tears or of trickling waters. But such trickling out of the rock is also called בּכי, Job 28:11, and not בּכא. This latter is the singular to בּכאים in 2Sa 5:24 (cf. נכאים, צבאים, Psa 103:21), the name of a tree, and, according to the old Jewish lexicographers, of the mulberry-tree (Talmudic תּוּת, Arab. tût); but according to the designation, of a tree from which some kind of fluid flows, and such a tree is the Arab. baka'un, resembling the balsam-tree, which is very common in the arid valley of Mecca, and therefore might also have given its name to some arid valley of the Holy Land (vid., Winer's Realwörterbuch, s.v. Bacha), and, according to 2Sa 5:22-25, to one belonging, as it would appear, to the line of valley which leads from the coasts of the Philistines to Jerusalem. What is spoken of in passages like Isa 35:7; Isa 41:18, as being wrought by the omnipotence of God, who brings His people home to Zion, appears here as the result of the power of faith in those who, keeping the same end of their journeyings in view, pass through the unfruitful sterile valley. That other side, however, also does not remain unexpressed. Not only does their faith bring forth water out of the sand and rock of the desert, but God also on His part lovingly anticipates their love, and rewardingly anticipates their faithfulness: a gentle rain, like that which refreshes the sown fields in the autumn, descends from above and enwraps it (viz., the Valley of Baca) in a fulness of blessing (יעטּה, Hiphil with two accusatives, of which one is to be supplied: cf. on the figure, Ps 65:14). The arid steppe becomes resplendent with a flowery festive garment (Isa 35:1.), not to outward appearance, but to them spiritually, in a manner none the less true and real. And whereas under ordinary circumstances the strength of the traveller diminishes in proportion as he has traversed more and more of his toilsome road, with them it is the very reverse; they go from strength to strength (cf. on the expression, Jer 9:2; Jer 12:2), i.e., they receive strength for strength (cf. on the subject-matter, Isa 40:31; Joh 1:16), and that an ever increasing strength, the nearer they come to the desired goal, which also they cannot fail to reach. The pilgrim-band (this is the subject to יראה), going on from strength to (אל) strength, at last reaches, attains to (אל instead of the אל־פּני used in other instances) Elohim in Zion. Having reached this final goal, the pilgrim-band pours forth its heart in the language of prayer such as we have in Psa 84:9, and the music here strikes up and blends its sympathetic tones with this converse of the church with its God.
The poet, however, who in spirit accompanies them on their pilgrimage, is now all the more painfully conscious of being at the present time far removed from this goal, and in the next strophe prays for relief. He calls God מגנּנוּ (as in Psa 59:12), for without His protection David's cause is lost. May He then behold (ראה, used just as absolutely as in 2Ch 24:22, cf. Lam 3:50), and look upon the face of His anointed, which looks up to Him out of the depth of its reproach. The position of the words shows that מגנּנוּ is not to be regarded as the object to ראה, according to Psa 89:19 (cf. Ps 47:10) and in opposition to the accentuation, for why should it not then have been אלהים ראה מגננו? The confirmation (Psa 84:11) puts the fact that we have before us a Psalm belonging to the time of David's persecution by Absalom beyond all doubt. Manifestly, when his king prevails, the poet will at the same time (cf. David's language, 2Sa 15:25) be restored to the sanctuary. A single day of his life in the courts of God is accounted by him as better than a thousand other days (מאלף with Olewejored and preceded by Rebia parvum). He would rather lie down on the threshold (concerning the significance of this הסתּופף in the mouth of a Korahite, vid., supra, p. 311) in the house of his God than dwell within in the tents of ungodliness (not “palaces,” as one might have expected, if the house of God had at that time been a palace). For how worthless is the pleasure and concealment to be had there, when compared with the salvation and protection which Jahve Elohim affords to His saints! This is the only instance in which God is directly called a sun (שׁמשׁ) in the sacred writings (cf. Sir. 42:16). He is called a shield as protecting those who flee to Him and rendering them inaccessible to their foes, and a sun as the Being who dwells in an unapproachable light, which, going forth from Him in love towards men, is particularized as חן and כבוד, as the gentle and overpowering light of the grace and glory (χάρις and δόξα) of the Father of Lights. The highest good is self-communicative (communicativum sui). The God of salvation does not refuse any good thing to those who walk בּתמים (בּדרך תמים, Psa 101:6; cf. on Psa 15:2). Upon all receptive ones, i.e., all those who are desirous and capable of receiving His blessings, He freely bestows them out of the abundance of His good things. Strophe and anti-strophe are doubled in this second half of the song. The epode closely resembles that which follows the first half. And this closing ashrê is not followed by any Sela. The music is hushed. The song dies away with an iambic cadence into a waiting expectant stillness. ==Petition of the Hitherto Favoured People for a Restoration of Favour== The second part of the Book of Isaiah is written for the Israel of the Exile. It was the incidents of the Exile that first unsealed this great and indivisible prophecy, which in its compass is without any parallel. And after it had been unsealed there sprang up out of it those numerous songs of the Psalm-collection which remind us of their common model, partly by their allegorizing figurative language, partly by their lofty prophetic thoughts of consolation. This first Korahitic Jahve-Psalm (in Psa 85:13 coming into contact with Psa 84:1-12, cf. Psa 84:12)), which more particularly by its allegorizing figurative language points to Isa 40:1, belongs to the number of these so-called deutero-Isaianic Psalms. The reference of Psa 85:1-13 to the period after the Exile and to the restoration of the state, says Dursch, is clearly expressed in the Psalm. On the other hand, Hengstenberg maintains that “the Psalm does not admit of any historical interpretation,” and is sure only of this one fact, that Psa 85:2-4 do not relate to the deliverance out of the Exile. Even this Psalm, however, is not a formulary belonging to no express period, but has a special historical basis; and Psa 85:2-4 certainly sound as though they came from the lips of a people restored to their fatherland.

Psalm 85

Verses 1-3

The poet first of all looks back into the past, so rich in tokens of favour. The six perfects are a remembrance of former events, since nothing precedes to modify them. Certainly that which has just been experienced might also be intended; but then, as Hitzig supposes, Psa 85:5-8 would be the petition that preceded it, and Psa 85:9 would go back to the turning-point of the answering of the request - a retrograde movement which is less probable than that in shuwbeenuw, Psa 85:5, we have a transition to the petition for a renewal of previously manifested favour. (שׁבית) שבּ שׁבוּת, here said of a cessation of a national judgment, seems to be meant literally, not figuratively (vid., Psa 14:7). רצה, with the accusative, to have and to show pleasure in any one, as in the likewise Korahitic lamentation- Psa 44:4, cf. Psa 147:11. In Psa 85:3 sin is conceived of as a burden of the conscience; in Psa 85:3 as a blood-stain. The music strikes up in the middle of the strophe in the sense of the “blessed” in Psa 32:1. In Psa 85:4 God's עברה (i.e., unrestrained wrath) appears as an emanation; He draws it back to Himself (אסף as in Joe 3:15, Psa 104:29; 1Sa 14:19) when He ceases to be angry; in Psa 85:4, on the other hand, the fierce anger is conceived of as an active manifestation on the part of God which ceases when He turns round (השׁיב, Hiph. as inwardly transitive as in Eze 14:6; Eze 39:25; cf. the Kal in Exo 32:12), i.e., gives the opposite turn to His manifestation.

Verses 4-7

The poet now prays God to manifest anew the loving-kindness He has shown formerly. In the sense of “restore us again,” שׁוּבנוּ does not form any bond of connection between this and the preceding strophe; but it does it, according to Ges. §121, 4, it is intended in the sense of (אלינוּ) שׁוּב לנוּ, turn again to us. The poet prays that God would manifest Himself anew to His people as He has done in former days. Thus the transition from the retrospective perfects to the petition is, in the presence of the existing extremity, adequately brought about. Assuming the post-exilic origin of the Psalm, we see from this strophe that it was composed at a period in which the distance between the temporal and spiritual condition of Israel and the national restoration, promised together with the termination of the Exile, made itself distinctly felt. On עמּנוּ (in relation to and bearing towards us) beside כּעסך, cf. Job 10:17, and also on הפר, Psa 89:34. In the question in Psa 89:6 reminding God of His love and of His promise, משׁך has the signification of constant endless continuing or pursuing, as in Psa 36:11. The expression in Psa 85:7 is like Psa 71:20, cf. Psa 80:19; שׁוּב is here the representative of rursus, Ges. §142. ישׁעך from ישׁע, like קצפּך in Psa 38:2, has ĕ (cf. the inflexion of פּרי and חק) instead of the ı̆ in אלהי ישׁענוּ. Here at the close of the strophe the prayer turns back inferentially to this attribute of God.

Verses 8-10

The prayer is followed by attention to the divine answer, and by the answer itself. The poet stirs himself up to give ear to the words of God, like Habakkuk, Hab 2:1. Beside אשׁמעה we find the reading אשׁמעה, vid., on Psa 39:13. The construction of האל ה is appositional, like המּלך דּוד, Ges. §113. כּי neither introduces the divine answer in express words, nor states the ground on which he hearkens, but rather supports the fact that God speaks from that which He has to speak. Peace is the substance of that which He speaks to His people, and that (the particularizing Waw) to His saints; but with the addition of an admonition. אל is dehortative. It is not to be assumed in connection with this ethical notion that the ah of לכסלה is the locative ah as in לשׁאולה, Psa 9:18. כּסלה is related to כּסל like foolery to folly. The present misfortune, as is indicated here, is the merited consequence of foolish behaviour (playing the fool). In Psa 85:10. the poet unfolds the promise of peace which he has heard, just as he has heard it. What is meant by ישׁעו is particularized first by the infinitive, and then in perfects of actual fact. The possessions that make a people truly happy and prosperous are mentioned under a charming allegory exactly after Isaiah's manner, Isa 32:16., Isa 45:8; Isa 59:14. The glory that has been far removed again takes up its abode in the land. Mercy or loving-kindness walks along the streets of Jerusalem, and there meets fidelity, like one guardian angel meeting the other. Righteousness and peace or prosperity, these two inseparable brothers, kiss each other there, and fall lovingly into each other's arms.^[73]

Verses 11-13

The poet pursues this charming picture of the future further. After God's אמת, i.e., faithfulness to the promises, has descended like dew, אמת, i.e., faithfulness to the covenant, springs up out of the land, the fruit of that fertilizing influence. And צדקה, gracious justice, looks down from heaven, smiling favour and dispensing blessing. גּם in Psa 85:13 places these two prospects in reciprocal relation to one another (cf. Psa 84:7); it is found once instead of twice. Jahve gives הטּוב, everything that is only and always good and that imparts true happiness, and the land, corresponding to it, yields יבוּלהּ, the increase which might be expected from a land so richly blessed (cf. Psa 67:7 and the promise in Lev 26:4). Jahve Himself is present in the land: righteousness walks before Him majestically as His herald, and righteousness ישׂם לדרך פּעמיו, sets (viz., its footsteps) upon the way of His footsteps, that is to say, follows Him inseparably. פּעמיו stands once instead of twice; the construct is to a certain extent attractional, as in Psa 65:12; Gen 9:6. Since the expression is neither דּרך (Psa 50:23; Isa 51:10) nor לדּרך (Isa 49:11), it is natural to interpret the expression thus, and it gives moreover (cf. Isa 58:8; Isa 52:12) an excellent sense. But if, which we prefer, שׂים is taken in the sense of שׂים לב (as e.g., in Job 4:20) with the following ל, to give special heed to anything (Deu 32:46; Eze 40:4; Eze 44:5), to be anxiously concerned about it (1Sa 9:20), then we avoid the supplying in thought of a second פעמיו, which is always objectionable, and the thought obtained by the other interpretation is brought clearly before the mind: righteousness goes before Jahve, who dwells and walks abroad in Israel, and gives heed to the way of His steps, that is to say, follows carefully in His footsteps.

Psalm 86

== Prayer of a Persecuted Saint.==
A Psalm “by David” which has points of contact with Psa 85:1-13 (cf. Psa 86:2, חסיד, with Psa 85:9; Psa 86:15, חסד ואמת, with Psa 85:11) is here inserted between Korahitic Psalms: it can only be called a Psalm by David as having grown out of Davidic and other model passages. The writer cannot be compared for poetical capability either with David or with the authors of such Psalms as Ps 116 and Psa 130:1-8. His Psalm is more liturgic than purely poetic, and it is also only entitled תּפּלּה, without bearing in itself any sign of musical designation. It possesses this characteristic, that the divine name אדני occurs seven times,^[74] just as it occurs three times in Psa 130:1-8, forming the start for a later, Adonajic style in imitation of the Elohimic.

Verses 1-5

The prayer to be heard runs like Psa 55:3; and the statement of the ground on which it is based, Psa 86:1, word for word like Ps 40:18. It is then particularly expressed as a prayer for preservation (שׁמרה, as in Psa 119:167, although imperative, to be read shāmerah; cf. Psa 30:4 מיּרדי, Psa 38:21 רדפי or רדפי, and what we have already observed on Psa 16:1 שׁמרני); for he is not only in need of God's help, but also because חסיד (Psa 4:4; Psa 16:10), i.e., united to Him in the bond of affection (חסד, Hos 6:4; Jer 2:2), not unworthy of it. In Psa 86:2 we hear the strains of Psa 25:20; Psa 31:7; in Psa 86:3, of Psa 57:2.: the confirmation in Psa 86:4 is taken verbally from Psa 25:1, cf. also Psa 130:6. Here, what is said in Psa 86:4 of this shorter Adonajic Psalm, Psa 130:1-8, is abbreviated in the ἅπαξ γεγραμ. סלּח (root סל, של, to allow to hang loose, χαλᾶν, to give up, remittere). The Lord is good (טּוב), i.e., altogether love, and for this very reason also ready to forgive, and great and rich in mercy for all who call upon Him as such. The beginning of the following group also accords with Psa 130:1-8 in Psa 86:2.

Verses 6-13

Here, too, almost everything is an echo of earlier language of the Psalms and of the Law; viz., Psa 86:7 follows Psa 17:6 and other passages; Psa 86:8 is taken from Exo 15:11, cf. Psa 89:9, where, however, אלהים, gods, is avoided; Psa 86:8 follows Deu 3:24; Psa 86:9 follows Psa 22:28; Psa 86:11 is taken from Psa 27:11; Psa 86:11 from Psa 26:3; Psa 86:13, שׁאול תּחתּיּה from Deu 32:22, where instead of this it is תּחתּית, just as in Psa 130:2 תּחנוּני (supplicatory prayer) instead of תּחנוּנותי (importunate supplications); and also Psa 86:10 (cf. Psa 72:18) is a doxological formula that was already in existence. The construction הקשׁיב בּ is the same as in Psa 66:19. But although for the most part flowing on only in the language of prayer borrowed from earlier periods, this Psalm is, moreover, not without remarkable significance and beauty. With the confession of the incomparableness of the Lord is combined the prospect of the recognition of the incomparable One throughout the nations of the earth. This clear unallegorical prediction of the conversion of the heathen is the principal parallel to Rev 15:4. “All nations, which Thou hast made” - they have their being from Thee; and although they have forgotten it (vid., Psa 9:18), they will nevertheless at last come to recognise it. כּל־גּוים, since the article is wanting, are nations of all tribes (countries and nationalities); cf. Jer 16:16 with Psa 22:18; Tobit 13:11, ἔθνη πολλά, with ibid. Psa 14:6, πάντα τὰ ἔθνη. And how weightily brief and charming is the petition in Psa 86:11 : uni cor meum, ut timeat nomen tuum! Luther has rightly departed from the renderings of the lxx, Syriac, and Vulgate: laetetur (יחדּ from חדה). The meaning, however, is not so much “keep my heart near to the only thing,” as “direct all its powers and concentrate them on the one thing.” The following group shows us what is the meaning of the deliverance out of the hell beneath (שׁאול תּחתּיּה, like ארץ תּחתּית, the earth beneath, the inner parts of the earth, Eze 31:14.), for which the poet promises beforehand to manifest his thankfulness (כּי, Psa 86:13, as in Ps 56:14).

Verses 14-17

The situation is like that in the Psalms of the time of Saul. The writer is a persecuted one, and in constant peril of his life. He has taken Psa 86:14 out of the Elohimic Psa 54:5, and retained the Elohim as a proper name of God (cf. on the other hand Psa 86:8, Psa 86:10); he has, however, altered זרים to זרים, which here, as in Isa 13:11 (cf. however, ibid. Psa 25:5), is the alternating word to עריצים. In Psa 86:15 he supports his petition that follows by Jahve's testimony concerning Himself in Exo 34:6. The appellation given to himself by the poet in Psa 86:16 recurs in Psa 116:16 (cf. Wisd. 9:5). The poet calls himself “the son of Thy handmaid” as having been born into the relation to Him of servant; it is a relationship that has come to him by birth. How beautifully does the Adonaj come in here for the seventh time! He is even from his mother's womb the servant of the sovereign Lord, from whose omnipotence he can therefore also look for a miraculous interposition on his behalf. A “token for good” is a special dispensation, from which it becomes evident to him that God is kindly disposed towards him. לטובה as in the mouth of Nehemiah, Neh 5:19; Neh 13:31; of Ezr 8:22; and also even in Jeremiah and earlier. ויבשׁוּ is just as parenthetical as in Isa 26:11.

Psalm 87

The City of the New Birth of the Nations

The mission thought in Psa 86:9 becomes the ruling thought in this Korahitic Psalm. It is a prophetic Psalm in the style, boldly and expressively concise even to obscurity (Eusebius, σφόδρα αἰνιγματώδης καὶ σκοτεινῶς εἰρημένος), in which the first three oracles of the tetralogy Isa 21:1, and the passage Isa 30:6, Isa 30:7 - a passage designed to be as it were a memorial exhibition - are also written. It also resembles these oracles in this respect, that Psa 87:1 opens the whole arsis-like by a solemn statement of its subject, like the emblematical inscriptions there. As to the rest, Isa 44:5 is the key to its meaning. The threefold ילּד here corresponds to the threefold זה in that passage.
Since Rahab and Babylon as the foremost worldly powers are mentioned first among the peoples who come into the congregation of Jahve, and since the prospect of the poet has moulded itself according to a present rich in promise and carrying such a future in its bosom, it is natural (with Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Vaihinger, Keil, and others) to suppose that the Psalm was composed when, in consequence of the destruction of the Assyrian army before Jerusalem, offerings and presents were brought from many quarters for Jahve and the king of Judah (2Ch 32:23), and the admiration of Hezekiah, the favoured one of God, had spread as far as Babylon. Just as Micah (Mic 4:10) mentions Babylon as the place of the chastisement and of the redemption of his nation, and as Isaiah, about the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, predicts to the king a carrying away of his treasures and his posterity to Babylon, so here Egypt and Babylon, the inheritress of Assyria, stand most prominent among the worldly powers that shall be obliged one day to bow themselves to the God of Israel. In a similar connection Isaiah (Isa 19:1) does not as yet mention Babylon side by side with Egypt, but Assyria.

Verses 1-4

The poet is absorbed in the contemplation of the glory of a matter which he begins to celebrate, without naming it. Whether we render it: His founded, or (since מיסּד and מוּסּד are both used elsewhere as part. pass.): His foundation (after the form מלוּכה, poetically for יסוד, a founding, then that which is set fast = a foundation), the meaning remains the same; but the more definite statement of the object with שׁערי ציּון is more easily connected with what precedes by regarding it as a participle. The suffix refers to Jahve, and it is Zion, whose praise is a favourite theme of the Korahitic songs, that is intended. We cannot tell by looking to the accents whether the clause is to be taken as a substantival clause (His founded city is upon the holy mountains) or not. Since, however, the expression is not יסוּדתו היא בהררי־קדשׁ, יסודתו בהררי קדשׁ is an object placed first in advance (which the antithesis to the other dwellings of Jacob would admit of), and in Psa 87:2 a new synonymous object is subordinated to אהב by a similar turn of the discourse to Jer 13:27; Jer 6:2 (Hitzig). By altering the division of the verses as Hupfeld and Hofmann do (His foundation or founded city upon the holy mountains doth Jahve love), Psa 87:2 is decapitated. Even now the God-founded city (surrounded on three sides by deep valleys), whose firm and visible foundation is the outward manifestation of its imperishable inner nature, rises aloft above all the other dwelling-places of Israel. Jahve stands in a lasting, faithful, loving relationship (אהב, not 3 praet. אהב) to the gates of Zion. These gates are named as a periphrasis for Zion, because they bound the circuit of the city, and any one who loves a city delights to go frequently through its gates; and they are perhaps mentioned in prospect of the fulness of the heathen that shall enter into them. In Psa 87:3 the lxx correctly, and at the same time in harmony with the syntax, renders: Δεδοξασμένα ἐλαλήθη περὶ σοῦ. The construction of a plural subject with a singular predicate is a syntax common in other instances also, whether the subject is conceived of as a unity in the form of the plural (e.g., Psa 66:3; Psa 119:137; Isa 16:8), or is individualized in the pursuance of the thought (as is the case most likely in Gen 27:29, cf. Psa 12:3); here the glorious things are conceived of as the sum-total of such. The operation of the construction of the active (Ew. §295, b) is not probable here in connection with the participle. בּ beside דּבּר may signify the place or the instrument, substance and object of the speech (e.g., Psa 119:46), but also the person against whom the words are spoken (e.g., Psa 50:20), or concerning whom they are uttered (as the words of the suitor to the father or the relatives of the maiden, 1Sa 25:39; Sol 8:8; cf. on the construction, 1Sa 19:3). The poet, without doubt, here refers to the words of promise concerning the eternal continuance and future glory of Jerusalem: Glorious things are spoken, i.e., exist as spoken, in reference to thee, O thou city of God, city of His choice and of His love.
The glorious contents of the promise are now unfolded, and that with the most vivid directness: Jahve Himself takes up the discourse, and declares the gracious, glorious, world-wide mission of His chosen and beloved city: it shall become the birth-place of all nations. Rahab is Egypt, as in Psa 89:11; Isa 30:7; Isa 51:9, the southern worldly power, and Babylon the northern. הזכּיר, as frequently, of loud (Jer 4:16) and honourable public mention or commemoration, Ps 45:18. It does not signify “to record or register in writing;” for the official name מזכּיר, which is cited in support of this meaning, designates the historian of the empire as one who keeps in remembrance the memorable events of the history of his time. It is therefore impossible, with Hofmann, to render: I will add Rahab and Babylon to those who know me. In general ל is not used to point out to whom the addition is made as belonging to them, but for what purpose, or as what (cf. 2Sa 5:3; Isa 4:3), these kingdoms, hitherto hostile towards God and His people, shall be declared: Jahve completes what He Himself has brought about, inasmuch as He publicly and solemnly declares them to be those who know Him, i.e., those who experimentally (vid., Psa 36:11) know Him as their God. Accordingly, it is clear that זה ילּד־שׁם is also meant to refer to the conversion of the other three nations to whom the finger of God points with הנּה, viz., the war-loving Philistia, the rich and proud Tyre, and the adventurous and powerful Ethiopia (Isa 18:1-7). זה does not refer to the individuals, nor to the sum-total of these nations, but to nation after nation (cf. זה העם, Isa 23:13), by fixing the eye upon each one separately. And שׁם refers to Zion. The words of Jahve, which come in without any intermediary preparation, stand in the closest connection with the language of the poet and seer. Zion appears elsewhere as the mother who brings forth Israel again as a numerous people (Isa 66:7; Psa 54:1-3): it is the children of the dispersion (diaspora) which Zion regains in Isa 60:4.; here, however, it is the nations which are born in Zion. The poet does not combine with it the idea of being born again in the depth of its New Testament meaning; he means, however, that the nations will attain a right of citizenship in Zion (πολιτεία τοῦ Ἰσραήλ, Eph 2:12) as in their second mother-city, that they will therefore at any rate experience a spiritual change which, regarded from the New Testament point of view, is the new birth out of water and the Spirit.

Verses 5-7

Inasmuch now as the nations come thus into the church (or congregation) of the children of God and of the children of Abraham, Zion becomes by degrees a church immeasurably great. To Zion, however, or of Zion (ל of reference to), shall it be said אישׁ ואישׁ ילּד־בּהּ. Zion, the one city, stands in contrast to all the countries, the one city of God in contrast to the kingdoms of the world, and אישׁ ואישׁ in contrast to זה. This contrast, upon the correct apprehension of which depends the understanding of the whole Psalm, is missed when it is said, “whilst in relation to other countries it is always only the whole nation that comes under consideration, Zion is not reckoned up as a nation, but by persons” (Hofmann). With this rendering the ילּד retires into the background; in that case this giving of prominence to the value of the individual exceeds the ancient range of conception, and it is also an inadmissible appraisement that in Zion each individual is as important as a nation as a whole. Elsewhere אישׁ אישׁ, Lev 17:10, Lev 17:13, or אישׁ ואישׁ, Est 1:8, signifies each and every one; accordingly here אישׁ ואישׁ (individual and, or after, individual) affirms a progressus in infinitum, where one is ever added to another. Of an immeasurable multitude, and of each individual in this multitude in particular, it is said that he was born in Zion. Now, too, והוּא כוננה עליון has a significant connection with what precedes. Whilst from among foreign peoples more and more are continually acquiring the right of natives in Zion, and thus are entering into a new national alliance, so that a breach of their original national friendships is taking place, He Himself (cf. 1Sa 20:9), the Most High, will uphold Zion (Psa 48:9), so that under His protection and blessing it shall become ever greater and more glorious. Psa 87:6 tells us what will be the result of such a progressive incorporation in the church of Zion of those who have hitherto been far removed, viz., Jahve will reckon when He writeth down (כּתוב as in Jos 18:8) the nations; or better - since this would more readily be expressed by בּכתבו, and the book of the living (Isa 4:3) is one already existing from time immemorial - He will reckon in the list (כתוב after the form חלום, חלו, פּקוד = כּתב, Eze 13:9) of the nations, i.e., when He goes over the nations that are written down there and chosen for the coming salvation, “this one was born there;” He will therefore acknowledge them one after another as those born in Zion. The end of all history is that Zion shall become the metropolis of all nations. When the fulness of the Gentiles is thus come in, then shall all and each one as well singing as dancing say (supply יאמרוּ): All my fountains are in thee. Among the old translators the rendering of Aquila is the best: καὶ ᾄδοντες ὡς χοροί· πᾶσαι πηγαὶ ἐν σοί, which Jerome follows, et cantores quasi in choris: omnes fontes mei in te. One would rather render cholaliym, “flute-players” (lxx ὡς ἐν αὐλοῖς); but to pipe or play the flute is חלּל (a denominative from חליל), 1Ki 1:40, whereas to dance is חלל (Pilel of חוּל); it is therefore = מחוללים, like לצצים, Hos 7:5. But it must not moreover be rendered, “And singers as well as dancers (will say);” for “singers” is משׁררים, not שׁרים, which signifies cantantes, not cantores. Singing as dancing, i.e., making known their festive joy as well by the one as by the other, shall the men of all nations incorporated in Zion say: All my fountains, i.e., fountains of salvation (after Isa 12:3), are in thee (O city of God). It has also been interpreted: my looks (i.e., the object on which my eye is fixed, or the delight of my eyes), or: my thoughts (after the modern Hebrew עיּן of spiritual meditation); but both are incongruous. The conjecture, too, of Böttcher, and even before him of Schnurrer (Dissertationes, p. 150), כל־מעיני, all who take up their abode (instead of which Hupfeld conjectures מעיני, all my near-dwellers, i.e., those who dwell with me under the same roof)^[75], is not Hebrew, and deprives us of the thought which corresponds to the aim of the whole, that Jerusalem shall be universally regarded as the place where the water of life springs for the whole of mankind, and shall be universally praised as this place of fountains.

Psalm 88

Plaintive Prayer of a Patient Sufferer Like Job

Psalms 88 is as gloomy as Psa 87:1-7 is cheerful; they stand near one another as contrasts. Not Ps 77, as the old expositors answer to the question quaenam ode omnium tristissima, but this Psalms 88 is the darkest, gloomiest, of all the plaintive Psalms; for it is true the name “God of my salvation,” with which the praying one calls upon God, and his praying itself, show that the spark of faith within him is not utterly extinguished; but as to the rest, it is all one pouring forth of deep lament in the midst of the severest conflict of temptation in the presence of death, the gloom of melancholy does not brighten up to become a hope, the Psalm dies away in Job-like lamentation. Herein we discern echoes of the Korahitic Psa 42:1-11 and of Davidic Psalms: compare Psa 88:3 with Psa 18:7; Psa 88:5 with Psa 28:1; Psa 88:6 with Psa 31:23; Psa 88:18 with Psa 22:17.; v. 19 (although differently applied) with Psa 31:12; and more particularly the questions in Psa 88:11-13 with Psa 6:6, of which they are as it were only the amplification. But these Psalm-echoes are outweighed by the still more striking points of contact with the Book of Job, both as regards linguistic usage (דּאב, Psa 88:10, Job 14:14; רפאים, Psa 88:11, Job 26:5; אבדּון, Psa 88:12, Job 26:6; Job 28:22; נער, Psa 88:16, Job 33:25; Job 36:14; אמים, Psa 88:16, Job 20:25; בּעוּתים, Psa 88:17, Job 6:4) and single thoughts (cf. Psa 88:5 with Job 14:10; Psa 88:9 with Job 30:10; v. 19 with Job 17:9; Job 19:14), and also the suffering condition of the poet and the whole manner in which this finds expression. For the poet finds himself in the midst of the same temptation as Job not merely so far as his mind and spirit are concerned; but his outward affliction is, according to the tenor of his complaints, the same, viz., the leprosy (Psa 88:9), which, the disposition to which being born with him, has been his inheritance from his youth up (Psa 88:16). Now, since the Book of Job is a Chokma-work of the Salomonic age, and the two Ezrahites belonged to the wise men of the first rank at the court of Solomon (1Ki 4:31), it is natural to suppose that the Book of Job has sprung out of this very Chokma-company, and that perhaps this very Heman the Ezrahite who is the author of Psalms 88 has made a passage of his own life, suffering, and conflict of soul, a subject of dramatic treatment.
The inscription of the Psalm runs: A Psalm-song by the Korahites; to the Precentor, to be recited (lit., to be pressed down, not after Isa 27:2 : to be sung, which expresses nothing, nor: to be sung alternatingly, which is contrary to the character of the Psalm) after a sad manner (cf. Psa 53:1) with muffled voice, a meditation by Heman the Ezrahite. This is a double inscription, the two halves of which are contradictory. The bare להימן side by side with לבני־קרח would be perfectly in order, since the precentor Heman is a Korahite according to 1Ch 6:33-38; but חימן האזרחי is the name of one of the four great Israelitish sages in 1Ki 4:31, who, according to 1Ch 2:6, is a direct descendant of Zerah, and therefore is not of the tribe of Levi, but of Judah. The suppositions that Heman the Korahite had been adopted into the family of Zerah, or that Heman the Ezrahite had been admitted among the Levites, are miserable attempts to get over the difficulty. At the head of the Psalm there stand two different statements respecting its origin side by side, which are irreconcilable. The assumption that the title of the Psalm originally was either merely שׁיר מזמור לבני־קרח, or merely למנצח וגו, is warranted by the fact that only in this one Psalm למנצח does not occupy the first place in the inscriptions. But which of the two statements is the more reliable one? Most assuredly the latter; for שׁיר מזמור לבני־קרח is only a recurrent repetition of the inscription of Psa 87:1-7. The second statement, on the other hand, by its precise designation of the melody, and by the designation of the author, which corresponds to the Psalm that follows, gives evidence of its antiquity and its historical character.

Verses 1-7

The poet finds himself in the midst of circumstances gloomy in the extreme, but he does not despair; he still turns towards Jahve with his complaints, and calls Him the God of his salvation. This actus directus of fleeing in prayer to the God of salvation, which urges its way through all that is dark and gloomy, is the fundamental characteristic of all true faith. Psa 88:2 is not to be rendered, as a clause of itself: “by day I cry unto Thee, in the night before Thee” (lxx and Targum), which ought to have been יומם, but (as it is also pointed, especially in Baer's text): by day, i.e., in the time (Psa 56:4; Psa 78:42, cf. Psa 18:1), when I cry before Thee in the night, let my prayer come... (Hitzig). In Psa 88:3 he calls his piercing lamentation, his wailing supplication, רנּתי, as in Psa 17:1; Psa 61:2. הטּה as in Psa 86:1, for which we find הט in Psa 17:6. The Beth of בּרעות, as in Psa 65:5; Lam 3:15, Lam 3:30, denotes that of which his soul has already had abundantly sufficient. On Psa 88:4, cf. as to the syntax Psa 31:11. איל (ἅπαξ λεγομ. like אילוּת, Psa 22:20) signifies succinctness, compactness, vigorousness (ἁδρότης): he is like a man from whom all vital freshness and vigour is gone, therefore now only like the shadow of a man, in fact like one already dead. חפשׁי, in Psa 88:6, the lxx renders ἐν νεκροῖς ἐλεύθερος (Symmachus, ἀφεὶς ἐλεύθερος); and in like manner the Targum, and the Talmud which follows it in formulating the proposition that a deceased person is חפשׁי מן חמצוות, free from the fulfilling of the precepts of the Law (cf. Rom 6:7). Hitzig, Ewald, Köster, and Böttcher, on the contrary, explain it according to Eze 27:20 (where חפשׁ signifies stragulum): among the dead is my couch (חפשׁי = יצועי, Job 17:13). But in respect of Job 3:19 the adjectival rendering is the more probable; “one set free among the dead” (lxx) is equivalent to one released from the bond of life (Job 39:5), somewhat as in Latin a dead person is called defunctus. God does not remember the dead, i.e., practically, inasmuch as, devoid of any progressive history, their condition remains always the same; they are in fact cut away (נגזר as in Psa 31:23; Lam 3:54; Isa 53:8) from the hand, viz., from the guiding and helping hand, of God. Their dwelling-place is the pit of the places lying deep beneath (cf. on תּחתּיּות, Psa 63:10; Psa 86:13; Eze 26:20, and more particularly Lam 3:55), the dark regions (מחשׁכּים as in Psa 143:3, Lam 3:6), the submarine depths (בּמצלות; lxx, Symmachus, the Syriac, etc.: ἐν σκιᾷ θανάτου = בצלמות, according to Job 10:21 and frequently, but contrary to Lam 3:54), whose open abyss is the grave for each one. On Psa 88:8 cf. Psa 42:8. The Mugrash by כל־משׁבריך stamps it as an adverbial accusative (Targum), or more correctly, since the expression is not עניתני, as the object placed in advance. Only those who are not conversant with the subject (as Hupfeld in this instance) imagine that the accentuation marks ענּית as a relative clause (cf. on the contrary Psa 8:7, Psa 21:3, etc.). ענּה, to bow down, press down; here used of the turning or directing downwards (lxx ἐπήγαγες) of the waves, which burst like a cataract over the afflicted one.

Verses 8-12

The octastichs are now followed by hexastichs which belong together in pairs. The complaint concerning the alienation of his nearest relations sounds like Job 19:13., but the same strain is also frequently heard in the earlier Psalms written in times of suffering, e.g., Psa 31:9. He is forsaken by all his familiar friends (not: acquaintances, for מידּע signifies more than that), he is alone in the dungeon of wretchedness, where no one comes near him, and whence he cannot make his escape. This sounds, according to Lev. 13, very much like the complaint of a leper. The Book of Leviticus there passes over from the uncleanness attending the beginning of human life to the uncleanness of the most terrible disease. Disease is the middle stage between birth and death, and, according to the Eastern notion, leprosy is the worst of all diseases, it is death itself clinging to the still living man (Num 12:12), and more than all other evils a stroke of the chastening hand of God (נגע), a scourge of God (צרעת). The man suspected of having leprosy was to be subjected to a seven days' quarantine until the determination of the priest's diagnosis; and if the leprosy was confirmed, he was to dwell apart outside the camp (Lev 13:46), where, though not imprisoned, he was nevertheless separated from his dwelling and his family (cf. Job, at Job 19:19), and if a man of position, would feel himself condemned to a state of involuntary retirement. It is natural to refer the כּלא, which is closely connected with שׁתּני, to this separation. עיני, Psa 88:10, instead of עיני, as in Psa 6:8; Psa 31:10 : his eye has languished, vanished away (דּאב of the same root as tābescere, cognate with the root of דּונג, Psa 68:3), in consequence of (his) affliction. He calls and calls upon Jahve, stretches out (שׁטּח, expandere, according to the Arabic, more especially after the manner of a roof) his hands (palmas) towards Him, in order to shield himself from His wrath and to lead Him compassionately to give ear to him. In Psa 88:11-13 he bases his cry for help upon a twofold wish, viz., to become an object of the miraculous help of God, and to be able to praise Him for it. Neither of these wishes would be realized if he were to die; for that which lies beyond this life is uniform darkness, devoid of any progressive history. With מתים alternates רפאים (sing. רפא), the relaxed ones, i.e., shades (σκιαὶ) of the nether world. With reference to יודוּ instead of להודות, vid., Ewald, §337, b. Beside חשׁך (Job 10:21.) stands ארץ נשׁיּה, the land of forgetfulness (λήθη), where there is an end of all thinking, feeling, and acting (Ecc 9:5-6, Ecc 9:10), and where the monotony of death, devoid of thought and recollection, reigns. Such is the representation given in the Old Testament of the state beyond the present, even in Ecclesiastes, and in the Apocrypha (Sir. 17:27f. after Isa 38:18.; Baruch 2:17f.); and it was obliged to be thus represented, for in the New Testament not merely the conception of the state after death, but this state itself, is become a different one.

Verses 13-18

He who complains thus without knowing any comfort, and yet without despairing, gathers himself up afresh for prayer. With ואני he contrasts himself with the dead who are separated from God's manifestation of love. Being still in life, although under wrath that apparently has no end, he strains every nerve to struggle through in prayer until he shall reach God's love. His complaints are petitions, for they are complaints that are poured forth before God. The destiny under which for a long time he has been more like one dying than living, reaches back even into his youth. מנּער (since נער is everywhere undeclined) is equivalent to מנּערי. The ἐξηπορήθην of the lxx is the right indicator for the understanding of the ἅπαξ λ.ε.γ. אפוּנה. Aben-Ezra and Kimchi derive it from פּן, like עלה from על,^[76] and assign to it the signification of dubitare. But it may be more safely explained after the Arabic words Arab. afana , afina , ma'fûn (root ‘f, to urge forwards, push), in which the fundamental notion of driving back, narrowing and exhausting, is transferred to a weakening or weakness of the intellect. We might also compare פּנה, Arab. faniya, “to disappear, vanish, pass away;” but the ἐξηπορήθην of the lxx favours the kinship with that Arab. afina , infirma mente et consilii inops fuit,^[77] which has been already compared by Castell. The aorist of the lxx, however, is just as erroneous in this instance as in Psa 42:5; Psa 55:3; Psa 57:5. In all these instances the cohortative denotes the inward result following from an outward compulsion, as they say in Hebrew: I lay hold of trembling (Isa 13:8; Job 18:20; Job 21:6) or joy (Isa 35:10; Isa 51:11), when the force of circumstances drive one into such states of mind. Labouring under the burden of divine dispensations of a terrifying character, he finds himself in a state of mental weakness and exhaustion, or of insensible (senseless) fright; over him as their destined goal before many others go God's burnings of wrath (plur. only in this instance), His terrible decrees (vid., concerning בעת on Psa 18:5) have almost annihilated him. צמּתתוּני is not an impossible form (Olshausen, §251, a), but an intensive form of צמּתוּ, the last part of the already inflected verb being repeated, as in עהבוּ הבוּ, Hos 4:18 (cf. in the department of the noun, פּיפיּות, edge-edges = many edges, Psa 149:6), perhaps under the influence of the derivative.^[78]
The corrections צמתּתני (from צמתת) or צמּתתני (from צמּת) are simple enough; but it is more prudent to let tradition judge of that which is possible in the usage of the language. In Psa 88:18 the burnings become floods; the wrath of God can be compared to every destroying and overthrowing element. The billows threaten to swallow him up, without any helping hand being stretched out to him on the part of any of his lovers and friends. In v. 19a to be now explained according to Job 16:14, viz., My familiar friends are gloomy darkness; i.e., instead of those who were hitherto my familiars (Job 19:14), darkness is become my familiar friend? One would have thought that it ought then to have been מידּעי (Schnurrer), or, according to Pro 7:4, מודעי, and that, in connection with this sense of the noun, מחשׁך ought as subject to have the precedence, that consequently מידּעי is subject and מחשׁך predicate: my familiar friends have lost themselves in darkness, are become absolutely invisible (Hitzig at last). But the regular position of the words is kept to if it is interpreted: my familiar friends are reduced to gloomy darkness as my familiar friend, and the plural is justified by Job 19:14 : Mother and sister (do I call) the worm. With this complaint the harp falls from the poet's hands. He is silent, and waits on God, that He may solve this riddle of affliction. From the Book of Job we might infer that He also actually appeared to him. He is more faithful than men. No soul that in the midst of wrath lays hold upon His love, whether with a firm or with a trembling hand, is suffered to be lost.

Psalm 89

== Prayer for a Renewal of the Mercies of David.==

After having recognised the fact that the double inscription of Ps 88 places two irreconcilable statements concerning the origin of that Psalm side by side, we renounce the artifices by which Ethan (איתן)^[79] the Ezrahite, of the tribe of Judah (1Ki 5:11 1Ki 4:31, 1Ch 2:6), is made to be one and the same person with Ethan (Jeduthun) the son of Kushaiah the Merarite, of the tribe of Levi (1Ch 15:17; 1Ch 6:29-32; 1Ch 6:44-47), the master of the music together with Asaph and Heman, and the chief of the six classes of musicians over whom his six sons were placed as sub-directors (1 Chr. 25).
The collector has placed the Psalms of the two Ezrahites together. Without this relationship of the authors the juxtaposition would also be justified by the reciprocal relation in which the two Psalms stand to one another by their common, striking coincidences with the Book of Job. As to the rest, however, Ps 88 is a purely individual, and Psalms 89 a thoroughly nationally Psalm. Both the poetical character and the situation of the two Psalms are distinct.
The circumstances in which the writer of Psalms 89 finds himself are in most striking contradiction to the promises given to the house of David. He revels in the contents of these promises, and in the majesty and faithfulness of God, and then he pours forth his intense feeling of the great distance between these and the present circumstances in complaints over the afflicted lot of the anointed of God, and prays God to be mindful of His promises, and on the other hand, of the reproach by which at this time His anointed and His people are overwhelmed. The anointed one is not the nation itself (Hitzig), but he who at that time wears the crown. The crown of the king is defiled to the ground; his throne is cast down to the earth; he is become grey-headed before his time, for all the fences of his land are broken through, his fortresses fallen, and his enemies have driven him out of the field, so that reproach and scorn follow him at every step.
There was no occasion for such complaints in the reign of Solomon; but surely in the time of Rehoboam, into the first decade of whose reign Ethan the Ezrahite may have survived king Solomon, who died at the age of sixty. In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak (שׁישׁק = Σέσογχις = Shishonk I), the first Pharaoh of the twenty-second (Bubastic) dynasty, marched against Jerusalem with a large army gathered together out of many nations, conquered the fortified cities of Judah, and spoiled the Temple and Palace, even carrying away with him the golden shields of Solomon - a circumstance which the history bewails in a very especial manner. At that time Shemaiah preached repentance, in the time of the greatest calamity of war; king and princes humbled themselves; and in the midst of judgment Jerusalem accordingly experienced the gracious forbearance of God, and was spared. God did not complete his destruction, and there also again went forth דברים טובים, i.e., (cf. Jos 23:14; Zec 1:13) kindly comforting words from God, in Judah. Such is the narrative in the Book of Kings (1Ki 14:25-28) and as supplemented by the chronicler (2Ch 12:1-12).
During this very period Psalms 89 took its rise. The young Davidic king, whom loss and disgrace make prematurely old, is Rehoboam, that man of Jewish appearance whom Pharaoh Sheshonk is bringing among other captives before the god Amun in the monumental picture of Karnak, and who bears before him in his embattled ring the words Judhmelek (King of Judah) - one of the finest and most reliable discoveries of Champollion, and one of the greatest triumphs of his system of hieroglyphics.^[80]
Ps. 89 stands in kindred relationship not only to Ps 74, but besides Psa 79:1-13, also to Ps 77-78, all of which glance back to the earliest times in the history of Israel. They are all Asaphic Psalms, partly old Asaphic (Ps 77, Ps 78), partly later ones (Ps 74, Psa 79:1-13). From this fact we see that the Psalms of Asaph were the favourite models in that school of the four wise men to which the two Ezrahites belong.

Verses 1-4

The poet, who, as one soon observes, is a חכם (for the very beginning of the Psalm is remarkable and ingenious), begins with the confession of the inviolability of the mercies promised to the house of David, i.e., of the הסדי דוד הנּאמנים, Isa 55:3.^[81]
God's faithful love towards the house of David, a love faithful to His promises, will he sing without ceasing, and make it known with his mouth, i.e., audibly and publicly (cf. Job 19:16), to the distant posterity. Instead of חסדי, we find here, and also in Lam 3:22, חסדי with a not merely slightly closed syllable. The Lamed of לדר ודר is, according to Psa 103:7; Psa 145:12, the datival Lamed. With כּי־אמרתּי (lxx, Jerome, contrary to Psa 89:3, ὅτι εἶπας) the poet bases his resolve upon his conviction. נבנה means not so much to be upheld in building, as to be in the course of continuous building (e.g., Job 22:23; Mal 3:15, of an increasingly prosperous condition). Loving-kindness is for ever (accusative of duration) in the course of continuous building, viz., upon the unshakeable foundation of the promise of grace, inasmuch as it is fulfilled in accordance therewith. It is a building with a most solid foundation, which will not only not fall into ruins, but, adding one stone of fulfilment upon another, will rise ever higher and higher. שׁמים then stands first as casus absol., and בּהם is, as in Psa 19:5, a pronoun having a backward reference to it. In the heavens, which are exalted above the rise and fall of things here below, God establishes His faithfulness, so that it stands fast as the sun above the earth, although the condition of things here below seems sometimes to contradict it (cf. Psa 119:89). Now follow in Psa 89:4-5 the direct words of God, the sum of the promises given to David and to his seed in 2 Sam. 7, at which the poet arrives more naturally in Psa 89:20. Here they are strikingly devoid of connection. It is the special substance of the promises that is associated in thought with the “loving-kindness” and “truth” of Psa 89:3, which is expanded as it were appositionally therein. Hence also אכין and תּכין, וּבניתי and יבּנה correspond to one another. David's seed, by virtue of divine faithfulness, has an eternally sure existence; Jahve builds up David's throne “into generation and generation,” inasmuch as He causes it to rise ever fresh and vigorous, never as that which is growing old and feeble.

Verses 5-8

At the close of the promises in Psa 89:4-5 the music is to become forte. And ויודוּ attaches itself to this jubilant Sela. In Psa 89:6-19 there follows a hymnic description of the exalted majesty of God, more especially of His omnipotence and faithfulness, because the value of the promise is measured by the character of the person who promises. The God of the promise is He who is praised by the heavens and the holy ones above. His way of acting is פלא, of a transcendent, paradoxical, wondrous order, and as such the heavens praise it; it is praised (יודו, according to Ges. §137, 3) in the assembly of the holy ones, i.e., of the spirits in the other world, the angels (as in Job 5:1; Job 15:15, cf. Deu 33:2), for He is peerlessly exalted above the heavens and the angels. שׁחק, poetic singular instead of שׁחקים (vid., supra on Psa 77:18), which is in itself already poetical; and ערך, not, as e.g., in Isa 40:18, in the signification to co-ordinate, but in the medial sense: to rank with, be equal to. Concerning בּני אלים, vid., on Psa 29:1. In the great council (concerning סוד, of both genders, perhaps like כּוס, vid., on Psa 25:14) of the holy ones also, Jahve is terrible; He towers above all who are about Him (1Ki 22:19, cf. Dan 7:10) in terrible majesty. רבּה might, according to Psa 62:3; Psa 78:15, be an adverb, but according to the order of the words it may more appropriately be regarded as an adjective; cf. Job 31:34, כּי אערץ המון רבּה, “when I feared the great multitude.” In Psa 89:9 He is apostrophized with אלהי צבאות as being the One exalted above the heavens and the angels. The question “Who is as Thou?” takes its origin from Exo 15:11. חסין is not the construct form, but the principal form, like גּביר, ידיד, עויל ,יד, and is a Syriasm; for the verbal stem Syr. hṣan is native to the Aramaic, in which Syr. haṣı̄nā’ = שׁדּי. In יהּ, what God is is reduced to the briefest possible expression (vid., Psa 68:19). In the words, “Thy faithfulness compasseth Thee round about,” the primary thought of the poet again breaks through. Such a God it is who has the faithfulness with which He fulfils all His promises, and the promises given to the house of David also, as His constant surrounding. His glory would only strike one with terror; but the faithfulness which encompasses Him softens the sunlike brilliancy of His glory, and awakens trust in so majestic a Ruler.

Verses 9-14

At the time of the poet the nation of the house of David was threatened with assault from violent foes; and this fact gives occasion for this picture of God's power in the kingdom of nature. He who rules the raging of the sea, also rules the raging of the sea of the peoples, Psa 65:8. גּאוּת, a proud rising, here of the sea, like גּאוה in Psa 46:4. Instead of בּשׂוע, Hitzig pleasantly enough reads בּשׁוא = בּשׁאו from שׁאה; but שׂוא is also possible so far as language is concerned, either as an infinitive = נשׂוא, Psa 28:2; Isa 1:14 (instead of שׂאת), or as an infinitival noun, like שׂיא, loftiness, Job 20:6, with a likewise rejected Nun. The formation of the clause favours our taking it as a verb: when its waves rise, Thou stillest them. From the natural sea the poet comes to the sea of the peoples; and in the doings of God at the Red Sea a miraculous subjugation of both seas took place at one and the same time. It is clear from Psa 74:13-17; Isa 51:9, that Egypt is to be understood by Rahab in this passage as in Psa 87:4. The word signifies first of all impetuosity, violence, then a monster, like “the wild beast of the reed,” Psa 68:31, i.e., the leviathan or the dragon. דּכּאת is conjugated after the manner of the Lamed He verbs, as in Psa 44:20. כּחלל is to be understood as describing the event or issue (vid., Psa 18:43): so that in its fall the proudly defiant kingdom is like one fatally smitten. Thereupon in Psa 89:12-15 again follows in the same co-ordination first the praise of God drawn from nature, then from history. Jahve's are the heavens and the earth. He is the Creator, and for that very reason the absolute owner, of both. The north and the right hand, i.e., the south, represent the earth in its entire compass from one region of the heavens to the other. Tabor on this side of the Jordan represents the west (cf. Hos 5:1), and Hermon opposite the east of the Holy Land. Both exult by reason of the name of God; by their fresh, cheerful look they give the impression of joy at the glorious revelation of the divine creative might manifest in themselves. In Psa 89:14 the praise again enters upon the province of history. “An arm with (עם) heroic strength,” says the poet, inasmuch as he distinguishes between the attribute inherent in God and the medium of its manifestation in history. His throne has as its מכון, i.e., its immovable foundation (Pro 16:12; Pro 25:5), righteousness of action and right, by which all action is regulated, and which is unceasingly realized by means of the action. And mercy and truth wait upon Him. קדּם פּני is not; to go before any one (הלּך לפני, Ps 85:14), but anticipatingly to present one's self to any one, Psa 88:14; Psa 95:2; Mic 6:6. Mercy and truth, these two genii of sacred history (Psa 43:3), stand before His face like waiting servants watching upon His nod.

Verses 15-18

The poet has now described what kind of God He is upon whose promise the royal house in Israel depends. Blessed, then, is the people that walks in the light of His countenance. הלּך of a self-assured, stately walk. The words ידעי תּרוּעה are the statement of the ground of the blessing interwoven into the blessing itself: such a people has abundant cause and matter for exultation (cf. Psa 84:5). תּרוּעה is the festive sound of joy of the mouth (Num 23:21), and of trumpets or sackbuts (Psa 27:6). This confirmation of the blessing is expanded in Psa 89:17-19. Jahve's שׁם, i.e., revelation or manifestation, becomes to them a ground and object of unceasing joy; by His צדקה, i.e., the rigour with which He binds Himself to the relationship He has entered upon with His people and maintains it, they are exalted above abjectness and insecurity. He is תּפארת עזּמו, the ornament of their strength, i.e., their strength which really becomes an ornament to them. In Psa 89:18 the poet declares Israel to be this happy people. Pinsker's conjecture, קרנם (following the Targum), destroys the transition to Psa 89:19, which is formed by Psa 89:18. The plural reading of Kimchi and of older editions (e.g., Bomberg's), קרנינוּ, is incompatible with the figure; but it is immaterial whether we read תּרים with the Chethîb (Targum, Jerome), or with the Kerî (lxx, Syriac) תּרוּם.^[82] מגנּנוּ and מלכּנוּ in Psa 89:19 are parallel designations of the human king of Israel; מגן as in Ps 47:10, but not in Psa 84:10. For we are not compelled, with a total disregard of the limits to the possibilities of style (Ew. §310, a), to render Psa 89:19: and the Holy One of Israel, (as to Him, He) is our King (Hitzig), since we do not bring down the Psalm beyond the time of the kings. Israel's shield, Israel's king, the poet says in the holy defiant confidence of faith, is Jahve's, belongs to the Holy One of Israel, i.e., he stands as His own possession under the protection of Jahve, the Holy One, who has taken Israel to Himself for a possession; it is therefore impossible that the Davidic throne should become a prey to any worldly power.

Verses 19-22

Having thus again come to refer to the king of Israel, the poet now still further unfolds the promise given to the house of David. The present circumstances are a contradiction to it. The prayer to Jahve, for which the way is thus prepared, is for the removal of this contradiction. A long line, extending beyond the measure of the preceding lines, introduces the promises given to David. With אז the respective period of the past is distinctly defined. The intimate friend of Jahve (חסיד) is Nathan (1Ch 17:15) or David, according as we translate בחזון “in a vision” or “by means of a vision.” But side by side with the לחסידך we also find the preferable reading לחסידיך, which is followed in the renderings of the lxx, Syriac, Vulgate, Targum, Aquila, Symmachus, and the Quarta, and is adopted by Rashi, Aben-Ezra, and others, and taken up by Heidenheim and Baer. The plural refers to Samuel and Nathan, for the statement brings together what was revealed to these two prophets concerning David. עזר is assistance as a gift, and that, as the designation of the person succoured by it (שׁוּה על as in Psa 21:6) with גּבּור shows, aid in battle. בּחוּר (from בּחר = בּגר in the Mishna: to ripen, to be manly or of marriageable age, distinct from בּחיר in Psa 89:4) is a young man, adolescens: while yet a young man David was raised out of his humble lowly condition (Psa 78:71) high above the people. When he received the promise (2 Sam. 7) he had been anointed and had attained to the lordship over all Israel. Hence the preterites in Psa 89:20-21, which are followed by promissory futures from Psa 89:22 onwards. תּכּון is fut. Niph., to be established, to prove one's self to be firm, unchangeable (Psa 78:37), a stronger expression than תּהיה, 1Sa 18:12, 1Sa 18:14; 2Sa 3:10. The Hiph. השּׁיא, derived from נשׁא = נשׁה, to credit (vid., on Isa 24:2; Gesenius, Hengstenberg), does not give any suitable sense; it therefore signifies here as elsewhere, “to impose upon, surprise,” with בּ, as in Psa 55:16 with על. Psa 89:23 is the echo of 2Sa 7:10.

Verses 23-29

What is promised in Psa 89:26 is a world-wide dominion, not merely dominion within the compass promised in the primeval times (Gen 15:18; 2Ch 9:26), in which case it ought to have been said ובנהר (of the Euphrates). Nor does the promise, however, sound so definite and boundless here as in Psa 72:8, but it is indefinite and universal, without any need for our asking what rivers are intended by נהרות. נתן יד בּ, like שׁלח (in Isa 11:14, of a giving and taking possession. With אף־אני (with retreated tone, as in Psa 119:63, Psa 119:125) God tells with what He will answer David's filial love. Him who is the latest-born among the sons of Jesse, God makes the first-born (בּכור from בּכר, to be early, opp. לקשׁ, to be late, vid., Job 2:1-13 :21), and therefore the most favoured of the “sons of the Most High,” Psa 82:6. And as, according to Deu 28:1, Israel is to be high (עליון) above all nations of the earth, so David, Israel's king, in whom Israel's national glory realizes itself, is made as the high one (עליון) with respect to the kings, i.e., above the kings, of the earth. In the person of David his seed is included; and it is that position of honour which, after having been only prelusively realized in David and Solomon, must go on being fulfilled in his seed exactly as the promise runs. The covenant with David is, according to Psa 89:29, one that shall stand for ever. David is therefore, as Psa 89:30 affirms, eternal in his seed; God will make David's seed and throne לעד, into eternal, i.e., into such as will abide for ever, like the days of heaven, everlasting. This description of eternal duration is, as also in Sir. 45:15, Bar. 1:11, Taken from Deu 11:21; the whole of Psa 89:30 is a poetic reproduction of 2Sa 7:16.

Verses 30-37

Now follows the paraphrase of 2Sa 7:14, that the faithlessness of David's line in relation to the covenant shall not interfere with (annul) the faithfulness of God - a thought with which one might very naturally console one's self in the reign of Rehoboam. Because God has placed the house of David in a filial relationship to Himself, He will chastise the apostate members as a father chastises his son; cf. Pro 23:13. In 1Ch 17:13 the chronicler omits the words of 2Sa 7:14 which there provide against perverted action (העוות) on the part of the seed of David; our Psalm proves their originality. But even if, as history shows, this means of chastisement should be ineffectual in the case of individuals, the house of David as such will nevertheless remain ever in a state of favour with Him. In Psa 89:34 חסדּי לא־אפיר מעמּו corresponds to וחסדּי־לא־יסוּר ממּנּוּ in 2Sa 7:15 (lxx, Targum): the fut. Hiph. of פרר is otherwise always אפר; the conjecture אסיר is therefore natural, yet even the lxx translators (ου ̓ μὴ διασκεδάσω) had אפיר before them. שׁקּר בּ as in Psa 44:18. The covenant with David is sacred with God: He will not profane it (חלּל, to loose the bonds of sanctity). He will fulfil what has gone forth from His lips, i.e., His vow, according to Deu 23:24 [23], cf. Num 30:3 [2]. One thing hath He sworn to David; not: once = once for all (lxx), for what is introduced by Psa 89:36 (cf. Psa 27:4) and follows in Psa 89:37, Psa 89:38, is in reality one thing (as in Psa 62:12, two). He hath sworn it per sanctitatem suam. Thus, and not in sanctuario meo, בּקדשׁי in this passage and Amo 4:2 (cf. on Psa 60:8) is to be rendered, for elsewhere the expression is בּי, Gen 22:16; Isa 45:23, or בּנפשׁו, Amo 6:8; Jer 51:14, or בּשׁמי, Jer 44:26, or בּימינו, Isa 62:8. It is true we do not read any set form of oath in 2 Sam. 7, 1 Chr. 17, but just as Isaiah, Isa 54:9, takes the divine promise in Gen 8:21 as an oath, so the promise so earnestly and most solemnly pledged to David may be accounted by Psalm-poesy (here and in Psa 132:11), which reproduces the historical matter of fact, as a promise attested with an oath. With אם in Psa 89:36 God asserts that He will not disappoint David in reference to this one thing, viz., the perpetuity of his throne. This shall stand for ever as the sun and moon; for these, though they may one day undergo a change (Psa 102:27), shall nevertheless never be destroyed. In the presence of 2Sa 7:16 it looks as if Psa 89:38 ought to be rendered: and as the witness in the clouds shall it (David's throne) be faithful (perpetual). By the witness in the clouds one would then have to understand the rainbow as the celestial memorial and sign of an everlasting covenant. Thus Luther, Geier, Schmid, and others. But neither this rendering, nor the more natural one, “and as the perpetual, faithful witness in the clouds,” is admissible in connection with the absence of the כּ of comparison. Accordingly Hengstenberg, following the example of Jewish expositors, renders: “and the witness in the clouds is perpetual,” viz., the moon, so that the continuance of the Davidic line would be associated with the moon, just as the continuance of the condemned earth is with the rainbow. But in what sense would the moon have the name, without example elsewhere, of witness? Just as the Book of Job was the key to the conclusion of Ps 88, so it is the key to this ambiguous verse of the Psalm before us. It has to be explained according to Job 16:19, where Job says: “Behold in heaven is my witness, and my surety in the heights.” Jahve, the אל נאמן (Deu 7:9), seals His sworn promise with the words, “and the witness in the sky (ethereal heights) is faithful” (cf. concerning this Waw in connection with asseverations, Ew. §340, c). Hengstenberg's objection, that Jahve cannot be called His own witness, is disposed of by the fact that עד frequently signifies the person who testifies anything concerning himself; in this sense, in fact, the whole Tôra is called עדוּת ה (the testimony of Jahve).

Verses 38-45

Now after the poet has turned his thoughts towards the beginnings of the house of David which were so rich in promise, in order that he might find comfort under the sorrowful present, the contrast of the two periods is become all the more sensible to him. With ואתּה in Psa 89:39 (And Thou - the same who hast promised and affirmed this with an oath) his Psalm takes a new turn, for which reason it might even have been ועתּה. זנח is used just as absolutely here as in Psa 44:24; Psa 74:1; Psa 77:8, so that it does not require any object to be supplied out of Psa 89:39. נארתּה in Psa 89:40 the lxx renders kate'strepsas; it is better rendered in Lam 2:7 ἀπετίναξε; for נאר is synonymous with נער, to shake off, push away, cf. Arabic el - menâ‛ir, the thrusters (with the lance). עבדּך is a vocational name of the king as such. His crown is sacred as being the insignia of a God-bestowed office. God has therefore made the sacred thing vile by casting it to the ground (חלּל לארץ, as in Psa 74:17, to cast profaningly to the ground). The primary passage to Psa 89:41-42, is Psa 80:13. “His hedges” are all the boundary and protecting fences which the land of the king has; and מבצריו “the fortresses” of his land (in both instances without כל, because matters have not yet come to such a pass).^[83]
In שׁסּהוּ the notions of the king and of the land blend together. עברי־דרך are the hordes of the peoples passing through the land. שׁכניו are the neighbouring peoples that are otherwise liable to pay tribute to the house of David, who sought to take every possible advantage of that weakening of the Davidic kingdom. In Psa 89:44 we are neither to translate “rock of his sword” (Hengstenberg), nor “O rock” (Olshausen). צוּר does not merely signify rupes, but also from another root (צוּר, Arab. ṣâr, originally of the grating or shrill noise produced by pressing and squeezing, then more particularly to cut or cut off with pressure, with a sharply set knife or the like) a knife or a blade (cf. English knife, and German kneifen, to nip): God has decreed it that the edge or blade of the sword of the king has been turned back by the enemy, that he has not been able to maintain his ground in battle (הקמתו with ē instead of ı̂, as also when the tone is not moved forward, Mic 5:4). In Psa 89:45 the Mem of מטהרו, after the analogy of Eze 16:41; Eze 34:10, and other passages, is a preposition: cessare fecisti eum a splendore suo. A noun מטּהר = מטהר with Dag. dirimens, ^[84] like מקדּשׁ Exo 15:17, מנּזר Nah 3:17 (Abulwalîd, Aben-Ezra, Parchon, Kimchi, and others), in itself improbable in the signification required here, is not found either in post-biblical or in biblical Hebrew. טהר, like צהר, signifies first of all not purity, but brilliancy. Still the form טהר does not lie at the basis of it in this instance; for the reading found here just happens not to be טהרו, but מטּהרו; and the reading adopted by Norzi, Heidenheim, and Baer, as also by Nissel and others, so far as form is concerned is not distinct from it, viz., מטּהרו (miṭtŏharo), the character of the Shebâ being determined by the analogy of the å following (cf. בּסּערה, 2Ki 2:1), which presupposes the principal form טהר (Böttcher, §386, cf. supra, 2:31, note). The personal tenor of Psa 89:46 requires that it should be referred to the then reigning Davidic king, but not as dying before his time (Olshausen), but as becoming prematurely old by reason of the sorrowful experiences of his reign. The larger half of the kingdom has been wrested from him; Egypt and the neighbouring nations also threaten the half that remains to him; and instead of the kingly robe, shame completely covers him.

Verses 46-51

After this statement of the present condition of things the psalmist begins to pray for the removal of all that is thus contradictory to the promise. The plaintive question, Psa 89:47, with the exception of one word, is verbatim the same as Psa 79:5. The wrath to which quousque refers, makes itself to be felt, as the intensifying (vid., Psa 13:2) לנצח implies, in the intensity and duration of everlasting wrath. חלד is this temporal life which glides past secretly and unnoticed (Psa 17:14); and זכר־אני is not equivalent to זכרני (instead of which by way of emphasis only זכרני אני can be said), but אני מה־חלד stands for מה־חלד אני - according to the sense equivalent to אני מה־חדל, Psa 39:5, cf. Psa 39:6. The conjecture of Houbigant and modern expositors, זכר אדני (cf. Psa 89:51), is not needed, since the inverted position of the words is just the same as in Psa 39:5. In Psa 89:48 it is not pointed על־מה שׁוא, “wherefore (Job 10:2; Job 13:14) hast Thou in vain (Psa 127:1) created?” (Hengstenberg), but על־מה־שּׁוא, on account of or for what a nothing (מה־שׁוא belonging together as adjective and substantive, as in Psa 30:10; Job 26:14) hast Thou created all the children of men? (De Wette, Hupfeld, and Hitzig). על, of the ground of a matter and direct motive, which is better suited to the question in Psa 89:49 than the other way of taking it: the life of all men passes on into death and Hades; why then might not God, within this brief space of time, this handbreadth, manifest Himself to His creatures as the merciful and kind, and not as the always angry God? The music strikes in here, and how can it do so otherwise than in elegiac mesto? If God's justice tarries and fails in this present world, then the Old Testament faith becomes sorely tempted and tried, because it is not able to find consolation in the life beyond. Thus it is with the faith of the poet in the present juncture of affairs, the outward appearance of which is in such perplexing contradiction to the loving-kindness sworn to David and also hitherto vouchsafed. חסדים has not the sense in this passage of the promises of favour, as in 2Ch 6:42, but proofs of favour; הראשׁנים glances back at the long period of the reigns of David and of Solomon.^[85]
The Asaph Ps 77 and the Tephilla Isa. 63 contain similar complaints, just as in connection with Psa 89:51 one is reminded of the Asaph Psa 79:2, Psa 79:10, and in connection with Psa 89:52 of Psa 79:12. The phrase נשׂא בחיקו is used in other instances of loving nurture, Num 11:12; Isa 40:11. In this passage it must have a sense akin to חרפּת עבדיך. It is impossible on syntactic grounds to regard כּל־רבּים עמּים as still dependent upon חרפּת (Ewald) or, as Hupfeld is fond of calling it, as a “post-liminiar” genitive. Can it be that the כל is perhaps a mutilation of כּלמּת, after Eze 36:15, as Böttcher suggests? We do not need this conjecture. For (1) to carry any one in one's bosom, if he is an enemy, may signify: to be obliged to cherish him with the vexation proceeding from him (Jer 15:15), without being able to get rid of him; (2) there is no doubt that רבּים can, after the manner of numerals, be placed before the substantive to which it belongs, Eze 32:10, Pro 31:29; 1Ch 28:5; Neh 9:28; cf. the other position, e.g., Jer 16:16; (3) consequently כּל־רבּים עמּים may signify the “totality of many peoples” just as well as כּל גּוים רבּים in Eze 31:6. The poet complains as a member of the nation, as a citizen of the empire, that he is obliged to foster many nations in his bosom, inasmuch as the land of Israel was overwhelmed by the Egyptians and their allies, the Libyans, Troglodytes, and Ethiopians. The אשׁר which follows in Psa 89:52 cannot now be referred back over Psa 89:51 to חרפּת (quâ calumniâ), and yet the relative sense, not the confirmatory (because, quoniam), is at issue. We therefore refer it to עמים, and take אויביך as an apposition, as in Psa 139:20 : who reproach Thee, (as) Thine enemies, Jahve, who reproach the footsteps (עקּבות as in Psa 77:20 with Dag. dirimens, which gives it an emotional turn) of Thine anointed, i.e., they follow him everywhere, wheresoever he may go, and whatsoever he may do. With these significant words, עקּבות משׁיחך, the Third Book of the Psalms dies away.

Verse 52

Psa 89:52 (Hebrew_Bible_89:53) The closing doxology of the Third Book. =Psalm 90= ==Taking Refuge in the loving-kindness of the Eternal One under the Wrathful Judgment of Death==
The Fourth Book of the Psalms, corresponding to the ספר במדבר of the Pentateuch, begins with a Prayer of Moses the man of God, which comes out of the midst of the dying off of the older generation during the march through the wilderness. To the name, which could not be allowed to remain so bald, because next to Abraham he is the greatest man known to the Old Testament history of redemption, is added the title of honour אישׁ האלהים (as in Deu 33:1; Jos 14:6), an ancient name of the prophets which expresses the close relationship of fellowship with God, just as “servant of Jahve” expresses the relationship of service, in accordance with the special office and in relation to the history of redemption, into which Jahve has taken the man and into which he himself has entered. There is scarcely any written memorial of antiquity which so brilliantly justifies the testimony of tradition concerning its origin as does this Psalm, which may have been preserved in some one or other of the older works, perhaps the “Book of Jashar” (Jos 10:13; 2Sa 1:18), until the time of the final redaction of the Psalter. Not alone with respect to its contents, but also with reference to the form of its language, it is perfectly suitable to Moses. Even Hitzig can bring nothing of importance against this view, for the objection that the author in v. 1 glances back upon past generations, whilst Israel was only born in the time of Moses, is removed by the consideration that the existence of Israel reaches back into the patriarchal times; and there is as little truth in the assertion that the Piel שׂבּענוּ in Psa 90:14 instead of the Hiphil brings the Psalm down into very late times, as in the idea that the Hiph. והאבדתּ in Psa 143:12 instead of the Piel carries this Psa 143:1-12 back into very early times. These trifling points dwindle down to nothing in comparison with the fact that Psalms 90 bears within itself distinct traces of the same origin as the song האזינו (Deut. 32), ), the blessing of Moses (Deut. 33), ), the discourses in Deuteronomy, and in general the directly Mosaic portions of the Pentateuch. The Book of the Covenant, together with the Decalogue (Exo 19:1) and Deuteronomy (with the exception of its supplement), are regarded by us, on very good grounds, as the largest originally Mosaic constituent parts of the Pentateuch. The Book of Deuteronomy is תּורת משׁה in a pre-eminent sense.

Verses 1-4

The poet begins with the confession that the Lord has proved Himself to His own, in all periods of human history, as that which He was before the world was and will be for evermore. God is designedly appealed to by the name אדני, which frequently occurs in the mouth of Moses in the middle books of the Pentateuch, and also in the Song at the Sea, Exo 15:17 and in Deu 3:24. He is so named here as the Lord ruling over human history with an exaltation ever the same. Human history runs on in דּר ודר, so that one period (περίοδος) with the men living contemporaneous with it goes and another comes; the expression is deuteronomic (Deu 32:7). Such a course of generations lies behind the poet; and in them all the Lord has been מעון to His church, out of the heart of which the poet discourses. This expression too is Deuteronomic (Deu 33:27). מעון signifies a habitation, dwelling-place (vid., on Psa 26:8), more especially God's heavenly and earthly dwelling-place, then the dwelling-place which God Himself is to His saints, inasmuch as He takes up to Himself, conceals and protects, those who flee to Him from the wicked one and from evil, and turn in to Him (Psa 71:3; Psa 91:9). In order to express fuisti היית was indispensable; but just as fuisti comes from fuo, φύω, היה (הוה) signifies not a closed, shut up being, but a being that discloses itself, consequently it is fuisti in the sense of te exhibuisti. This historical self-manifestation of god is based upon the fact that He is אל, i.e., might absolutely, or the absolutely Mighty One; and He was this, as Psa 90:2 says, even before the beginning of the history of the present world, and will be in the distant ages of the future as of the past. The foundation of this world's history is the creation. The combination ארץ ותבל shows that this is intended to be taken as the object. ותּחולל (with Metheg beside the e4 of the final syllable, which is deprived of its accent, vid., on Psa 18:20) is the language of address (Rashi): that which is created is in a certain sense born from God (ילּד), and He brings it forth out of Himself; and this is here expressed by חולל (as in Deu 32:18, cf. Isa 51:2), creation being compared to travail which takes place amidst pains (Psychology, S. 114; tr. p. 137). If, after the example of the lxx and Targum, one reads as passive ותּחולל (Böttcher, Olshausen, Hitzig) from the Pulal חולל, Pro 8:24, - and this commends itself, since the pre-existence of God can be better dated back beyond facts than beyond the acts of God Himself, - then the conception remains essentially the same, since the Eternal and Absolute One is still to be thought of as מחולל. The fact that the mountains are mentioned first of all, harmonizes with Deu 33:15. The modus consecutivus is intended to say: before the mountains were brought forth and Thou wast in labour therewith.... The forming of the mountains consequently coincides with the creation of the earth, which is here as a body or mass called ארץ, and as a continent with the relief of mountains and lowlands is called תבל (cf. תבל ארץ, Pro 8:31; Job 37:12). To the double clause with טרם seq. praet. (cf. on the other hand seq. fut. Deu 31:21) is appended וּמעולם as a second definition of time: before the creation of the world, and from eternity to eternity. The Lord was God before the world was - that is the first assertion of Psa 90:2; His divine existence reaches out of the unlimited past into the unlimited future - this is the second. אל is not vocative, which it sometimes, though rarely, is in the Psalms; it is a predicate, as e.g., in Deu 3:24.
This is also to be seen from Psa 90:3, Psa 90:4, when Psa 90:3 now more definitely affirms the omnipotence of God, and Psa 90:4 the supra-temporality of God or the omnipresence of God in time. The lxx misses the meaning when it brings over אל from Psa 90:2, and reads אל־תּשׁב. The shorter future form תּשׁב for תּשׁיב stands poetically instead of the longer, as e.g., in Psa 11:6; Psa 26:9; cf. the same thing in the inf. constr. in Deu 26:12, and both instances together in Deu 32:8. The poet intentionally calls the generation that is dying away אנושׁ, which denotes man from the side of his frailty or perishableness; and the new generation בּני־אדם, with which is combined the idea of entrance upon life. It is clear that השׁיב עד־דּכּא is intended to be understood according to Gen 3:19; but it is a question whether דּכּא is conceived of as an adjective (with mutable aa), as in Psa 34:19, Isa 57:15 : Thou puttest men back into the condition of crushed ones (cf. on the construction Num 24:24), or whether as a neutral feminine from דּך (= דּכּה): Thou changest them into that which is crushed = dust, or whether as an abstract substantive like דּכּה, or according to another reading (cf. Psa 127:2) דּכּא, in Deu 23:2 : to crushing. This last is the simplest way of taking it, but it comes to one and the same thing with the second, since דּכּא signifies crushing in the neuter sense. A fut. consec. follows. The fact that God causes one generation to die off has as its consequence that He calls another into being (cf. the Arabic epithet of God el - mu‛ı̂d = המשׁיב, the Resuscitator). Hofmann and Hitzig take תּשׁב as imperfect on account of the following ותּאמר: Thou didst decree mortality for men; but the fut. consec. frequently only expresses the sequence of the thoughts or the connection of the matter, e.g., after a future that refers to that which is constantly taking place, Job 14:10. God causes men to die without letting them die out; for - so it continues in Psa 90:4 - a thousand years is to Him a very short period, not to be at all taken into account. What now is the connection between that which confirms and that which is confirmed here? It is not so much Psa 90:3 that is confirmed as Psa 90:2, to which the former serves for explanation, viz., this, that God as the Almighty (אל), in the midst of this change of generations, which is His work, remains Himself eternally the same. This ever the same, absolute existence has its ground herein, that time, although God fills it up with His working, is no limitation to Him. A thousand years, which would make any man who might live through them weary of life, are to Him like a vanishing point. The proposition, as 2Pe 3:8 shows, is also true when reversed: “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” He is however exalted above all time, inasmuch as the longest period appears to Him very short, and in the shortest period the greatest work can be executed by Him. The standpoint of the first comparison, “as yesterday,” is taken towards the end of the thousand of years. A whole millennium appears to God, when He glances over it, just as the yesterday does to us when (כּי) it is passing by (יעבר), and we, standing on the border of the opening day, look back upon the day that is gone. The second comparison is an advance upon the first, and an advance also in form, from the fact that the Caph similitudinis is wanting: a thousand years are to God a watch in the night. אשׁמוּרה is a night-watch, of which the Israelites reckoned three, viz., the first, the middle, and the morning watch (vid., Winer's Realwörterbuch s. v. Nachtwache). It is certainly not without design that the poet says אשׁמוּרה בלּילה instead of אשׁמרת הלּילה. The night-time is the time for sleep; a watch in the night is one that is slept away, or at any rate passed in a sort of half-sleep. A day that is past, as we stand on the end of it, still produces upon us the impression of a course of time by reason of the events which we can recall; but a night passed in sleep, and now even a fragment of the night, is devoid of all trace to us, and is therefore as it were timeless. Thus is it to God with a thousand years: they do not last long to Him; they do not affect Him; at the close of them, as at the beginning, He is the Absolute One (אל). Time is as nothing to Him, the Eternal One. The changes of time are to Him no barrier restraining the realization of His counsel - a truth which has a terrible and a consolatory side. The poet dwells upon the fear which it produces.

Verses 5-8

Psa 90:5-6 tell us how great is the distance between men and this eternal selfsameness of God. The suffix of זרמתּם, referred to the thousand years, produces a synallage (since שׁנה is feminine), which is to be avoided whenever it is possible to do so; the reference to בני־אדם, as being the principal object pointed to in what has gone before, is the more natural, to say the very least. In connection with both ways of applying it, זרם does not signify: to cause to rattle down like sudden heavy showers of rain; for the figure that God makes years, or that He makes men (Hitzig: the germs of their coming into being), to rain down from above, is fanciful and strange. זרם may also mean to sweep or wash away as with heavy rains, abripere instar nimbi, as the old expositors take it. So too Luther at one time: Du reyssest sie dahyn (Thou carriest them away), for which he substituted later: Du lessest sie dahin faren wie einen Strom (Thou causest them to pass away as a river); but זרם always signifies rain pouring down from above. As a sudden and heavy shower of rain, becoming a flood, washes everything away, so God's omnipotence sweeps men away. There is now no transition to another alien figure when the poet continues: שׁנה יהיוּ. What is meant is the sleep of death, Psa 76:6, שׁנת עולם, Jer 51:39, Jer 51:57, cf. ישׁן Psa 13:4. He whom a flood carries away is actually brought into a state of unconsciousness, he goes entirely to sleep, i.e., he dies.
From this point the poet certainly does pass on to another figure. The one generation is carried away as by a flood in the night season, and in the morning another grows up. Men are the subject of יחלף, as of יהיוּ. The collective singular alternates with the plural, just as in Psa 90:3 the collective אנושׁ alternates with בני־אדם. The two members of Psa 90:5 stand in contrast. The poet describes the succession of the generations. One generation perishes as it were in a flood, and another grows up, and this also passes on to the same fate. The meaning in both verses of the חלף, which has been for the most part, after the lxx, Vulgate, and Luther, erroneously taken to be praeterire = interire, is determined in accordance with this idea. The general signification of this verb, which corresponds to the Arabic chlf, is “to follow or move after, to go into the place of another, and in general, of passing over from one place or state into another.” Accordingly the Hiphil signifies to put into a new condition, Psa 102:27, to set a new thing on the place of an old one, Isa 9:9 [10], to gain new strength, to take fresh courage, Isa 40:31; Isa 41:1; and of plants: to send forth new shoots, Job 14:7; consequently the Kal, which frequently furnishes the perfect for the future Hiphil (Ew. §127, b, and Hitzig on this passage), of plants signifies: to gain new shoots, not: to sprout (Targum, Syriac), but to sprout again or afresh, regerminare; cf. Arab. chilf, an aftergrowth, new wood. Perishing humanity renews its youth in ever new generations. Psa 90:6 again takes up this thought: in the morning it grows up and shoots afresh, viz., the grass to which men are likened (a figure appropriated by Isa. 40), in the evening it is cut down and it dries up. Others translate מולל to wither (root מל, properly to be long and lax, to allow to hang down long, cf. אמלל, אמל with Arab. ‘ml, to hope, i.e., to look forth into the distance); but (1) this Pilel of מוּל or Poēl of מלל is not favourable to this intransitive way of taking it; (2) the reflexive in Psa 58:8 proves that מלל signifies to cut off in the front or above, after which perhaps even Psa 37:2, Job 14:2; Job 18:16, by comparison with Job 24:24, are to be explained. In the last passage it runs: as the top of the stalk they are cut off (fut. Niph. of מלל). Such a cut or plucked ear of corn is called in Deu 23:25 מלילה, a Deuteronomic hapaxlegomenon which favours our way of taking the ימולל (with a most general subject = ימולל). Thus, too, ויבשׁ is better attached to what precedes: the cut grass becomes parched hay. Just such an alternation of morning springing froth and evening drying up is the alternation of the generations of men.
The poet substantiates this in Psa 90:7. from the experience of those amongst whom he comprehended himself in the לנוּ of Psa 90:1, Hengstenberg takes Psa 90:7 to be a statement of the cause of the transitoriness set forth: its cause is the wrath of God; but the poet does not begin כי באפך but כי כלינו. The chief emphasis therefore lies upon the perishing, and כי is not argumentative but explicative. If the subject of כלינוּ were men in general (Olshausen), then it would be elucidating idem per idem. But, according to Psa 90:1, those who speak here are those whose refuge the Eternal One is. The poet therefore speaks in the name of the church, and confirms the lot of men from that which his people have experienced even down to the present time. Israel is able out of its own experience to corroborate what all men pass through; it has to pass through the very same experience as a special decree of God's wrath on account of its sins. Therefore in Psa 90:7-8 we stand altogether upon historical ground. The testimony of the inscription is here verified in the contents of the Psalm. The older generation that came out of Egypt fell a prey to the sentence of punishment, that they should gradually die off during the forty years' journey through the desert; and even Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb only excepted, were included in this punishment on special grounds, Num 14:26., Deu 1:34-39. This it is over which Moses here laments. God's wrath is here called אף and חמה; just as the Book of Deuteronomy (in distinction from the other books of the Pentateuch) is fond of combining these two synonyms (Deu 9:19; Deu 29:22, Deu 29:27, cf. Gen 27:44.). The breaking forth of the infinitely great opposition of the holy nature of God against sin has swept away the church in the person of its members, even down to the present moment; נבהל as in Psa 104:29, cf. בּחלה, Lev 26:16. It is the consequence of their sins. עון signifies sin as the perversion of the right standing and conduct; עלוּם, that which is veiled in distinction from manifest sins, is the sum-total of hidden moral, and that sinful, conduct. There is no necessity to regard עלמנוּ as a defective plural; עלמים signifies youth (from a radically distinct word, עלם); secret sins would therefore be called עלמות according to Psa 19:13. God sets transgressions before Him when, because the measure is full and forgiveness is inadmissible, He makes them an object of punishment. שׁתּ (Kerî, as in Psa 8:7 : שׁתּה, cf. Psa 6:4 ואתּ, Psa 74:6 ועתּ) has the accent upon the ultima before an initial guttural. The parallel to לנגדּך is למאור פּניך. עור is light, and מאור is either a body of light, as the sun and moon, or, as in this passage, the circle of light which the light forms. The countenance of God (פני ה) is God's nature in its inclination towards the world, and מאור פני ה is the doxa of His nature that is turned towards the world, which penetrates everything that is conformed to God as a gracious light (Num 6:25), and makes manifest to the bottom everything that is opposed to God and consumes it as a wrathful fire.

Verses 9-12

After the transitoriness of men has now been confirmed in Psa 90:6. out of the special experience of Israel, the fact that this particular experience has its ground in a divine decree of wrath is more definitely confirmed from the facts of this experience, which, as Psa 90:11. complain, unfortunately have done so little to urge them on to the fear of God, which is the condition and the beginning of wisdom. In Psa 90:9 we distinctly hear the Israel of the desert speaking. That was a generation that fell a prey to the wrath of God (דּור עברתו, Jer 7:29). עברה is wrath that passes over, breaks through the bounds of subjectivity. All their days (cf. Psa 103:15) are passed away (פּנה, to turn one's self, to turn, e.g., Deu 1:24) in such wrath, i.e., thoroughly pervaded by it. They have spent their years like a sound (כּמו־הגה), which has hardly gone forth before it has passed away, leaving no trace behind it; the noun signifies a gentle dull sound, whether a murmur (Job 37:2) or a groan (Eze 2:10). With בּהם in Psa 90:10 the sum is stated: there are comprehended therein seventy years; they include, run up to so many. Hitzig renders: the days wherein (בהם) our years consist are seventy years; but שׁנותינו side by side with ימי must be regarded as its more minute genitival definition, and the accentuation cannot be objected to. Beside the plural שׁנים the poetic plural שׁנות appears here, and it also occurs in Deu 32:7 (and nowhere else in the Pentateuch). That of which the sum is to be stated stands first of all as a casus absol. Luther's rendering: Siebenzig Jar, wens hoch kompt so sinds achtzig (seventy years, or at the furthest eighty years), as Symmachus also meant by his ἐν παραδόξῳ (in Chrysostom), is confirmed by the Talmudic הגיע לגבורות, “to attain to extreme old age” (B. Moëd katan, 28a), and rightly approved of by Hitzig and Olshausen. גבוּרת signifies in Psa 71:16 full strength, here full measure. Seventy, or at most eighty years, were the average sum of the extreme term of life to which the generation dying out in the wilderness attained. ורהבּם the lxx renders τὸ πλεῖον αὐτῶν, but רהבּם is not equivalent to רבּם. The verb רהב signifies to behave violently, e.g., of importunate entreaty, Pro 6:3, of insolent treatment, Isa 3:5, whence רהב (here רהב), violence, impetuosity, and more especially a boastful vaunting appearance or coming forward, Job 9:13; Isa 30:7. The poet means to say that everything of which our life is proud (riches, outward appearance, luxury, beauty, etc.), when regarded in the right light, is after all only עמל, inasmuch as it causes us trouble and toil, and און, because without any true intrinsic merit and worth. To this second predicate is appended the confirmatory clause. חישׁ is infin. adverb. from חוּשׁ, הישׁ, Deu 32:35 : speedily, swiftly (Symmachus, the Quinta, and Jerome). The verb גּוּז signifies transire in all the Semitic dialects; and following this signification, which is applied transitively in Num 11:31, the Jewish expositors and Schultens correctly render: nam transit velocissime. Following upon the perfect גּז, the modus consecutivus ונּעפה maintains its retrospective signification. The strengthening of this mood by means of the intentional ah is more usual with the 1st pers. sing., e.g., Gen 32:6, than with the 1st pers. plur., as here and in Gen 41:11; Ew. §232, g. The poet glances back from the end of life to the course of life. And life, with all of which it had been proud, appears as an empty burden; for it passed swiftly by and we fled away, we were borne away with rapid flight upon the wings of the past.
Such experience as this ought to urge one on to the fear of God; but how rarely does this happen! and yet the fear of God is the condition (stipulation) and the beginning of wisdom. The verb ידע in Psa 90:11, just as it in general denotes not merely notional but practically living and efficient knowledge, is here used of a knowledge which makes that which is known conduce to salvation. The meaning of וּכיראתך is determined in accordance with this. The suffix is here either gen. subj.: according to Thy fearfulness (יראה as in Eze 1:18), or gen. obj.: according to the fear that is due to Thee, which in itself is at once (cf. Psa 5:8; Exo 20:20; Deu 2:25) more natural, and here designates the knowledge which is so rarely found, as that which is determined by the fear of God, as a truly religious knowledge. Such knowledge Moses supplicates for himself and for Israel: to number our days teach us rightly to understand. 1Sa 23:17, where כּן ידע signifies “he does not know it to be otherwise, he is well aware of it,” shows how כּן is meant. Hitzig, contrary to the accentuation, draws it to למנות ימינו; but “to number our days” is in itself equivalent to “hourly to contemplate the fleeting character and brevity of our lifetime;” and כּן הודע prays for a true qualification for this, and one that accords with experience. The future that follows is well adapted to the call, as frequently aim and result. But הביא is not to be taken, with Ewald and Hitzig, in the signification of bringing as an offering, a meaning this verb cannot have of itself alone (why should it not have been ונקריב?). Böttcher also erroneously renders it after the analogy of Pro 2:10 : “that we may bring wisdom into the heart,” which ought to be בּלב. הביא, deriving its meaning from agriculture, signifies “to carry off, obtain, gain, prop. to bring in,” viz., into the barn, 2Sa 9:10, Hagg. Psa 1:6; the produce of the field, and in a general way gain or profit, is hence called תּבוּאה. A wise heart is the fruit which one reaps or garners in from such numbering of the days, the gain which one carries off from so constantly reminding one's self of the end. לבב חכמה is a poetically intensified expression for לב חכם, just as לב מרפּא in Pro 14:30 signifies a calm easy heart.

Verses 13-17

The prayer for a salutary knowledge, or discernment, of the appointment of divine wrath is now followed by the prayer for the return of favour, and the wish that God would carry out His work of salvation and bless Israel's undertakings to that end. We here recognise the well-known language of prayer of Moses in Exo 32:12, according to which שׁוּבה is not intended as a prayer for God's return to Israel, but for the turning away of His anger; and the sigh עד־מתי that is blended with its asks how long this being angry, which threatens to blot Israel out, is still to last. והנּהם is explained according to this same parallel passage: May God feel remorse or sorrow (which in this case coincide) concerning His servants, i.e., concerning the affliction appointed to them. The naming of the church by עבדיך (as in Deu 9:27, cf. Exo 32:13 of the patriarchs) reminds one of Deu 32:36 : concerning His servants He shall feel compassion (Hithpa. instead of the Niphal). The prayer for the turning of wrath is followed in Psa 90:14 by the prayer for the turning towards them of favour. In בּבּקר there lies the thought that it has been night hitherto in Israel. “Morning” is therefore the beginning of a new season of favour. In שׂבּענוּ (to which הסדּך is a second accusative of the object) is implied the thought that Israel whilst under wrath has been hungering after favour; cf. the adjective שׂבע in the same tropical signification in Deu 33:23. The supplicatory imperatives are followed by two moods expressive of intention: then will we, or: in order that we may rejoice and be glad; for futures like these set forth the intention of attaining something as a result or aim of what has been expressed just before: Ew. §325, a. בּכל־ימינוּ is not governed by the verbs of rejoicing (Psa 118:24), in which case it would have been בּחיּינוּ, but is an adverbial definition of time (Psa 145:2; Psa 35:8): within the term of life allotted to us. We see from Psa 90:15 that the season of affliction has already lasted for a long time. The duration of the forty years of wrath, which in the midst of their course seemed to them as an eternity, is made the measure of the reviving again that is earnestly sought. The plural ימות instead of ימי is common only to our Psalm and Deu 32:7; it is not known elsewhere to Biblical Hebrew. And the poetical שׁנות instead of שׁני, which also occurs elsewhere, appears for the first time in Deu 32:7. The meaning of ענּיתנוּ, in which ימות hcihw is specialized after the manner of a genitive, is explained from Deu 8:2., according to which the forty years' wandering in the wilderness was designed to humble (ענּות) and to prove Israel through suffering. At the close of these forty years Israel stands on the threshold of the Promise Land. To Israel all final hopes were closely united with the taking possession of this land. We learn from Gen. 49 that it is the horizon of Jacob's prophetic benediction. This Psalm too, in Psa 90:16-17, terminates in the prayer for the attainment of this goal. The psalmist has begun in Psa 90:1 his adoration with the majestic divine name אדני; in Psa 90:13 he began his prayer with the gracious divine name יהוה; and now, where he mentions God for the third time, he gives to Him the twofold name, so full of faith, אדני אלהינוּ. אל used once alternates with the thrice repeated על: salvation is not Israel's own work, but the work of Jahve; it therefore comes from above, it comes and meets Israel. It is worthy of remark that the noun פּעל occurs only in Deuteronomy in the whole Tôra, and that here also of the gracious rule of Jahve, Psa 32:4, cf. Psa 33:11. The church calls the work of the Lord מעשׂה ידינוּ in so far as He executes it through them. This expression מעשׂה ידים as a designation of human undertakings runs through the whole of the Book of Deuteronomy: Deu 2:7; Deu 4:28; Deu 11:7; Deu 14:29; Deu 16:15; Deu 24:19; Deu 27:15; Deu 28:12; Deu 30:9. In the work of the Lord the bright side of His glory unveils itself, hence it is called הדר; this too is a word not alien at least to the language of Deuteronomy, Deu 33:17. Therein is made manifest נעם ה, His graciousness and condescension - an expression which David has borrowed from Moses in Psa 27:4. יראה and יהי are optatives. כּוננה is an urgent request, imperat. obsecrantis as the old expositors say. With Waw the same thought is expressed over again (cf. Isa 55:1, וּלכוּ, yea come) - a simple, childlike anadiplosis which vividly reminds us of the Book of Deuteronomy, which revolves in thoughts that are ever the same, and by that very means speaks deeply to the heart. Thus the Deuteronomic impression of this Psalm accompanies us from beginning to end, from מעון to מעשׂה ידים. Nor will it now be merely accidental that the fondness for comparisons, which is a peculiarity of the Book of Deuteronomy (Deu 1:31, Deu 1:44; Deu 8:5; Deu 28:29, Deu 28:49, cf. Deu 28:13, Deu 28:44; Deu 29:17-18), is found again in this Psalm.

Psalm 91

Talismanic Song in Time of War and Pestilence

The primeval song is followed by an anonymous song (inscribed by the lxx without any warrant τῷ Δαυίδ), the time of whose composition cannot be determined; and it is only placed in this order because the last verse accords with the last verse but one of Ps 90. There the revelation of Jahve's work is prayed for, and here Jahve promises: I will grant him to see My salvation; the “work of Jahve” is His realized “salvation.” The two Psalms also have other points of contact, e.g., in the מעון referred to God (vid., Symbolae, p. 60).
In this Psalm, the Invocavit Psalm of the church, which praises the protecting and rescuing grace which he who believingly takes refuge in God experiences in all times of danger and distress,^[86] the relation of Psa 91:2 to Psa 91:1 meets us at the very beginning as a perplexing riddle. If we take Psa 91:1 as a clause complete in itself, then it is tautological. If we take אמר in Psa 91:2 as a participle (Jerome, dicens) instead of אמר, ending with Pathach because a construct from (cf. Psa 94:9; Psa 136:6), then the participial subject would have a participial predicate: “He who sitteth is saying,” which is inelegant and also improbable, since אמר in other instances is always the 1st pers. fut. If we take אמר as 1st pers. fut. and Psa 91:1 as an apposition of the subject expressed in advance: as such an one who sitteth.... I say, then we stumble against יתלונן; this transition of the participle to the finite verb, especially without the copula (וּבצל), is confusing. If, however, we go on and read further into the Psalm, we find that the same difficulty as to the change of person recurs several times later on, just as in the opening. Olshausen, Hupfeld, and Hitzig get rid of this difficulty by all sorts of conjectures. But a reason for this abrupt change of the person is that dramatic arrangement recognised even in the Targum, although awkwardly indicated, which, however, as first of all clearly discerned by J. D. Michaelis and Maurer. There are, to wit, two voices that speak (as in Psa 121:1-8), and at last the voice of Jahve comes in as a third. His closing utterance, rich in promise, forms, perhaps not unaccidentally, a seven-line strophe. Whether the Psalm came also to be executed in liturgical use thus with several voices, perhaps by three choirs, we cannot tell; but the poet certainly laid it out dramatically, as the translation represents it. In spite of the many echoes of earlier models, it is one of the freshest and most beautiful Psalms, resembling the second part of Isaiah in its light-winged, richly coloured, and transparent diction.

Verses 1-2

As the concealing One, God is called עליון, the inaccessibly high One; and as the shadowing One שׁדּי, the invincibly almighty One. Faith, however, calls Him by His covenant name (Heilsname) יהוה and, with the suffix of appropriation, אלהי (my God). In connection with Psa 91:1 we are reminded of the expressions of the Book of Job, Job 39:28, concerning the eagle's building its nest in its eyrie. According to the accentuation, Psa 91:2 ought to be rendered with Geier, “Dicit: in Domino meo (or Domini) latibulum, etc.” But the combination אמר לה is more natural, since the language of address follows in both halves of the verse.

Verses 3-9

Psa 91:3-9 יקושׁ, as in Pro 6:5; Jer 5:26, is the dullest toned from for יקושׁ or יוקשׁ, Psa 124:7. What is meant is death, or “he who has the power of death,” Heb 2:14, cf. 2Ti 2:26. “The snare of the fowler” is a figure for the peril of one's life, Ecc 9:12. In connection with Psa 91:4 we have to call to mind Deu 32:11 : God protects His own as an eagle with its large strong wing. אברה is nom. unitatis, a pinion, to אבר, Isa 40:31; and the Hiph. הסך, from סכך, with the dative of the object, like the Kal in Psa 140:8, signifies to afford covering, protection. The ἅπαξ λεγ. סחרה, according to its stem-word, is that which encompasses anything round about, and here beside צנּה, a weapon of defence surrounding the body on all sides; therefore not corresponding to the Syriac sḥārtā', a stronghold (סהר, מסגּרת), but to Syriac sabrā', a shield. The Targum translates צנּה with תּריסא, θυρεός, and סחרה with עגילא, which points to the round parma. אמתּו is the truth of the divine promises. This is an impregnable defence (a) in war-times, Psa 91:5, against nightly surprises, and in the battle by day; (b) in times of pestilence, Psa 91:6, when the destroying angel, who passes through and destroys the people (Exo 11:4), can do no harm to him who has taken refuge in God, either in the midnight or the noontide hours. The future יהלך is a more rhythmical and, in the signification to rage (as of disease) and to vanish away, a more usual form instead of ילך. The lxx, Aquila, and Symmachus erroneously associate the demon name שׁד with ישׁוּד. It is a metaplastic (as if formed from שׁוּד morf de) future for ישׁד, cf. Pro 29:6, ירוּן, and Isa 42:4, ירוּץ, frangetur. Psa 91:7 a hypothetical protasis: si cadant; the preterite would signify cediderint, Ew. §357, b. With רק that which will solely and exclusively take place is introduced. Burk correctly renders: nullam cum peste rem habebis, nisi ut videas. Only a spectator shalt thou be, and that with thine own eyes, being they self inaccessible and left to survive, conscious that thou thyself art a living one in contrast with those who are dying. And thou shalt behold, like Israel on the night of the Passover, the just retribution to which the evil-doers fall a prey. שׁלּמה, recompense, retribution, is a hapaxlegomenon, cf. שׁלּמים, Isa 34:8. Ascribing the glory to God, the second voice confirms or ratifies these promises.

Verses 9-16

The first voice continues this ratification, and goes on weaving these promises still further: thou hast made the Most High thy dwelling-place (מעון); there shall not touch thee.... The promises rise ever higher and higher and sound more glorious. The Pual אנּה, prop. to be turned towards, is equivalent to “to befall one,” as in Pro 12:21; Aquila well renders: ου ̓ μεταχθήσεται πρὸς σὲ κακία. לא־יקרב reminds one of Isa 54:14, where אל follows; here it is בּ, as in Jdg 19:13. The angel guardianship which is apportioned to him who trusts in God appears in Psa 91:11, Psa 91:12 as a universal fact, not as a solitary fact and occurring only in extraordinary instances. Haec est vera miraculorum ratio, observes Brentius on this passage, quod semel aut iterum manifeste revelent ea quae Deus semper abscondite operatur. In ישּׂאוּנך the suffix has been combined with the full form of the future. The lxx correctly renders Psa 91:12: μήποτε προσκόψῃς πρὸς λίθον τὸν πόδα σου, for נגף everywhere else, and therefore surely here too and in Pro 3:23, has a transitive signification, not an intransitive (Aquila, Jerome, Symmachus), cf. Jer 13:16. Psa 91:13 tells what he who trusts in God has power to do by virtue of this divine succour through the medium of angels. The promise calls to mind Mar 16:18, ὄφεις ἀροῦσι, they shall take up serpents, but still more Luk 10:19 : Behold, I give you power to tread ἐπάνω ὄφεων καὶ σκορπίων καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ ἐχθροῦ. They are all kinds of destructive powers belonging to nature, and particularly to the spirit-world, that are meant. They are called lions and fierce lions from the side of their open power, which threatens destruction, and adders and dragons from the side of their venomous secret malice. In Psa 91:13 it is promised that the man who trusts in God shall walk on over these monsters, these malignant foes, proud in God and unharmed; in Psa 91:13, that he shall tread them to the ground (cf. Rom 16:20). That which the divine voice of promise now says at the close of the Psalm is, so far as the form is concerned, an echo taken from Ps 50. Psa 50:15, Psa 50:23 of that Psalm sound almost word for word the same. Gen 46:4, and more especially Isa 63:9, are to be compared on Psa 50:15. In B. Taanith 16a it is inferred from this passage that God compassionates the suffering ones whom He is compelled by reason of His holiness to chasten and prove. The “salvation of Jahve,” as in Psa 50:23, is the full reality of the divine purpose (or counsel) of mercy. To live to see the final glory was the rapturous thought of the Old Testament hope, and in the apostolic age, of the New Testament hope also.

Psalm 92

Sabbath Thoughts

This Song-Psalm for the Sabbath-day was the Sabbath-Psalm among the week's Psalms of the post-exilic service (cf. pp. 18, 211); and was sung in the morning at the drink-offering of the first Tamîd lamb, just as at the accompanying Sabbath-musaph-offering (Num 28:9.) a part of the song Deut. 32 (divided into six parts) was sung, and at the service connected with the Mincha or evening sacrifice one of the three pieces, Exo 15:1-10, Exo 15:11-19, Num 21:17-20 (B. Rosh ha-Shana 31a). 1 Macc. 9:23 is a reminiscence from Psa 92:1-15 deviating but little from the lxx version, just as 1 Macc. 7:17 is a quotation taken from Ps 89. With respect to the sabbatical character of the Psalm, it is a disputed question even in the Talmud whether it relates to the Sabbath of the Creation (R. Nehemiah, as it is taken by the Targum) or to the final Sabbath of the world's history (R. Akiba: the day that is altogether Sabbath; cf. Athanasius: αἰνεῖ ἐκείνην τὴν γενησομένην ἀνάπαυσιν). The latter is relatively more correct. It praises God, the Creator of the world, as the Ruler of the world, whose rule is pure loving-kindness and faithfulness, and calms itself, in the face of the flourishing condition of the evil-doers, with the prospect of the final issue, which will brilliantly vindicate the righteousness of God, that was at that time imperceptible to superficial observation, and will change the congregation of the righteous into a flourishing grove of palms and cedars upon holy ground. In this prospect Psa 92:12 and Psa 91:8 coincide, just as God is also called “the Most High” at the beginning of these two Psalms. But that the tetragrammaton occurs seven times in both Psalms, as Hengstenberg says, does not turn out to be correct. Only the Sabbath-Psalm (and not Ps 91) repeats the most sacred Name seven times. And certainly the unmistakeable strophe-schema too, 6. 6. 7. 6. 6, is not without significance. The middle of the Psalm bears the stamp of the sabbatic number. It is also worthy of remark that the poet gains the number seven by means of an anadiplosis in Psa 92:10. Such an emphatic climax by means of repetition is common to our Psalm with Psa 93:3; Psa 94:3; Psa 96:13.

Verses 1-3

The Sabbath is the day that God has hallowed, and that is to be consecrated to God by our turning away from the business pursuits of the working days (Isa 58:13.) and applying ourselves to the praise and adoration of God, which is the most proper, blessed Sabbath employment. It is good, i.e., not merely good in the eyes of God, but also good for man, beneficial to the heart, pleasant and blessed. Loving-kindness is designedly connected with the dawn of the morning, for it is morning light itself, which breaks through the night (Psa 30:6; Psa 59:17), and faithfulness with the nights, for in the perils of the loneliness of the night it is the best companion, and nights of affliction are the “foil of its verification.” עשׂור beside נבל (נבל) is equivalent to נבל עשׂור in Psa 33:2; Psa 144:9 : the ten-stringed harp or lyre. הגּיון is the music of stringed instruments (vid., on Psa 9:17), and that, since הגה in itself is not a suitable word for the rustling (strepitus) of the strings, the impromptu or phantasia playing (in Amo 6:5, scornfully, פּרט), which suits both Psa 9:17 (where it is appended to the forte of the interlude) and the construction with Beth instrumenti.

Verses 4-6

Statement of the ground of this commendation of the praise of God. Whilst פּעל is the usual word for God's historical rule (Psa 44:2; Psa 64:10; Psa 90:16, etc.), מעשׂי ידיך denotes the works of the Creator of the world, although not to the exclusion of those of the Ruler of the world (Psa 143:5). To be able to rejoice over the revelation of God in creation and the revelation of God in general is a gift from above, which the poet thankfully confesses that he has received. The Vulgate begins Psa 92:5 Quia delectasti me, and Dante in his Purgatorio, xxviii. 80, accordingly calls the Psalm il Salmo Delectasti; a smiling female form, which represents the life of Paradise, says, as she gathers flowers, she is so happy because, with the Psalm Delectasti, she takes a delight in the glory of God's works. The works of God are transcendently great; very deep are His thoughts, which mould human history and themselves gain from in it (cf. Psa 40:6; Psa 139:17., where infinite fulness is ascribed to them, and Isa 55:8, where infinite height is ascribed to them). Man can neither measure the greatness of the divine works nor fathom the depth of the divine thoughts; he who is enlightened, however, perceives the immeasurableness of the one and the unfathomableness of the other, whilst a אישׁ־בּער, a man of animal nature, homo brutus (vid., Psa 73:22), does not come to the knowledge (לא ידע, used absolutely as in Psa 14:4), and כּסיל, a blockhead, or one dull in mind, whose carnal nature outweighs his intellectual and spiritual nature, does not discern את־זאת (cf. 2Sa 13:17), id ipsum, viz., how unsearchable are God's judgments and untrackable His ways (Rom 11:33).

Verses 7-9

Upon closer examination the prosperity of the ungodly is only a semblance that lasts for a time. The infinitive construction in Psa 92:8 is continued in the historic tense, and it may also be rendered as historical. זאת היתה (Saadia: Arab. fânnh) is to be supplied in thought before להשּׁמדם, as in Job 27:14. What is spoken of is an historical occurrence which, in its beginning, course, and end, has been frequently repeated even down to the present day, and ever confirmed afresh. And thus, too, in time to come and once finally shall the ungodly succumb to a peremptory, decisive (עדי־עד) judgment of destruction. Jahve is מרום לעלם, by His nature and by His rule He is “a height for ever;” i.e., in relation to the creature and all that goes on here below He has a nature beyond and above all this (Jenseitigkeit), ever the same and absolute; He is absolutely inaccessible to the God-opposed one here below who vaunts himself in stupid pride and rebelliously exalts himself as a titan, and only suffers it to last until the term of his barren blossoming is run out. Thus the present course of history will and must in fact end in a final victory of good over evil: for lo Thine enemies, Jahve - for lo Thine enemies.... הנּה points as it were with the finger to the inevitable end; and the emotional anadiplosis breathes forth a zealous love for the cause of God as if it were his own. God's enemies shall perish, all the workers of evil shall be disjointed, scattered, יתפּרדוּ (cf. Job 4:11). Now they form a compact mass, which shall however fall to pieces, when one day the intermingling of good and evil has an end.

Verses 10-12

The hitherto oppressed church then stands forth vindicated and glorious. The futt. consec. as preterites of the ideal past, pass over further on into the pure expression of future time. The lxx renders: καὶ ὑψωθήσεται (ותּרם) ὡς μονοκέρωτος τὸ κέρας μου. By ראים (incorrect for ראם, primary form ראם), μονόκερως, is surely to be understood the oryx, one-horned according to Aristotle and the Talmud (vid., on Psa 29:6; Job 39:9-12). This animal is called in Talmudic קרשׂ (perhaps abbreviated from μονόκερως); the Talmud also makes use of ארזילא (the gazelle) as synonymous with ראם (Aramaic definitive or emphatic state רימא).^[87]
The primary passages for figures taken from animal life are Num 23:22; Deu 33:17. The horn is an emblem of defensive power and at the same time of stately grace; and the fresh, green oil an emblem of the pleasant feeling and enthusiasm, joyous in the prospect of victory, by which the church is then pervaded (Act 3:19). The lxx erroneously takes בּלּותי as infin. Piel, τὸ γῆράς μου, my being grown old, a signification which the Piel cannot have. It is 1st praet. Kal from בּלל, perfusus sum (cf. Arabic balla, to be moist, ballah and bullah, moistness, good health, the freshness of youth), and the ultima-accentuation, which also occurs in this form of double Ajin verbs without Waw convers. (vid., on Job 19:17), ought not to mislead. In the expression שׁמן רענן, the adjective used in other instances only of the olive-tree itself is transferred to the oil, which contains the strength of its succulent verdure as an essence. The ecclesia pressa is then triumphans. The eye, which was wont to look timidly and tearfully upon the persecutors, the ears, upon which even their name and the tidings of their approach were wont to produce terror, now see their desire upon them as they are blotted out. שׁמע בּ (found only here) follows the sense of ראה בּ, cf. Arab. nḍr fı̂, to lose one's self in the contemplation of anything. שׁוּרי is either a substantive after the form בּוּז, גּוּר, or a participle in the signification “those who regarded me with hostility, those who lay in wait for me,” like נוּס, fled, Num 35:32, סוּר, having removed themselves to a distance, Jer 17:13, שׁוּב, turned back, Mic 2:8; for this participial form has not only a passive signification (like מוּל, circumcised), but sometimes too, a deponent perfect signification; and חוּשׁ in Num 32:17, if it belongs here, may signify hurried = in haste. In שׁוּרי, however, no such passive colouring of the meaning is conceivable; it is therefore: insidiati (Luzatto, Grammatica, §518: coloro che mi guatavano). There is no need for regarding the word, with Böttcher and Olshausen, as distorted from שׁררי (the apocopated participle Pilel of the same verb); one might more readily regard it as a softening of that word as to the sound (Ewald, Hitzig). In Psa 92:12 it is not to be rendered: upon the wicked doers (villains) who rise up against me. The placing of the adjective thus before its substantive must (with the exception of רב when used after the manner of a numeral) be accounted impossible in Hebrew, even in the face of the passages brought forward by Hitzig, viz., 1Ch 27:5; 1Sa 31:3;^[88] it is therefore: upon those who as villains rise up against. The circumstance that the poet now in Psa 92:13 passes from himself to speak of the righteous, is brought about by the fact that it is the congregation of the righteous in general, i.e., of those who regulate their life according to the divine order of salvation, into whose future he here takes a glance. When the prosperity lit. the blossoming of the ungodly comes to an end, the springing up and growth of the righteous only then rightly has its beginning. The richness of the inflorescence of date-palm (תּמר) is clear from the fact, that when it has attained its full size, it bears from three to four, and in some instances even as many as six, hundred pounds of fruit. And there is no more charming and majestic sight than the palm of the oasis, this prince among the trees of the plain, with its proudly raised diadem of leaves, its attitude peering forth into the distance and gazing full into the face of the sun, its perennial verdure, and its vital force, which constantly renews itself from the root - a picture of life in the midst of the world of death. The likening of the righteous to the palm, to the “blessed tree,” to this “sister of man,” as the Arabs call it, offers points of comparison in abundance. Side by side with the palm is the cedar, the prince of the trees of the mountain, and in particular of Mount Lebanon. The most natural point of comparison, as ישׂגּה (cf. Job 8:11) states, is its graceful lofty growth, then in general τὸ δασὺ καὶ θερμὸν καὶ θρέψιμον (Theodoret), i.e., the intensity of its vegetative strength, but also the perpetual verdure of its foliage and the perfume (Hos 14:7) which it exhales.

Verses 13-15

The soil in which the righteous are planted or (if it is not rendered with the lxx πεφυτευμένοι, but with the other Greek versions μεταφυτευθέντες) into which they are transplanted, and where they take root, a planting of the Lord, for His praise, is His holy Temple, the centre of a family fellowship with God that is brought about from that point as its starting-point and is unlimited by time and space. There they stand as in sacred ground and air, which impart to them ever new powers of life; they put forth buds (הפריח as in Job 14:9) and preserve a verdant freshness and marrowy vitality (like the olive, 52:10, Jdg 9:9) even into their old age (נוּב of a productive force for putting out shoots; vid., with reference to the root נב, Genesis, S. 635f.), cf. Isa 65:22 : like the duration of the trees is the duration of my people; they live long in unbroken strength, in order, in looking back upon a life rich in experiences of divine acts of righteousness and loving-kindness, to confirm the confession which Moses, in Deu 32:4, places at the head of his great song. There the expression is אין עול, here it is אין עלתה בּו. This ‛ôlātha, softened from ‛awlātha - So the Kerî - with a transition from the aw , au into ô, is also found in Job 5:16 (cf. עלה = עולה Psa 58:3; Psa 64:7; Isa 61:8), and is certainly original in this Psalm, which also has many other points of coincidence with the Book of Job (like Ps 107, which, however, in Psa 107:42 transposes עלתה into עולה).

Psalm 93

The Royal Throne above the Sea of the Peoples

1 JAHVE now is King, He hath clothed Himself with majesty ; Jahve hath clothed Himself, He hath girded Himself with might : Therefore the world standeth fast without tottering. 2 Thy throne standeth fast from of old, From everlasting art Thou. 3 The floods have lifted up, Jahve, The floods have lifted up their roaring, The floods lift up their noise. 4 More than the rumblings of great waters, Of the glorious, of the breakers of the sea, Is Jahve glorious in the height. 5 Thy testimonies are inviolable, Holiness becometh Thy house, Jahve, unto length of days.
Side by side with those Psalms which behold in anticipation the Messianic future, whether it be prophetically or only typically, or typically and prophetically at the same time, as the kingship of Jahve's Anointed which overcomes and blesses the world, there are others in which the perfected theocracy as such is beheld beforehand, not, however, as an appearing (parusia) of a human king, but as the appearing of Jahve Himself, as the kingdom of God manifest in all its glory. These theocratic Psalms form, together with the christocratic, two series of prophecy referring to the last time which run parallel with one another. The one has for its goal the Anointed of Jahve, who rules out of Zion over all peoples; the other, Jahve sitting above the cherubim, to whom the whole world does homage. The two series, it is true, converge in the Old Testament, but do not meet; it is the history that fulfils these types and prophecies which first of all makes clear that which flashes forth in the Old Testament only in certain climaxes of prophecy and of lyric too (vid., on Psa 45:1), viz., that the parusia of the Anointed One and the parusia of Jahve is one and the same.
Theocracy is an expression coined by Josephus. In contrast with the monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic form of government of other nations, he calls the Mosaic form θεοκρατία, but he does so somewhat timidly, ὡς ἂν τις εἴποι βιασάμενος τὸν λόγον [c. Apion. ii. 17]. The coining of the expression is thankworthy; only one has to free one's self from the false conception that the theocracy is a particular constitution. The alternating forms of government were only various modes of its adjustment. The theocracy itself is a reciprocal relationship between God and men, exalted above these intermediary forms, which had its first manifest beginning when Jahve became Israel's King (Deu 33:5, cf. Exo 15:18), and which will be finally perfected by its breaking through this national self-limitation when the King of Israel becomes King of the whole world, that is overcome both outwardly and spiritually. Hence the theocracy is an object of prediction and of hope. And the word מלך is used with reference to Jahve not merely of the first beginning of His imperial dominion, and of the manifestation of the same in facts in the most prominent points of the redemptive history, but also of the commencement of the imperial dominion in its perfected glory. We find the word used in this lofty sense, and in relation to the last time, e.g., in Isa 24:23; Isa 52:7, and most unmistakeably in Rev 11:17; Psa 19:6. And in this sense יהוה מלך is the watchword of the theocratic Psalms. Thus it is used even in Psa 47:9; but the first of the Psalms beginning with this watchword is Psa 93:1-5. They are all post-exilic. The prominent point from which this eschatological perspective opens out is the time of the new-born freedom and of the newly restored state.
Hitzig pertinently says: “This Psalm is already contained in nuce in Psa 92:9 of the preceding Psalm, which surely comes from the same author. This is at once manifest from the jerking start of the discourse in Psa 93:3 (cf. Psa 92:10), which resolves the thought into two members, of which the first subsides into the vocative יהוה.” The lxx (Codd. Vat. and Sin.) inscribes it: Εἰς τὴν ἡμέρην τοῦ προσαββάτου, ὅτε κατῴκισται ἡ γῆ, αἶνος ᾠδῆς τῷ Δαυίδ. The third part of this inscription is worthless. The first part (for which Cod. Alex. erroneously has: τοῦ σαββάτου) is corroborated by the Talmudic tradition. Psa 93:1-5 was really the Friday Psalm, and that, as is said in Rosh ha-shana 31a, ומלך עליהן (בשׁשׁי) על שׁם שׁגמר מלאכתו, because God then (on the sixth day) had completed His creative work and began to reign over them (His creatures); and that ὅτε κατῴκισται (al. κατῴκιστο) is to be explained in accordance therewith: when the earth had been peopled (with creatures, and more especially with men).

Verses 1-2

The sense of מלך (with ā beside Zinnor or Sarka as in Psa 97:1; Psa 99:1 beside Dechî)^[89] is historical, and it stands in the middle between the present מלך ה and the future מלך :ה Jahve has entered upon the kingship and now reigns Jahve's rule heretofore, since He has given up the use of His omnipotence, has been self-abasement and self-renunciation: how, however, He shows Himself in all His majesty, which rises aloft above everything; He has put this on like a garment; He is King, and now too shows Himself to the world in the royal robe. The first לבשׁ has Olewejored; then the accentuation takes לבשׁ ה together by means of Dechî, and עז התאזּר together by means of Athnach. עז, as in Psa 29:1-11, points to the enemies; what is so named is God's invincibly triumphant omnipotence. This He has put on (Isa 51:9), with this He has girded Himself - a military word (Isa 8:9): Jahve makes war against everything in antagonism to Himself, and casts it to the ground with the weapons of His wrathful judgments. We find a further and fuller description of this עז התאזר in Isa 59:17; Isa 63:1., cf. Dan 7:9.^[90]
That which cannot fail to take place in connection with the coming of this accession of Jahve to the kingdom is introduced with אף. The world, as being the place of the kingdom of Jahve, shall stand without tottering in opposition to all hostile powers (Psa 96:10). Hitherto hostility towards God and its principal bulwark, the kingdom of the world, have disturbed the equilibrium and threatened all God-appointed relationships with dissolution; Jahve's interposition, however, when He finally brings into effect all the abundant might of His royal government, will secure immoveableness to the shaken earth (cf. Psa 75:4). His throne stands, exalted above all commotion, מאז; it reaches back into the most distant past. Jahve is מעולם; His being loses itself in the immemorial and the immeasurable. The throne and nature of Jahve are not incipient in time, and therefore too are not perishable; but as without beginning, so also they are endless, infinite in duration.

Verses 3-5

All the raging of the world, therefore, will not be able to hinder the progress of the kingdom of God and its final breaking through to the glory of victory. The sea with its mighty mass of waters, with the constant unrest of its waves, with its ceaseless pressing against the solid land and foaming against the rocks, is an emblem of the Gentile world alienated from and at enmity with God; and the rivers (floods) are emblems of worldly kingdoms, as the Nile of the Egyptian (Jer 44:7.), the Euphrates of the Assyrian (Isa 8:7.), or more exactly, the Tigris, swift as an arrow, of the Assyrian, and the tortuous Euphrates of the Babylonian empire (Isa 27:1). These rivers, as the poet says whilst he raises a plaintive but comforted look upwards to Jahve, have lifted up, have lifted up their murmur, the rivers lift up their roaring. The thought is unfolded in a so-called “parallelism with reservation.” The perfects affirm what has taken place, the future that which even now as yet is taking place. The ἅπαξ λεγ. דּכי signifies a striking against (collisio), and a noise, a din. One now in Psa 93:4 looks for the thought that Jahve is exalted above this roaring of the waves. מן will therefore be the min of comparison, not of the cause: “by reason of the roar of great waters are the breakers of the sea glorious” (Starck, Geier), - which, to say nothing more, is a tautological sentence. But if מן is comparative, then it is impossible to get on with the accentuation of אדירים, whether it be with Mercha (Ben-Asher) or Dechî (Ben-Naphtali). For to render: More than the roar of great waters are the breakers of the sea glorious (Mendelssohn), is impracticable, since מים רבים are nothing less than ים (Isa 17:12.), and we are prohibited from taking אדירים משׁברי־ים as a parenthesis (Köster), by the fact that it is just this clause that is exceeded by אדיר במרום ה. Consequently אדירים has to be looked upon as a second attributive to מים brought in afterwards, and משׁבּרי־ים (the waves of the sea breaking upon the rocks, or even only breaking upon one another) as a more minute designation of these great and magnificent waters (אדירים, according to Exo 15:10),^[91], and it should have been accented: מים רבים אדירים משברי ים | מקלות. Jahve's celestial majesty towers far above all the noisy majesties here below, whose waves, though lashed never so high, can still never reach His throne. He is King of His people, Lord of His church, which preserves His revelation and worships in His temple. This revelation, by virtue of His unapproachable, all-overpowering kingship, is inviolable; His testimonies, which minister to the establishment of His kingdom and promise its future manifestation in glory, are λόγοι πιστοί καὶ ἀληθινοί, Rev 19:9; Rev 22:6. And holiness becometh His temple (נאוה־קדשׁ, 3rd praet. Pilel, or according to the better attested reading of Heidenheim and Baer, נאוה;^[92] therefore the feminine of the adjective with a more loosened syllable next to the tone, like יחשׁב־לּי in Ps 40:18), that is to say, it is inviolable (sacrosanct), and when it is profaned, shall ever be vindicated again in its holiness. This clause, formulated after the manner of a prayer, is at the same time a petition that Jahve in all time to come would be pleased to thoroughly secure the place where His honour dwells here below against profanation.

Psalm 94

==The Consolation of Prayer under the Oppression of Tyrants== 8 Be sensible, ye senseless among the people ! And ye fools, when will ye become wise ? 9 He who hath planted the ear, ought He not to hear ? Or He who formed the eye, ought He not to see ? 10 He who chastiseth the nations, ought He not to reprove, He who teacheth men knowledge ? 11 Jahve knoweth the thoughts of men That they are vanity. 12 Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, Jah, And teachest out of Thy Law ; 13 To give him rest from the days of adversity, Until the pit be digged for the evil-doer. 14 For Jahve doth not thrust away His people, And He doth not forsake His inheritance. 15 But right must turn unto righteousness, And all the upright in heart shall follow it. 16 Who would rise up for me against the evil-doers? Who would stand up for me against the workers of 17 If Jahve had not been my help, [iniquity? My soul would quickly have dwelt in the silence of death. 18 If I say : My foot tottereth, Then, Jahve, thy loving-kindness npholdeth me. 19 In the multitude of my cares within me Thy comforts delight my soul. 20 Hath the judgment-seat of corruption fellowship with Thee, Which frameth trouble by decree ? 21 They press in upon the soul of the righteous, And condemn innocent blood. 22 But Jahve is a fortress for me, And my God is the high rock of my refuge. 23 He turneth back upon them their iniquity, And for their wickedness He will destroy them, Jahve our God will destroy them.
This Psalm, akin to Psa 92:1-15 and Psa 93:1-5 by the community of the anadiplosis, bears the inscription Ψαλμὸς ᾠδῆς τῷ Δαυίδ, τετράδι σαββάτου in the lxx. It is also a Talmudic tradition^[93] that it was the Wednesday song in the Temple liturgy (τετράδι σαββάτου = ברביעי בשׁבת). Athanasius explains it by a reference to the fourth month (Jer 39:2). The τῳ Δαυίδ, however, is worthless. It is a post-Davidic Psalm; for, although it comes out of one mould, we still meet throughout with reminiscences of older Davidic and Asaphic models. The enemies against whom it supplicates the appearing of the God of righteous retribution are, as follows from a comparison of Psa 94:5, Psa 94:8, Psa 94:10, Psa 94:12, non-Israelites, who despise the God of Israel and fear not His vengeance, Psa 94:7; whose barbarous doings, however, call forth, even among the oppressed people themselves, foolish doubts concerning Jahve's omniscient beholding and judicial interposition. Accordingly the Psalm is one of the latest, but not necessarily a Maccabaean Psalm. The later Persian age, in which the Book of Ecclesiastes was written, could also exhibit circumstances and moods such as these.

Verses 1-3

The first strophe prays that God would at length put a judicial restraint upon the arrogance of ungodliness. Instead of חופיע (a less frequent form of the imperative for הופע, Ges. §53, rem. 3) it was perhaps originally written הופיעה (Psa 80:2), the He of which has been lost owing to the He that follows. The plural נקמות signifies not merely single instances of taking vengeance (Eze 25:17, cf. supra Psa 18:48), but also intensively complete revenge or recompense (Jdg 11:36; 2Sa 4:8). The designation of God is similar to אל גּמלות in Jer 51:56, and the anadiplosis is like Psa 94:3, Psa 94:23, Psa 93:1, Psa 93:3. הנּשׂא, lift Thyself up, arise, viz., in judicial majesty, calls to mind Psa 7:7. השׁיב גּמוּל is construed with על (cf. ל, Psa 28:4; 59:18) as in Joe 3:4. With גּאים accidentally accord ἀγαυός and κύδεΐ γαίων in the epic poets. ==Verses 4-7==
The second strophe describes those over whom the first prays that the judgment of God may come. הבּיע (cf. הטּיף) is a tropical phrase used of that kind of speech that results from strong inward impulse and flows forth in rich abundance. The poet himself explains how it is here (cf. Psa 59:8) intended: they speak עתק, that which is unrestrained, unbridled, insolent (vid., Psa 31:19). The Hithpa. התאמּר Schultens interprets ut Emiri (Arab. ‘mı̂r, a commander) se gerunt; but אמיר signifies in Hebrew the top of a tree (vid., on Isa 17:9); and from the primary signification to tower aloft, whence too אמר, to speak, prop. effere = effari, התאמּר, like התימּר in Isa 61:6, directly signifies to exalt one's self, to carry one's self high, to strut. On ודכּאוּ cf. Pro 22:22; Isa 3:15; and on their atheistical principle which ויּאמרוּ places in closest connection with their mode of action, cf. Psa 10:11; Psa 59:8 extrem. The Dagesh in יּהּ, distinct from the Dag. in the same word in Psa 94:12, Psa 118:5, Psa 118:18, is the Dag. forte conjunct. according to the rule of the so-called דחיק.

Verses 8-11

The third strophe now turns from those bloodthirsty, blasphemous oppressors of the people of God whose conduct calls forth the vengeance of Jahve, to those among the people themselves, who have been puzzled about the omniscience and indirectly about the righteousness of God by the fact that this vengeance is delayed. They are called בערים and כסילים in the sense of Psa 73:21. Those hitherto described against whom God's vengeance is supplicated are this also; but this appellation would be too one-sided for them, and בּעם refers the address expressly to a class of men among the people whom those oppress and slay. It is absurd that God, the planter of the ear (הנּטע, like שׁסע in Lev 11:7, with an accented ultima, because the praet. Kal does not follow the rule for the drawing back of the accent called נסוג אחור) and the former of the eye (cf. Psa 40:7; Exo 4:11), should not be able to hear and to see; everything that is excellent in the creature, God must indeed possess in original, absolute perfection.^[94]
The poet then points to the extra-Israelitish world and calls God יסר גּוים, which cannot be made to refer to a warning by means of the voice of conscience; יסר used thus without any closer definition does not signify “warning,” but “chastening” (Pro 9:7). Taking his stand upon facts like those in Job 12:23, the poet assumes the punitive judicial rule of God among the heathen to be an undeniable fact, and presents for consideration the question, whether He who chasteneth nations cannot and will not also punish the oppressors of His church (cf. Gen 18:25), He who teacheth men knowledge, i.e., He who nevertheless must be the omnipotent One, since all knowledge comes originally from Him? Jahve - thus does the course of argument close in Psa 94:11 - sees through (ידע of penetrative perceiving or knowing that goes to the very root of a matter) the thoughts of men that they are vanity. Thus it is to be interpreted, and not: for they (men) are vanity; for this ought to have been כּי הבל המּה, whereas in the dependent clause, when the predicate is not intended to be rendered especially prominent, as in Ps 9:21, the pronominal subject may precede, Isa 61:9; Jer 46:5 (Hitzig). The rendering of the lxx (1Co 3:20), ὅτι εἰσὶ μάταιοι (Jerome, quoniam vanae sunt), is therefore correct; המּה, with the customary want of exactness, stands for הנּה. It is true men themselves are הבל; it is not, however, on this account that He who sees through all things sees through their thoughts, but He sees through them in their sinful vanity.

Verses 12-15

The fourth strophe praises the pious sufferer, whose good cause God will at length aid in obtaining its right. The “blessed” reminds one of Psa 34:9; Psa 40:5, and more especially of Job 5:17, cf. Pro 3:11. Here what are meant are sufferings like those bewailed in Psa 94:5., which are however, after all, the well-meant dispensations of God. Concerning the aim and fruit of purifying and testing afflictions God teaches the sufferer out of His Law (cf. e.g., Deu 8:5.), in order to procure him rest, viz., inward rest (cf. Jer 49:23 with Isa 30:15), i.e., not to suffer him to be disheartened and tempted by days of wickedness, i.e., wicked, calamitous days (Ew. §287, b), until (and it will inevitably come to pass) the pit is finished being dug into which the ungodly falls headlong (cf. Psa 112:7.). יּהּ has the emphatic Dagesh, which properly does not double, and still less unite, but requires an emphatic pronunciation of the letter, which might easily become inaudible. The initial Jod of the divine name might easily lose it consonantal value here in connection with the preceding toneless û,^[95] and the Dag. guards against this: cf. Psa 118:5, Psa 118:18. The certainty of the issue that is set in prospect by עד is then confirmed with כּי. It is impossible that God can desert His church - He cannot do this, because in general right must finally come to His right, or, as it is here expressed, משׁפּט must turn to צדק, i.e., the right that is now subdued must at length be again strictly maintained and justly administered, and “after it then all who are upright in heart,” i.e., all such will side with it, joyously greeting that which has been long missed and yearned after. משׁפּט is fundamental right, which is at all times consistent with itself and raised above the casual circumstances of the time, and צדק, like אמת in Isa 42:3, is righteousness (justice), which converts this right into a practical truth and reality.

Verses 16-19

In the fifth strophe the poet celebrates the praise of the Lord as his sole, but also trusty and most consolatory help. The meaning of the question in Psa 94:16 is, that there is no man who would rise and succour him in the conflict with the evil-doers; ל as in Exo 14:25; Jdg 6:31, and עם (without נלחם or the like) in the sense of contra, as in Psa 55:19, cf. 2Ch 20:6. God alone is his help. He alone has rescued him from death. היה is to be supplied to לוּלי: if He had not been, or: if He were not; and the apodosis is: then very little would have been wanting, then it would soon have come to this, that his soul would have taken up its abode, etc.; cf. on the construction Psa 119:92; Psa 124:1-5; Isa 1:9, and on כּמעט with the praet. Psa 73:2; Psa 119:87; Gen 26: 10 (on the other hand with the fut. Psa 81:15). דּוּמה is, as in Psa 115:17, the silence of the grave and of Hades; here it is the object to שׁכנה, as in Psa 37:3, Pro 8:12, and frequently. When he appears to himself already as one that has fallen, God's mercy holds him up. And when thoughts, viz., sad and fearful thoughts, are multiplied within him, God's comforts delight him, viz., the encouragement of His word and the inward utterances of His Spirit. שׁרעפּים, as in Psa 139:23, is equivalent to שעפּים, from שׂעף, סעף, Arab. š‛b, to split, branch off (Psychology, S. 181; tr. p. 214). The plural form ישׁעשׁעוּ, like the plural of the imperative in Isa 29:9, has two Pathachs, the second of which is the “independentification” of the Chateph of ישׁעשׁע.

Verses 20-23

In the sixth strophe the poet confidently expects the inevitable divine retribution for which he has earnestly prayed in the introduction. יחברך is erroneously accounted by many (and by Gesenius too) as fut. Pual = יחבּרך = יחבּר עמּך, a vocal contraction together with a giving up of the reduplication in favour of which no example can be advanced. It is fut. Kal = יחברך, from יחבּר = יחבּר, with the same regression of the modification of the vowel^[96] as in יחנך = יחנך in Gen 43:29; Isa 30:19 (Hupfeld), but as in verbs primae gutturalis, so also in כּתבם, כּתבם, inflected from כּתב, Ew. §251, d. It might be more readily regarded as Poel than as Pual (like תּאכלנוּ, Job 20:26), but the Kal too already signifies to enter into fellowship (Gen 14:3; Hos 4:17), therefore (similarly to יגרך, Psa 5:5) it is: num consociabitur tecum. כּסּא is here the judgment-seat, just as the Arabic cursi directly denotes the tribunal of God (in distinction from Arab. ‘l - ‛arš, the throne of His majesty). With reference to הוּות vid., on Psa 5:10. Assuming that חק is a divine statute, we obtain this meaning for עלי־חק: which frameth (i.e., plots and executes) trouble, by making the written divine right into a rightful title for unrighteous conduct, by means of which the innocent are plunged into misfortune. Hitzig renders: contrary to order, after Pro 17:26, where, however, על־ישׁר is intended like ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, Mat 5:10. Olshausen proposes to read יגוּרוּ (Psa 56:7; Psa 59:4) instead of יגודּוּ, just as conversely Aben-Ezra in Psa 56:7 reads יגודּוּ. But גּדד, גּוּד, has the secured signification of scindere, incidere (cf. Arab. jdd, but also chd, supra, p. 255), from which the signification invadere can be easily derived (whence גּדוּד, a breaking in, invasion, an invading host). With reference to דּם נקי vid., Psychology, S. 243 (tr. p. 286): because the blood is the soul, that is said of the blood which applies properly to the person. The subject to יגודו are the seat of corruption (by which a high council consisting of many may be meant, just as much as a princely throne) and its accomplices. Prophetic certainty is expressed in ויהי and ויּשׁב. The figure of God as משׂגּב is Davidic and Korahitic. צוּר מחסּי צוּר is explained from Psa 18:2. Since השׁיב designates the retribution as a return of guilt incurred in the form of actual punishment, it might be rendered “requite” just as well as “cause to return;” עליהם, however, instead of להם (Psa 54:7) makes the idea expressed in Psa 7:17 more natural. On ברעתם Hitzig correctly compares 2Sa 14:7; 2Sa 3:27. The Psalm closes with an anadiplosis, just as it began with one; and אלהינוּ affirms that the destruction of the persecutor will follow as surely as the church is able to call Jahve its God.

Psalm 95

Verses 1-2

Jahve is called the Rock of our salvation (as in Psa 89: 27, cf. Psa 94:22) as being its firm and sure ground. Visiting the house of God, one comes before God's face; קדּם פּני, praeoccupare faciem, is equivalent to visere (visitare). תּודה is not confessio peccati, but laudis. The Beth before תודה is the Beth of accompaniment, as in Mic 6:6; that before זמרות (according to 2Sa 23:1 a name for psalms, whilst מזמר can only be used as a technical expression) is the Beth of the medium.

Verses 3-7

The adorableness of God receives a threefold confirmation: He is exalted above all gods as King, above all things as Creator, and above His people as Shepherd and Leader. אלהים (gods) here, as in Psa 96:4., Psa 97:7, Psa 97:9, and frequently, are the powers of the natural world and of the world of men, which the Gentiles deify and call kings (as Moloch Molech, the deified fire), which, however, all stand under the lordship of Jahve, who is infinitely exalted above everything that is otherwise called god (Psa 96:4; Psa 97:9). The supposition that תּועפות הרים denotes the pit-works (μέταλλα) of the mountains (Böttcher), is at once improbable, because to all appearance it is intended to be the antithesis to מחקרי־ארץ, the shafts of the earth. The derivation from ועף (יעף), κάμνειν, κοπιᾶν, also does not suit תועפות in Num 23:22; Num 24:8, for “fatigues” and “indefatigableness” are notions that lie very wide apart. The כּסף תּועפות of Job 22:25 might more readily be explained according to this “silver of fatigues,” i.e., silver that the fatiguing labour of mining brings to light, and תועפות הרים in the passage before us, with Gussetius, Geier, and Hengstenberg: cacumina montium quia defatigantur qui eo ascendunt, prop. ascendings = summits of the mountains, after which כסף תועפות, Job 22:25, might also signify “silver of the mountain-heights.” But the lxx, which renders δόξα in the passages in Numbers and τὰ ὕψη τῶν ὀρέων in the passage before us, leads one to a more correct track. The verb יעף (ועף), transposed from יפע (ופע), goes back to the root יף, וף, to stand forth, tower above, to be high, according to which תועפות = תופעות signifies eminentiae, i.e., towerings = summits, or prominences = high (the highest) perfection (vid., on Job 22:25). In the passage before us it is a synonym of the Arabic mı̂fan , mı̂fâtun , pars terrae eminens (from Arab. wfâ = יפע, prop. instrumentally: a means of rising above, viz., by climbing), and of the names of eminences derived from Arab. yf’ (after which Hitzig renders: the teeth of the mountains). By reason of the fact that Jahve is the Owner (cf. 1Sa 2:8), because the Creator of all things, the call to worship, which concerns no one so nearly as it does Israel, the people, which before other peoples is Jahve's creation, viz., the creation of His miraculously mighty grace, is repeated. In the call or invitation, השׁתּחוה signifies to stretch one's self out full length upon the ground, the proper attitude of adoration; כּרע, to curtsey, to totter; and בּרך, Arabic baraka, starting from the radical signification flectere, to kneel down, in genua (πρόχνυ, pronum = procnum) procumbere, 2Ch 6:13 (cf. Hölemann, Bibelstudien, i. 135f.). Beside עם מרעיתו, people of His pasture, צאן ידו is not the flock formed by His creating hand (Augustine: ipse gratiâ suâ nos oves fecit), but, after Gen 30:35, the flock under His protection, the flock led and defended by His skilful, powerful hand. Böttcher renders: flock of His charge; but יד in this sense (Jer 6:3) signifies only a place, and “flock of His place” would be poetry and prose in one figure.

Verses 7-11

The second decastich begins in the midst of the Masoretic Psa 95:7. Up to this point the church stirs itself up to a worshipping appearing before its God; now the voice of God (Heb 4:7), earnestly admonishing, meets it, resounding from out of the sanctuary. Since שׁמע בּ signifies not merely to hear, but to hear obediently, Psa 95:7 cannot be a conditioning protasis to what follows. Hengstenberg wishes to supply the apodosis: “then will He bless you, His people;” but אם in other instances too (Psa 81:9; Psa 139:19; Pro 24:11), like לוּ, has an optative signification, which it certainly has gained by a suppression of a promissory apodosis, but yet without the genius of the language having any such in mind in every instance. The word היּום placed first gives prominence to the present, in which this call to obedience goes forth, as a decisive turning-point. The divine voice warningly calls to mind the self-hardening of Israel, which came to light at Merîbah, on the day of Massah. What is referred to, as also in Psa 81:8, is the tempting of God in the second year of the Exodus on account of the failing of water in the neighbourhood of Horeb, at the place which is for this reason called Massah u - Merı̂bah (Exo 17:1-7); from which is to be distinguished the tempting of God in the fortieth year of the Exodus at Merı̂bah, viz., at the waters of contention near Kadesh (written fully Mê - Merı̂bah Kadesh, or more briefly Mê - Merı̂bah), Num 20:2-13 (cf. on Psa 78:20). Strictly כמריבה signifies nothing but instar Meribae, as in Psa 83:10 instar Midianitarum; but according to the sense, כּ is equivalent to כּעל. Psa 106:32, just as כּיום is equivalent to כּביום. On אשׁר, quum, cf. Deu 11:6. The meaning of גּם־ראוּ פעלי is not they also (גם as in Psa 52:7) saw His work; for the reference to the giving of water out of the rock would give a thought that is devoid of purpose here, and the assertion is too indefinite for it to be understood of the judgment upon those who tempted God (Hupfeld and Hitzig). It is therefore rather to be rendered: notwithstanding (ho'moos, Ew. §354, a) they had (= although they had, cf. גם in Isa 49:15) seen His work (His wondrous guiding and governing), and might therefore be sure that He would not suffer them to be destroyed. The verb קוּט coincides with κοτέω, κότος. בּדּור .ען, for which the lxx has τῇ γενεᾷ ἐκείνη, is anarthrous in order that the notion may be conceived of more qualitatively than relatively: with a (whole) generation. With ואמר Jahve calls to mind the repeated declarations of His vexation concerning their heart, which was always inclined towards error which leads to destruction - declarations, however, which bore no fruit. Just this ineffectiveness of His indignation had as its result that (אשׁר, not ὅτι but ὥστε, as in Gen 13:16; Deu 28:27, Deu 28:51; 2Ki 9:37, and frequently) He sware, etc. (אם = verily not, Gesen. §155, 2, f, with the emphatic future form in ûn which follows). It is the oath in Num 14:27. that is meant. The older generation died in the desert, and therefore lost the entering into the rest of God, by reason of their disobedience. If now, many centuries after Moses, they are invited in the Davidic Psalter to submissive adoration of Jahve, with the significant call: “To-day if ye will hearken to His voice!” and with a reference to the warning example of the fathers, the obedience of faith, now as formerly, has therefore to look forward to the gracious reward of entering into God's rest, which the disobedient at that time lost; and the taking possession of Canaan was, therefore, not as yet the final מנוּחה (Deu 12:9). This is the connection of the wider train of thought which to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews Heb 3:1, Heb 4:1, follows from this text of the Psalm.

Psalm 96

A Greeting of the Coming Kingdom of God

1 SING unto Jahve a new song, Sing unto Jahve, all lands. 2 Sing unto Jahve, bless His Name, Cheerfully proclaim His salvation from day to day. 3 Declare His glory among the heathen, His wonders among all peoples. 4 For great is Jahve and worthy to be praised exceedingly, Terrible is He above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But Jahve hath made the heavens. 6 Brightness and splendour are before Him, Might and beauty are in His sanctuary. 7 Give unto Jahve, O ye races of the peoples, Give unto Jahve glory and might. 8 Give unto Jahve the honour of His Name, Take offerings and come into His courts. 9 Worship Jahve in holy attire, Tremble before Him, all lands. 10 Say among the heathen : " Jahve is now King, Therefore the world will stand without tottering, He will govern the peoples in uprightness." 11 The heavens shall rejoice And the earth be glad, The sea shall roar and its fulness. 12 The field shall exult and all that is therein, Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy— 13 Before Jahve, for He cometh, For He cometh to judge the earth — He shall judge the world in righteousness And the peoples in His faithfulness.
What Psa 95:3 says: “A great God is Jahve, and a great King above all gods,” is repeated in Psa 96:1-13. The lxx inscribes it (1) ᾠδὴ τῷ Δαυίδ, and the chronicler has really taken it up almost entire in the song which was sung on the day when the Ark was brought in (1Ch 16:23-33); but, as the coarse seams between vv. 22-23, vv. 33-34 show, he there strings together familiar reminiscences of the Psalms (vid., on Ps 105) as a sort of mosaic, in order approximately to express the festive mood and festive strains of that day. And (2) ὅτε ὁ οἶκος ᾠκοδομεῖτο (Cod. Vat. ᾠκοδόμηται) μετὰ τὴν αἰχμαλωσίαν. By this the lxx correctly interprets the Psalm as a post-exilic song: and the Psalm corresponds throughout to the advance which the mind of Israel has experienced in the Exile concerning its mission in the world. The fact that the religion of Jahve is destined for mankind at large, here receives the most triumphantly joyous, lyrical expression. And so far as this is concerned, the key-note of the Psalm is even deutero-Isaianic. For it is one chief aim of Isa 40:1 to declare the pinnacle of glory of the Messianic apostolic mission on to which Israel is being raised through the depth of affliction of the Exile. All these post-exilic songs come much nearer to the spirit of the New Testament than the pre-exilic; for the New Testament, which is the intrinsic character of the Old Testament freed from its barriers and limitations, is in process of coming into being (im Werden begriffen) throughout the Old Testament, and the Exile was one of the most important crises in this progressive process.
Psa 96:1 are more Messianic than many in the strict sense of the word Messianic; for the central (gravitating) point of the Old Testament gospel (Heilsverkündigung) lies not in the Messiah, but in the appearing (parusia) of Jahve - a fact which is explained by the circumstance that the mystery of the incarnation still lies beyond the Old Testament knowledge or perception of salvation. All human intervention in the matter of salvation accordingly appears as purely human, and still more, it preserves a national and therefore outward and natural impress by virtue of the national limit within which the revelation of salvation has entered. If the ideal Davidic king who is expected even does anything superhuman, he is nevertheless only a man - a man of God, it is true, without his equal, but not the God-man. The mystery of the incarnation does, it is true, the nearer it comes to actual revelation, cast rays of its dawning upon prophecy, but the sun itself remains below the horizon: redemption is looked for as Jahve's own act, and “Jahve cometh” is also still the watchword of the last prophet (Mal 3:1).
The five six-line strophes of the Psalm before us are not to be mistaken. The chronicler has done away with five lines, and thereby disorganized the strophic structure; and one line (Psa 96:10) he has removed from its position. The originality of the Psalm in the Psalter, too, is revealed thereby, and the non-independence of the chronicler, who treats the Psalm as an historian.

Verses 1-3

Call to the nation of Jahve to sing praise to its God and to evangelize the heathen. שׁירוּ is repeated three times. The new song assumes a new form of things, and the call thereto, a present which appeared to be a beginning that furnished a guarantee of this new state of things, a beginning viz., of the recognition of Jahve throughout the whole world of nations, and of His accession to the lordship over the whole earth. The new song is an echo of the approaching revelation of salvation and of glory, and this is also the inexhaustible material of the joyful tidings that go forth from day to day (מיּום ליום as in Est 3:7, whereas in the Chronicles it is מיום אל־יום as in Num 30:15). We read Psa 96:1 verbally the same in Isa 42:10; Psa 96:2 calls to mind Isa 52:7; Isa 60:6; and Psa 96:3, Isa 66:19.

Verses 4-6

Confirmation of the call from the glory of Jahve that is now become manifest. The clause Psa 96:4, as also Psa 145:3, is taken out of Psa 48:2. כל־אלהים is the plural of כּל־אלוהּ, every god, 2Ch 32:15; the article may stand here or be omitted (Psa 95:3, cf. Psa 113:4). All the elohim, i.e., gods, of the peoples are אלילים (from the negative אל), nothings and good-for-nothings, unreal and useless. The lxx renders δαιμόνια, as though the expression were שׁדים (cf. 1Co 10:20), more correctly εἴδωλα in Rev 9:20. What Psa 96:5 says is wrought out in Isa 40, Isa 44, and elsewhere; אלילים is a name of idols that occurs nowhere more frequently than in Isaiah. The sanctuary (Psa 96:6) is here the earthly sanctuary. From Jerusalem, over which the light arises first of all (Isa. 60), Jahve's superterrestrial doxa now reveals itself in the world. הוד־והדר is the usual pair of words for royal glory. The chronicler reads Psa 96:6 עז וחדוה בּמקמו, might and joy are in His place (הדוה( ecalp siH ni era yoj d a late word, like אחוה, brotherhood, brotherly affection, from an old root, Exo 18:9). With the place of God one might associate the thought of the celestial place of God transcending space; the chronicler may, however, have altered במקדשׁו into במקמו because when the Ark was brought in, the Temple (בית המקדשׁ) was not yet built.

Verses 7-9

Call to the families of the peoples to worship God, the One, living, and glorious God. הבוּ is repeated three times here as Psa 29:1-11, of which the whole strophe is an echo. Isaiah (ch. 60) sees them coming in with the gifts which they are admonished to bring with them into the courts of Jahve (in Chr. only: לפניו). Instead of בּהדרת קדשׁ here and in the chronicler, the lxx brings the courts (חצרת) in once more; but the dependence of the strophe upon Psa 29:1-11 furnishes a guarantee for the “holy attire,” similar to the wedding garment in the New Testament parable. Instead of מפּניו, Psa 96:9, the chronicler has מלּפניו, just as he also alternates with both forms, 2Ch 32:7, cf. 1Ch 19:18.

Verses 10-11

That which is to be said among the peoples is the joyous evangel of the kingdom of heaven which is now come and realized. The watchword is “Jahve is King,” as in Isa 52:7. The lxx correctly renders: ὁ κύριος ἐβασίλευσε^[97] for מלך is intended historically (Rev 11:17). אף, as in Psa 93:1, introduces that which results from this fact, and therefore to a certain extent goes beyond it. The world below, hitherto shaken by war and anarchy, now stands upon foundations that cannot be shaken in time to come, under Jahve's righteous and gentle sway. This is the joyful tidings of the new era which the poet predicts from out of his own times, when he depicts the joy that will then pervade the whole creation; in connection with which it is hardly intentional that Psa 96:11 and Psa 96:11 acrostically contain the divine names יהוה and יהו. This joining of all creatures in the joy at Jahve's appearing is a characteristic feature of Isa 40:1. These cords are already struck in Isa 35:1. “The sea and its fulness” as in Isa 42:10. In the chronicler Psa 96:10 (ויאמרו instead of אמרו) stands between Psa 96:11 and Psa 96:11 - according to Hitzig, who uses all his ingenuity here in favour of that other recension of the text, by an oversight of the copyist.

Verses 12-13

The chronicler changes שׂדי into the prosaic השּׂדה, and כל־עצי־יעל with the omission of the כל into עצי היּער. The psalmist on his part follows the model of Isaiah, who makes the trees of the wood exult and clap their hands, Psa 55:12; Psa 44:23. The אז, which points into this festive time of all creatures which begins with Jahve's coming, is as in Isa 35:5. Instead of לפני, “before,” the chronicler has the מלּפני so familiar to him, by which the joy is denoted as being occasioned by Jahve's appearing. The lines Psa 96:13 sound very much like Psa 9:9. The chronicler has abridged Psa 96:13, by hurrying on to the mosaic-work portion taken from Ps 105. The poet at the close glances from the ideal past into the future. The twofold בּא is a participle, Ew. §200. Being come to judgment, after He has judged and sifted, executing punishment, Jahve will govern in the righteousness of mercy and in faithfulness to the promises.

Psalm 97

The Breaking Through of the Kingdom of God, the Judge and Saviour

1 JAHVE is now King, the earth shouteth for joy, Many islands rejoice. 2 Clouds and darkness are round about Him, Righteousness and judgment are the pillars of His throne. 3 Fire goeth before Him And burnetb. up His enemies round about. 4 His lightnings lighten the world ; The earth seeth it, and trembleth because of it. 5 Mountains melt like wax before Jahve, Before the Lord of the whole earth. 6 The heavens declare His righteousness, And all the peoples see His glory. 7 Confounded are all those who serve graven images, Who boast themselves of idols ; All the gods cast themselves down to Him. 8 Zion heareth it and rejoiceth thereat, And the daughters of Judah shout for joy— Because of Thy judgments, Jahve ! 9 For Thou, Jahve, art the Most High over all the earth, Thou art highly exalted above all gods. 10 Ye who love Jahve, hate evil : He who guardeth the souls of His saints, Out of the hand of the evil-doer will He rescue them. 11 Light is sown for the righteous, And for the upright-minded joy. 12 Rejoice, ye righteous, in Jahve, And sing praise unto His holy Name.
This Psalm, too, has the coming of Jahve, who enters upon His kingdom through judgment, as its theme, and the watchword “Jahve is King” as its key-note. The lxx inscribes it: τῷ Δαυίδ ὅτε ἡ γῆ αὐτοῦ καθίσταται (καθίστατο); Jerome: quando terra ejus restituta est. The τῷ Δαυίδ is worthless; the time of restoration, from which it takes its rise, is the post-exilic, for it is composed, as mosaic-work, out of the earlier original passages of Davidic and Asaphic Psalms and of the prophets, more especially of Isaiah, and is entirely an expression of the religious consciousness which resulted from the Exile.

Verses 1-3

We have here nothing but echoes of the older literature: Psa 97:1, cf. Isa 42:10-12; Isa 51:5; Psa 97:2, cf. Psa 18:10, Psa 18:12; Psa 97:2 = Psa 89:15; Psa 97:3, cf. Psa 50:3; Psa 18:9; Psa 97:3, cf. Isa 42:25. Beginning with the visible coming of the kingdom of God in the present, with מלך ה the poet takes his stand upon the standpoint of the kingdom which is come. With it also comes rich material for universal joy. תּגל is indicative, as in Psa 96:11 and frequently. רבּים are all, for all of them are in fact many (cf. Isa 52:15). The description of the theophany, for which the way is preparing in Psa 97:2, also reminds one of Hab. 3. God's enshrouding Himself in darkness bears witness to His judicial earnestness. Because He comes as Judge, the basis of His royal throne and of His judgment-seat is also called to mind. His harbinger is fire, which consumes His adversaries on every side, as that which broke forth out of the pillar of cloud once consumed the Egyptians.

Verses 4-6

Again we have nothing but echoes of the older literature: Psa 97:4 = Psa 77:19; Psa 97:4, cf. Psa 77:17; Psa 97:5, cf. Mic 1:4; Psa 97:5, cf. Mic 4:13; Psa 97:6 = Psa 50:6; Psa 97:6, cf. Isa 35:2; Isa 40:5; Isa 52:10; Isa 66:18. The poet goes on to describe that which is future with historical certainty. That which Psa 77:19 says of the manifestation of God in the earlier times he transfers to the revelation of God in the last time. The earth sees it, and begins to tremble in consequence of it. The reading ותּחל, according to Hitzig (cf. Ew. §232, b) traditional, is, however, only an error of pointing that has been propagated; the correct reading is the reading of Heidenheim and Baer, restored according to MSS, ותּחל (cf. 1Sa 31:3), like ותּבן, ותּקם, ותּרם, and ותּשׂם. The figure of the wax is found even in Psa 68:3; and Jahve is also called “Lord of the whole earth” in Zec 4:14; Zec 6:5. The proclamation of the heavens is an expression of joy, Psa 96:11. They proclaim the judicial strictness with which Jahve, in accordance with His promises, carries out His plan of salvation, the realization of which has reached its goal in the fact that all men see the glory of God.

Verses 7-8

When the glory of Jahve becomes manifest, everything that is opposed to it will be punished and consumed by its light. Those who serve idols will become conscious of their delusion with shame and terror, Isa 42:17; Jer 10:14. The superhuman powers (lxx ἄγγελοι), deified by the heathen, then bow down to Him who alone is Elohim in absolute personality. השׁתּחווּ is not imperative (lxx, Syriac), for as a command this clause would be abrupt and inconsequential, but the perfect of that which actually takes place. The quotation in Heb 1:6 is taken from Deu 32:43, lxx. In Psa 97:8 (after Psa 48:12) the survey of the poet again comes back to his own nation. When Zion hears that Jahve has appeared, and all the world and all the powers bow down to Him, she rejoices; for it is in fact her God whose kingship has come to the acknowledge. And all the daughter-churches of the Jewish land exult together with the mother-church over the salvation which dawns through judgments.

Verse 9

This distichic epiphonema (Psa 97:9 = Ps 83:19; Psa 97:9, cf. Psa 47:3, 10) might close the Psalm; there follows still, however, a hortatory strophe (which was perhaps not added till later on).

Verses 10-12

It is true Psa 97:12 is = Psa 32:11, Psa 97:12 = Psa 30:5, and the promise in Psa 97:10 is the same as in Psa 37:28; Psa 34:21; but as to the rest, particularly Psa 97:11, this strophe is original. It is an encouraging admonition to fidelity in an age in which an effeminate spirit of looking longingly towards lit. ogling heathenism was rife, and stedfast adherence to Jahve was threatened with loss of life. Those who are faithful in their confession, as in the Maccabaean age (Ἀσιδαῖοι), are called חסדיו. The beautiful figure in Psa 97:11 is misapprehended by the ancient versions, inasmuch as they read זרח (Psa 112:4) instead of זרע. זרע does not here signify sown = strewn into the earth, but strewn along his life's way, so that he, the righteous one, advances step by step in the light. Hitzig rightly compares ki'dnatai ski'dnatai, used of the dawn and of the sun. Of the former Virgil also says, Et jam prima novo spargebat lumine terras. =Psalm 98=

Greeting to Him Who Is Become Known in Righteousness and Salvation

1 SING unto Jahve a new song, For He hath done marvellous things, His right hand and His holy arm helped Him. 2 Jahve hath made known His salvation, He hath revealed His righteousness before the eyes of the nations. 3 He remembered His loving-kindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel, All the ends of the earth saw the salvation of our God. 4 Make a joyful noise unto Jahve, all ye lands, Break forth into rejoicing and play — 5 Play unto Jahve with the cithern, With the cithern and the voice of song. 6 With trumpets and the sound of the horn, Make a joyful noise before the King Jahve ! 7 Let the sea roar, and that which fllleth it, The world, and those who dwell therein. 8 Let the rivers clap their hands, Together let the mountains rejoice 9 Before Jahve, for He cometh to judge the earth — He shall judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with uprightness.
This is the only Psalm which is inscribed מזמור without further addition, whence it is called in B. Aboda Zara, 24b, מזמורא יתומא (the orphan Psalm). The Peshîto Syriac inscribes it De redemtione populi ex Aegypto; the “new song,” however, is not the song of Moses, but the counterpart of this, cf. Rev 15:3. There “the Lord reigneth” resounded for the first time, at the sea; here the completion of the beginning there commenced is sung, viz., the final glory of the divine kingdom, which through judgment breaks through to its full reality. The beginning and end are taken from Psa 96:1-13. Almost all that lies between is taken from the second part of Isaiah. This book of consolation for the exiles is become as it were a Castalian spring for the religious lyric.

Verses 1-3

Psa 98:1-3Psa 98:1 we have already read in Psa 96:1. What follows in Psa 98:1 is taken from Isa 52:10; Isa 63:5, cf. Psa 98:7, Psa 59:16, cf. Psa 40:10. The primary passage, Isa 52:10, shows that the Athnach of Psa 98:2 is correctly placed. לעיני is the opposite of hearsay (cf. Arab. l - l - ‛yn, from one's own observation, opp. Arab. l - l - chbr, from the narrative of another person). The dative לבית ישראל depends upon ויּזכּר, according to Psa 106:45, cf. Luk 1:54.

Verses 4-6

The call in Psa 98:4 demands some joyful manifestation of the mouth, which can be done in many ways; in Psa 98:5 the union of song and the music of stringed instruments, as of the Levites; and in Psa 98:6 the sound of wind instruments, as of the priests. On Psa 98:4 cf. Isa 44:23; Isa 49: 13; Isa 52:9, together with Isa 14:7 (inasmuch as פּצחוּ ורננוּ is equivalent to פּצחוּ רנּה). קול זמרה is found also in Isa 51:3.

Verses 7-9

Here, too, it is all an echo of the earlier language of Psalms and prophets: Psa 98:7 = Psa 96:11; Psa 98:7 like Psa 24:1; Psa 98:8 after Isa 55:12 (where we find מחא כּף instead of the otherwise customary תּקע כּף, Psa 47:2; or הכּה כּף, 2Ki 11:12, is said of the trees of the field); Psa 98:9 - Psa 96:13, cf. Psa 36:10. In the bringing in of nature to participate in the joy of mankind, the clapping rivers (נהרות) are original to this Psalm: the rivers cast up high waves, which flow into one another like clapping hands;^[98] cf. Hab 3:10, where the abyss of the sea lifts up its hands on high, i.e., causes its waves to run mountain-high.

Psalm 99

Song of Praise in Honour of the Thrice Holy One

1 JAHVE reigneth, the peoples tremble ; He sitteth upon the cherubim, the earth tottereth. 2 Jahve in Zion is great, And He is exalted above all the peoples. 3 They shall praise Thy great and fearful name — Holy is He. 4 And the might of a king who loveth the right Hast Tnou established in righteousness ; Right and righteousness hast Thou executed in Jacob. 5 Exalt ye Jahve our God, And prostrate yourselves at His footstool — Holy is He. 6 Moses and Aaron among His priests, And Samuel among those who call upon His name — They called unto Jahve and He answered them ; 1 In a pillar of cloud He spoke to them ; They kept His testimonies, And the law which He gave them. 8 Jahve our God, Thou hast answered them ; A forgiving God wast Thou unto them, And one taking vengeance of their deeds. 9 Exalt ye Jahve our God, And prostrate yourselves at His holy mountain, For holy is Jahve our God.
This is the third of the Psalms (Psa 93:1-5, Psa 97:1-12, Psa 99:1-9) which begin with the watchword מלך ה. It falls into three parts, of which the first (Psa 99:1-3) closes with קדושׁ הוּא, the second (Psa 99:4, Psa 99:5) with קדושׁ הוּא, and the third, more full-toned, with אלחנוּ קדושׁ ה - an earthly echo of the trisagion of the seraphim. The first two Sanctuses are two hexastichs; and two hexastichs form the third, according to the very same law by which the third and the sixth days of creation each consists of two creative works. This artistic form bears witness against Olshausen in favour of the integrity of the text; but the clare-obscure of the language and expression makes no small demands upon the reader.
Bengel has seen deepest into the internal character of this Psalm. He says, “The 99th Psalm has three parts, in which the Lord is celebrated as He who is to come, as He who is, and as He who was, and each part is closed with the ascription of praise: He is holy.” The Psalm is laid out accordingly by Oettinger, Burk, and C. H. Rieger.

Verses 1-3

The three futures express facts of the time to come, which are the inevitable result of Jahve's kingly dominion bearing sway from heaven, and here below from Zion, over the world; they therefore declare what must and will happen. The participle insidens cherubis (Psa 80:2, cf. Psa 18:11) is a definition of the manner (Olshausen): He reigns, sitting enthroned above the cherubim. נוּט, like Arab. nwd, is a further formation of the root na, nu, to bend, nod. What is meant is not a trembling that is the absolute opposite of joy, but a trembling that leads on to salvation. The Breviarium in Psalterium, which bears the name of Jerome, observes: Terra quamdiu immota fuerit, sanari non potest; quando vero mota fuerit et intremuerit, tunc recipiet sanitatem. In Psa 99:3 declaration passes over into invocation. One can feel how the hope that the “great and fearful Name” (Deu 10:17) will be universally acknowledged, and therefore that the religion of Israel will become the religion of the world, moves and elates the poet. The fact that the expression notwithstanding is not קדושׁ אתּה, but קדושׁ הוּא, is explained from the close connection with the seraphic trisagion in Isa 6:3. הוּא refers to Jahve; He and His Name are notions that easily glide over into one another.

Verses 4-5

The second Sanctus celebrates Jahve with respect to His continuous righteous rule in Israel. The majority of expositors construe it: “And (they shall praise) the might of the king, who loves right;” but this joining of the clause on to יודוּ over the refrain that stands in the way is hazardous. Neither can ועז מלך משׁפּט אהב, however, be an independent clause, since אהב cannot be said of עז, but only of its possessor. And the dividing of the verse at אהב, adopted by the lxx, will therefore not hold good. משפט אהב is an attributive clause to מלך in the same position as in Psa 11:7; and עז, with what appertains to it, is the object to כּוננתּ placed first, which has the king's throne as its object elsewhere (Psa 9:8, 2Sa 7:13; 1Ch 17:12), just as it here has the might of the king, which, however, here at the same time in מישׁרים takes another and permutative object (cf. the permutative subject in Psa 72:17), as Hitzig observes; or rather, since מישׁרים is most generally used as an adverbial notion, this מישׁרים (Psa 58:2; Psa 75:3; Psa 9:9, and frequently), usually as a definition of the mode of the judging and reigning, is subordinated: and the might of a king who loves the right, i.e., of one who governs not according to dynastic caprice but moral precepts, hast Thou established in spirit and aim (directed to righteousness and equity). What is meant is the theocratic kingship, and Psa 11:4 says what Jahve has constantly accomplished by means of this kingship: He has thus maintained right and righteousness (cf. e.g., 2Sa 8:15; 1Ch 18:14; 1Ki 10:9; Isa 16:5) among His people. Out of this manifestation of God's righteousness, which is more conspicuous, and can be better estimated, within the nation of the history of redemption than elsewhere, grows the call to highly exalt Jahve the God of Israel, and to bow one's self very low at His footstool. להדם רגליו, as in Psa 132:7, is not a statement of the object (for Isa 45:14 is of another kind), but (like אל in other instances) of the place in which, or of the direction (cf. Psa 7:14) in which the προσκύνησις is to take place. The temple is called Jahve's footstool (1Ch 28:2, cf. Lam 2:1; Isa 60:13) with reference to the ark, the capporeth of which corresponds to the transparent sapphire (Exo 24:10) and to the crystal-like firmament of the mercaba (Eze 1:22, cf. 1Ch 28:18).

Verses 6-9

The vision of the third Sanctus looks into the history of the olden time prior to the kings. In support of the statement that Jahve is a living God, and a God who proves Himself in mercy and in judgment, the poet appeals to three heroes of the olden time, and the events recorded of them. The expression certainly sounds as though it had reference to something belonging to the present time; and Hitzig therefore believes that it must be explained of the three as heavenly intercessors, after the manner of Onias and Jeremiah in the vision 2 Macc. 15:12-14. But apart from this presupposing an active manifestation of life on the part of those who have fallen happily asleep, which is at variance with the ideas of the latest as well as of the earliest Psalms concerning the other world, this interpretation founders upon Psa 99:7, according to which a celestial discourse of God with the three “in the pillar of cloud” ought also to be supposed. The substantival clauses Psa 99:6 bear sufficient evident in themselves of being a retrospect, by which the futures that follow are stamped as being the expression of the contemporaneous past. The distribution of the predicates to the three is well conceived. Moses was also a mighty man in prayer, for with his hands uplifted for prayer he obtained the victory for his people over Amalek (Exo 17:11.), and on another occasion placed himself in the breach, and rescued them from the wrath of God and from destruction (Psa 106:23; Exo 32:30-32; cf. also Num 12:13); and Samuel, it is true, is only a Levite by descent, but by office in a time of urgent need a priest (cohen), for he sacrifices independently in places where, by reason of the absence of the holy tabernacle with the ark of the covenant, it was not lawful, according to the letter of the law, to offer sacrifices, he builds an altar in Ramah, his residence as judge, and has, in connection with the divine services on the high place (Bama) there, a more than high-priestly position, inasmuch as the people do not begin the sacrificial repasts before he has blessed the sacrifice (1Sa 9:13). But the character of a mighty man in prayer is outweighed in the case of Moses by the character of the priest; for he is, so to speak, the proto-priest of Israel, inasmuch as he twice performed priestly acts which laid as it were a foundation for all times to come, viz., the sprinkling of the blood at the ratification of the covenant under Sinai (Ex. 24), and the whole ritual which was a model for the consecrated priesthood, at the consecration of the priests (Lev. 8). It was he, too, who performed the service in the sanctuary prior to the consecration of the priests: he set the shew-bread in order, prepared the candlestick, and burnt incense upon the golden altar (Exo 40:22-27). In the case of Samuel, on the other hand, the character of the mediator in the religious services is outweighed by that of the man mighty in prayer: by prayer he obtained Israel the victory of Ebenezer over the Philistines (1Sa 7:8.), and confirmed his words of warning with the miraculous sign, that at his calling upon God it would thunder and rain in the midst of a cloudless season (1Sa 12:16, cf. Sir. 46:16f.).
The poet designedly says: Moses and Aaron were among His priests, and Samuel among His praying ones. This third twelve-line strophe holds good, not only of the three in particular, but of the twelve-tribe nation of priests and praying ones to which they belong. For Psa 99:7 cannot be meant of the three, since, with the exception of a single instance (Num 12:5), it is always Moses only, not Aaron, much less Samuel, with whom God negotiates in such a manner. אליהם refers to the whole people, which is proved by their interest in the divine revelation given by the hand of Moses out of the cloudy pillar (Exo 33:7.). Nor can Psa 99:6 therefore be understood of the three exclusively, since there is nothing to indicate the transition from them to the people: crying (קראים, syncopated like חטאים, 1Sa 24:11) to Jahve, i.e., as often as they (these priests and praying ones, to whom a Moses, Aaron, and Samuel belong) cried unto Jahve, He answered them-He revealed Himself to this people who had such leaders (choragi), in the cloudy pillar, to those who kept His testimonies and the law which He gave them. A glance at Psa 99:8 shows that in Israel itself the good and the bad, good and evil, are distinguished. God answered those who could pray to Him with a claim to be answered. Psa 99:7, is, virtually at least, a relative clause, declaring the prerequisite of a prayer that may be granted. In Psa 99:8 is added the thought that the history of Israel, in the time of its redemption out of Egypt, is not less a mirror of the righteousness of God than of the pardoning grace of God. If Psa 99:7-8 are referred entirely to the three, then עלילות and נקם, referred to their sins of infirmity, appear to be too strong expressions. But to take the suffix of עלילותם objectively (ea quae in eos sunt moliti Core et socii ejus), with Symmachus (καὶ ἔκδικος ἐπὶ ταῖς ἐπηρείναις αὐτῶν) and Kimchi, as the ulciscens in omnes adinventiones eorum of the Vulgate is interpreted,^[99] is to do violence to it. The reference to the people explains it all without any constraint, and even the flight of prayer that comes in here (cf. Mic 7:18). The calling to mind of the generation of the desert, which fell short of the promise, is an earnest admonition for the generation of the present time. The God of Israel is holy in love and in wrath, as He Himself unfolds His Name in Exo 34:6-7. Hence the poet calls upon his fellow-countrymen to exalt this God, whom they may with pride call their own, i.e., to acknowledge and confess His majesty, and to fall down and worship at (ל cf. אל, Psa 5:8) the mountain of His holiness, the place of His choice and of His presence.

Psalm 100

==Call of All the World to the Service of the True God==
This Psalm closes the series of deutero-Isaianic Psalms, which began with Ps 91. There is common to all of them that mild sublimity, sunny cheerfulness, unsorrowful spiritual character, and New Testament expandedness, which we wonder at in the second part of the Book of Isaiah; and besides all this, they are also linked together by the figure anadiplosis, and manifold consonances and accords.
The arrangement, too, at least from Psa 93:1-5 onwards, is Isaianic: it is parallel with the relation of Isa 24:1 to Psa 13:1. Just as the former cycle of prophecies closes that concerning the nations, after the manner of a musical finale, so the Psalms celebrating the dominion of God, from Psa 93:1-5 onwards, which vividly portray the unfolded glory of the kingship of Jahve, have Jubilate and Cantate Psalms in succession.
From the fact that this last Jubilate is entirely the echo of the first, viz., of the first half of Psa 95:1-11, we see how ingenious the arrangement is. There we find all the thoughts which recur here. There it is said in Psa 95:7, He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the flock of His hand. And in Psa 95:2, Let us come before His face with thanksgiving (בּתודה), let us make a joyful noise unto Him in songs!
This תודה is found here in the title of the Psalm, מזמור לתּודה. Taken in the sense of a “Psalm for thanksgiving,” it would say but little. We may take לתודה in a liturgical sense (with the Targum, Mendelssohn, Ewald, and Hitzig), like ליום השׁבת, Psa 92:1, in this series, and like להזכיר in Psa 38:1; Psa 70:1. What is intended is not merely the tôda of the heart, but the shelamı̂m - tôda, תּודה זבח, Psa 107:22; Psa 116:17, which is also called absolutely תודה in Psa 56: 13, 2Ch 29:31. That kind of shelamı̂m is thus called which is presented על־תודה, i.e., as thankful praise for divine benefits received, more particularly marvellous protection and deliverance (vid., Ps 107).

Verses 1-3

The call in Psa 100:1 sounds like Psa 98:4; Psa 66:1. כּל־הארץ are all lands, or rather all men belonging to the earth's population. The first verse, without any parallelism and in so far monostichic, is like the signal for a blowing of the trumpets. Instead of “serve Jahve with gladness (בּשׂמחה),” it is expressed in Psa 2:11, “serve Jahve with fear (בּיראה).” Fear and joy do not exclude one another. Fear becomes the exalted Lord, and the holy gravity of His requirements; joy becomes the gracious Lord, and His blessed service. The summons to manifest this joy in a religious, festive manner springs up out of an all-hopeful, world-embracing love, and this love is the spontaneous result of living faith in the promise that all tribes of the earth shall be blessed in the seed of Abraham, and in the prophecies in which this promise is unfolded. דּעוּ (as in Psa 4:4) Theodoret well interprets δι ̓ αὐτῶν μάθετε τῶν πραγμάτων. They are to know from facts of outward and inward experience that Jahve is God: He hath made us, and not we ourselves. Thus runs the Chethîb, which the lxx follows, αὐτὸς ἔποήσεν ἡμᾶς καὶ οὐχ ἡμεῖς (as also the Syriac and Vulgate); but Symmachus (like Rashi), contrary to all possibilities of language, renders αὐτὸς ἐποίησεν ἡμᾶς οὐκ ὄντας. Even the Midrash (Bereshith Rabba, ch. c. init.) finds in this confession the reverse of the arrogant words in the mouth of Pharaoh: “I myself have made myself” (Eze 29:3). The Kerî, on the other hand, reads לו,^[100] which the Targum, Jerome, and Saadia follow and render: et ipsius nos sumus. Hengstenberg calls this Kerî quite unsuitable and bad; and Hupfeld, on the other hand, calls the Chethîb an “unspeakable insipidity.” But in reality both readings accord with the context, and it is clear that they are both in harmony with Scripture. Many a one has drawn balsamic consolation from the words ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos; e.g., Melancthon when disconsolately sorrowful over the body of his son in Dresden on the 12th July 1559. But in ipse fecit nos et ipsius nos sumus there is also a rich mine of comfort and of admonition, for the Creator of also the Owner, His heart clings to His creature, and the creature owes itself entirely to Him, without whom it would not have had a being, and would not continue in being. Since, however, the parallel passage, Psa 95:7, favours ולו rather than ולא; since, further, ולא ,reh is the easier reading, inasmuch as הוּא leads one to expect that an antithesis will follow (Hitzig); and since the “His people and the sheep of His pasture” that follows is a more natural continuation of a preceding ולו אנחנו than that it should be attached as a predicative object to עשׂנוּ over a parenthetical ולא אנחנו: the Kerî decidedly maintains the preference. In connection with both readings, עשׂה has a sense related to the history of redemption, as in 1Sa 12:6. Israel is Jahve's work (מעשׂה), Isa 29:23; Isa 60:21, cf. Deu 32:6, Deu 32:15, not merely as a people, but as the people of God, who were kept in view even in the calling of Abram.

Verses 4-5

Therefore shall the men of all nations enter with thanksgiving into the gates of His Temple and into the courts of His Temple with praise (Psa 96:8), in order to join themselves in worship to His church, which - a creation of Jahve for the good of the whole earth - is congregated about this Temple and has it as the place of its worship. The pilgrimage of all peoples to the holy mountain is an Old Testament dress of the hope for the conversion of all peoples to the God of revelation, and the close union of all with the people of this God. His Temple is open to them all. They may enter, and when they enter they have to look for great things. For the God of revelation (52:11; 54:8) is “good” (Psa 25:8; Psa 34:9), and His loving-kindness and faithfulness endure for ever - the thought that recurs frequently in the later Hallelujah and Hodu Psalms and is become a liturgical formula (Jer 33:11). The mercy of loving-kindness of God is the generosity, and His faithfulness the constancy, of His love.

Psalm 101

Verses 1-8

This is the “prince's Psalm,”^[101] or as it is inscribed in Luther's version, “David's mirror of a monarch.” Can there be any more appropriate motto for it than what is said of Jahve's government in Psa 99:4? In respect of this passage of Psa 99:1-9, to which Psa 100:1-5 is the finale, Psa 101:1-8 seems to be appended as an echo out of the heart of David. The appropriateness of the words לדוד מזמור (the position of the words is as in Psa 24:1-10; 40; 109:1-110:7; 139) is corroborated by the form and contents. Probably the great historical work from which the chronicler has taken excerpts furnished the post-exilic collector with a further gleaning of Davidic songs, or at least songs that were ascribed to David. The Psalm before us belongs to the time during which the Ark was in the house of Obed-Edom, where David had left it behind through terror at the misfortune of Uzzah. David said at that time: “How shall the Ark of Jahve come to me (the unholy one)?” 2Sa 6:8. He did not venture to bring the Ark of the Fearful and Holy One within the range of his own house. In our Psalm, however, he gives utterance to his determination as king to give earnest heed to the sanctity of his walk, of his rule, and of his house; and this resolve he brings before Jahve as a vow, to whom, in regard to the rich blessing which the Ark of God diffuses around it (2Sa 6:11.), he longingly sighs: “When wilt Thou come to me?!” This contemporaneous reference has been recognised by Hammond and Venema. From the fact that Jahve comes to David, Jerusalem becomes “the city of Jahve,” Psa 101:8; and to defend the holiness of this the city of His habitation in all faithfulness, and with all his might, is the thing to which David here pledges himself.
The contents of the first verse refer not merely to the Psalm that follows as an announcement of its theme, but to David's whole life: graciousness and right, the self-manifestations united ideally and, for the king who governs His people, typically in Jahve, shall be the subject of his song. Jahve, the primal source of graciousness and of right, it shall be, to whom he consecrates his poetic talent, as also his playing upon the harp. חסד is condescension which flows from the principle of free love, and משׁפּט legality which binds itself impartially and uncapriciously to the rule (norm) of that which is right and good. They are two modes of conduct, mutually tempering each other, which God requires of every man (Mic 6:8, cf. Mat 23:23 : τὴν κρίσιν καὶ τὸν ἔλεον), and more especially of a king. Further, he has resolved to give heed, thoughtfully and with an endeavour to pursue it (השׂכּיל בּ as in Dan 9:13), unto the way of that which is perfect, i.e., blameless. What is further said might now be rendered as a relative clause: when Thou comest to me. But not until then?! Hitzig renders it differently: I will take up the lot of the just when it comes to me, i.e., as often as it is brought to my knowledge. But if this had been the meaning, בּדבר would have been said instead of בּדרך (Exo 18:16, Exo 18:19; 2Sa 19:12 [11]); for, according to both its parts, the expression דוך תמים is an ethical notion, and is therefore not used in a different sense from that in Psa 101:6. Moreover, the relative use of the interrogative מתי in Hebrew cannot be supported, with the exception, perhaps, of Pro 23:35. Athanasius correctly interprets: ποθῶ σου τὴν παρουσίαν, ὦ δέσποτα, ἱμείρομαί σου τῆς ἐπιφανείας, ἀλλὰ δὸς τὸ ποθούμενον. It is a question of strong yearning: when wilt Thou come to me? is the time near at hand when Thou wilt erect Thy throne near to me? If his longing should be fulfilled, David is resolved to, and will then, behave himself as he further sets forth in the vows he makes. He pledges himself to walk within his house, i.e., his palace, in the innocence or simplicity of his heart (Psa 78:72; Pro 20:7), without allowing himself to be led away from this frame of mind which has become his through grace. He will not set before his eyes, viz., as a proposition or purpose (Deu 15:9; Exo 10:10; 1Sa 29:10, lxx), any morally worthless or vile matter whatsoever (Psa 41:8, cf. concerning בליּעל, Psa 18:5). The commission of excesses he hates: עשׂה is infin. constr. instead of עשׂות as in Gen 31:28; Gen 50:20; Pro 21:3, cf. ראה Gen 48:11, שׁתו Pro 31:4. סטים (like שׂטים in Hos 5:2), as the object of עשׂה, has not a personal (Kimchi, Ewald) signification (cf. on the other hand Psa 40:5), but material signification: (facta)declinantia (like זדים, Psa 19:13, insolentia; הבלים, Zec 11:7, vincientia); all temptations and incitements of this sort he shakes off from himself, so that nothing of the kind cleaves to him. The confessions in Psa 101:4 refer to his own inward nature: לב עקּשׁ (not עקּשׁ־לב, Pro 17:20), a false heart that is not faithful in its intentions either to God or to men, shall remain far from him; wickedness (רע as in Psa 36:5) he does not wish to know, i.e., does not wish to foster and nurture within him. Whoso secretly slanders his neighbour, him will he destroy; it will therefore be so little possible for any to curry favour with him by uncharitable perfidious tale-bearing, of the wiliness of which David himself had had abundant experience in his relation to Saul, that it will rather call forth his anger upon him (Pro 30:10). Instead of the regularly pointed מלושׁני the Kerî reads מלשׁני, melŏshnı̂, a Poel (לשׁן linguâ petere, like עין oculo petere, elsewhere הלשׁין, Pro 30:10) with ŏ instead of ō (vid., on Psa 109:10; Psa 62:4) and with Chirek compaginis (vid., on Psa 113:1-9). The “lofty of eyes,” i.e., supercilious, haughty, and the “broad of heart,” i.e., boastful, puffed up, self-conceited (Pro 28:25, cf. Psa 21:4), him he cannot endure (אוּכל, properly fut. Hoph., I am incapable of, viz., לשׂאת, which is to be supplied as in Isa 1:13, after Pro 30:21; Jer 44:22).^[102]
On the other hand, his eyes rest upon the faithful of the land, with the view, viz., of drawing them into his vicinity. Whoso walks in the way of uprightness, he shall serve him (שׁרת, θεραπεύειν, akin to עבד, δουλεύειν). He who practises deceit shall not stay within his house; he who speaks lies shall have no continuance (יכּון is more than equivalent to נכון) before (under) his eyes. Every morning (לבּקרים as in Psa 73:14; Isa 33:2; Lam 3:23, and לבקרים, Job 7:18), when Jahve shall have taken up His abode in Jerusalem, will he destroy all evil-doers (רשׁעי as in Psa 119:119), i.e., incorrigibly wicked ones, wherever he may meet them upon the earth, in order that all workers of evil may be rooted out of the royal city, which is now become the city of Jahve. =Psalm 102= == Prayer of a Patient Sufferer for Himself and for the Jerusalem That Lies in Ruins==
Psa 101:1-8 utters the sigh: When wilt Thou come to me? and Ps 102 with the inscription: Prayer for an afflicted one when he pineth away and poureth forth his complaint before Jahve, prays, Let my prayer come unto Thee. It is to be taken, too, just as personally as it sounds, and the person is not to be construed into a nation. The song of the עני is, however, certainly a national song; the poet is a servant of Jahve, who shares the calamity that has befallen Jerusalem and its homeless people, both in outward circumstances and in the very depth of his soul. עטף signifies to pine away, languish, as in Psa 61:3, Isa 57:16; and שׁפך שׂיחו to pour out one's thoughts and complaints, one's anxious care, as in Psa 142:3, cf. 1Sa 1:15.
As in the case already with many of the preceding Psalms, the deutero-Isaianic impression accompanies us in connection with this Psalm also, even to the end; and the further we get in it the more marked does the echo of its prophetical prototype become. The poet also allies himself with earlier Psalms, such as Ps 22, Ps 69, and Psa 79:1-13, although himself capable of lofty poetic flight, in return for which he makes us feel the absence of any safely progressive unfolding of the thoughts.

Verses 1-2

The Psalm opens with familiar expressions of prayer, such as rise in the heart and mouth of the praying one without his feeling that they are of foreign origin; cf. more especially Psa 39:13; Psa 18:7; Psa 88:3; and on Psa 102:3 : Psa 27:9 (Hide not Thy face from me); Psa 59:17 (ביום צר לי); Psa 31:3 and frequently (Incline Thine ear unto me); Psa 56:10 (ביום אקוא); Psa 69:8; Psa 143:7 (מהר ענני).

Verses 3-5

From this point onward the Psalm becomes original. Concerning the Beth in בעשׁן, vid., on Psa 37:20. The reading כּמו קד (in the Karaite Ben-Jerucham) enriches the lexicon in the same sense with a word which has scarcely had any existence. מוקד (Arabic mauḳid) signifies here, as in other instances, a hearth. נחרוּ is, as in Psa 69:4, Niphal: my bones are heated through with a fever-heat, as a hearth with the smouldering fire that is on it. הוּכּה (cf. יגודּוּ, Psa 94:21) is used exactly as in Hos 9:16, cf. Psa 121:5. The heart is said to dry up when the life's blood, of which it is the reservoir, fails. The verb שׁכח is followed by מן of dislike. On the cleaving of the bones to the flesh from being baked, i.e., to the skin (Arabic bašar, in accordance with the radical signification, the surface of the body = the skin, from בשׂר, to brush along, rub, scrape, scratch on the surface), cf. Job 19:20; Lam 4:8. ל (אל) with דּבק is used just like בּ. It is unnecessary, with Böttcher, to draw מקּול אנחתי to Psa 102:5. Continuous straining of the voice, especially in connection with persevering prayer arising from inward conflict, does really make the body waste away.

Verses 6-8

Psa 102:6-8 קאת (construct of קאת or קאת from קאה, vid., Isaiah, at Isa 34:11-12), according to the lxx, is the pelican, and כּוס is the night-raven or the little horned-owl.^[103] דּמה obtains the signification to be like, equal (aequalem esse), from the radical signification to be flat, even, and to spread out flat (as the Dutch have already recognised). They are both unclean creatures, which are fond of the loneliness of the desert and ruined places. To such a wilderness, that of the exile, is the poet unwillingly transported. He passes the nights without sleep (שׁקד, to watch during the time for sleep), and is therefore like a bird sitting lonesome (בּודד, Syriac erroneously נודד) upon the roof whilst all in the house beneath are sleeping. The Athnach in Psa 102:8 separates that which is come to be from the ground of the “becoming” and the “becoming” itself. His grief is that his enemies reproach him as one forsaken of God. מהולל, part. Poal, is one made or become mad, Ecc 2:2 : my mad ones = those who are mad against me. These swear by him, inasmuch as they say when they want to curse: “God do unto thee as unto this man,” which is to be explained according to Isa 65:15; Jer 29:22.

Verses 9-11

Ashes are his bread (cf. Lam 3:16), inasmuch as he, a mourner, sits in ashes, and has thrown ashes all over himself, Job 2:8; Eze 27:30. The infected שׁקּוי has שׁקּוּ = שׁקּוּו for its principal form, instead of which it is שׁקּוּי in Hos 2:7. “That Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down” is to be understood according to Job 30:22. First of all God has taken away the firm ground from under his feet, then from aloft He has cast him to the ground - an emblem of the lot of Israel, which is removed from its fatherland and cast into exile, i.e., into a strange land. In that passage the days of his life are כּצל נטוּי, like a lengthened shadow, which grows longer and longer until it is entirely lost in darkness, Psa 109:23. Another figure follows: he there becomes like an (uprooted) plant which dries up.

Verses 12-14

When the church in its individual members dies off on a foreign soil, still its God, the unchangeable One, remains, and therein the promise has the guarantee of its fulfilment. Faith lays hold upon this guarantee as in Ps 90. It becomes clear from Psa 9:8 and Lam 5:19 how תּשׁב is to be understood. The Name which Jahve makes Himself by self-attestation never falls a prey to the dead past, it is His ever-living memorial (זכר, Exo 3:15). Thus, too, will He restore Jerusalem; the limit, or appointed time, to which the promise points is, as his longing tells the poet, now come. מועד, according to Psa 75:3; Hab 2:3, is the juncture, when the redemption by means of the judgment on the enemies of Israel shall dawn. לחננהּ, from the infinitive חנן, has ĕ, flattened from ă, in an entirely closed syllable. רצה seq. acc. signifies to have pleasure in anything, to cling to it with delight; and חנן, according to Pro 14:21, affirms a compassionate, tender love of the object. The servants of God do not feel at home in Babylon, but their loving yearning lingers over the ruins, the stones and the heaps of the rubbish (Neh 4:2), of Jerusalem.

Verses 15-17

With וייראוּ we are told what will take place when that which is expected in Psa 102:14 comes to pass, and at the same time the fulfilment of that which is longed for is thereby urged home upon God: Jahve's own honour depends upon it, since the restoration of Jerusalem will become the means of the conversion of the world - a fundamental thought of Isa 40:1 (cf. more particularly Isa 59:19; Isa 60:2), which is also called to mind in the expression of this strophe. This prophetic prospect (Isa 40:1-5) that the restoration of Jerusalem will take place simultaneously with the glorious parusia of Jahve re-echoes here in a lyric form. כּי, Psa 102:17, states the ground of the reverence, just as Psa 102:20 the ground of the praise. The people of the Exile are called in Psa 102:18 הערער, from ערר, to be naked: homeless, powerless, honourless, and in the eyes of men, prospectless. The lxx renders this word in Jer 17:6 ἀγριομυρίκη, and its plural, formed by an internal change of vowel, ערוער, in Jer 48:6 ὄνος ἄγριος, which are only particularizations of the primary notion of that which is stark naked, neglected, wild. Psa 102:18 is an echo off Psa 22:25. In the mirror of this and of other Psalms written in times of affliction the Israel of the Exile saw itself reflected.

Verses 18-22

The poet goes on advancing motives to Jahve for the fulfilment of his desire, by holding up to Him what will take place when He shall have restored Zion. The evangel of God's redemptive deed will be written down for succeeding generations, and a new, created people, i.e., a people coming into existence, the church of the future, shall praise God the Redeemer for it. דּור אחרון as in Psa 48:14; Psa 78:4. עם נברא like עם נולד Ps 22:32, perhaps with reference to deutero-Isaianic passages like Isa 43:17. On Psa 102:20, cf. Isa 63:15; in Psa 102:21 (cf. Isa 42:7; Isa 61:1) the deutero-Isaianic colouring is very evident. And Psa 102:21 rests still more verbally upon Psa 79:11. The people of the Exile are as it were in prison and chains (אסיר), and are advancing towards their destruction (בּני תמוּתה), if God does not interpose. Those who have returned home are the subject to לספּר. בּ in Psa 102:23 introduces that which takes place simultaneously: with the release of Israel from servitude is united the conversion of the world. נקבּץ occurs in the same connection as in Isa 60:4. After having thus revelled in the glory of the time of redemption the poet comes back to himself and gives form to his prayer on his own behalf.

Verses 23-28

On the way (ב as in Psa 110:7) - not “by means of the way” (ב as in Psa 105:18), in connection with which one would expect of find some attributive minuter definition of the way - God hath bowed down his strength (cf. Deu 8:2); it was therefore a troublous, toilsome way which he has been led, together with his people. He has shortened his days, so that he only drags on wearily, and has only a short distance still before him before he is entirely overcome. The Chethîb כחו (lxx ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ) may be understood of God's irresistible might, as in Job 23:6; Job 30:18, but in connection with it the designation of the object is felt to be wanting. The introductory אמר (cf. Job 10:2), which announces a definite moulding of the utterance, serves to give prominence to the petition that follows. In the expression אל־תּעלני life is conceived of as a line the length of which accords with nature; to die before one's time is a being taken up out of this course, so that the second half of the line is not lived through (Ps 55:24, Isa 38:10). The prayer not to sweep him away before his time, the poet supports not by the eternity of God in itself, but by the work of the rejuvenation of the world and of the restoration of Israel that is to be looked for, which He can and will bring to an accomplishment, because He is the ever-living One. The longing to see this new time is the final ground of the poet's prayer for the prolonging of his life. The confession of God the Creator in Psa 102:26 reminds one in its form of Isa 48:13, cf. Psa 44:24. המּה in Psa 102:27 refers to the two great divisions of the universe. The fact that God will create heaven and earth anew is a revelation that is indicated even in Isa 34:4, but is first of all expressed more fully and in many ways in the second part of the Book of Isaiah, viz., Isa 51:6, Isa 51:16; Isa 65:17; Isa 66:22. It is clear from the agreement in the figure of the garment (Isa 51:6, cf. Psa 50:9) and in the expression (עמד, perstare, as in Isa 66:22) that the poet has gained this knowledge from the prophet. The expressive אתּה הוּא, Thou art He, i.e., unalterably the same One, is also taken from the mouth of the prophet, Isa 41:4; Isa 43:10; Isa 46:4; Isa 48:12; הוּא is a predicate, and denotes the identity (sameness) of Jahve (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, i. 63). In v. 29 also, in which the prayer for a lengthening of life tapers off to a point, we hear Isa 65:2; Isa 66:22 re-echoed. And from the fact that in the mind of the poet as of the prophet the post-exilic Jerusalem and the final new Jerusalem upon the new earth under a new heaven blend together, it is evident that not merely in the time of Hezekiah or of Manasseh (assuming that Isa 40:1 are by the old Isaiah), but also even in the second half of the Exile, such a perspectively foreshortened view was possible. When, moreover, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews at once refers Psa 102:26-28 to Christ, this is justified by the fact that the God whom the poet confesses as the unchangeable One is Jahve who is to come.

Psalm 103

Hymn in Honour of God the All-Compassionate One

To the “Thou wilt have compassion upon Zion” of Psa 102:14 is appended Psalms 103, which has this as its substance throughout; but in other respects the two Psalms stand in contrast to one another. The inscription לדוד is also found thus by itself without any further addition even before Psalms of the First Book (Psa 26:1, Ps 35, Ps 37). It undoubtedly does not rest merely on conjecture, but upon tradition. For no internal grounds which might have given rise to the annotation לדוד can be traced. The form of the language does not favour it. This pensive song, so powerful in its tone, has an Aramaic colouring like Ps 116; Psa 124:1-8; Psa 129:1-8. In the heaping up of Aramaizing suffix-forms it has its equal only in the story of Elisha, 2Ki 4:1-7, where, moreover, the Kerî throughout substitutes the usual forms, whilst here, where these suffix-forms are intentional ornaments of the expression, the Chethîb rightly remains unaltered. The forms are 2nd sing. fem. ēchi for ēch, and 2nd sing. plur. ājchi for ajich. The i without the tone which is added here is just the one with which originally the pronunciation was אתּי instead of אתּ and לכי for לך. Out of the Psalter (here and Psa 116:7, Psa 116:19) these suffix-forms echi and ajchi occur only in Jer 11:15, and in the North-Palestinian history of the prophet in the Book of Kings. The groups or strophes into which the Psalm falls are Psa 103:1, Psa 103:6, Psa 103:11, Psa 103:15, Psa 103:19. If we count their lines we obtain the schema 10. 10. 8. 8. 10. The coptic version accordingly reckons 46 CTYXOC, i.e., στίχοι.

Verses 1-5

In the strophe Psa 103:1 the poet calls upon his soul to arise to praiseful gratitude for God's justifying, redeeming, and renewing grace. In such soliloquies it is the Ego that speaks, gathering itself up with the spirit, the stronger, more manly part of man (Psychology, S. 104f.; tr. p. 126), or even, because the soul as the spiritual medium of the spirit and of the body represents the whole person of man (Psychology, S. 203; tr. p. 240), the Ego rendering objective in the soul the whole of its own personality. So here in Psa 103:3 the soul, which is addressed, represents the whole man. The קובים which occurs here is a more choice expression for מעים (מעים): the heart, which is called קרב κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, the reins, the liver, etc.; for according to the scriptural conception (Psychology, S. 266; tr. p. 313) these organs of the cavities of the breast and abdomen serve not merely for the bodily life, but also the psycho-spiritual life. The summoning בּרכי is repeated per anaphoram. There is nothing the soul of man is so prone to forget as to render thanks that are due, and more especially thanks that are due to God. It therefore needs to be expressly aroused in order that it may not leave the blessing with which God blesses it unacknowledged, and may not forget all His acts performed (גּמל = גּמר) on it (גּמוּל, ῥῆμα μέσον, e.g., in Psa 137:8), which are purely deeds of loving-kindness), which is the primal condition and the foundation of all the others, viz., sin-pardoning mercy. The verbs סלח and רפא with a dative of the object denote the bestowment of that which is expressed by the verbal notion. תּחלוּאים (taken from Deu 29:21, cf. 1Ch 21:19, from חלא = חלה, root הל, solutum, laxum esse) are not merely bodily diseases, but all kinds of inward and outward sufferings. משּׁחת the lxx renders ἐκ φθορᾶς (from שׁחת, as in Job 17:14); but in this antithesis to life it is more natural to render the “pit” (from שׁוּח) as a name of Hades, as in Psa 16:10. Just as the soul owes its deliverance from guilt and distress and death to God, so also does it owe to God that with which it is endowed out of the riches of divine love. The verb עטּר, without any such addition as in Ps 5:13, is “to crown,” cf. Psa 8:6. As is usually the case, it is construed with a double accusative; the crown is as it were woven out of loving-kindness and compassion. The Beth of בּטּוב in Psa 103:5 instead of the accusative (Psa 104:28) denotes the means of satisfaction, which is at the same time that which satisfies. עדיך the Targum renders: dies senectutis tuae, whereas in Psa 32:9 it is ornatus ejus; the Peshîto renders: corpus tuum, and in Psa 32:9 inversely, juventus eorum. These significations, “old age” or “youth,” are pure inventions. And since the words are addressed to the soul, עדי cannot also, like כבוד in other instances, be a name of the soul itself (Aben-Ezra, Mendelssohn, Philippsohn, Hengstenberg, and others). We, therefore, with Hitzig, fall back upon the sense of the word in Psa 32:9, where the lxx renders τάς σιαγόνας αὐτῶν, but here more freely, apparently starting from the primary notion of עדי = Arabic chadd, the cheek: τὸν ἐμπιπλῶντα ἐν ἀγαθοῖς τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν σου (whereas Saadia's victum tuum is based upon a comparison of the Arabic gdâ, to nourish). The poet tells the soul (i.e., his own person, himself) that God satisfies it with good, so that it as it were gets its cheeks full of it (cf. Psa 81:11). The comparison כּנּשׁר is, as in Mic 1:16 (cf. Isa 40:31), to be referred to the annual moulting of the eagle. Its renewing of its plumage is an emblem of the renovation of his youth by grace. The predicate to נעוּריכי (plural of extension in relation to time) stands first regularly in the sing. fem.

Verses 6-10

His range of vision being widened from himself, the poet now in Psa 103:6 describes God's gracious and fatherly conduct towards sinful and perishing men, and that as it shines forth from the history of Israel and is known and recognised in the light of revelation. What Psa 103:6 says is a common-place drawn from the history of Israel. משׁפּטים is an accusative governed by the עשׂה that is to be borrowed out of עשׂה (so Baer after the Masora). And because Psa 103:6 is the result of an historical retrospect and survey, יודיע in Psa 103:7 can affirm that which happened in the past (cf. Psa 96:6.); for the supposition of Hengstenberg and Hitzig, that Moses here represents Israel like Jacob, Isaac, and Joseph in other instances, is without example in the whole Israelitish literature. It becomes clear from Psa 103:8 in what sense the making of His ways known is meant. The poet has in his mind Moses' prayer: “make known to me now Thy way” (Exo 33:13), which Jahve fulfilled by passing by him as he stood in the cleft of the rock and making Himself visible to him as he looked after Him, amidst the proclamation of His attributes. The ways of Jahve are therefore in this passage not those in which men are to walk in accordance with His precepts (Psa 25:4), but those which He Himself follows in the course of His redemptive history (Psa 67:3). The confession drawn from Exo 34:6. is become a formula of the Israelitish faith (Psa 86:15; Psa 145:8; Joe 2:13; Neh 9:17, and frequently). In Psa 103:9. the fourth attribute (ורב־חסד) is made the object of further praise. He is not only long (ארך from ארך, like כּבד from כּבד) in anger, i.e., waiting a long time before He lets His anger loose, but when He contends, i.e., interposes judicially, this too is not carried to the full extent (Psa 78:38), He is not angry for ever (נטר, to keep, viz., anger, Amo 1:11; cf. the parallels, both as to matter and words, Jer 3:5; Isa 57:16). The procedure of His righteousness is regulated not according to our sins, but according to His purpose of mercy. The prefects in Psa 103:10 state that which God has constantly not done, and the futures in Psa 103:9 what He continually will not do.

Verses 11-14

The ingenious figures in Psa 103:11. (cf. Psa 36:6; Psa 57:11) illustrate the infinite power and complete unreservedness of mercy (loving-kindness). הרחיק has Gaja (as have also השׁחיתו and התעיבו, Psa 14:1; Psa 53:2, in exact texts), in order to render possible the distinct pronunciation of the guttural in the combination רח. Psa 103:13 sounds just as much like the spirit of the New Testament as Psa 103:11, Psa 103:12. The relationship to Jahve in which those stand who fear Him is a filial relationship based upon free reciprocity (Mal 3:11). His Fatherly compassion is (Psa 103:14) based upon the frailty and perishableness of man, which are known to God, much the same as God's promise after the Flood not to decree a like judgment again (Gen 8:21). According to this passage and Deu 31:21, יצרנוּ appears to be intended of the moral nature; but according to Psa 103:14, one is obliged to think rather of the natural form which man possesses from God the Creator (ויּיצר, Gen 2:7) than of the form of heart which he has by his own choice and, so far as its groundwork is concerned, by inheritance (Psa 51:7). In זכוּר, mindful, the passive, according to Böttcher's correct apprehension of it, expresses a passive state after an action that is completed by the person himself, as in בּטוּה, ידוּע, and the like. In its form Psa 103:14 reminds one of the Book of Job Job 11:11; Job 28:23, and Psa 103:14 as to subject-matter recalls Job 7:7, and other passages (cf. Psa 78:39; Psa 89:48); but the following figurative representation of human frailty, with which the poet contrasts the eternal nature of the divine mercy as the sure stay of all God-fearing ones in the midst of the rise and decay of things here below, still more strongly recalls that book.

Verses 15-18

The figure of the grass recalls Psa 90:5., cf. Isa 40:6-8; Isa 51:12; that of the flower, Job 14:2. אנושׁ is man as a mortal being; his life's duration is likened to that of a blade of grass, and his beauty and glory to a flower of the field, whose fullest bloom is also the beginning of its fading. In Psa 103:16 בּו (the same as in Isa 40:7.) refers to man, who is compared to grass and flowers. כּי is ἐάν with a hypothetical perfect; and the wind that scorches up the plants, referred to man, is an emblem of every form of peril that threatens life: often enough it is really a breath of wind which snaps off a man's life. The bold designation of vanishing away without leaving any trace, “and his place knoweth him no more,” is taken from Job 7:10, cf. ibid. Job 8:18; Job 20:9. In the midst of this plant-like, frail destiny, there is, however, one strong ground of comfort. There is an everlasting power, which raises all those who link themselves with it above the transitoriness involved in nature's laws, and makes them eternal like itself. This power is the mercy of God, which spans itself above (על) all those who fear Him like an eternal heaven. This is God's righteousness, which rewards faithful adherence to His covenant and conscientious fulfilment of His precepts in accordance with the order of redemption, and shows itself even to (ל) children's children, according to Exo 20:6; Exo 34:7; Deu 7:9 : on into a thousand generations, i.e., into infinity.

Verses 19-22

He is able to show Himself thus gracious to His own, for He is the supra-mundane, all-ruling King. With this thought the poet draws on to the close of his song of praise. The heavens in opposition to the earth, as in Psa 115:3; Ecc 5:12, is the unchangeable realm above the rise and fall of things here below. On Psa 103:19 cf. 1Ch 29:12. בּכּל refers to everything created without exception, the universe of created things. In connection with the heavens of glory the poet cannot but call to mind the angels. His call to these to join in the praise of Jahve has its parallel only in Psa 29:1-11 and Psa 148:1-14. It arises from the consciousness of the church on earth that it stands in living like-minded fellowship with the angels of God, and that it possesses a dignity which rises above all created things, even the angels which are appointed to serve it (Psa 91:11). They are called גּבּרים as in Joe 3:11, and in fact גּבּרי כּח, as the strong to whom belongs strength unequalled. Their life endowed with heroic strength is spent entirely - an example for mortals - in an obedient execution of the word of God. לשׁמע is a definition not of the purpose, but of the manner: obediendo (as in Gen 2:3 perficiendo). Hearing the call of His word, they also forthwith put it into execution. the hosts (צבאיו), as משׁרתיו shows, are the celestial spirits gathered around the angels of a higher rank (cf. Luk 2:13), the innumerable λειτουργικὰ πνεῦματα (Psa 104:4, Dan 7:10; Heb 1:14), for there is a hierarchia caelestis. From the archangels the poet comes to the myriads of the heavenly hosts, and from these to all creatures, that they, wheresoever they may be throughout Jahve's wide domain, may join in the song of praise that is to be struck up; and from this point he comes back to his own soul, which he modestly includes among the creatures mentioned in the third passage. A threefold בּרכי נפשׁי now corresponds to the threefold בּרכוּ; and inasmuch as the poet thus comes back to his own soul, his Psalm also turns back into itself and assumes the form of a converging circle. =Psalm 104= ==Hymn in Honour of the God of the Seven Days==

With Bless, O my soul, Jahve, as Ps 103, begins this anonymous Psalms 104 also, in which God's rule in the kingdom of nature, as there in the kingdom of grace, is the theme of praise, and as there the angels are associated with it. The poet sings the God-ordained present condition of the world with respect to the creative beginnings recorded in Gen 1:1; and closes with the wish that evil may be expelled from this good creation, which so thoroughly and fully reveals God's power, and wisdom, and goodness. It is a Psalm of nature, but such as not poet among the Gentiles could have written. The Israelitish poet stands free and unfettered in the presence of nature as his object, and all things appear to him as brought forth and sustained by the creative might of the one God, brought into being and preserved in existence on purpose that He, the self-sufficient One, may impart Himself in free condescending love - as the creatures and orders of the Holy One, in themselves good and pure, but spotted an disorganized only by the self-corruption of man in sin and wickedness, which self-corruption must be turned out in order that the joy of God in His works and the joy of these works in their Creator may be perfected. The Psalm is altogether an echo of the heptahemeron (or history of the seven days of creation) in Gen 1:1. Corresponding toe the seven days it falls into seven groups, in which the מאד הנה־טוב of Gen 1:31 is expanded. It is not, however, so worked out that each single group celebrates the work of a day of creation; the Psalm has the commingling whole of the finished creation as its standpoint, and is therefore not so conformed to any plan. Nevertheless it begins with the light and closes with an allusion to the divine Sabbath. When it is considered that Psa 104:8 is only with violence accommodated to the context, that Psa 104:18 is forced in without any connection and contrary to any plan, and that Psa 104:32 can only be made intelligible in that position by means of an artificial combination of the thoughts, then the supposition of Hitzig, ingeniously wrought out by him in his own way, is forced upon one, viz., that this glorious hymn has decoyed some later poet-hand into enlarging upon it.

Verses 1-4

The first decastich begins the celebration with work of the first and second days. הוד והדר here is not the doxa belonging to God πρὸ παντὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος (Jud 1:25), but the doxa which He has put on (Job 40:10) since He created the world, over against which He stands in kingly glory, or rather in which He is immanent, and which reflects this kingly glory in various gradations, yea, to a certain extent is this glory itself. For inasmuch as God began the work of creation with the creation of light, He has covered Himself with this created light itself as with a garment. That which once happened in connection with the creation may, as in Amo 4:13; Isa 44:24; Isa 45:7; Jer 10:12, and frequently, be expressed by participles of the present, because the original setting is continued in the preservation of the world; and determinate participles alternate with participles without the article, as in Isa 44:24-28, with no other difference than that the former are more predicative and the latter more attributive. With Psa 104:2 the poet comes upon the work of the second day: the creation of the expanse (רקיע) which divides between the waters. God has spread this out (cf. Isa 40:22) like a tent-cloth (Isa 54:2), of such light and of such fine transparent work; נוטה here rhymes with עטה. In those waters which the “expanse” holds aloft over the earth God lays the beams of His upper chambers (עליּותתו, instead of which we find מעלותיו in Amo 9:6, from עליּה, ascent, elevation, then an upper story, an upper chamber, which would be more accurately עלּיּה after the Aramaic and Arabic); but not as though the waters were the material for them, they are only the place for them, that is exalted above the earth, and are able to be this because to the Immaterial One even that which is fluid is solid, and that which is dense is transparent. The reservoirs of the upper waters, the clouds, God makes, as the lightning, thunder, and rain indicate, into His chariot (רכוּב), upon which he rides along in order to make His power felt below upon the earth judicially (Isa 19:1), or in rescuing and blessing men. רכוּב (only here) accords in sound with כּרוּב, Psa 18:11. For Psa 104:3 also recalls this primary passage, where the wings of the wind take the place of the cloud-chariot. In Psa 104:4 the lxx (Heb 1:7) makes the first substantive into an accusative of the object, and the second into an accusative of the predicate: Ὁ ποιῶν τοὺς ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ πνεῦματα καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ πυρὸς φλόγα. It is usually translated the reverse say: making the winds into His angels, etc. This rendering is possible so far as the language is concerned (cf. Psa 100:3 Chethîb, and on the position of the worlds, Amo 4:13 with Psa 5:8), and the plural משׁרתיו is explicable in connection with this rendering from the force of the parallelism, and the singular אשׁ from the fact that this word has no plural. Since, however, עשׂה with two accusatives usually signifies to produce something out of something, so that the second accusative (viz., the accusative of the predicate, which is logically the second, but according to the position of the words may just as well be the first, Exo 25:39; Exo 30:25, as the second, Exo 37:23; Exo 38:3; Gen 2:7; 2Ch 4:18-22) denotes the materia ex qua, it may with equal right at least be interpreted: Who makes His messengers out of the winds, His servants out of the flaming or consuming (vid., on Psa 57:5) fire (אשׁ, as in Jer 48:45, masc.). And this may affirm either that God makes use of wind and fire for special missions (cf. Psa 148:8), or (cf. Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, i. 325f.) that He gives wind and fire to His angels for the purpose of His operations in the world which are effected through their agency, as the materials of their outward manifestation, and as it were of their self-embodiment,^[104] as then in Psa 18:11 wind and cherub are both to be associated together in thought as the vehicle of the divine activity in the world, and in Psa 35:5 the angel of Jahve represents the energy of the wind.

Verses 5-9

In a second decastich the poet speaks of the restraining of the lower waters and the establishing of the land standing out of the water. The suffix, referring back to ארץ, is intended to say that the earth hanging free in space (Job 26:7) has its internal supports. Its eternal stability is preserved even amidst the judgment predicted in Isa 24:16., since it comes forth out of it, unremoved from its former station, as a transformed, glorified earth. The deep (תּהום) with which God covers it is that primordial mass of water in which it lay first of all as it were in embryo, for it came into being ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ δι ̓ ὕδατος (2Pe 3:5). כּסּיתו does not refer to תהום (masc. as in Job 28:14), because then עליה would be required, but to ארץ, and the masculine is to be explained either by attraction) according to the model of 1Sa 2:4), or by a reversion to the masculine ground-form as the discourse proceeds (cf. the same thing with עיר 2Sa 17:13, צעקה Exo 11:6, יד Eze 2:9). According to Psa 104:6, the earth thus overflowed with water was already mountainous; the primal formation of the mountains is therefore just as old as the תהום mentioned in direct succession to the תהו ובהו. After this, Psa 104:7 describe the subduing of the primordial waters by raising up the dry land and the confining of these waters in basins surrounded by banks. Terrified by the despotic command of God, they started asunder, and mountains rose aloft, the dry land with its heights and its low grounds appeared. The rendering that the waters, thrown into wild excitement, rose up the mountains and descended again (Hengstenberg), does not harmonize with the fact that they are represented in Psa 104:6 as standing above the mountains. Accordingly, too, it is not to be interpreted after Psa 107:26 : they (the waters) rose mountain-high, they sunk down like valleys. The reference of the description to the coming forth of the dry land on the third day of creation requires that הרים should be taken as subject to יעלוּ. But then, too, the בקעות are the subject to ירדוּ, as Hilary of Poictiers renders it in his Genesis, 5:97, etc.: subsidunt valles, and not the waters as subsiding into the valleys. Hupfeld is correct; Psa 104:8 is a parenthesis which affirms that, inasmuch as the waters retreating laid the solid land bare, mountains and valleys as such came forth visibly; cf. Ovid, Metam. i. 344: Flumina subsidunt, montes exire videntur.

Verses 8-9

Psa 104:8 continues with the words אל־מקום (cf. Gen 1:9, אחד אל־מקום): the waters retreat to the place which (זה, cf. Psa 104:26, for אשׁר, Gen 39:20) God has assigned to them as that which should contain them. He hath set a bound (גּבוּל, synon. חק, Pro 8:29; Jer 5:22) for them beyond which they may not flow forth again to cover the earth, as the primordial waters of chaos have done.

Verses 10-14

The third decastich, passing on to the third day of creation, sings the benefit which the shore-surrounded waters are to the animal creation and the growth of the plants out of the earth, which is irrigated from below and moistened from above. God, the blessed One, being the principal subject of the Psalm, the poet (in Psa 104:10 and further on) is able to go on in attributive and predicative participles: Who sendeth springs בּנּחלים, into the wadîs (not: בּנחלים, as brooks). נחל, as Psa 104:10 shows, is here a synonym of בּקעה, and there is no need for saying that, flowing on in the plains, they grow into rivers. The lxx has ἐν φάραγξιν. חיתו שׂדי is doubly poetic for חיּת השּׂדה. God has also provided for all the beasts that roam far from men; and the wild ass, swift as an arrow, difficult to be hunted, and living in troops (פּרא, Arabic ferâ, root פר, Arab. fr, to move quickly, to whiz, to flee; the wild ass, the onager, Arabic himâr el-wahs, whose home is on the steppes), is made prominent by way of example. The phrase “to break the thirst” occurs only here. עליהם, Psa 104:12, refers to the מעינים, which are also still the subject in Psa 104:11. The pointing עפאים needlessly creates a hybrid form in addition to עפאים (like לבאים) and עפיים. From the tangled branches by the springs the poet insensibly reaches the second half of the third day. The vegetable kingdom at the same time reminds him of the rain which, descending out of the upper chambers of the heavens, waters the waterless mountain-tops. Like the Talmud (B. Ta‛anı̂th, 10a), by the “fruit of Thy work” (מעשׂיך as singular) Hitzig understands the rain; but rain is rather that which fertilizes; and why might not the fruit be meant which God's works (מעשׂיך, plural) here below (Psa 104:24), viz., the vegetable creations, bear, and from which the earth, i.e., its population, is satisfied, inasmuch as vegetable food springs up as much for the beasts as for man? In connection with עשׂב the poet is thinking of cultivated plants, more especially wheat; לעבדת, however, does not signify: for cultivation by man, since, according to Hitzig's correct remonstrance, they do not say עבד העשׂב, and להוציא has not man, but rather God, as its subject, but as in 1Ch 26:30, for the service (use) of man.

Verses 14-18

In the fourth decastich the poet goes further among the creatures of the field and of the forest. The subject to להוציא is מצמיח. The clause expressing the purpose, which twice begins with an infinitive, is continued in both instances, as in Isa 13:9, but with a change of subject (cf. e.g., Amo 1:11; Amo 2:4), in the finite verb. On what is said of wine we may compare Ecc 10:19, Sir. 40:20, and more especially Isaiah, who frequently mentions wine as a representative of all the natural sources of joy. The assertion that משּׁמן signifies “before oil = brighter than oil,” is an error that is rightly combated by Böttcher in his Proben and two of his “Gleanings,”^[105] which imputes to the poet a mention of oil that is contrary to his purpose in this connection wand inappropriate. Corn, wine, and oil are mentioned as the three chief products of the vegetable kingdom (Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Dathe, and Hupfeld), and are assumed under עשׂב in Psa 104:14, as is also the case in other instances where distinction would be superfluous, e.g., in Exo 9:22. With oil God makes the countenance shining, or bright and cheerful, not by means of anointing-since it was not the face but the head that was anointed (Mat 6:17), - but by the fact of its increasing the savouriness and nutritiveness of the food. להצהיל is chosen with reference to יצהר. In Psa 104:15 לבב־אנושׁ does not stand after, as in Psa 104:15 (where it is לבב־ with Gaja on account of the distinctive), but before the verb, because לבב as that which is inward stands in antithesis to פנים as that which is outside. Since the fertilization of the earth by the rain is the chief subject of the predication in Psa 104:13, Psa 104:16 is naturally attached to what precedes without arousing critical suspicion. That which satisfies is here the rain itself, and not, as in Psa 104:13, that which the rain matures. The “trees of Jahve” are those which before all others proclaim the greatness of their Creator. אשׁר־שׁם refers to these trees, of which the cedars and then the cypresses (ברושׁים, root בר, to cut) are mentioned. They are places where small and large birds build their nests and lodge, more particularly the stork, which is called the חסידה as being πτηνῶν εὐσεβέστατον ζώων (Barbrius, Fab. xiii.), asavis pia (pietaticultrix in Petronius, lv. 6), i.e., on account of its love of family life, on account of which it is also regarded as bringing good fortune to a house.^[106]
The care of God for the lodging of His creatures leads the poet from the trees to the heights of the mountains and the hiding-places of the rocks, in a manner that is certainly abrupt and that disturbs the sketch taken from the account of the creation. הגּבהים is an apposition. יעל (Arabic wa‛il) is the steinboc, wild-goat, as being an inhabitant of יעל (wa‛l , wa‛la), i.e., the high places of the rocks, as יען, Lam 4:3, according to Wetzstein, is the ostrich as being an inhabitant of the wa‛na , i.e., the sterile desert; and שׁפן is the rock-badger, which dwells in the clefts of the rocks (Pro 30:26), and resembles the marmot - South Arabic Arab. tufun , Hyrax Syriacus (distinct from the African). By שׁפן the Jewish tradition understand the coney, after which the Peshîto here renders it לחגסא (חגס, cuniculus). Both animals, the coney and the rock-badger, may be meant in Lev 11:5; Deu 14:7; for the sign of the cloven hoof (פּרסה שׁסוּעה) is wanting in both. The coney has four toes, and the hyrax has a peculiar formation of hoof, not cloven, but divided into several parts.

Verses 19-23

The fifth decastich, in which the poet passes over from the third to the fourth day, shows that he has the order of the days of creation before his mind. The moon is mentioned first of all, because the poet wishes to make the picture of the day follow that of the night. He describes it in Psa 104:19 as the calendarial principal star. מועדים are points and divisions of time (epochs), and the principal measurer of these for civil and ecclesiastical life is the moon (cf. Sir. 43:7, ἀπὸ σελήνης σημεῖον ἑορτῆς), just as the sun, knowing when he is to set, is the infallible measurer of the day. In Psa 104:20 the description, which throughout is drawn in the presence of God in His honour, passes over into direct address: jussives (תּשׁת, ויהי) stand in the hypothetical protasis and in its apodosis (EW. §357, b). It depends upon God's willing only, and it is night, and the wakeful life of the wild beasts begins to be astir. The young lions then roar after their prey, and flagitaturi sunt a Deo cibum suum. The infinitive with Lamed is an elliptical expression of a conjugatio periphrastica (vid., on Hab 1:17), and becomes a varying expression of the future in general in the later language in approximation to the Aramaic. The roar of the lions and their going forth in quest of prey is an asking of God which He Himself has implanted in their nature. With the rising of the sun the aspect of things becomes very different. שׁמשׁ is feminine here, where the poet drops the personification (cf. Psa 19:1-14). The day which dawns with sunrise is the time for man. Both as to matter and style, Psa 104:21 call to mind Job 24:5; Job 37:8; Job 38:40.

Verses 24-30

Fixing his eye upon the sea with its small and great creatures, and the care of God for all self-living beings, the poet passes over to the fifth and sixth days of creation. The rich contents of this sixth group flow over and exceed the decastich. With מה־רבּוּ (not מה־גּדלוּ, Psa 92:6) the poet expresses his wonder at the great number of God's works, each one at the same time having its adjustment in accordance with its design, and all, mutually serving one another, co-operating one with another. קנין, which signifies both bringing forth and acquiring, has the former meaning here according to the predicate: full of creatures, which bear in themselves the traces of the Name of their Creator (קנה). Beside קיניך, however, we also find the reading קנינך, which is adopted by Norzi, Heidenheim, and Baer, represented by the versions (lxx, Vulgate, and Jerome), by expositors (Rashi: קנין שׁלּך), by the majority of the MSS (according to Norzi) and old printed copies, which would signify τῆς κτίσεώς σου, or according to the Latin versions κτήσεώς σου (possessione tua, Luther “they possessions”), but is inferior to the plural ktisma'toon σου, as an accusative of the object to מלאה. The sea more particularly is a world of moving creatures innumerable (Psa 69:35). זה היּם does not properly signify this sea, but that sea, yonder sea (cf. Psa 68:9, Isa 23:13; Jos 9:13). The attributes follow in an appositional relation, the looseness of which admits of the non-determination (cf. Psa 68:28; Jer 2:21; Gen 43:14, and the reverse case above in Psa 104:18). אניּה .) in relation to אני is a nomen unitatis (the single ship). It is an old word, which is also Egyptian in the form hani and ana.^[107]Leviathan, in the Book of Job, the crocodile, is in this passage the name of the whale (vid., Lewysohn, Zoologie des Talmuds, §§178-180, 505). Ewald and Hitzig, with the Jewish tradition, understand בּו in Psa 104:26 according to Job 41:5 : in order to play with him, which, however, gives no idea that is worthy of God. It may be taken as an alternative word for שׁם (cf. בּו in Psa 104:20, Job 40:20): to play therein, viz., in the sea (Saadia). In כּלּם, Psa 104:27, the range of vision is widened from the creatures of the sea to all the living things of the earth; cf. the borrowed passages Psa 145:15., Psa 147:9. כּלּם, by an obliteration of the suffix, signifies directly “altogether,” and בּעתּו (cf. Job 38:32): when it is time for it. With reference to the change of the subject in the principal and in the infinitival clause, vid., Ew. §338, a. The existence, passing away, and origin of all beings is conditioned by God. His hand provides everything; the turning of His countenance towards them upholds everything; and His breath, the creative breath, animates and renews all things. The spirit of life of every creature is the disposing of the divine Spirit, which hovered over the primordial waters and transformed the chaos into the cosmos. תּסף in Psa 104:29 is equivalent to תּאסף, as in 1Sa 15:6, and frequently. The full future forms accented on the ultima, from Psa 104:27 onwards, give emphasis to the statements. Job 34:14. may be compared with Psa 104:29.

Verses 31-35

The poet has now come to an end with the review of the wonders of the creation, and closes in this seventh group, which is again substantially decastichic, with a sabbatic meditation, inasmuch as he wishes that the glory of God, which He has put upon His creatures, and which is reflected and echoed back by them to Him, may continue for ever, and that His works may ever be so constituted that He who was satisfied at the completion of His six days' work may be able to rejoice in them. For if they cease to give Him pleasure, He can indeed blot them out as He did at the time of the Flood, since He is always able by a look to put the earth in a tremble, and by a touch to set the mountains on fire (ותּרעד of the result of the looking, as in Amo 5:8; Amo 9:6, and ויעשׁנוּ of that which takes place simultaneously with the touching, as in Psa 144:5, Zec 9:5, cf. on Hab 3:10). The poet, however, on his part, will not suffer there to be any lack of the glorifying of Jahve, inasmuch as he makes it his life's work to praise his God with music and song (בּחיּי as in Psa 63:5, cf. Bar. 4:20, ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις μου). Oh that this his quiet and his audible meditation upon the honour of God may be pleasing to Him (ערב על synonymous with טּוב על, but also שׁפר על, Psa 16:6)! Oh that Jahve may be able to rejoice in him, as he himself will rejoice in his God! Between “I will rejoice,” Psa 104:34, and “He shall rejoice,” Psa 104:31, there exists a reciprocal relation, as between the Sabbath of the creature in God and the Sabbath of God in the creature. When the Psalmist wishes that God may have joy in His works of creation, and seeks on his part to please God and to have his joy in God, he is also warranted in wishing that those who take pleasure in wickedness, and instead of giving God joy excite His wrath, may be removed from the earth (יתּמּוּ, cf. Num 14:35); for they are contrary to the purpose of the good creation of God, they imperil its continuance, and mar the joy of His creatures. The expression is not: may sins (חטּאים, as it is meant to be read in B. Berachoth, 10a, and as some editions, e.g., Bomberg's of 1521, actually have it), but: may sinners, be no more, for there is no other existence of sin than the personal one.
With the words Bless, O my soul, Jahve, the Psalm recurs to its introduction, and to this call upon himself is appended the Hallelujah which summons all creatures to the praise of God - a call of devotion which occurs nowhere out of the Psalter, and within the Psalter is found here for the first time, and consequently was only coined in the alter age. In modern printed copies it is sometimes written הללוּ־יהּ, sometimes הללוּ יהּ, but in the earlier copies (e.g., Venice 1521, Wittenberg 1566) mostly as one word הללוּיהּ.^[108]
In the majority of MSS it is also found thus as one word,^[109] and that always with הּ, except the first הללוּיהּ which occurs here at the end of Ps 104, which has ה raphe in good MSS and old printed copies. This mode of writing is that attested by the Masora (vid., Baer's Psalterium, p. 132). The Talmud and Midrash observe this first Hallelujah is connected in a significant manner with the prospect of the final overthrow of the wicked. Ben-Pazzi (B. Berachoth 10a) counts 103 פרשׁיות up to this Hallelujah, reckoning Psa 1:1-6 and Psa 2:1-12 as one פרשׁת'.

Psalm 105

Thanksgiving Hymn in Honour of God Who Is Attested in the Earliest History of Israel

1 GIVE thanks unto Jahve, publish His Name, Make known among the peoples His deeds.

2 Sing unto Him, harp unto Him, Speak of all His wondrous works.

3 Glory ye in His holy Name,

Let the heart of those rejoice who seek Jahve.

4 Follow after Jahve and His strength, Seek ye His face evermore.

5 Remember His wondrous works which He hath done, His rare deeds and the decisions of His mouth,

6 O seed of Abraham His servant, Ye sons of Jacob, His chosen ones.

7 He, Jahve, is our God,

His judgments go forth over all lands.

8 He remembereth for ever His covenant,

The word which He hath established to a thousand gene- rations,

9 "Which He made with Abraham, And His oath unto Isaac.

10 And He hath established it for Jacob as a statute, For Israel as an everlasting covenant,

11 Saying : " Unto thee do I give the land of Canaan As the line of your inheritance."

12 When they were a countable people, Very small, and sojourning therein,

13 And went to and fro from nation to natioi.. From one kingdom to another people :

14 He suffered no man to oppress them, And He reproved kings for their sakes :

15 " Touch not Mine anointed ones, And to My prophets do no harm! " It) Then He called up a famine over the land, Every staff of bread He brake.

17 He sent before them a man, As a slave was Joseph sold.

18 They hurt his feet with fetters, Iron came upon his soul,

19 Until the time that his word came, The word of Jahve had proved him.

20 The king sent and loosed him,

The ruler of the peoples, and let him go free ,*

21 He made him lord of his house, And ruler over all his possession,

22 To bind his princes at his will, And to make his elders wiser.

23 Thus Israel came to Egypt,

And Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham.

24 And He made His people fruitful exceedingly, And made them more powerful than their enemies.

25 He turned their heart to hate His people, To practise cunning on His servants ;

26 He sent Moses His servant, Aaron, whom He had chosen.

27 They performed upon them facts of His signs, And strange things in the land of Ham.

28 He sent darkness and made it dark, And they rebelled not against His words ;

29 He turned their waters into blood, And thus killed their fish.

30 Their land swarmed forth frogs In the chambers of their kings.

31 He spake, and the gad-fly came, Gnats in all their border.

32 He gave them as rain hail, Flaming fire in their land,

33 And He smote down their vines and fig-tree^ And brake the trees of their border.

34 He spake, and the locusts came, And the grasshopper without number,

35 And devoured all the green herb in their land, And devoured the fruit of their ground.

36 Then He smote all the first-born in their land, The firstlings of all their strength,

37 And led them forth with silver and gold,

And there was no stumbling one among His tribes.

38 Egypt rejoiced at their departure,

For dread of them had fallen upon them.

39 He spread a cloud for a covering, And fire to lighten the night ;

40 They desired, and He brought quails,

And satisfied them with the bread of heaven ;

41 He opened a rock, and waters gushed out, They flowed through the steppes as a river.

42 For He remembered His holy word, Abraham His servant ;

43 And He led forth His people with gladness, And with exulting His chosen ones ;

44 And He gave them the lands of the heathen,

And that gained by the labour of the nations they in- herited ;

45 That they might observe His laws And keep His instructions.

Hallelujah !

We have here another Psalm closing with Hallelujah, which opens the series of the Hodu-Psalms. Such is the name we give only to Psalms which begin with הודו (Ps 105, Ps 107, Ps 118, Ps 136), just as we call those which begin with הללויה (Ps 106, Psa 111:1, Psa 117:1-2, Ps 135, Psa 146:1) Hallelujah-Psalms (alleluiatici). The expression להלּל וּלהודות, which frequently occurs in the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, points to these two kinds of Psalms, or at least to their key-notes.
The festival song which David, according to 1Ch 16:7, handed over to Asaph and his brethren for musical execution at the setting down of the Ark and the opening of divine service on Zion, is, so far as its first part is concerned (1Ch 16:8-22), taken from our Psalm (Psa 105:1), which is then followed by Psa 96:1-13 as a second part, and is closed with [[Bible_(King_James)/P salms|Psa 106:1]], Psa 106:47-48. Hitzig regards the festival song in the chronicler as the original, and the respective parallels in the Psalms as “layers or shoots.” “The chronicler,” says he, “there produces with labour, and therefore himself seeking foreign aid, a song for a past that is dead.” But the transition from Psa 105:22 to Psa 105:23 and from Psa 105:33 to Psa 105:34, so devoid of connection, the taking over of the verse out of Ps 106 referring to the Babylonian exile into Psa 105:35, and even of the doxology of the Fourth Book, regarded as an integral part of the Psalm, into Psa 105:36, refute that perversion of the right relation which has been attempted in the interest of the Maccabaean Psalms. That festival song in the chronicler, as has been shown again very recently by Riehm and Köhler, is a compilation of parts of songs already at hand, arranged for a definite purpose. Starting on the assumption that the Psalms as a whole are Davidic (just as all the Proverbs are Salomonic), because David called the poetry of the Psalms used in religious worship into existence, the attempt is made in that festival song to represent the opening of the worship on Zion, at that time in strains belonging to the Davidic Psalms.
So far as the subject-matter is concerned, Psalms 105 attaches itself to the Asaph Ps 78, which recapitulates the history of Israel. The recapitulation here, however, is made not with any didactic purpose, but with the purpose of forming a hymn, and does not come down beyond the time of Moses and Joshua. Its source is likewise the Tôra as it now lies before us. The poet epitomizes what the Tôra narrates, and clothes it in a poetic garb.

Verses 1-6

Invitation to the praise - praise that resounds far and wide among the peoples - of the God who has become manifest wondrously in the deeds and words connected with the history of the founding of Israel. הודה לה, as in Psa 33:2; Psa 75:2, of a praising and thankful confession offered to God; קרא בשׁם ה, to call with the name of Jahve, i.e., to call upon it, of an audible, solemn attestation of God in prayer and in discourse (Symmachus, κηρύσσετε). The joy of heart^[110] that is desired is the condition of a joyous opening of the mouth and Israel's own stedfast turning towards Jahve, the condition of all salutary result; for it is only His “strength” that breaks through all dangers, and His “face” that lightens up all darkness. משׁפּטי־פּיו, as Psa 105:7 teaches, are God's judicial utterances, which have been executed without any hindrance, more particularly in the case of the Egyptians, their Pharaoh, and their gods. The chronicler has פּיהוּ and זרע ישׂראל, which is so far unsuitable as one does not know whether עבדו is to be referred to “Israel” the patriarch, or to the “seed of Israel,” the nation; the latter reference would be deutero-Isaianic. In both texts the lxx reads עבדו (ye His servants).

Verses 7-11

The poet now begins himself to do that to which he encourages Israel. Jahve is Israel's God: His righteous rule extends over the whole earth, whilst His people experience His inviolable faithfulness to His covenant. יהוה in Psa 105:7 is in apposition to הוּא, for the God who bears this name is as a matter of course the object of the song of praise. זכר is the perfect of practically pledges certainty (cf. Psa 111:5, where we find instead the future of confident prospect). The chronicler has זכרוּ instead (lxx again something different: μνημονεύωμεν); but the object is not the demanding but the promissory side of the covenant, so that consequently it is not Israel's remembering but God's that is spoken of. He remembers His covenant in all time to come, so that exile and want of independence as a state are only temporary, exceptional conditions. צוּה has its radical signification here, to establish, institute, Psa 111:9. לאלף דּור (in which expression דור is a specifying accusative) is taken from Deu 7:9. And since דּבר is the covenant word of promise, it can be continued אשׁר כּרת; and Hag 2:5 (vid., Köhler thereon) shows that אשׁר is not joined to בריתו over Psa 105:8. וּשׁבוּעתו, however, is a second object to זכר (since דּבר with what belongs to it as an apposition is out of the question). It is the oath on Moriah (Gen 22:16) that is meant, which applied to Abraham and his seed. לישׂחק (chronicler ליצחק), as in Amo 7:9; Jer 33:26. To זכר is appended ויּעמרדה; the suffix, intended as neuter, points to what follows, viz., this, that Canaan shall be Israel's hereditary land. From Abraham and Isaac we come to Jacob-Israel, who as being the father of the twelve is the twelve-tribe nation itself that is coming into existence; hence the plural can alternate with the singular in Psa 105:11. את־ארץ כּנען (chronicler, without the את) is an accusative of the object, and חבל נחלתכם accusative of the predicate: the land of Canaan as the province of your own hereditary possession measured out with a measuring line (Psa 78:55).

Verses 12-15

The poet now celebrates the divine preservation which had sway over the small beginnings of Israel, when it made the patriarchs proof against harm on their wanderings. “Men of number” are such as can be easily counted, vid., the confessions in Gen 34:30; Deu 26:5; ויּתהלּכוּ places the claim upon the hospitality at one time of this people and at another time of that people in the connection with it of cause and effect. כּמעט, as a small number, only such a small number, signifies, as being virtually an adjective: inconsiderable, insignificant, worthless (Pro 10:20). בּהּ refers to Canaan. In Psa 105:13 the way in which the words גּוי and עם alternate is instructive: the former signifies the nation, bound together by a common origin, language, country, and descent; the latter the people, bound together by unity of government.^[111]
The apodosis does not begin until Psa 105:14. It is different in connection with בּהיותכם in the text of the chronicler, and in this passage in the Psalter of the Syriac version, according to which Psa 105:12 ought to be jointed to the preceding group. The variation ומממלכה instead of מממלכה is of no consequence; but לאישׁ (to any one whomsoever) instead of אדם, in connection with הניח, restores the current mode of expression (Ecc 5:11; 2Sa 16:11; Hos 4:17) instead of one which is without support elsewhere, but which follows the model of נתן, נטשׁ, Gen 31:28 (cf. supra p. 171); whilst on the other hand ובנביאי instead of ולנביאי substitutes an expression that cannot be supported for the current one (Gen 19:9; Rth 1:21). In Psa 105:14 the poet has the three histories of the preservation of the wives of the patriarchs in his mind, viz., of Sarah in Egypt (Gen. 12), and of Sarah and of Rebekah both in Philistia (Psa 20:1-9, Psa 26:1-12, cf. especially Psa 26:11). In the second instance God declares the patriarch to be a “prophet” (Psa 20:7). The one mention has reference to this and the other to Gen. 17, where Abram is set apart to be the father of peoples and kings, and Sarai to be a princess. They are called משׁיהים (a passive form) as eing God-chosen princes, and נביאים (an intensive active form, from נבא, root נב, to divulge), not as being inspired ones (Hupfeld), but as being God's spokesmen (cf. Exo 7:1. with Exo 4:15.), therefore as being the recipients and mediators of a divine revelation.

Verses 16-24

Psa 105:16-24 “To call up a famine” is also a prose expression in 2Ki 8:1. To break the staff of bread (i.e., the staff which bread is to man) is a very old metaphor, Lev 26:26. That the selling of Joseph was, providentially regarded, a “sending before,” he himself says in Gen 45:5. Psa 102:24 throws light upon the meaning of ענּה ב. The Kerî רגלו is just as much without any occasion to justify it as עינו in Ecc 4:8 (for עיניו). The statement that iron came upon his soul is intended to say that he had to endure in iron fetters sufferings that threatened his life. Most expositors take בּרזל as equivalent to בּבּרזל, but Hitzig rightly takes נפשׁו as an object, following the Targum; for ברזל as a name of an iron fetter^[112] can change its gender, as do, e.g., צפון as a name of the north wind, and כבוד as a name of the soul. The imprisonment (so harsh at the commencement) lasted over ten years, until at last Joseph's word cam to pass, viz., the word concerning this exaltation which had been revealed to him in dreams (Gen 42:9). According to Psa 107:20, דברו appears to be the word of Jahve, but then one would expect from Psa 105:19 a more parallel turn of expression. What is meant is Joseph's open-hearted word concerning his visions, and אמרת ה is the revelation of God conveying His promises, which came to him in the same form, which had to try, to prove, and to purify him (צרף as in Psa 17:3, and frequently), inasmuch as he was not to be raised to honour without having in a state of deep abasement proved a faithfulness that wavered not, and a confidence that knew no despair. The divine “word” is conceived of as a living effectual power, as in Psa 119:50. The representation of the exaltation begins, according to Gen 41:14, with שׁלח־מלך^[113] and follows Gen 41:39-41, Gen 41:44, very closely as to the rest, according to which בּנפשׁו is a collateral definition to לאסּר (with an orthophonic Dag.) in the sense of בּרצונו: by his soul, i.e., by virtue of his will (vid., Psychology, S. 202; tr. p. 239). In consequence of this exaltation of Joseph, Jacob-Israel came then into Egypt, and sojourned there as in a protecting house of shelter (concerning גּוּר, vid., supra, p. 414). Egypt is called (Psa 105:23, Psa 105:27) the land of Chaam, as in Psa 78:51; according to Plutarch, in the vernacular the black land, from the dark ashy grey colouring which the deposited mud of the Nile gives to the ground. There Israel became a powerful, numerous people (Exo 1:7; Deu 26:5), greater than their oppressors.

Verses 25-38

Narration of the Exodus out of Egypt after the plagues that went forth over that land. Psa 105:25 tells how the Egyptians became their “oppressors.” It was indirectly God's work, inasmuch as He gave increasing might to His people, which excited their jealousy. The craft reached its highest pitch in the weakening of the Israelites that was aimed at by killing all the male children that were born. דּברי signifies facts, instances, as in Psa 65:4; Psa 145:5. Here, too, as in Ps 78, the miraculous judgments of the ten plagues to not stand in exactly historical order. The poet begins with the ninth, which was the most distinct self-representation of divine wrath, viz., the darkness (Exo 10:21-29): shā'lach chō'shech. The former word (שׁלח) has an orthophonic Gaja by the final syllable, which warns the reader audibly to utter the guttural of the toneless final syllable, which might here be easily slurred over. The Hiph. החשׁיך has its causative signification here, as also in Jer 13:16; the contracted mode of writing with i instead of ı̂ may be occasioned by the Waw convers. Psa 105:28 cannot be referred to the Egyptians; for the expression would be a mistaken one for the final compliance, which was wrung from them, and the interrogative way of taking it: nonne rebellarunt, is forced: the cancelling of the לא, however (lxx and Syriac), makes the thought halting. Hitzig proposes ולא שׁמרו: they observed not His words; but this, too, sounds flat and awkward when said of the Egyptians. The subject will therefore be the same as the subject of שׂמוּ; and of Moses and Aaron, in contrast to the behaviour at Mê - Merı̂bah (Num 20:24; Num 27:14; cf. 1Ki 13:21, 1Ki 13:26), it is said that this time they rebelled not against the words (Kerî, without any ground: the word) of God, but executed the terrible commands accurately and willingly. From the ninth plague the poet in Psa 105:29 passes over to the first (Exo 7:14-25), viz., the red blood is appended to the black darkness. The second plague follows, viz., the frogs (Exo 8:1-15); Psa 105:20 looks as though it were stunted, but neither has the lxx read any ויבאו (ויעלו), Ex. 7:28. In Psa 105:31 he next briefly touches upon the fourth plague, viz., the gad-fly, ערב, lxx κυνόμυια (Exo 8:20-32, vid., on Psa 78:45), and the third (Exo 8:16-19), viz., the gnats, which are passed over in Ps 78. From the third plague the poet in Psa 105:32, Psa 105:33 takes a leap over to the seventh, viz., the hail (Ex 9:13-35). In Psa 105:32 he has Exo 9:24 before his mind, according to which masses of fire descended with the hail; and in Psa 105:33 (as in Psa 78:47) he fills in the details of Exo 9:25. The seventh plague is followed by the eighth in Psa 105:34, Psa 105:35, viz., the locust (Ex 10:1-20), to which ילק (the grasshopper) is the parallel word here, just as חסיל (the cricket) is in Psa 78:46. The expression of innumerableness is the same as in Psa 104:25. The fifth plague, viz., the pestilence, murrain (Exo 9:1-7), and the sixth, viz., שׁחין, boils (Exo 9:8-12), are left unmentioned; and the tenth plague closes, viz., the smiting of the first-born (Exo 11:1.), which Psa 105:36 expresses in the Asaphic language of Psa 78:51. Without any mention of the institution of the Passover, the tenth plague is followed by the departure with the vessels of silver and gold asked for from the Egyptians (Exo 12:35; Exo 11:2; Exo 3:22). The Egyptians were glad to get rid of the people whose detention threatened them with total destruction (Exo 12:33). The poet here draws from Isa 5:27; Isa 14:31; Isa 63:13, and Exo 15:16. The suffix of שׁבטיו refers to the chief subject of the assertion, viz., to God, according to Psa 122:4, although manifestly enough the reference to Israel is also possible (Num 24:2).

Verses 39-45

Now follows the miraculous guidance through the desert to the taking possession of Canaan. The fact that the cloud (ענן, root ען, to meet, to present itself to view, whence the Arabic ‛ănăn, the visible outward side of the vault of heaven) by day, and becoming like fire by night, was their guide (Exo 13:21), is left out of consideration in Psa 105:39. With למסך we are not to associate the idea of a covering against foes, Exo 14:19., but of a covering from the smiting sun, for פּרשׁ (Exo 40:19), as in Isa 4:5., points to the idea of a canopy. In connection with the sending of the quails the tempting character of the desire is only momentarily dwelt upon, the greater emphasis is laid on the omnipotence of the divine goodness which responded to it. שׁאלוּ is to be read instead of שׁאל, the w before w having been overlooked; and the Kerî writes and points שׂליו (like סתיו, עניו) in order to secure the correct pronunciation, after the analogy of the plural termination יו-. The bread of heaven (Psa 78:24.) is the manna. In Psa 105:41 the giving of water out of the rock at Rephidim and at Kadesh are brought together; the expression corresponds better to the former instance (Exo 17:6, cf. Num 20:11). הלכוּ refers to the waters, and נהר for כּנּהרות, Psa 78:16, is, as in Psa 22:14, an equation instead of a comparison. In this miraculous escort the patriarchal promise moves on towards its fulfilment; the holy word of promise, and the stedfast, proved faith of Abraham - these were the two motives. The second את is, like the first, a sign of the object, not a preposition (lxx, Targum), in connection with which Psa 105:42 would be a continuation of Psa 105:42, dragging on without any parallelism. Joy and exulting are mentioned as the mood of the redeemed ones with reference to the festive joy displayed at the Red Sea and at Sinai. By Psa 105:43 one is reminded of the same descriptions of the antitype in Isaiah, Isa 35:10; Isa 51:11; Isa 55:12, just as Psa 105:41 recalls Isa 48:21. “The lands of the heathen” are the territories of the tribes of Canaan. עמל is equivalent to יגיע in Isa 45:14 : the cultivated ground, the habitable cities, and the accumulated treasures. Israel entered upon the inheritance of these peoples in every direction. As an independent people upon ground that is theirs by inheritance, keeping the revealed law of their God, was Israel to exhibit the pattern of a holy nation moulded after the divine will; and, as the beginning of the Psalm shows, to unite the peoples to themselves and their God, the God of redemption, by the proclamation of the redemption which has fallen to their own lot.

Psalm 106

== Israel's Unfaithfulness from Egypt Onwards, and God's Faithfulness Down to the Present Time==

With this anonymous Psalm begins the series of the strictly Hallelujah-Psalms, i.e., those Psalms which have הללו־יה for their arsis-like beginning and for their inscription (Ps 106, 111-113, Psa 117:1-2, 135, 146-150). The chronicler in his cento, 1Ch 16:8., and in fact in 1Ch 16:34-36, puts the first and last verses of this Psalm (Psa 106:1, Psa 106:47), together with the Beracha (Psa 106:48) which closes the Fourth Book of the Psalms, into the mouth of David, from which it is to be inferred that this Psalm is no more Maccabaean than Psa 96:1-13 and Ps 105 (which see), and that the Psalter was divided into five books which were marked off by the doxologies even in the time of the chronicler. The Beracha, Psa 106:48, appears even at that period to have been read as an integral part of the Psalm, according to liturgical usage. The Hallelujah Psalms 106, like the Hodu Ps 105 and the Asaph Ps 78, recapitulates the history of the olden times of the Israelitish nation. But the purpose and mode of the recapitulation differ in each of these three Psalms. In Ps 78 it is didactic; in Ps 105 hymnic; and here in Psalms 106 penitential. It is a penitential Psalm, or Psalm of confession, a ודּוּי (from התודּה to confess, Lev 16:21). The oldest types of such liturgical prayers are the two formularies at the offering of the first-fruits, Deut. 26, and Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the Temple, 1 Kings 8. And to this kind of tephilla, the Vidduj, belong, beyond the range of the Psalter, the prayer of Daniel, Dan 9:1 (vid., the way in which it is introduced in Dan 9:4), and the prayer (Neh 9:5-38) which eight Levites uttered in the name of the people at the celebration of the fast-day on the twenty-fourth of Tishri. It is true Psalms 106 is distinguished from these prayers of confession in the prose style as being a Psalm; but it has three points in common with them and with the liturgical tephilla in general, viz., (1) the fondness for inflexional rhyming, i.e., for rhyming terminations of the same suffixes; (2) the heaping up of synonyms; and (3) the unfolding of the thoughts in a continuous line. These three peculiarities are found not only in the liturgical border, Psa 106:1-6, Psa 106:47, but also in the middle historical portion, which forms the bulk of the Psalm. The law of parallelism, is, it is true, still observed; but apart from these distichic wave-like ridges of the thoughts, it is all one direct, straight-line flow without technical division.

Verses 1-5

The Psalm begins with the liturgical call, which has not coined for the first time in the Maccabaean age (1 Macc. 4:24), but was already in use in Jeremiah's time (Psa 33:11). The lxx appropriately renders טּוב by χρηστός, for God is called “good” not so much in respect of His nature as of the revelation of His nature. The fulness of this revelation, says Psa 106:2 (like Psa 40:6), is inexhaustible. גּבוּרות are the manifestations of His all-conquering power which makes everything subservient to His redemptive purposes (Psa 20:7); and תּהלּה is the glory (praise or celebration) of His self-attestation in history. The proclaiming of these on the part of man can never be an exhaustive echo of them. In Psa 106:3 the poet tells what is the character of those who experience such manifestations of God; and to the assertion of the blessedness of these men he appends the petition in Psa 106:4, that God would grant him a share in the experiences of the whole nation which is the object of these manifestations. עמּך beside בּרצון is a genitive of the object: with the pleasure which Thou turnest towards Thy people, i.e., when Thou again (cf. Psa 106:47) showest Thyself gracious unto them. On פּקד cf. Psa 8:5; Psa 80:15, and on ראה ב, Jer 29:32; a similar Beth is that beside לשׂמח (at, on account of, not: in connection with), Psa 21:2; Psa 122:__PAGESEPARATOR__1. God's “inheritance” is His people; the name for them is varied four times, and thereby גּוי is also exceptionally brought into use, as in Zep 2:9.

Verses 6-12

The key-note of the vidduj, which is a settled expression since 1Ki 8:47 (Dan 9:5, cf. Bar. 2:12), makes itself heard here in Psa 106:6; Israel is bearing at this time the punishment of its sins, by which it has made itself like its forefathers. In this needy and helpless condition the poet, who all along speaks as a member of the assembly, takes the way of the confession of sin, which leads to the forgiveness of sin and to the removal of the punishment of sin. רשׁע, 1Ki 8:47, signifies to be, and the Hiph. to prove one's self to be, a רשׁע. עם in Psa 106:6 is equivalent to aeque ac, as in Ecc 2:16; Job 9:26. With Psa 106:7 the retrospect begins. The fathers contended with Moses and Aaron in Egypt (Exo 5:21), and gave no heed to the prospect of redemption (Exo 6:9). The miraculous judgments which Moses executed (Exo 3:20) had no more effect in bringing them to a right state of mind, and the abundant tokens of loving-kindness (Isa 63:7) amidst which God redeemed them made so little impression on their memories that they began to despair and to murmur even at the Red Sea (Exo 14:11.). With על, Psa 106:7, alternates בּ (as in Eze 10:15, בּנהר); cf. the alternation of prepositions in Joe 3:8. When they behaved thus, Jahve might have left their redemption unaccomplished, but out of unmerited mercy He nevertheless redeemed them. Psa 106:8-11 are closely dependent upon Ex. 14. Psa 106:11 is a transposition (cf. Psa 34:21; Isa 34:16) from Exo 14:28. On the other hand, Psa 106:9 is taken out of Isa 63:13 (cf. Wisd. 19:9); Isa. 63:7-64:12 is a prayer for redemption which has a similar ground-colouring. The sea through which they passed is called, as in the Tôra, ים־סוּף, which seems, according to Exo 2:3; Isa 19:3, to signify the sea of reed or sedge, although the sedge does not grow in the Red Sea itself, but only on the marshy places of the coast; but it can also signify the sea of sea-weed, mare algosum, after the Egyptian sippe, wool and sea-weed (just as Arab. ṣûf also signifies both these). The word is certainly Egyptian, whether it is to be referred back to the Egyptian word sippe (sea-weed) or seebe (sedge), and is therefore used after the manner of a proper name; so that the inference drawn by Knobel on Exo 8:18 from the absence of the article, that סוּף is the name of a town on the northern point of the gulf, is groundless. The miracle at the sea of sedge or sea-weed - as Psa 106:12 says - also was not without effect. Exo 14:31 tells us that they believed on Jahve and Moses His servant, and the song which they sang follows in Ex. 15. But they then only too quickly added sins of ingratitude.

Verses 13-23

The first of the principal sins on the other side of the Red Sea was the unthankful, impatient, unbelieving murmuring about their meat and drink, Psa 106:13-15. For what Psa 106:13 places foremost was the root of the whole evil, that, falling away from faith in God's promise, they forgot the works of God which had been wrought in confirmation of it, and did not wait for the carrying out of His counsel. The poet has before his eye the murmuring for water on the third day after the miraculous deliverance (Exo 15:22-24) and in Rephidim (Exo 17:2). Then the murmuring for flesh in the first and second years of the Exodus which was followed by the sending of the quails (Ex. 16 and Num. 11), together with the wrathful judgment by which the murmuring for the second time was punished (Kibrôth ha - Ta'avah, Num 11:33-35). This dispensation of wrath the poet calls רזון (lxx, Vulgate, and Syriac erroneously πλησμονήν, perhaps מזון, nourishment), inasmuch as he interprets Num 11:33-35 of a wasting disease, which swept away the people in consequence of eating inordinately of the flesh, and in the expression (cf. Psa 78:31) he closely follows Isa 10:16. The “counsel” of God for which they would not wait, is His plan with respect to the time and manner of the help. חכּה, root Arab. ḥk, a weaker power of Arab. ḥq, whence also Arab. ḥkl, p. 111, ḥkm, p. 49 note 1, signifies prop. to make firm, e.g., a knot (cf. on Psa 33:20), and starting from this (without the intervention of the metaphor moras nectere, as Schultens thinks) is transferred to a firm bent of mind, and the tension of long expectation. The epigrammatic expression ויּתאוּוּ תאוה (plural of ויתאו, Isa 45:12, for which codices, as also in Pro 23:3, Pro 23:6; Pro 24:1, the Complutensian, Venetian 1521, Elias Levita, and Baer have ויתאו without the tonic lengthening) is taken from Num 11:4.
The second principal sin was the insurrection against their superiors, Psa 106:16-18. The poet has Num 16:1 in his eye. The rebellious ones were swallowed up by the earth, and their two hundred and fifty noble, non-Levite partisans consumed by fire. The fact that the poet does not mention Korah among those who were swallowed up is in perfect harmony with Num 16:25., Deu 11:6; cf. however Num 26:10. The elliptical תפתּה in Psa 106:17 is explained from Num 16:32; Num 26:10.
The third principal sin was the worship of the calf, Psa 106:19-23. The poet here glances back at Ex. 32, but not without at the same time having Deu 9:8-12 in his mind; for the expression “in Horeb” is Deuteronomic, e.g., Deu 4:15; Deu 5:2, and frequently. Psa 106:20 is also based upon the Book of Deuteronomy: they exchanged their glory, i.e., the God who was their distinction before all peoples according to Deu 4:6-8; Deu 10:21 (cf. also Jer 2:11), for the likeness (תּבנית) of a plough-ox (for this is pre-eminently called שׁוּר, in the dialects תּור), contrary to the prohibition in Deu 4:17. On Psa 106:21 cf. the warning in Deu 6:12. “Land of Cham” = Egypt, as in Psa 78:51; Psa 105:23, Psa 105:27. With ויאמר in Psa 106:23 the expression becomes again Deuteronomic: Deu 9:25, cf. Exo 32:10. God made and also expressed the resolve to destroy Israel. Then Moses stepped into the gap (before the gap), i.e., as it were covered the breach, inasmuch as he placed himself in it and exposed his own life; cf. on the fact, besides Ex. 32, also Deu 9:18., Psa 10:10, and on the expression, Eze 22:30 and also Jer 18:20.

Verses 24-33

The fact to which the poet refers in Psa 106:24, viz., the rebellion in consequence of the report of the spies, which he brings forward as the fourth principal sin, is narrated in Num 13, Num 14. The appellation ארץ חמדּה is also found in Jer 3:19; Zec 7:14. As to the rest, the expression is altogether Pentateuchal. “They despised the land,” after Num 14:31; “they murmured in their tents,” after Deu 1:27; “to lift up the land” = to swear, after Exo 6:8; Deu 32:40; the threat להפּיל, to make them fall down, fall away, after Num 14:29, Num 14:32. The threat of exile is founded upon the two great threatening chapters, Lev 26; Deu 28:1; cf. more particularly Lev 26:33 (together with the echoes in Eze 5:__PAGESEPARATOR__12; Eze 12:14, etc.), Deu 28:64 (together with the echoes in Jer 9:15; Eze 22:15, etc.). Eze 20:23 stands in a not accidental relationship to Psa 106:26.; and according to that passage, וּלהפיל is an error of the copyist for וּלהפיץ (Hitzig).
Now follows in Psa 106:28-31 the fifth of the principal sins, viz., the taking part in the Moabitish worship of Baal. The verb נצמד (to be bound or chained), taken from Num 25:3, Num 25:5, points to the prostitution with which Baal Peôr, this Moabitish Priapus, was worshipped. The sacrificial feastings in which, according to Num 25:2, they took part, are called eating the sacrifices of the dead, because the idols are dead beings (nekroi', Wisd. 13:10-18) as opposed to God, the living One. The catena on Rev 2:14 correctly interprets: τὰ τοῖς εἰδώλοις τελεσθέντα κρέα.^[114]
The object of “they made angry” is omitted; the author is fond of this, cf. Psa 106:7 and Psa 106:32. The expression in Psa 106:29 is like Exo 19:24. The verb עמד is chosen with reference to Num 17:13. The result is expressed in Psa 106:30 after Num 25:8, Num 25:18., Num 17:13. With פּלּל, to adjust, to judge adjustingly (lxx, Vulgate, correctly according to the sense, ἐξιλάσατο), the poet associates the thought of the satisfaction due to divine right, which Phinehas executed with the javelin. This act of zeal for Jahve, which compensated for Israel's unfaithfulness, was accounted unto him for righteousness, by his being rewarded for it with the priesthood unto everlasting ages, Num 25:10-13. This accounting of a work for righteousness is only apparently contradictory to Gen 15:5.: it was indeed an act which sprang from a constancy in faith, and one which obtained for him the acceptation of a righteous man for the sake of this upon which it was based, by proving him to be such.
In Psa 106:__PAGESEPARATOR__32, Psa 106:33 follows the sixth of the principal sins, viz., the insurrection against Moses and Aaron at the waters of strife in the fortieth year, in connection with which Moses forfeited the entrance with them into the Land of Promise (Num 20:11., Deu 1:37; Deu 32:51), since he suffered himself to be carried away by the persevering obstinacy of the people against the Spirit of God (המרה mostly providing the future for מרה, as in Psa 106:7, Psa 106:43, Psa 78:17, Psa 78:40, Psa 78:56, of obstinacy against God; on את־רוּחו cf. Isa 63:10) into uttering the words addressed to the people, Num 20:10, in which, as the smiting of the rock which was twice repeated shows, is expressed impatience together with a tinge of unbelief. The poet distinguishes, as does the narrative in Num. 20, between the obstinacy of the people and the transgression of Moses, which is there designated, according to that which lay at the root of it, as unbelief. The retrospective reference to Num 27:14 needs adjustment accordingly.

Verses 34-43

The sins in Canaan: the failing to exterminate the idolatrous peoples and sharing in their idolatry. In Psa 106:34 the poet appeals to the command, frequently enjoined upon them from Exo 23:32. onwards, to extirpate the inhabitants of Canaan. Since they did not execute this command (vid., Jdg 1:1), that which it was intended to prevent came to pass: the heathen became to them a snare (mowqeesh), Exo 23:33; Exo 34:12; Deu 7:16. They intermarried with them, and fell into the Canaanitish custom in which the abominations of heathenism culminate, viz., the human sacrifice, which Jahve abhorreth (Deu 12:31), and only the demons (שׁדים, Deu 32:17) delight in. Thus then the land was defiled by blood-guiltiness (חנף, Num 35:33, cf. Isa 24:5; Isa 26:21), and they themselves became unclean (Eze 20:43) by the whoredom of idolatry. In Psa 106:40-43 the poet (as in Neh 9:26.) sketches the alternation of apostasy, captivity, redemption, and relapse which followed upon the possession of Canaan, and more especially that which characterized the period of the judges. God's “counsel” was to make Israel free and glorious, but they leaned upon themselves, following their own intentions (בּעצתם); wherefore they perished in their sins. The poet uses מכך (to sink down, fall away) instead of the נמק (to moulder, rot) of the primary passage, __PAGESEPARATOR__Lev 26:39, retained in Eze 24:23; Eze 33:10, which is no blunder (Hitzig), but a deliberate change.

Verses 44-46

The poet's range of vision here widens from the time of the judges to the history of the whole of the succeeding age down to the present; for the whole history of Israel has essentially the same fundamental character, viz., that Israel's unfaithfulness does not annul God's faithfulness. That verifies itself even now. That which Solomon in 1Ki 8:50 prays for on behalf of his people when they may be betrayed into the hands of the enemy, has been fulfilled in the case of the dispersion of Israel in all countries (Psa 107:3), Babylonia, Egypt, etc.: God has turned the hearts of their oppressors towards them. On ראה ב, to regard compassionately, cf. Gen 29:32; 1Sa 1:11. בּצּר לחם belong together, as in Psa 107:6, and frequently. רנּה is a cry of lamentation, as in 1Ki 8:28 in Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the Temple. From this source comes Psa 106:6, and also from this source Psa 106:46, cf. 1Ki 8:50 together with Neh 1:11. In ויּנּחם the drawing back of the tone does not take place, as in Gen 24:67. חסדו beside כּרב is not pointed by the Kerî חסדּו, as in Psa 5:8; Psa 69:14, but as in Lam 3:32, according to Psa 106:7, Isa 63:7, חסדו: in accordance with the fulness (riches) of His manifold mercy or loving-kindness. The expression in Psa 106:46 is like Gen 43:14. Although the condition of the poet's fellow-countrymen in the dispersion may have been tolerable in itself, yet this involuntary scattering of the members of the nation is always a state of punishment. The poet prays in Psa 106:47 that God may be pleased to put an end to this.

Verse 47

He has now reached the goal, to which his whole Psalm struggles forth, by the way of self-accusation and the praise of the faithfulness of God. השׁתּבּח (found only here) is the reflexive of the Piel, to account happy, Ecc 4:2, therefore: in order that we may esteem ourselves happy to be able to praise Thee. In this reflexive (and also passive) sense השׁתבח is customary in Aramaic and post-biblical Hebrew.

Verse 48

The closing doxology of the Fourth Book. The chronicler has ואמרוּ before Psa 106:47 (which with him differs only very slightly), an indispensable rivet, so to speak, in the fitting together of Psa 106:1 (Psa 107:1) and Psa 106:47. The means this historian, who joins passages together like mosaic-work, calls to his aid are palpable enough. He has also taken over. Psa 106:48 by transforming and let all the people say Amen, Hallelujah! in accordance with his style (cf. 1Ch 25:3; 2Ch 5:13, and frequently, Ezr 3:11), into an historical clause: ויּאמרוּ כל־העם אמן והלּל ליהוה. Hitzig, by regarding the echoes of the Psalms in the chronicler as the originals of the corresponding Psalms in the Psalter, and consequently 1Ch 16:36 as the original of the Beracha placed after our Psalm, reverses the true relation; vid., with reference to this point, Riehm in the Theolog. Literat. Blatt, 1866, No. 30, and Köhler in the Luther. Zeitschrift, 1867, S. 297ff. The priority of Ps 106 is clear from the fact that Psa 106:1 gives a liturgical key-note that was in use even in Jeremiah's time (Psa 33:11), and that Psa 106:47 reverts to the tephilla-style of the introit, Psa 106:4. And the priority of Psa 106:48 as a concluding formula of the Fourth Book is clear from the fact that is has been fashioned, like that of the Second Book (Psa 72:18.), under the influence of the foregoing Psalm. The Hallelujah is an echo of the Hallelujah-Psalm, just as there the Jahve Elohim is an echo of the Elohim-Psalm. And “let all the people say Amen” is the same closing thought as in Psa 106:6 of Ps, which is made into the closing doxology of the whole Psalter. Ἀμὴν ἀλληλούΐα together (Rev 19:4) is a laudatory confirmation.

Psalm 107

==An Admonition to Fellow-Countrymen to Render Thanks on account of Having Got the Better of Calamities==

With this Psalm begins the Fifth Book, the Book אלה הדברים of the Psalter. With Ps 106 closed the Fourth Book, or the Book במדבר, the first Psalm of which, Ps 90, bewailed the manifestation of God's wrath in the case of the generation of the desert, and in the presence of the prevailing death took refuge in God the eternal and unchangeable One. Ps 106, which closes the book has בּמּדבּר (Psa 106:14, Psa 107:26) as its favourite word, and makes confession of the sins of Israel on the way to Canaan. Now, just as at the beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy Israel stands on the threshold of the Land of Promise, after the two tribes and a half have already established themselves on the other side of the Jordan, so at the beginning of this Fifth Book of the Psalter we see Israel restored to the soil of its fatherland. There it is the Israel redeemed out of Egypt, here it is the Israel redeemed out of the lands of the Exile. There the lawgiver once more admonishes Israel to yield the obedience of love to the Law of Jahve, here the psalmist calls upon Israel to show gratitude towards Him, who has redeemed it from exile and distress and death.
We must not therefore be surprised if Ps 106 and Ps 107 are closely connected, in spite of the fact that the boundary of the two Books lies between them. “Ps. 107 stands in close relationship to Ps 106. The similarity of the beginning at once points back to this Psalm. Thanks are here given in Psa 107:3 for what was there desired in v. 47. The praise of the Lord which was promised in Psa 106:47 in the case of redemption being vouchsafed, is here presented to Him after redemption vouchsafed.” This observation of Hengstenberg is fully confirmed. The Psa 104:1 really to a certain extent from a tetralogy. Ps 104 derives its material from the history of the creation, Ps 105 from the history of Israel in Egypt, in the desert, and in the Land of Promise down to the Exile, and Psalms 107 from the time of the restoration. Nevertheless the connection of Ps 104 with Psa 105:1 is by far not so close as that of these three Psalms among themselves. These three anonymous Psalms form a trilogy in the strictest sense; they are a tripartite whole from the hand of one author. The observation is an old one. The Harpffe Davids mit Teutschen Saiten bespannet (Harp of David strung with German Strings), a translation of the Psalms which appeared in Augsburg in the year 1659, begins Ps 106 with the words: “For the third time already am I now come, and I make bold to spread abroad, with grateful acknowledgment, Thy great kindnesses.” God's wondrous deeds of loving-kindness and compassion towards Israel from the time of their forefathers down to the redemption out of Egypt according to the promise, and giving them possession of Canaan, are the theme of Ps 105. The theme of Ps 106 is the sinful conduct of Israel from Egypt onwards during the journey through the desert, and then in the Land of Promise, by which they brought about the fulfilment of the threat of exile (Psa 106:27); but even there God's mercy was not suffered to go unattested (Psa 106:46). The theme of Psalms 107, finally, is the sacrifice of praise that is due to Him who redeemed them out of exile and all kinds of destruction. We may compare Psa 105:44, He gave them the lands (ארצות) of the heathen; Psa 106:27, (He threatened) to cast forth their seed among the heathen and to scatter them in the lands (בּארצות); and Psa 107:3, out of the lands (מארצות) hath He brought them together, out of east and west, out of north and south. The designed similarity of the expression, the internal connection, and the progression in accordance with a definite plan, are not to be mistaken here. In other respects, too, these three Psalms are intimately interwoven. In them Egypt is called “the land of Ham” (Psa 105:23, Psa 105:27; Psa 106:22), and Israel “the chosen ones of Jahve” (Psa 105:6, Psa 105:43; Psa 106:5, cf. Psa 23:1-6). They are fond of the interrogative form of exclamation (Psa 106:2; Psa 107:43). There is an approach in them to the hypostatic conception of the Word (דּבר, Psa 105:19; Psa 106:20). Compare also ישׁימון Psa 106:14; Psa 107:4; and the Hithpa. התהלּל Psa 105:3; Psa 106:5, השׁתּבּח, Psa 106:47, התבּלּע Psa 107:27. In all three the poet shows himself to be especially familiar with Isa 40:1, and also with the Book of Job. Psalms 107 is the fullest in reminiscences taken from both these Books, and in this Psalm the movement of the poet is more free without recapitulating history that has been committed to writing. Everything therefore favours the assertion that Ps 105, Ps 106, and Ps 107 are a “trefoil” (trifolium) - two Hodu-Psalms, and a Hallalujah-Psalm in the middle.
Ps. 107 consists of six groups with an introit, Psa 107:1-3, and an epiphonem, Psa 107:43. The poet unrolls before the dispersion of Israel that has again attained to the possession of its native land the pictures of divine deliverances in which human history, and more especially the history of the exiles, is so rich. The epiphonem at the same time stamps the hymn as a consolatory Psalm; for those who were gathered again out of the lands of the heathen nevertheless still looked for the final redemption under the now milder, now more despotic sceptre of the secular power.

Verses 1-3

The introit, with the call upon them to grateful praise, is addressed to the returned exiles. The Psalm carries the marks of its deutero-Isaianic character on the very front of it, viz.: “the redeemed of Jahve,” taken from Isa 62:12, cf. Psa 63:4; Psa 35:9.; קבּץ as in Isa 56:8, and frequently; “from the north and from the sea,” as in Isa 49:12 : “the sea” (ים) here (as perhaps there also), side by side with east, west, and north, is the south, or rather (since ים is an established usus loquendi for the west) the south-west, viz., the southern portion of the Mediterranean washing the shores of Egypt. With this the poet associates the thought of the exiles of Egypt, as with וּממּערב the exiles of the islands, i.e., of Asia Minor and Europe; he is therefore writing at a period in which the Jewish state newly founded by the release of the Babylonian exiles had induced the scattered fellow-countrymen in all countries to return home. Calling upon the redeemed ones to give thanks to God the Redeemer in order that the work of the restoration of Israel may be gloriously perfected amidst the thanksgiving of the redeemed ones, he forthwith formulates the thanksgiving by putting the language of thanksgiving of the ancient liturgy (Jer 33:11) into their mouth. The nation, now again established upon the soil of the fatherland, has, until it had acquired this again, seen destruction in every form in a strange land, and can tell of the most manifold divine deliverances. The call to sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving is expanded accordingly into several pictures portraying the dangers of the strange land, which are not so much allegorical, personifying the Exile, as rather exemplificative.

Verses 4-9

It has actually come to pass, the first strophe tells us, that they wandered in a strange land through deserts and wastes, and seemed likely to have to succumb to death from hunger. According to Psa 107:40 and Isa 43:19, it appears that Psa 107:4 ought to be read לא־דרך (Olshausen, Baur, and Thenius); but the line is thereby lengthened inelegantly. The two words, joined by Munach, stand in the construct state, like פּרא אדם, Gen 16:12 : a waste of a way = ἔρημος ὁδός, Act 8:26 (Ewald, Hitzig), which is better suited to the poetical style than that דּרך, as in משׁנה־כּסףp, and the like, should be an accusative of nearer definition (Hengstenberg). In connection with עיר מושׁב the poet, who is fond of this combination (Psa 107:7, Psa 107:36, cf. בּית־מושׁב, Lev 25:29), means any city whatever which might afford the homeless ones a habitable, hospitable reception. With the perfects, which describe what has been experienced, alternates in Psa 107:5 the imperfect, which shifts to the way in which anything comes about: their soul in them enveloped itself (vid., Psa 61:3), i.e., was nigh upon extinction. With the fut. consec. then follows in Psa 107:6 the fact which gave the turn to the change in their misfortune. Their cry for help, as the imperfect יצּילם implies, was accompanied by their deliverance, the fact of which is expressed by the following fut. consec. ויּדריכם. Those who have experienced such things are to confess to the Lord, with thanksgiving, His loving-kindness and His wonderful works to the children of men. It is not to be rendered: His wonders (supply אשׁר עשׂה) towards the children of men (Luther, Olshausen, and others). The two ל coincide: their thankful confession of the divine loving-kindness and wondrous acts is not to be addressed alone to Jahve Himself, but also to men, in order that out of what they have experienced a wholesome fruit may spring forth for the multitude. נפשׁ שׁוקקה (part. Polel, the ē of which is retained as a pre-tonic vowel in pause, cf. Psa 68:26 and on Job 20:27, Ew. §188, b) is, as in Isa 29:9, the thirsting soul (from שׁוּק, Arab. sâq, to urge forward, of the impulse and drawing of the emotions, in Hebrew to desire ardently). The preterites are here an expression of that which has been experienced, and therefore of that which has become a fact of experience. In superabundant measure does God uphold the languishing soul that is in imminent danger of languishing away.

Verses 10-16

Others suffered imprisonment and bonds; but through Him who had decreed this as punishment for them, they also again reached the light of freedom. Just as in the first strophe, here, too, as far as יודוּ in Psa 107:15, is all a compound subject; and in view of this the poet begins with participles. “Darkness and the shadow of death” (vid., Psa 23:4) is an Isaianic expression, Isa 9:1 (where ישׁבי is construed with ב), Psa 42:7 (where ישׁבי is construed as here, cf. Gen 4:20; Zec 2:11), just as “bound in torture and iron” takes its rise from Job 36:8. The old expositors call it a hendiadys for “torturing iron” (after Psa 105:18); but it is more correct to take the one as the general term and the other as the particular: bound in all sorts of affliction from which they could not break away, and more particularly in iron bonds (בּרזל, like the Arabic firzil, an iron fetter, vid., on Psa 105:18). In Psa 107:11, which calls to mind Isa 5:19, and with respect to Psa 107:12, Isa 3:8, the double play upon the sound of the words is unmistakeable. By עצה is meant the plan in accordance with which God governs, more particularly His final purpose, which lies at the basis of His leadings of Israel. Not only had they nullified this purpose of mercy by defiant resistance (המרה) against God's commandments (אמרי, Arabic awâmir , âmireh) on their part, but they had even blasphemed it; נאץ, Deu 32:19, and frequently, or נאץ (prop. to pierce, then to treat roughly), is an old Mosaic designation of blasphemy, Deu 31:20; Num 14:11, Num 14:23; Num 16:30. Therefore God thoroughly humbled them by afflictive labour, and caused them to stumble (כּשׁל). But when they were driven to it, and prayed importunately to Him, He helped them out of their straits. The refrain varies according to recognised custom. Twice the expression is ויצעקו, twice ויזעקו; once יצילם, then twice יושׁיעם, and last of all יוציאם, which follows here in Psa 107:14 as an alliteration. The summary condensation of the deliverance experienced (Psa 107:16) is moulded after Isa 45:2. The Exile, too, may be regarded as such like a large jail (vid., e.g., Isa 42:7, Isa 42:22); but the descriptions of the poet are not pictures, but examples.

Verses 17-22

Others were brought to the brink of the grave by severe sickness; but when they draw nigh in earnest prayer to Him who appointed that they should suffer thus on account of their sins, He became their Saviour. אויל (cf. e.g., Job 5:3), like נבל (vid., Psa 14:1), is also an ethical notion, and not confined to the idea of defective intellect merely. It is one who insanely lives only for the passing hour, and ruins health, calling, family, and in short himself and everything belonging to him. Those who were thus minded, the poet begins by saying, were obliged to suffer by reason of (in consequence of) their wicked course of life. The cause of their days of pain and sorrow is placed first by way of emphasis; and because it has a meaning that is related to the past יתענּוּ thereby comes all the more easily to express that which took place simultaneously in the past. The Hithpa. in 1Ki 2:26 signifies to suffer willingly or intentionally; here: to be obliged to submit to suffering against one's will. Hengstenberg, for example, construes it differently: “Fools because of their walk in transgression (more than 'because of their transgression'), and those who because of their iniquities were afflicted - all food,” etc. But מן beside יתענּוּ has the assumption in its favour of being an affirmation of the cause of the affliction. In Psa 107:18 the poet has the Book of Job (Job 33:20, Job 33:22) before his eye. And in connection with Psa 107:20, ἀπέστειλεν τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἰάσατο αὐτοὺς (lxx), no passage of the Old Testament is more vividly recalled to one's mind than Psa 105:19, even more than Psa 147:18; because here, as in Psa 105:19, it treats of the intervention of divine acts within the sphere of human history, and not of the intervention of divine operations within the sphere of the natural world. In the natural world and in history the word (דּבר) is God's messenger (Psa 105:19, cf. Isa 55:10.), and appears here as a mediator of the divine healing. Here, as in Job 33:23., the fundamental fact of the New Testament is announced, which Theodoret on this passage expresses in words: Ὁ Θεὸς Λόγος ἐνανθρωπήσας καὶ ἀποσταλεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος τὰ παντοδαπὰ τῶν ψυχῶν ἰάσατο τραύματα καὶ τοὺς διαφθαρέντας ἀνέῤῥωσε λογισμούς. The lxx goes on to render it: καὶ ἐῤῥύσατο αὐτοὺς ἐκ τῶν διαφθορῶν αὐτῶν, inasmuch as the translators derive שׁחיתותם from שׁחיתה (Dan 6:5), and this, as שׁחת elsewhere (vid., Psa 16:10), from שׁחת, διαφθείρειν, which is approved by Hitzig. But Lam 4:20 is against this. From שׁחה is formed a noun שׁחוּת (שׁחוּת) in the signification a hollow place (Pro 28:10), the collateral form of which, שׁחית (שׁחית), is inflected like חנית, plur. חניתות with a retention of the substantival termination. The “pits” are the deep afflictions into which they were plunged, and out of which God caused them to escape. The suffix of וירפאם avails also for ימלּט, as in Gen 27:5; Gen 30:31; Psa 139:1; Isa 46:5.

Verses 23-32

Others have returned to tell of the perils of the sea. Without any allegory (Hengstenberg) it speaks of those who by reason of their calling traverse (which is expressed by ירד because the surface of the sea lies below the dry land which slopes off towards the coast) the sea in ships (read boŏnijoth without the article), and that not as fishermen, but (as Luther has correctly understood the choice of the word) in commercial enterprises. These have seen the works and wonders of God in the eddying deep, i.e., they have seen with their own eyes what God can do when in His anger He calls up the powers of nature, and on the other hand when He compassionately orders them back into their bounds. God's mandate (ויּאמר as in Psa 105:31, Psa 105:34) brought it to pass that a stormy wind arose (cf. עמד, Psa 33:9), and it drove its (the sea's) waves on high, so that the seafarers at one time were tossed up to the sky and then hurled down again into deep abysses, and their soul melted בּרעה, in an evil, anxious mood, i.e., lost all its firmness. They turned about in a circle (יחוגּוּ( elc from חגג = חוּג) and reeled after the manner of a drunken man; all their wisdom swallowed itself up, i.e., consumed itself within itself, came of itself to nought, just as Ovid, Trist. i. 1, says in connection with a similar description of a storm at sea: ambiguis ars stupet ipsa malis. The poet here writes under the influence of Isa 19:3, Isa 19:14. But at their importunate supplication God led them forth out of their distresses (Psa 25:17). He turned the raging storm into a gentle blowing (= דּממה דּקּה, 1Ki 19:12). הקים construed with ל here has the sense of transporting (carrying over) into another condition or state, as Apollinaris renders: αὐτίκα δ ̓ εἰς αὔρην προτέρην μετέθηκε θύελλαν. The suffix of גּלּיהם cannot refer to the מים רבּים in Psa 107:23, which is so far removed; “their waves” are those with which they had to battle. These to their joy became calm (חשׁה) and were still (שׁתק as in Jon 1:11), and God guided them ἐπὶ λιμένα θελήματος αὐτῶν (lxx). מחוז, a hapax-legomenon, from Arab. ḥâz (ḥwz), to shut in on all sides and to draw to one's self (root Arab. ḥw , gyravit , in gyrum egit), signifies a place enclosed round, therefore a haven, and first of all perhaps a creek, to use a northern word, a fiord. The verb שׁתק in relation to חשׁה is the stronger word, like יבשׁ in relation to חרם in the history of the Flood. Those who have been thus marvellously rescued are then called upon thankfully to praise God their Deliverer in the place where the national church assembles, and where the chiefs of the nation sit in council; therefore, as it seems, in the Temple and in the Forum.^[115]
Now follow two more groups without the two beautiful and impressive refrains with which the four preceding groups are interspersed. The structure is less artistic, and the transitions here and there abrupt and awkward. One might say that these two groups are inferior to the rest, much as the speeches of Elihu are inferior to the rest of the Book of Job. That they are, however, nevertheless from the hand of the very same poet is at once seen from the continued dependence upon the Book of Job and Isaiah. Hengstenberg sees in Psa 107:33-42 “the song with which they exalt the Lord in the assembly of the people and upon the seat of the elders.” but the materia laudis is altogether different from that which is to be expected according to the preceding calls to praise. Nor is it any the more clear to us that Psa 107:33. refer to the overthrow of Babylon, and Psa 107:35. to the happy turn of affairs that took place simultaneously for Israel; Psa 107:35 does not suit Canaan, and the expressions in Psa 107:36. would be understood in too low a sense. No, the poet goes on further to illustrate the helpful government of God the just and gracious One, inasmuch as he has experiences in his mind in connection therewith, of which the dispersion of Israel in all places can sing and speak.

Verses 33-38

Since in Psa 107:36 the historical narration is still continued, a meaning relating to the contemporaneous past is also retrospectively given to the two correlative ישׂם. It now goes on to tell what those who have now returned have observed and experienced in their own case. Psa 107:33 sounds like Isa 50:2; Psa 107:33 like Isa 35:7; and Psa 107:35 takes its rise from Isa 41:18. The juxtaposition of מוצאי and צמּאון, since Deu 8:15, belongs to the favourite antithetical alliterations, e.g., Isa 61:3. מלחה, that which is salty (lxx cf. Sir. 39:23: ἅλμη), is, as in Job 39:6, the name for the uncultivated, barren steppe. A land that has been laid waste for the punishment of its inhabitants has very often been changed into flourishing fruitful fields under the hands of a poor and grateful generation; and very often a land that has hitherto lain uncultivated and to all appearance absolutely unprofitable has developed an unexpected fertility. The exiles to whom Jeremiah writes, Psa 29:5 : Build ye houses and settle down, and plant gardens and eat their fruit, may frequently have experienced this divine blessing. Their industry and their knowledge also did their part, but looked at in a right light, it was not their own work but God's work that their settlement prospered, and that they continually spread themselves wider and possessed a not small, i.e., (cf. 2Ki 4:3) a very large, stock of cattle.

Verses 39-43

But is also came to pass that it went ill with them, inasmuch as their flourishing prosperous condition drew down upon them the envy of the powerful and tyrannical; nevertheless God put an end to tyranny, and always brought His people again to honour and strength. Hitzig is of opinion that Psa 107:39 goes back into the time when things were different with those who, according to Psa 107:36-38, had thriven. The modus consecutivus is sometimes used thus retrospectively (vid., Isa 37:5); here, however, the symmetry of the continuation from Psa 107:36-38, and the change which is expressed in Psa 107:39 in comparison with Psa 107:38, require an actual consecution in that which is narrated. They became few and came down, were reduced (שׁחח, cf. Pro 14:19 : to come to ruin, or to be overthrown), a coarctatione malitiae et maeroris. עצר is the restraint of despotic rule, רעה the evil they had to suffer under such restraint, and רגון sorrow, which consumed their life. מעצר has Tarcha and רעה Munach (instead of Mercha and Mugrash, vid., Accentuationssystem, xviii. 2). There is no reason for departing from this interpunction and rendering: “through tyranny, evil, and sorrow.” What is stiff and awkward in the progress of the description arises from the fact that Psa 107:40 is borrowed from Job 12:21, Job 12:24, and that the poet is not willing to make any change in these sublime words. The version shows how we think the relation of the clauses is to be apprehended. Whilst He pours out His wrath upon tyrants in the contempt of men that comes upon them, and makes them fugitives who lose themselves in the terrible waste, He raises the needy and those hitherto despised and ill-treated on high out of the depth of their affliction, and makes families like a flock, i.e., makes their families so increase, that they come to have the appearance of a merrily gamboling and numerous flock. Just as this figure points back to Job 21:11, so Psa 107:42 is made up out of Job 22:19; Job 5:16. The sight of this act of recognition on the part of God of those who have been wrongfully oppressed gives joy to the upright, and all roguery (עולה, vid., Ps 92:16) has its mouth closed, i.e., its boastful insolence is once for all put to silence. In Psa 107:43 the poet makes the strains of his Psalm die away after the example of Hosea, Hosea 14:10 [9], in the nota bene expressed after the manner of a question: Who is wise - he will or let him keep this, i.e., bear it well in mind. The transition to the justice together with a change of number is rendered natural by the fact that מי חכם, as in Hos. loc. cit. (cf. Jer 9:11; Est 5:6, and without Waw apod. Jdg 7:3; Pro 9:4, Pro 9:16), is equivalent to quisquis sapeins est. חסדי ה (חסדי) are the manifestations of mercy or loving-kindness in which God's ever-enduring mercy unfolds itself in history. He who is wise has a good memory for and a clear understanding of this.

Psalm 108

Two Elohimic Fragments Brought Together

The אודך in Psa 108:4 and the whole contents of this Psalm is the echo to the הודוּ of the preceding Psalm. It is inscribed a Psalm-song by David, but only because it is compiled out of ancient Davidic materials. The fact of the absence of the למנצח makes it natural to suppose that it is of later origin. Two Davidic Psalm-pieces in the Elohimic style are here, with trifling variations, just put together, not soldered together, and taken out of their original historical connection.
That a poet like David would thus compile a third out of two of his own songs (Hengstenberg) is not conceivable.

Verses 1-5

This first half is taken from Ps. 57:8-12. The repetition of confident is my heart in Psa 57:1-11 is here omitted; and in place of it the “my glory” of the exclamation, awake my glory, is taken up to “I will sing and will harp” as a more minute definition of the subject (vid., on Psa 3:5): He will do it, yea,his soul with all its godlike powers shall do it. Jahve in Psa 108:4 is transformed out of the Adonaj; and Waw copul. is inserted both before Psa 108:4 and Psa 108:6, contrary to Psa 57:1-11. מעל, Psa 108:5 (as in Est 3:1), would be a pleasing change for עד if Psa 108:5 followed Psa 108:5 and the definition of magnitude did not retrograde instead of heightening. Moreover Psa 36:6; Jer 51:9 (cf. על in Psa 113:4; Psa 148:13) favour עד in opposition to מעל.

Verses 6-13

Ps. 60:7-14 forms this second half. The clause expressing the purpose with למען, as in its original, has the following הושׁיעה for its principal clause upon which it depends. Instead of ועננוּ, which one might have expected, the expression used here is וענני without any interchange of the mode of writing and of reading it; many printed copies have ועננו here also; Baer, following Norzi, correctly has וענני. Instead of ולי...לי, Psa 60:9, we here read לי...לי, which is less soaring. And instead of Cry aloud concerning me, O Philistia do I shout for joy (the triumphant cry of the victor); in accordance with which Hupfeld wishes to take התרועעי in the former as infinitive: “over (עלי instead of עלי) Philistia is my shouting for joy” (התרועעי instead of התרועעי, since the infinitive does not admit of this pausal form of the imperative). For עיר מצור we have here the more usual form of expression עיר מבצר. Psa 108:12 is weakened by the omission of the אתּה (הלא).

Psalm 109

==Imprecation upon the Curser Who Prefers the Curse to the Blessing==

The אודה, corresponding like an echo to the הודו of Ps 107, is also found here in Psa 109:30. But Psalms 109 is most closely related to Ps 69. Anger concerning the ungodly who requite love with ingratitude, who persecute innocence and desire the curse instead of the blessing, has here reached its utmost bound. The imprecations are not, however, directed against a multitude as in Ps 69, but their whole current is turned against one person. Is this Doeg the Edomite, or Cush the Benjamite? We do not know. The marks of Jeremiah's hand, which raised a doubt about the לדוד of Ps 69, are wanting here; and if the development of the thoughts appears too diffuse and overloaded to be suited to David, and also many expressions (as the inflected מעט in Psa 109:8, the נכאה, which is explained by the Syriac, in Psa 109:16, and the half-passive חלל in Psa 109:22) look as though they belong to the later period of the language, yet we feel on the other hand the absence of any certain echoes of older models. For in the parallels Psa 109:6, cf. Zec 3:1, and Psa 109:18, Psa 109:29, cf. Isa 59:17, it is surely not the mutual relationship but the priority that is doubtful; Psa 109:22, however, in relation to Psa 55:5 (cf. Psa 109:4 with Psa 55:5) is a variation such as is also allowable in one and the same poet (e.g., in the refrains). The anathemas that are here poured forth more extensively than anywhere else speak in favour of David, or at least of his situation. They are explained by the depth of David's consciousness that he is the anointed of Jahve, and by his contemplation of himself in Christ. The persecution of David was a sin not only against David himself, but also against the Christ in him; and because Christ is in David, the outbursts of the Old Testament wrathful spirit take the prophetic form, so that this Psalm also, like Ps 22 and Ps 69, is a typically prophetic Psalm, inasmuch as the utterance of the type concerning himself is carried by the Spirit of prophecy beyond himself, and thus the ara' is raised to the προφητεία ἐν εἴδει ἀρᾶς (Chrysostom). These imprecations are not, however, appropriate in the mouth of the suffering Saviour. It is not the spirit of Zion but of Sinai which here speaks out of the mouth of David; the spirit of Elias, which, according to Luk 9:55, is not the spirit of the New Testament. This wrathful spirit is overpowered in the New Testament by the spirit of love. But these anathemas are still not on this account so many beatings of the air. There is in them a divine energy, as in the blessing and cursing of every man who is united to God, and more especially of a man whose temper of mind is such as David's. They possess the same power as the prophetical threatenings, and in this sense they are regarded in the New Testament as fulfilled in the son of perdition (Joh 17:12). To the generation of the time of Jesus they were a deterrent warning not to offend against the Holy One of God, and this Psalmus Ischarioticus (Act 1:20) will ever be such a mirror of warning to the enemies and persecutors of Christ and His Church.

Verses 1-5

A sign for help and complaints of ungrateful persecutors form the beginning of the Psalm. “God of my praise” is equivalent to God, who art my praise, Jer 17:14, cf. Deu 10:21. The God whom the Psalmist has hitherto had reason to praise will also now show Himself to him as worthy to be praised. Upon this faith he bases the prayer: be not silent (Psa 28:1; Psa 35:22)! A mouth such as belongs to the “wicked,” a mouth out of which comes “deceit,” have they opened against him; they have spoken with him a tongue (accusative, vid., on Psa 64:6), i.e., a language, of falsehood. דּברי of things and utterances as in Psa 35:20. It would be capricious to take the suffix of אהבתי in Psa 109:4 as genit. object. (love which they owe me), and in Psa 109:5 as genit. subject.; from Psa 38:21 it may be seen that the love which he has shown to them is also meant in Psa 109:4. The assertion that he is “prayer” is intended to say that he, repudiating all revenges of himself, takes refuge in God in prayer and commits his cause into His hands. They have loaded him with evil for good, and hatred for the love he has shown to them. Twice he lays emphasis on the fact that it is love which they have requited to him with its opposite. Perfects alternate with aorists: it is no enmity of yesterday; the imprecations that follow presuppose an inflexible obduracy on the side of the enemies.

Verses 6-10

The writer now turns to one among the many, and in the angry zealous fervour of despised love calls down God's judgment upon him. To call down a higher power, more particularly for punishment, upon any one is expressed by על (הפקיד) פּקד, Jer 15:3; Lev 26:16. The tormentor of innocence shall find a superior executor who will bring him before the tribunal (which is expressed in Latin by legis actio per manus injectionem). The judgment scene in Psa 109:6, Psa 109:7 shows that this is what is intended in Psa 109:6: At the right hand is the place of the accuser, who in this instance will not rest before the damnatus es has been pronounced. He is called שׂטן, which is not to be understood here after 1Sa 29:4; 2Sa 19:22, but after Zec 3:1; 1Ch 21:1, if not directly of Satan, still of a superhuman (cf. Num 22:22) being which opposes him, by appearing before God as his κατήγωρ; for according to Psa 109:7 the שׂטן is to be thought of as accuser, and according to Psa 109:7 God as Judge. רשׁע has the sense of reus, and יצא refers to the publication of the sentence. Psa 109:7 wishes that his prayer, viz., that by which he would wish to avert the divine sentence of condemnation, may become לחטאה, not: a missing of the mark, i.e., ineffectual (Thenius), but, according to the usual signification of the word: a sin, viz., because it proceeds from despair, not from true penitence. In Psa 109:8 the incorrigible one is wished an untimely death (מעטּים as in one other instance, only, Ecc 5:1) and the loss of his office. The lxx renders: τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν αὐτοῦ λάβοι ἕτερος. פּקדּה really signifies the office of overseer, oversight, office, and the one individual must have held a prominent position among the enemies of the psalmist. Having died off from this position before his time, he shall leave behind him a family deeply reduced in circumstances, whose former dwelling - place-he was therefore wealthy - becomes “ruins.” His children wander up and down far from these ruins (מן as e.g., in Jdg 5:11; Job 28:4) and beg (דּרשׁ, like προσαιτεῖν ἐπαιτεῖν, Sir. 40:28 = לחם בּקּשׁ, Psa 37:25). Instead of ודרשׁוּ the reading ודרשׁוּ is also found. A Poel is now and then formed from the strong verbs also,^[116] in the inflexion of which the Cholem is sometimes shortened to Kametz chatuph; vid., the forms of לשׁן, to slander, in Psa 101:5, תּאר, to sketch, mark out in outline, Isa 44:13, cf. also Job 20:26 (תּאכלהוּ) and Isa 62:9 (according to the reading מאספיו). To read the Kametz in these instances as ā, and to regard these forms as resolved Piels, is, in connection with the absence of the Metheg, contrary to the meaning of the pointing; on purpose to guard against this way of reading it, correct codices have ודרשׁוּ (cf. Psa 69:19), which Baer has adopted.

Verses 11-15

The Piel נקּשׁ properly signifies to catch in snares; here, like the Arabic Arab. nqš, II, IV, corresponding to the Latin obligare (as referring to the creditor's right of claim); nosheh is the name of the creditor as he who gives time for payment, gives credit (vid., Isa 24:2). In Psa 109:12 משׁך חסד, to draw out mercy, is equivalent to causing it to continue and last, Psa 36:11, cf. Jer 31:3. אחריתו, Psa 109:13, does not signify his future, but as Psa 109:13 (cf. Psa 37:38) shows: his posterity. יהי להכרית is not merely exscindatur, but exscindenda sit (Eze 30:16, cf. Jos 2:6), just as in other instances חיה ל corresponds to the active fut. periphrasticum, e.g., Gen 15:12; Isa 37:26. With reference to ימּח instead of ימּח (contracted from ימּחה), vid., Ges. §75, rem. 8. A Jewish acrostic interpretation of the name ישׁוּ runs: ימּח שׁמו וזכרו. This curse shall overtake the family of the υἱὸς τῆς ἀπωλείας. All the sins of his parents and ancestors shall remain indelible above before God the Judge, and here below the race, equally guilty, shall be rooted out even to its memory, i.e., to the last trace of it.

Verses 16-20

He whom he persecuted with a thirst for blood, was, apart from this, a great sufferer, bowed down and poor and נכאה לבב, of terrified, confounded heart. lxx κατανενυγμένον (Jerome, compunctum); but the stem-word is not נכא (נכה), root נך, but כּאה, Syriac bā‘ā’, cogn. כּהה, to cause to come near, to meet. The verb, and more especially in Niph., is proved to be Hebrew by Dan 11:30. Such an one who without anything else is of a terrified heart, inasmuch as he has been made to feel the wrath of God most keenly, this man has persecuted with a deadly hatred. He had experienced kindness (חסד) in a high degree, but he blotted out of his memory that which he had experienced, not for an instant imagining that he too on his part had to exercise חסד. The Poel מותת instead of המית points to the agonizing death (Isa 53:9, cf. Eze 28:10 מותי) to which he exposes God's anointed. The fate of the shedder of blood is not expressed after the manner of a wish in Psa 109:16-18, but in the historical form, as being the result that followed of inward necessity from the matter of fact of the course which he had himself determined upon. The verb בּוא seq. acc. signifies to surprise, suddenly attack any one, as in Isa 41:25. The three figures in Psa 109:18 are climactic: he has clothed himself in cursing, he has drunk it in like water (Job 15:16; Job 34:7), it has penetrated even to the marrow of his bones, like the oily preparations which are rubbed in and penetrate to the bones.n In Psa 109:19 the emphasis rests upon יעטּה and upon תּמיד. The summarizing Psa 109:20 is the close of a strophe. פּעלּה, an earned reward, here punishment incurred, is especially frequent in Isa 40:1, e.g., Psa 49:4; Psa 40:10; it also occurs once even in the Tôra, Lev 19:13. Those who answer the loving acts of the righteous with such malevolence in word and in deed commit a satanic sin for which there is no forgiveness. The curse is the fruit of their own choice and deed. Arnobius: Nota ex arbitrio evenisse ut nollet, propter haeresim, quae dicit Deum alios praedestinasse ad benedictionem, alios ad maledictionem.

Verses 21-25

The thunder and lightning are now as it were followed by a shower of tears of deep sorrowful complaint. Ps 109 here just as strikingly accords with Ps 69, as Ps 69 does with Ps 22 in the last strophe but one. The twofold name Jahve Adonaj (vid., Symbolae, p. 16) corresponds to the deep-breathed complaint. עשׂה אתּי, deal with me, i.e., succouring me, does not greatly differ from לי in 1Sa 14:6. The confirmation, Psa 109:21, runs like Psa 69:17 : Thy loving-kindness is טּוב, absolutely good, the ground of everything that is good and the end of all evil. Hitzig conjectures, as in Psa 69:17, חסדך כּטוב, “according to the goodness of Thy loving-kindness;” but this formula is without example: “for Thy loving-kindness is good” is a statement of the motive placed first and corresponding to the “for thy Name's sake.” In Psa 109:22 (a variation of Psa 55:5) חלל, not חלל, is traditional; this חלל, as being verb. denom. from חלל, signifies to be pierced, and is therefore equivalent to חולל (cf. Luk 2:35). The metaphor of the shadow in Psa 109:23 is as in Psa 102:12. When the day declines, the shadow lengthens, it becomes longer and longer (Virgil, majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae), till it vanishes in the universal darkness. Thus does the life of the sufferer pass away. The poet intentionally uses the Niph. נהלכתּי (another reading is נהלכתּי); it is a power rushing upon him from without that drives him away thus after the manner of a shadow into the night. The locust or grasshopper (apart from the plague of the locusts) is proverbial as being a defenceless, inoffensive little creature that is soon driven away, Job 39:20. ננער, to be shaken out or off (cf. Arabic na‛ûra, a water-wheel that fills its clay-vessels in the river and empties them out above, and הנּער, Zec 11:16, where Hitzig wishes to read הנּער, dispulsio = dispulsi). The fasting in Psa 109:24 is the result of the loathing of all food which sets in with deep grief. כּחשׁ משּׁמן signifies to waste away so that there is no more fat left.^[117]
In Psa 109:25 אני is designedly rendered prominent: in this the form of his affliction he is the butt of their reproaching, and they shake their heads doubtfully, looking upon him as one who is punished of God beyond all hope, and giving him up for lost. It is to be interpreted thus after Psa 69:11.

Verses 26-31

The cry for help is renewed in the closing strophe, and the Psalm draws to a close very similarly to Ps 69 and Ps 22, with a joyful prospect of the end of the affliction. In Psa 109:27 the hand of God stands in contrast to accident, the work of men, and his own efforts. All and each one will undeniably perceive, when God at length interposes, that it is His hand which here does that which was impossible in the eyes of men, and that it is His work which has been accomplished in this affliction and in the issue of it. He blesses him whom men curse: they arise without attaining their object, whereas His servant can rejoice in the end of his affliction. The futures in Psa 109:29 are not now again imprecations, but an expression of believingly confident hope. In correct texts כּמעיל has Mem raphatum. The “many” are the “congregation” (vid., Psa 22:23). In the case of the marvellous deliverance of this sufferer the congregation or church has the pledge of its own deliverance, and a bright mirror of the loving-kindness of its God. The sum of the praise and thanksgiving follows in Psa 109:31, where כּי signifies quod, and is therefore allied to the ὅτι recitativum (cf. Psa 22:25). The three Good Friday Psalms all sum up the comfort that springs from David's affliction for all suffering ones in just such a pithy sentence (Psa 22:25; Psa 69:34). Jahve comes forward at the right hand of the poor, contending for him (cf. Psa 110:5), to save (him) from those who judge (Psa 37:33), i.e., condemn, his soul. The contrast between this closing thought and Psa 109:6. is unmistakeable. At the right hand of the tormentor stands Satan as an accuser, at the right hand of the tormented one stands God as his vindicator; he who delivered him over to human judges is condemned, and he who was delivered up is “taken away out of distress and from judgment” (Isa 53:8) by the Judge of the judges, in order that, as we now hear in the following Psalm, he may sit at the right hand of the heavenly King. Ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι...ἀνελήμφθη ἐν δόξῃ! (1Ti 3:16).

Psalm 110

To the Priest-King at the Right Hand of God

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them: What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He? They say unto Him: David's. He saith unto them: How then doth David in the spirit call Him Lord, saying: “The Lord hath said unto my Lord: Sit Thou on My right hand until I make Thine enemies the stool of Thy feet?” If David then calls Him Lord, how is He his Son? And no man was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any one from that day forth question Him further.
So we read in Mat 22:41-46; Mar 12:35-37; Luk 20:41-44. The inference which it is left for the Pharisees to draw rests upon the two premises, which are granted, that Psa 110:1-7 is Davidic, and that it is prophetico-Messianic, i.e., that in it the future Messiah stands objectively before the mind of David. For if those who were interrogated had been able to reply that David does not there speak of the future Messiah, but puts into the mouth of the people words concerning himself, or, as Hofmann has now modified the view he formerly held (Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 496-500), concerning the Davidic king in a general way, (Note: Vid., the refutation of this modified view in Kurtz, Zur Theologie der Psalmen, in the Dorpater Zeitschrift for the year 1861, S. 516.Supplementary Note. - Von Hofmann now interprets Psa 110:1-7 as prophetico-Messianic. We are glad to be able to give it in his own words. “As the utterance of a prophet who speaks the word of God to the person addressed, the Psalm begins, and this it is then all through, even where it does not, as in Psa 110:4, expressly make known to the person addressed what God swears to him. God intends to finally subdue his foes to him. Until then, until his day of victory is come, he shall have a dominion in the midst of them, the sceptre of which shall be mighty through the succour of God. His final triumph is, however, pledged to him by the word of God, which appoints him, as another Melchizedek, to an eternal priesthood, that excludes the priesthood of Aaron, and by the victory which God has already given him in the day of His wrath. “This is a picture of a king on Zion who still looks forward to that which in Psa 72:8. has already taken place, - of a victorious, mighty king, who however is still ruling in the midst of foes, - therefore of a king such as Jesus now is, to whom God has given the victory over heathen Rome, and to whom He will subdue all his enemies when he shall again reveal himself in the world; meanwhile he is the kingly priest and the priestly king of the people of God. The prophet who utters this is David, He whom he addresses as Lord is the king who is appointed to become spoken according to 2Sa 23:3. David beholds him in a moment of his ruling to which the moment in his own ruling in which we find him in 2Sa 11:1 is typically parallel.”) then the question would lack the background of cogency as an argument. Since, however, the prophetico-Messianic character of the Psalm was acknowledged at that time (even as the later synagogue, in spite of the dilemma into which this Psalm brought it in opposition to the church, has never been able entirely to avoid this confession), the conclusion to be drawn from this Psalm must have been felt by the Pharisees themselves, that the Messiah, because the Son of David and Lord at the same time, was of human and at the same time of superhuman nature; that it was therefore in accordance with Scripture if this Jesus, who represented Himself to be the predicted Christ, should as such profess to be the Son of God and of divine nature.
The New Testament also assumes elsewhere that David in this Psalm speaks not of himself, but directly of Him, in whom the Davidic kingship should finally and for ever fulfil that of which the promise speaks. For Psa 110:1 is regarded elsewhere too as a prophecy of the exaltation of Christ at the right hand of the Father, and of His final victory over all His enemies: Act 2:34., 1Co 15:25; Heb 1:13; Heb 10:13; and the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 5:6; Heb 7:17, Heb 7:21) bases its demonstration of the abrogation of the Levitical priesthood by the Melchizedek priesthood of Jesus Christ upon Psa 110:4. But if even David, who raised the Levitical priesthood to the pinnacle of splendour that had never existed before, was a priest after the manner of Melchizedek, it is not intelligible how the priesthood of Jesus Christ after the manner of Melchizedek is meant to be a proof in favour of the termination of the Levitical priesthood, and to absolutely preclude its continuance.
We will not therefore deceive ourselves concerning the apprehension of the Psalm which is presented to us in the New Testament Scriptures. According to the New Testament Scriptures, David speaks in Psa 110:1-7 not merely of Christ in so far as the Spirit of God has directed him to speak of the Anointed of Jahve in a typical form, but directly and objectively in a prophetical representation of the Future One. And would this be impossible? Certainly there is no other Psalm in which David distinguishes between himself and the Messiah, and has the latter before him: the other Messianic Psalms of David are reflections of his radical, ideal contemplation of himself, reflected images of his own typical history; they contain prophetic elements, because David there too speaks ἐν πνεύματι, but elements that are not solved by the person of David. Nevertheless the last words of David in 2Sa 23:1-7 prove to us that we need not be surprised to find even a directly Messianic Psalm coming from his lips. After the splendour of all that pertained to David individually had almost entirely expired in his own eyes and in the eyes of those about him, he must have been still more strongly conscious of the distance between what had been realized in himself and the idea of the Anointed of God, as he lay on his death-bed, as his sun was going down. Since, however, all the glory with which God has favoured him comes up once more before his soul, he feels himself, to the glory of God, to be “the man raised up on high, the anointed of God of Jacob, the sweet singer of Israel,” and the instrument of the Spirit of Jahve. This he has been, and he, who as such contemplated himself as the immortal one, must now die: then in dying he seizes the pillars of the divine promise, he lets go the ground of his own present, and looks as a prophet into the future of his seed: The God of Israel hath said, to me hath the Rock of Israel spoken: “A ruler of men, a just one, a ruler in the fear of God; and as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, a cloudless morning, when after sunshine, after rain it becomes green out of the earth.” For not little (לא־כן to be explained according to Job 9:35, cf. Num 13:33; Isa 51:6) is my house with God, but an everlasting covenant hath He made with me, one ordered in all things and sure, for all my salvation and all my favour - ought He not to cause it to sprout? The idea of the Messiah shall notwithstanding be realized, in accordance with the promise, within his own house. The vision of the future which passes before his soul is none other than the picture of the Messiah detached from its subjectivity. And if so there, why may it not also have been so even in Psa 110:1-7?
The fact that Psa 110:1-7 has points of connection with contemporaneous history is notwithstanding the less to be denied, as its position in the Fifth Book leads one to suppose that it is taken out of its contemporary annalistic connection. The first of these connecting links is the bringing of the Ark home to Zion. Girded with the linen ephod of the priest, David had accompanied the Ark up to Zion with signs of rejoicing. There upon Zion Jahve, whose earthly throne is the Ark, now took His place at the side of David; but, spiritually considered, the matter stood properly thus, that Jahve, when He established Himself upon Zion, granted to David to sit henceforth enthroned at His side. The second connecting link is the victorious termination of the Syro-Ammonitish war, and also of the Edomitish war that came in between. The war with the Ammonites and their allies, the greatest, longest, and most glorious of David's wars, ended in the second year, when David himself joined the army, with the conquest of Rabbah. These two contemporary connecting links are to be recognised, but they only furnish the Psalm with the typical ground-colour for its prophetical contents.
In this Psalm David looks forth from the height upon which Jahve has raised him by the victory over Ammon into the future of his seed, and there He who carries forward the work begun by him to the highest pitch is his Lord. Over against this King of the future, David is not king, but subject. He calls him, as one out of the people, “my Lord.” This is the situation of the prophetico-kingly poet. He has received new revelations concerning the future of his seed. He has come down from his throne and the height of his power, and looks up to the Future One. He too sits enthroned on Zion. He too is victorious from thence. But His fellowship with God is the most intimate imaginable, and the last enemy is also laid at His feet. And He is not merely king, who as a priest provides for the salvation of His people, He is an eternal Priest by virtue of a sworn promise. The Psalm therefore relates to the history of the future upon a typical ground-work. It is also explicable why the triumph in the case of Ammon and the Messianic image have been thus to David's mind disconnected from himself. In the midst of that war comes the sin of David, which cast a shadow of sorrow over the whole of his future life and reduced its typical glory to ashes. Out of these ashes the phoenix of Messianic prophecy here arises. The type, come back to the conscious of himself, here lays down his crown at the feet of the Antitype.
Psa 110:1-7 consists of three sevens, a tetrastich together with a tristich following three times upon one another. The Rebia magnum in Psa 110:2 is a security for this stichic division, and in like manner the Olewejored by חילך in Psa 110:3, and in general the interpunction required by the sense. And Psa 110:1 and Psa 110:2 show decisively that it is to be thus divided into 4 + 3 lines; for Psa 110:1 with its rhyming inflexions makes itself known as a tetrastich, and to take it together with Psa 110:2 as a heptastich is opposed by the new turn which the Psalm takes in Psa 110:2. It is also just the same with Psa 110:4 in relation to Psa 110:3 : these seven stichs stand in just the same organic relation to the second divine utterance as the preceding seven to the first utterance. And since Psa 110:1-4 give twice 4 + 3 lines, Psa 110:5-7 also will be organized accordingly. There are really seven lines, of which the fifth, contrary to the Masoretic division of the verse, forms with Psa 110:7 the final tristich.
The Psalm therefore bears the threefold impress of the number seven, which is the number of an oath and of a covenant. Its impress, then, is thoroughly prophetic. Two divine utterances are introduced, and that not such as are familiar to us from the history of David and only reproduced here in a poetic form, as with Ps 89 and 132, but utterances of which nothing is known from the history of David, and such as we hear for the first time here. The divine name Jahve occurs three times. God is designedly called Adonaj the fourth time. The Psalm is consequently prophetic; and in order to bring the inviolable and mysterious nature even of its contents into comparison with the contemplation of its outward character, it has been organized as a threefold septiad, which is sealed with the thrice recurring tetragamma.

Verses 1-2

In Psa 20:1-9 and Psa 21:1-13 we see at once in the openings that what we have before us is the language of the people concerning their king. Here לאדני in Psa 110:1 does not favour this, and נאם is decidedly against it. The former does not favour it, for it is indeed correct that the subject calls his king “my lord,” e.g., 1Sa 22:12, although the more exact form of address is “my lord the king,” e.g., 1Sa 24:9; but if the people are speaking here, what is the object of the title of honour being expressed as if coming from the mouth of an individual, and why not rather, as in Ps 20-21, <, למלך or למשׁיחו? נאם is, however, decisive against the supposition that it is an Israelite who here expresses himself concerning the relation of his king to Jahve. For it is absurd to suppose that an Israelite speaking in the name of the people would begin in the manner of the prophets with נאם, more particularly since this נאם ה placed thus at the head of the discourse is without any perfectly analogous example (1Sa 2:30; Isa 1:24 are only similar) elsewhere, and is therefore extremely important. In general this opening position of נאם, even in cases where other genitives that יהוה follow, is very rare; נאם Num 24:3., Num 24:15, of David in 2Sa 23:1, of Agur in Pro 30:1, and always (even in Psa 36:2) in an oracular signification. Moreover, if one from among the people were speaking, the declaration ought to be a retrospective glance at a past utterance of God. But, first, the history knows nothing of any such divine utterance; and secondly, נאם ה always introduces God as actually speaking, to which even the passage cited by Hofmann to the contrary, Num 14:28, forms no exception. Thus it will consequently not be a past utterance of God to which the poet glances back here, but one which David has just now heard ἐν πνεύματι (Mat 22:43), and is therefore not a declaration of the people concerning David, but of David concerning Christ. The unique character of the declaration confirms this. Of the king of Israel it is said that he sits on the throne of Jahve (1Ch 29:23), viz., as visible representative of the invisible King (1Ch 28:5); Jahve, however, commands the person here addressed to take his place at His right hand. The right hand of a king is the highest place of honour, 1Ki 2:19.^[118]
Here the sitting at the right hand signifies not merely an idle honour, but reception into the fellowship of God as regards dignity and dominion, exaltation to a participation in God's reigning (βασιλεύειν, 1Co 15:25). Just as Jahve sits enthroned in the heavens and laughs at the rebels here below, so shall he who is exalted henceforth share this blessed calm with Him, until He subdues all enemies to him, and therefore makes him the unlimited, universally acknowledged ruler. עד as in Hos 10:12, for עד־כּי or עד־אשׁר, does not exclude the time that lies beyond, but as in Psa 112:8, Gen 49:10, includes it, and in fact so that it at any rate marks the final subjugation of the enemies as a turning-point with which something else comes about (vid., Act 3:21; 1Co 15:28). הדם is an accusative of the predicate. The enemies shall come to lie under his feet (1Ki 5:17), his feet tread upon the necks of the vanquished (Jos 10:24), so that the resistance that is overcome becomes as it were the dark ground upon which the glory of his victorious rule arises. For the history of time ends with the triumph of good over evil, - not, however, with the annihilation of evil, but with its subjugation. This is the issue, inasmuch as absolute omnipotence is effectual on behalf of and through the exalted Christ. In Psa 110:2, springing from the utterance of Jahve, follow words expressing a prophetic prospect. Zion is the imperial abode of the great future King (Psa 2:6). מטּה עזּך (cf. Jer 48:17; Eze 19:11-14) signifies “the sceptre (as insignia and the medium of exercise) of the authority delegated to thee” (1Sa 2:10, Mic 5:3). Jahve will stretch this sceptre far forth from Zion: no goal is mentioned up to which it shall extend, but passages like Zec 9:10 show how the prophets understand such Psalms. In Psa 110:2 follow the words with which Jahve accompanies this extension of the dominion of the exalted One. Jahve will lay all his enemies at his feet, but not in such a manner that he himself remains idle in the matter. Thus, then, having come into the midst of the sphere (בּקרב) of his enemies, shall he reign, forcing them to submission and holding them down. We read this רדה in a Messianic connection in Psa 72:8. So even in the prophecy of Balaam (Num 24:19), where the sceptre (Num 24:17) is an emblem of the Messiah Himself.

Verses 3-4

In order that he may rule thus victoriously, it is necessary that there should be a people and an army. In accordance with this union of the thoughts which Psa 110:3 anticipates, בּיום חילך signifies in the day of thy arriere ban, i.e., when thou callest up thy “power of an army” (2Ch 26:13) to muster and go forth to battle. In this day are the people of the king willingnesses (נדבת), i.e., entirely cheerful readiness; ready for any sacrifices, they bring themselves with all that they are and have to meet him. There is no need of any compulsory, lengthy proclamation calling them out: it is no army of mercenaries, but willingly and quickly they present themselves from inward impulse (מתנדּב, Jdg 5:2, Jdg 5:9). The punctuation, which makes the principal caesura at חילך with Olewejored, makes the parallelism of חילך and ילדוּתך distinctly prominent. Just as the former does not signify roboris tui, so now too the latter does not, according to Ecc 11:9, signify παιδιότητός σου (Aquila), and not, as Hofmann interprets, the dew-like freshness of youthful vigour, which the morning of the great day sheds over the king. Just as גּלוּת signifies both exile and the exiled ones, so ילדוּת, like νεότης, juventus, juventa, signifies both the time and age of youth, youthfulness, and youthful, young men (the youth). Moreover one does not, after Psa 110:3, look for any further declaration concerning the nature of the king, but of his people who place themselves at his service. The young men are likened to dew which gently descends upon the king out of the womb (uterus) of the morning-red.^[119] משׁחר is related to שׁחר just as מחשׁך is to חשׁך; the notion of שׁחר and חשׁך appears to be more sharply defined, and as it were apprehended more massively, in משׁחר and מחשׁך. The host of young men is likened to the dew both on account of its vigorousness and its multitude, which are like the freshness of the mountain dew and the immense number of its drops, 2Sa 17:12 (cf. Num 23:10), and on account of the silent concealment out of which it wondrously and suddenly comes to light, Mic 5:7. After not having understood “thy youth” of the youthfulness of the king, we shall now also not, with Hofmann, refer בּהדרי־קדשׁ to the king, the holy attire of his armour. הדרת קדשׁ is the vestment of the priest for performing divine service: the Levite singers went forth before the army in “holy attire” in 2Ch 20:21; here, however, the people without distinction wear holy festive garments. Thus they surround the divine king as dew that is born out of the womb of the morning-red. It is a priestly people which he leads forth to holy battle, just as in Rev 19:14 heavenly armies follow the Logos of God upon white horses, ἐνδεδυμένοι βύσσινον λευκὸν καθαρόν - a new generation, wonderful as if born out of heavenly light, numerous, fresh, and vigorous like the dew-drops, the offspring of the dawn. The thought that it is a priestly people leads over to Psa 110:4. The king who leads this priestly people is, as we hear in Psa 110:4, himself a priest (cohen). As has been shown by Hupfeld and Fleischer, the priest is so called as one who stands (from כּחן = כּוּן in an intransitive signification), viz., before God (Deu 10:8, cf. Psa 134:1; Heb 10:11), like נביא the spokesman, viz., of God.^[120]
To stand before God is the same as to serve Him, viz., as priest. The ruler whom the Psalm celebrates is a priest who intervenes in the reciprocal dealings between God and His people within the province of divine worship the priestly character of the people who suffer themselves to be led forth to battle and victory by him, stands in causal connection with the priestly character of this their king. He is a priest by virtue of the promise of God confirmed by an oath. The oath is not merely a pledge of the fulfilment of the promise, but also a seal of the high significance of its purport. God the absolutely truthful One (Num 13:19) swears - this is the highest enhancement of the נאם ה of which prophecy is capable (Amo 6:8).
He appoints the person addressed as a priest for ever “after the manner of Melchizedek” in this most solemn manner. The i of דברתי is the same ancient connecting vowel as in the מלכי of the name Melchizedek; and it has the tone, which it loses when, as in Lam 1:1, a tone-syllable follows. The widemeaning על־דּברת, “in respect to, on account of,” Ecc 3:18; Ecc 7:14; Ecc 8:2, is here specialized to the signification “after the manner, measure of,” lxx κατὰ τὴν τάξιν. The priesthood is to be united with the kingship in him who rules out of Zion, just as it was in Melchizedek, king of Salem, and that for ever. According to De Wette, Ewald, and Hofmann, it is not any special priesthood that is meant here, but that which was bestowed directly with the kingship, consisting in the fact that the king of Israel, by reason of his office, commended his people in prayer to God and blessed them in the name of God, and also had the ordering of Jahve's sanctuary and service. Now it is true all Israel is a “kingdom of priests” (Exo 19:6, cf. Num 16:3; Isa 61:6), and the kingly vocation in Israel must therefore also be regarded as in its way a priestly vocation. Btu this spiritual priesthood, and, if one will, this princely oversight of sacred things, needed not to come to David first of all by solemn promise; and that of Melchizedek, after which the relationship is here defined, is incongruous to him; for the king of Salem was, according to Canaanitish custom, which admitted of the union of the kingship and priesthood, really a high priest, and therefore, regarded from an Israelitish point of view, united in his own person the offices of David and of Aaron. How could David be called a priest after the manner of Melchizedek, he who had no claim upon the tithes of priests like Melchizedek, and to whom was denied the authority to offer sacrifice^[121] inseparable from the idea of the priesthood in the Old Testament? (cf. 2Ch 26:20). If David were the person addressed, the declaration would stand in antagonism with the right of Melchizedek as priest recorded in Gen. 14, which, according to the indisputable representation of the Epistle to the Hebrews, was equal in compass to the Levitico-Aaronic right, and, since “after the manner of” requires a coincident reciprocal relation, in antagonism to itself also.^[122]
One might get on more easily with Psa 110:4 by referring the Psalm to one of the Maccabaean priest-princes (Hitzig, von Lengerke, and Olshausen); and we should then prefer to the reference to Jonathan who put on the holy stola, 1 Macc. 10:21 (so Hitzig formerly), or Alexander Jannaeus who actually bore the title king (so Hitzig now), the reference to Simon, whom the people appointed to “be their governor and high priest for ever, until there should arise a faithful prophet” (1 Macc. 14:41), after the death of Jonathan his brother - a union of the two offices which, although an irregularity, was not one, however, that was absolutely illegal. But he priesthood, which the Maccabaeans, however, possessed originally as being priests born, is promised to the person addressed here in Psa 110:4; and even supposing that in Psa 110:4 the emphasis lay not on a union of the priesthood with the kingship, but of the kingship with the priesthood, then the retrospective reference to it in Zechariah forbids our removing the Psalm to a so much later period. Why should we not rather be guided in our understanding of this divine utterance, which is unique in the Old Testament, by this prophet, whose prophecy in Zec 6:12. is the key to it? Zechariah removes the fulfilment of the Psalm out of the Old Testament present, with its blunt separation between the monarchical and hierarchical dignity, into the domain of the future, and refers it to Jahve's Branch (צמח) that is to come. He, who will build the true temple of God, satisfactorily unites in his one person the priestly with the kingly office, which were at that time assigned to Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the prince. Thus this Psalm was understood by the later prophecy; and in what other sense could the post-Davidic church have appropriated it as a prayer and hymn, than in the eschatological Messianic sense? but this sense is also verified as the original. David here hears that the king of the future exalted at the right hand of God, and whom he calls his Lord, is at the same time an eternal priest. And because he is both these his battle itself is a priestly royal work, and just on this account his people fighting with him also wear priestly garments.

Verses 5-7

Just as in Psa 110:2 after Psa 110:1, so now here too after the divine utterance, the poet continues in a reflective strain. The Lord, says Psa 110:5, dashes in pieces kings at the right hand of this priest-king, in the day when His wrath is kindled (Psa 2:12, cf. Psa 21:10). אדני is rightly accented as subject. The fact that the victorious work of the person addressed is not his own work, but the work of Jahve on his behalf and through him, harmonizes with Psa 110:1. The sitting of the exalted one at the right hand of Jahve denotes his uniform participation in His high dignity and dominion. But in the fact that the Lord, standing at his right hand (cf. the counterpart in Psa 109:6), helps him to victory, that unchangeable relationship is shown in its historical working. The right hand of the exalted one is at the same time not inactive (see Num 24:17, cf. Num 24:8), and the Lord does not fail him when he is obliged to use his arm against his foes. The subject to ידין and to the two מחץ is the Lord as acting through him. “He shall judge among the peoples” is an eschatological hope, Psa 7:9; Psa 9:9; Psa 96:10, cf. 1Sa 2:10. What the result of this judgment of the peoples is, is stated by the neutrally used verb מלא with its accusative גויּות (cf. on the construction Psa 65:10; Deu 34:9): it there becomes full of corpses, there is there a multitude of corpses covering everything. This is the same thought as in Isa 66:24, and wrought out in closely related connection in Rev 19:17; Rev 18:21. Like the first מחץ, the second (Psa 110:6) is also a perfect of the idea past. Accordingly ארץ רבּה seems to signify the earth or a country (cf. ארץ רחבה, Exo 3:8; Neh 9:35) broad and wide, like תּהום רבּה the great far-stretching deep. But it might also be understood the “land of Rabbah,” as they say the “land of Jazer” (Num 32:1), the “country of Goshen” (Jos 10:41), and the like; therefore the land of the Ammonites, whose chief city is Rabbah. It is also questionable whether ראשׁ על־ארץ רבּה is to be taken like κεφαλὴν ὑπὲρ πάντα, Eph 1:22 (Hormann), or whether על־ארץ רבה belongs to מחץ as a designation of the battle-field. The parallels as to the word and the thing itself, Psa 68:22; Hab 3:13., speak for ראשׁ signifying not the chief, but the head; not, however, in a collective sense (lxx, Targum), but the head of the רשׁע κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν (vid., Isa 11:4). If this is the case, and the construction ראשׁ על is accordingly to be given up, neither is it now to be rendered: He breaks in pieces a head upon the land of Rabbah, but upon a great (broad) land; in connection with which, however, this designation of the place of battle takes its rise from the fact that the head of the ruler over this great territory is intended, and the choice of the word may have been determined by an allusion to David's Ammonitish war. The subject of Psa 110:7 is now not that arch-fiend, as he who in the course of history renews his youth, that shall rise up again (as we explained it formerly), but he whom the Psalm, which is thus rounded off with unity of plan, celebrates. Psa 110:7 expresses the toil of his battle, and Psa 110:7 the reward of undertaking the toil. על־כּן is therefore equivalent to ἀντὶ τούτου. בּדּרך, however, although it might belong to מגּחל (of the brook by the wayside, Psa 83:10; Psa 106:7), is correctly drawn to ישׁתּה by the accentuation: he shall on his arduous way, the way of his mission (cf. Psa 102:24), be satisfied with a drink from the brook. He will stand still only for a short time to refresh himself, and in order then to fight afresh; he will unceasingly pursue his work of victory without giving himself any time for rest and sojourn, and therefore (as the reward for it) it shall come to pass that he may lift his head on high as victor; and this, understood in a christological sense, harmonizes essentially with Phi 2:8., Heb 12:2, Rev 5:9.

Psalm 111

==Alphabetical Song in Praise of God==
With Psa 111:1-10 begins a trilogy of Hallelujah-Psalms. It may be appended to Psa 110:1-7, because it places the “for ever” of Psa 110:4 in broader light in relation to the history of redemption, by stringing praise upon praise of the deeds of Jahve and of His appointments. It stands in the closest relationship to Psa 112:1-10. Whilst Psa 111:1-10, as Hitzig correctly says, celebrates the glory, might, and loving-kindness of Jahve in the circle of the “upright,” Psa 112:1-10 celebrates the glory flowing therefrom and the happiness of the “upright” themselves, of those who fear Jahve. The two Psalms are twin in form as in contents. They are a mixture of materials taken from older Psalms and gnomical utterances; both are sententious, and both alphabetical. Each consists of twenty-two lines with the twenty-two letters of the alphabet at the beginning,^[123] and every line for the most part consists of three words. Both songs are only chains of acrostic lines without any strophic grouping, and therefore cannot be divided out. The analogous accentuation shows how strong is the impression of the close relationship of this twin pair; and both Psalms also close, in Psa 111:9 and Psa 111:10, with two verses of three members, being up to this point divided into verses of two members.

Verses 1-10

That which the poet purposes doing in Psa 111:1, he puts into execution from Psa 111:2 onwards. ועדה, according to Psa 64:7; Psa 118:14, is equivalent to ועדתם. According to Psa 111:10, הפציהם in Psa 111:2 apparently signifies those who find pleasure in them (the works of God); but חפצי = חפצי (like שׂמחי, Isa 24:7 = שׂמחי) is less natural than that it should be the construct form of the plural of חפץ, that occurs in three instances, and there was no need for saying that those who make the works of God the object of their research are such as interest themselves in them. We are led to the right meaning by לכל־חפצו in 1Ki 9:11 in comparison with Isa 44:28; Isa 46:10, cf. Isa 53:10, where חפץ signifies God's purpose in accordance with His counsel: constantly searched into, and therefore a worthy object of research (דרשׁ, root דר, to seek to know by rubbing, and in general experimentally, cf. Arab. drâ of knowledge empirically acquired) according to all their aims, i.e., in all phases of that which they have in view. In Psa 111:4 זכר points to the festival which propagates the remembrance of the deeds of God in the Mosaic age; טרף, Psa 111:5, therefore points to the food provided for the Exodus, and to the Passover meal, together with the feast of unleavened bread, this memorial (זכּרון, Exo 12:14) of the exemption in faithfulness to the covenant which was experienced in Egypt. This Psalm, says Luther, looks to me as though it had been composed for the festival of Easter. Even from the time of Theodoret and Augustine the thought of the Eucharist has been connected with Psa 111:5 in the New Testament mind; and it is not without good reason that Psa 111:1-10 has become the Psalm of the church at the celebration of the Lord's Supper. In connection with הגּיד one is reminded of the Pesach-Haggada. The deed of redemption which it relates has a power that continues in operation; for to the church of Jahve is assigned the victory not only over the peoples of Canaan, but over the whole world. The power of Jahve's deeds, which He has made known to His people, and which they tell over again among themselves, aims at giving them the inheritance of the peoples. The works of His hands are truth and right, for they are the realization of that which is true and which lasts and verifies itself, and of that which is right, that triumphantly maintains its ground. His ordinances are נאמנים (occasionally pointed נאמנים), established, attested, in themselves and in their results authorizing a firm confidence in their salutariness (cf. Psa 19:8). סמוּכים, supported, stayed, viz., not outwardly, but in themselves, therefore imperturbable (cf. סמוּך used of the state of mind, Psa 112:8; Isa 26:3). עשׂוּים, moulded, arranged, viz., on the part of God, “in truth, and upright;” ישׂר is accusative of the predicate (cf. Psa 119:37), but without its being clear why it is not pointed וישׁר. If we have understood Psa 111:4-6 correctly, then פּדוּת glances back at the deliverance out of Egypt. Upon this followed the ratification of the covenant on Sinai, which still remains inviolable down to the present time of the poet, and has the holiness and terribleness of the divine Name for a guarantee of its inviolability. The fear of Jahve, this holy and terrible God, is the beginning of wisdom - the motto of the Chokma in Job (Job 28:28) and Proverbs (Pro 1:7; Pro 9:10), the Books of the Chokma. Psa 111:10 goes on in this Proverbs-like strain: the fear of God, which manifests itself in obedience, is to those who practise them (the divine precepts, פקודים) שׂכל טּוב (Pro 13:15; Pro 3:4, cf. 2Ch 30:22), a fine sagacity, praiseworthy discernment - such a (dutiful) one partakes of everlasting praise. It is true, in glancing back to Psa 111:3, תּהלּתו seems to refer to God, but a glance forward to Psa 112:3 shows that the praise of him who fears God is meant. The old observation therefore holds good: ubi haec ode desinit, sequens incipit (Bakius).

Psalm 112

== Alphabetical Song in Praise of Those Who Fear God==
The alphabetical Hallelujah Psa 111:1-10, which celebrated the government of God, is now followed by another coinciding with it in structure (CTYXOC KB, i.e., 22 στίχοι, as the Coptic version correctly counts), which celebrates the men whose conduct is ordered after the divine pattern.

Verses 1-10

As in the preceding Psalm. Psa 112:1 here also sets forth the theme of that which follows. What is there said in Psa 112:3 concerning the righteousness of God, Psa 112:3 here says of the righteousness of him who fears God: this also standeth fast for ever, it is indeed the copy of the divine, it is the work and gift of God (Psa 24:5), inasmuch as God's salutary action and behaviour, laid hold of in faith, works a like form of action and behaviour to it in man, which, as Psa 112:9 says, is, according to its nature, love. The promise in Psa 112:4 sounds like Isa 60:2. Hengstenberg renders: “There ariseth in the darkness light to the upright who is gracious and compassionate and just.” But this is impossible as a matter of style. The three adjectives (as in Psa 111:4, pointing back to Exo 34:6, cf. Psa 145:8; Psa 116:5) are a mention of God according to His attributes. חנּוּן and רחוּם never take the article in Biblical Hebrew, and צדּיק follows their examples here (cf. on the contrary, Exo 9:27). God Himself is the light which arises in darkness for those who are sincere in their dealings with Him; He is the Sun of righteousness with wings of rays dispensing “grace” and “tender mercies,” Mal 4:2. The fact that He arises for those who are compassionate as He is compassionate, is evident from Psa 112:5. טוב being, as in Isa 3:10; Jer 44:17, intended of well-being, prosperity, טּוב אישׁ is here equivalent to אשׁרי אישׁ, which is rendered טוּביהּ דּגברא in Targumic phrase. חונן signifies, as in Psa 37:26, Psa 37:21, one who charitably dispenses his gifts around. Psa 112:5 is not an extension of the picture of virtue, but, as in Psa 127:5, a promissory prospect: he will uphold in integrity (בּמשׁפּט, Psa 72:2, Isa 9:7, and frequently), or rather (= בּמּשׁפּט) in the cause (Psa 143:2, Pro 24:23, and frequently), the things which depend upon him, or with which he has to do; for כּלכּל, sustinere, signifies to sustain, i.e., to nourish, to sustain, i.e., endure, and also to support, maintain, i.e., carry through. This is explanatorily confirmed in Psa 112:6 : he stands, as a general thing, imperturbably fast. And when he dies he becomes the object of everlasting remembrance, his name is still blessed (Pro 10:7). Because he has a cheerful conscience, his heart too is not disconcerted by any evil tidings (Jer 49:23): it remains נכון, erect, straight and firm, without suffering itself to bend or warp; בּטח בּה, full of confidence (passive, “in the sense of a passive state after a completed action of the person himself,” like זכוּר, Psa 103:14); סמוּך, stayed in itself and established. The last two designations are taken from Isa 26:3, where it is the church of the last times that is spoken of. Psa 91:8 gives us information with reference to the meaning of ראה בצריו; עד, as in Psa 94:13, of the inevitable goal, on this side of which he remains undismayed. 2Co 9:9, where Paul makes use of Psa 112:9 of the Psalm before us as an encouragement to Christian beneficence, shows how little the assertion “his righteousness standeth for ever” is opposed to the New Testament consciousness. פּזּר of giving away liberally and in manifold ways, as in Pro 11:24. רוּם, Psa 112:9, stands in opposition to the egoistical הרים in Psa 75:5 as a vegetative sprouting up (Psa 132:17). The evil-doer must see this, and confounded, vex himself over it; he gnashes his teeth with the rage of envy and chagrin, and melts away, i.e., loses consistency, becomes unhinged, dies off (נמס, 3d praet. Niph. as in Exo 16:21, pausal form of נמס = נמס). How often has he desired the ruin of him whom he must now see in honour! The tables are turned; this and his ungodly desire in general come to nought, inasmuch as the opposite is realized. On יראה, with its self-evident object, cf. Mic 7:10. Concerning the pausal form וכעס, vid., Psa 93:1. Hupfeld wishes to read תּקות after Psa 9:19, Pro 10:28. In defence of the traditional reading, Hitzig rightly points to Pro 10:24 together with Pro 10:28.

Psalm 113

Hallelujah to Him Who Raiseth Out of Low Estate

With this Psalm begins the Hallel, which is recited at the three great feasts, at the feast of the Dedication (Chanucca) and at the new moons, and not on New Year's day and the day of Atonement, because a cheerful song of praise does not harmonize with the mournful solemnity of these days. And they are recited only in fragments during the last days of the Passover, for “my creatures, saith the Holy One, blessed be He, were drowned in the sea, and ought ye to break out into songs of rejoicing?” In the family celebration of the Passover night it is divided into two parts, the one half, Psa 113:1-9, Psa 114:1-8, being sung before the repast, before the emptying of the second festal cup, and the other half, Psa 115:1, after the repast, after the filling of the fourth cup, to which the humnee'santes (Mat 26:30; Mar 14:26) after the institution of the Lord's Supper, which was connected with the fourth festal cup, may refer. Paulus Burgensis styles Psa 113:1 Alleluja Judaeorum magnum. This designation is also frequently found elsewhere. But according to the prevailing custom, Psa 113:1, and more particularly Psa 115:1, are called only Hallel, and Ps 136, with its “for His mercy endureth for ever” repeated twenty-six times, bears the name of “the Great Hallel” (הלּל הגּדול).^[124]
A heaping up, without example elsewhere, of the so-called Chirek compaginis is peculiar to Psa 113:1-9. Gesenius and others call the connecting vowels i and o (in proper names also u) the remains of old case terminations; with the former the Arabic genitive termination is compared, and with the latter the Arabic nominative termination. But in opposition to this it has been rightly observed, that this i and o are not attached to the dependent word (the genitive), but to the governing word. According to the more probable view of Ewald, §211, i and o are equivalent connecting vowels which mark the relation of the genitive case, and are to be explained from the original oneness of the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages.
The i is found most frequently appended to the first member of the stat. constr., and both to the masc., viz., in Deu 33:16; Zec 11:17 (perhaps twice, vid., Köhler in loc.), and to the femin., viz., in Gen 31:39; Psa 110:4; Isa 1:21. Lev 26:42; Psa 116:1 hardly belong here. Then this i is also frequently found when the second member of the stat. constr. has a preposition, and this preposition is consequently in process of being resolved: Gen 49:11; Exo 15:6, Oba 1:3 (Jer 49:16), Hos 10:11; Lam 1:1; Psa 123:1, and perhaps Sol 1:9. Also in the Chethîb, Jer 22:23; Jer 51:13; Eze 27:3. Thirdly, where a word stands between the two notions that belong together according to the genitival relation, and the stat. construct. is consequently really resolved: Psa 101:5; Isa 22:16; Mic 7:14. It is the same i which is found in a great many proper names, both Israelitish, e.g., Gamaliel (benefit of God), and Phoenician, e.g., Melchizedek, Hanniba‛al (the favour of Baal), and is also added to many Hebrew prepositions, like בּלתּי (where the i however can, according to the context, also be a pronominal suffix), זוּלתי (where i can likewise be a suffix), מנּי (poetical). In אפסי, on the other hand, the i is always a suffix. The tone of the i only retreats in accordance with rhythmical rule (vid., Psa 110:4), otherwise i is always accented. Psa 112:8 shows how our Psa 113:1-9 in particular delights in this ancient i, where it is even affixed to the infinitive as an ornament, a thing which occurs nowhere else, so that להושׁיבי excites the suspicion of being written in error for להושׁיבו.
Among those things which make God worthy to be praised the Psalm gives prominence to the condescension of the infinitely exalted One towards the lowly one. It is the lowliness of God lowering itself fro the exaltation of the lowly which performs its utmost in the work of redemption. Thus it becomes explicable that Mary in her Magnificat breaks forth into the same strain with the song of Hannah (1 Sam. 2) and this Psalm.

Verses 1-3

The call, not limited by any addition as in Psa 134:1, or eve, after the manner of Psa 103:20., extended over the earth, is given to the whole of the true Israel that corresponds to its election by grace and is faithful to its mission; and its designation by “servants of Jahve” (Ps 69:37, cf. Ps 34:23), or even “servant of Jahve” (Psa 136:22), has come into vogue more especially through the second part of Isaiah. This Israel is called upon to praise Jahve; for the praise and celebration of His Name, i.e., of His nature, which is disclosed by means of its manifestation, is a principal element, yea, the proper ground and aim, of the service, and shall finally become that which fills all time and all space. מהלּל laudatum (est), is equivalent to ἀινετόν, laudabile (lxx, Vulgate), and this does not differ greatly from laudetur. The predictive interpretation laudabitur is opposed to the context (cf. moreover Köhler on Mal 1:11).

Verses 4-6

This praiseworthiness is now confirmed. The opening reminds one of Psa 99:2. Pasek stands between גוים and יהוה in order to keep them apart. The totality of the nations is great, but Jahve is raised above it; the heavens are glorious, but Jahve's glory is exalted above them. It is not to be explained according to Psa 148:13; but according to Psa 57:6, 12, רם belongs to Psa 113:4 too as predicate. He is the incomparable One who has set up His throne in the height, but at the same time directs His gaze deep downwards (expression according to Ges. §142, rem. 1) in the heavens and upon earth, i.e., nothing in all the realm of the creatures that are beneath Him escapes His sight, and nothing is so low that it remains unnoticed by Him; on the contrary, it is just that which is lowly, as the following strophe presents to us in a series of portraits so to speak, that is the special object of His regard. The structure of Psa 113:5-6 militates against the construction of “in the heavens and upon the earth” with the interrogatory “who is like unto Jahve our God?” after Deu 3:24.

Verses 7-9

The thoughts of Psa 113:7 and Psa 113:8 are transplanted from the song of Hannah. עפר, according to 1Ki 16:2, cf. Psa 14:7, is an emblem of lowly estate (Hitzig), and אשׁפּת (from שׁפת) an emblem of the deepest poverty and desertion; for in Syria and Palestine the man who is shut out from society lies upon the mezbele (the dunghill or heap of ashes), by day calling upon the passers-by for alms, and by night hiding himself in the ashes that have been warmed by the sun (Job, ii. 152). The movement of the thoughts in Psa 113:8, as in Psa 113:1, follows the model of the epizeuxis. Together with the song of Hannah the poet has before his eye Hannah's exaltation out of sorrow and reproach. He does not, however, repeat the words of her song which have reference to this (1Sa 2:5), but clothes his generalization of her experience in his own language. If he intended that עקרת should be understood out of the genitival relation after the form עטרת, why did he not write מושׁיבי הבּית עקרה? הבּית would then be equivalent to בּיתה, Psa 68:7. עקרת הבּית is the expression for a woman who is a wife, and therefore housewife, הבּית (בּעלת) נות, but yet not a mother. Such an one has no settled position in the house of the husband, the firm bond is wanting in her relationship to her husband. If God gives her children, He thereby makes her then thoroughly at home and rooted-in in her position. In the predicate notion אם הבּנים שׂמחה the definiteness attaches to the second member of the string of words, as in Gen 48:19; 2Sa 12:30 (cf. the reverse instance in Jer 23:26, נבּאי השּׁקר, those prophesying that which is false), therefore: a mother of the children. The poet brings the matter so vividly before him, that he points as it were with his finger to the children with which God blesses her.

Psalm 114

==Commotion of Nature before God the Redeemer out of Egypt==
To the side of the general Hallelujah Psa 113:1-9 comes an historical one, which is likewise adorned in Psa 114:8 with the Chirek compaginis, and still further with Cholem compaginis, and is the festival Psalm of the eighth Passover day in the Jewish ritual. The deeds of God at the time of the Exodus are here brought together to form a picture in miniature which is as majestic as it is charming. There are four tetrastichs, which pass by with the swiftness of a bird as it were with four flappings of its wings. The church sings this Psalm in a tonus peregrinus distinct from the eight Psalm-tones.

Verses 1-4

Egypt is called עם לעז (from לעז, cogn. לעג, לעה), because the people spoke a language unintelligible to Israel (Psa 81:6), and as it were a stammering language. The lxx, and just so the Targum, renders ἐκ λαοῦ βαρβάρου (from the Sanscrit barbaras, just as onomatopoetic as balbus, cf. Fleischer in Levy's Chaldäisches Wörterbuch, i. 420). The redeemed nation is called Judah, inasmuch as God made it His sanctuary (קדשׁ) by setting up His sanctuary (מקדּשׁ, Exo 15:17) in the midst of it, for Jerusalem (el ḳuds) as Benjamitish Judaean, and from the time of David was accounted directly as Judaean. In so far, however, as He made this people His kingdom (ממשׁלותיו, an amplificative plural with Mem pathachatum), by placing Himself in the relation of King (Deu 33:5) to the people of possession which by a revealed law He established characteristically as His own, it is called Israel. 1 The predicate takes the form ותּהי, for peoples together with country and city are represented as feminine (cf. Jer 8:5). The foundation of that new beginning in connection with the history of redemption was laid amidst majestic wonders, inasmuch as nature was brought into service, co-operating and sympathizing in the work (cf. Psa 77:15.). The dividing of the sea opens, and the dividing of the Jordan closes, the journey through the desert to Canaan. The sea stood aside, Jordan halted and was dammed up on the north in order that the redeemed people might pass through. And in the middle, between these great wonders of the Exodus from Egypt and the entrance into Canaan, arises the not less mighty wonder of the giving of the Law: the skipping of the mountains like rams, of the ills like בּני־צאן, i.e., lambs (Wisd. 19:9), depicts the quaking of Sinai and its environs (Exo 19:18, cf. supra Psa 68:9, and on the figure Psa 29:6).

Verses 5-8

The poet, when he asks, “What aileth thee, O sea, that thou fleest...?” lives and moves in this olden time as a contemporary, or the present and the olden time as it were flow together to his mind; hence the answer he himself gives to the question propounded takes the form of a triumphant mandate. The Lord, the God of Jacob, thus mighty in wondrous works, it is before whom the earth must tremble. אדון does not take the article because it finds its completion in the following יעקב (אלוהּ); it is the same epizeuxis as in Psa 113:8; Psa 94:3; Psa 96:7, Psa 96:13. ההפכי has the constructive ı̂ out of the genitival relation; and in למעינו in this relation we have the constructive ô, which as a rule occurs only in the genitival combination, with the exception of this passage and בּנו באר, Num 24:3, Num 24:15 (not, however, in Pro 13:4, “his, the sluggard's, soul”), found only in the name for wild animals חיתו־ארץ, which occurs frequently, and first of all in Gen 1:24. The expression calls to mind Psa 107:35. הצּוּר is taken from Exo 17:6; and חלּמישׁ (lxx τὴν ἀκρότομον, that which is rugged, abrupt)^[125] stands, according to Deu 8:15, poetically for סלע, Num 20:11, for it is these two histories of the giving of water to which the poet points back. But why to these in particular? The causing of water to gush forth out of the flinty rock is a practical proof of unlimited omnipotence and of the grace which converts death into life. Let the earth then tremble before the Lord, the God of Jacob. It has already trembled before Him, and before Him let it tremble. For that which He has been He still ever is; and as He came once, He will come again.

Psalm 115

== Call to the God of Israel, the Living God, to Rescue the Honour of His Name==
This Psalm, which has scarcely anything in common with the preceding Psalm except that the expression “house of Jacob,” Psa 114:1, is here broken up into its several members in Psa 115:12., is found joined with it, making one Psalm, in the lxx, Syriac, Arabic and Aethiopic versions, just as on the other hand Ps 116 is split up into two. This arbitrary arrangement condemns itself. Nevertheless Kimchi favours it, and it has found admission into not a few Hebrew manuscripts.
It is a prayer of Israel for God's aid, probably in the presence of an expedition against heathen enemies. The two middle strophes of the four are of the same compass. Ewald's conjecture, that whilst the Psalm was being sung the sacrifice was proceeded with, and that in Psa 115:12 the voice of a priest proclaims the gracious acceptance of the sacrifice, is pleasing. But the change of voices begins even with Psa 115:9, as Olshausen also supposes.

Verses 1-2

It has to do not so much with the honour of Israel, which is not worthy of the honour (Eze 36:22.) and has to recognise in its reproach a well-merited chastisement, as with the honour of Him who cannot suffer the reproaching of His holy name to continue long. He willeth that His name should be sanctified. In the consciousness of his oneness with this will, the poet bases his petition, in so far as it is at the same time a petition on behalf of Israel, upon God's cha'ris and alee'theia as upon two columns. The second על, according to an express note of the Masora, has no Waw before it, although the lxx and Targum insert one. The thought in Psa 115:2 is moulded after Psa 79:10, or after Joe 2:17, cf. Psa 42:4; Mic 7:10. איּה־נא is the same style as נגדּה־נּא in Psa 116:18, cf. in the older language אל־נא, אם־נא, and the like.

Verses 3-8

The poet, with “And our God,” in the name of Israel opposes the scornful question of the heathen by the believingly joyous confession of the exaltation of Jahve above the false gods. Israel's God is in the heavens, and is therefore supramundane in nature and life, and the absolutely unlimited One, who is able to do all things with a freedom that is conditioned only by Himself: quod vult, valet (Psa 115:3 = Psa 135:6, Wisd. 12:18, and frequently). The carved gods (עצב, from עצב, cogn. חצב, קצב) of the heathen, on the contrary, are dead images, which are devoid of all life, even of the sensuous life the outward organs of which are imagined upon them. It cannot be proved with Ecc 5:16 that ידיהם and רגליחם are equivalent to ידים להם, רגלים. They are either subjects which the Waw apodosis cf. Gen 22:24; Pro 23:24; Hab 2:5) renders prominent, or casus absoluti (Ges. §145, 2), since both verbs have the idols themselves as their subjects less on account of their gender (יד and רגל are feminine, but the Hebrew usage of genders is very free and not carried out uniformly) as in respect of Psa 115:7: with reference to their hands, etc. ימישׁוּן is the energetic future form, which goes over from משׁשׁ into מוּשׁ, for ימשּׁוּ. It is said once again in Psa 115:7 that speech is wanting to them; for the other negations only deny life to them, this at the same time denies all personality. The author might know from his own experience how little was the distinction made by the heathen worship between the symbol and the thing symbolized. Accordingly the worship of idols seems to him, as to the later prophets, to be the extreme of self-stupefaction and of the destruction of human consciousness; and the final destiny of the worshippers of false gods, as he says in Psa 115:8, is, that they become like to their idols, that is to say, being deprived of their consciousness, life, and existence, they come to nothing, like those their nothingnesses (Isa 44:9). This whole section of the Psalm is repeated in Ps 135 (Psa 115:6, Psa 115:15).

Verses 9-14

After this confession of Israel there now arises a voice that addresses itself to Israel. The threefold division into Israel, the house of Aaron, and those who fear Jahve is the same as in Psa 118:2-4. In Ps 135 the “house of Levi” is further added to the house of Aaron. Those who fear Jahve, who also stand in the last passage, are probably the proselytes (in the Acts of the Apostles σεβόμενοι τὸν Θεόν, or merely σεβόμενοι)^[126] at any rate these are included even if Israel in Psa 115:9 is meant to signify the laity, for the notion of “those who fear Jahve” extends beyond Israel. The fact that the threefold refrain of the summons does not run, as in Psa 33:20, our help and shield is He, is to be explained from its being an antiphonal song. In so far, however, as the Psalm supplicates God's protection and help in a campaign the declaration of confident hope, their help and shield is He, may, with Hitzig, be referred to the army that is gone or is going forth. It is the same voice which bids Israel to be of good courage and announces to the people the well-pleased acceptance of the sacrifice with the words “Jahve hath been mindful of us” (זכרנוּ ה, cf. עתּה ידעתּי, Psa 20:7), perhaps simultaneously with the presentation of the memorial portion (אזכרה) of the meat-offering (Psa 38:1). The יברך placed at the head is particularized threefold, corresponding to the threefold summons. The special promise of blessing which is added in Psa 115:14 is an echo of Deu 1:11, as in 2Sa 24:3. The contracted future יסף we take in a consolatory sense; for as an optative it would be too isolated here. In spite of all oppression on the part of the heathen, God will make His people ever more numerous, more capable of offering resistance, and more awe-inspiring.

Verses 15-18

The voice of consolation is continued in Psa 115:15, but it becomes the voice of hope by being blended with the newly strengthened believing tone of the congregation. Jahve is here called the Creator of heaven and earth because the worth and magnitude of His blessing are measured thereby. He has reserved the heavens to Himself, but given the earth to men. This separation of heaven and earth is a fundamental characteristic of the post-diluvian history. The throne of God is in the heavens, and the promise, which is given to the patriarchs on behalf of all mankind, does not refer to heaven, but to the possession of the earth (Psa 37:22). The promise is as yet limited to this present world, whereas in the New Testament this limitation is removed and the κληρονομία embraces heaven and earth. This Old Testament limitedness finds further expression in Psa 115:17, where דּוּמה, as in Psa 94:17, signifies the silent land of Hades. The Old Testament knows nothing of a heavenly ecclesia that praises God without intermission, consisting not merely of angels, but also of the spirits of all men who die in the faith. Nevertheless there are not wanting hints that point upwards which were even better understood by the post-exilic than by the pre-exilic church. The New Testament morn began to dawn even upon the post-exilic church. We must not therefore be astonished to find the tone of Psa 6:6; Psa 30:10; Psa 88:11-13, struck up here, although the echo of those earlier Psalms here is only the dark foil of the confession which the church makes in Psa 115:18 concerning its immortality. The church of Jahve as such does not die. That it also does not remain among the dead, in whatever degree it may die off in its existing members, the psalmist might know from Isa 26:19; Isa 25:8. But the close of the Psalm shows that such predictions which light up the life beyond only gradually became elements of the church's consciousness, and, so to speak, dogmas.

Psalm 116

==Thanksgiving Song of One Who Has Escaped from Death==

We have here another anonymous Psalm closing with Hallelujah. It is not a supplicatory song with a hopeful prospect before it like Ps 115, but a thanksgiving song with a fresh recollection of some deadly peril that has just been got the better of; and is not, like Ps 115, from the mouth of the church, but from the lips of an individual who distinguishes himself from the church. It is an individual that has been delivered who here praises the loving-kindness he has experienced in the language of the tenderest affection. The lxx has divided this deeply fervent song into two parts, Psa 116:1-9, Psa 116:10-19, and made two Hallelujah-Psalms out of it; whereas it unites Psa 114:1-8 and Ps 115 into one. The four sections or strophes, the beginnings of which correspond to one another (Psa 116:1 and Psa 116:10, Psa 116:5 and Psa 116:15), are distinctly separate. The words אקרא וּבשׁם ה are repeated three times. In the first instance they are retrospective, but then swell into an always more full-toned vow of thanksgiving. The late period of its composition makes itself known not only in the strong Aramaic colouring of the form of the language, which adopts all kinds of embellishments, but also in many passages borrowed from the pre-exilic Psalms. The very opening, and still more so the progress, of the first strophe reminds one of Ps 18, and becomes an important hint for the exposition of the Psalm.

Verses 1-4

Not only is כּי אהבתּי “I love (like, am well pleased) that,” like ἀγαπῶ ὅτι, Thucydides vi. 36, contrary to the usage of the language, but the thought, “I love that Jahve answereth me,” is also tame and flat, and inappropriate to the continuation in Psa 116:2. Since Psa 116:3-4 have come from Psa 18:5-17, אהבתּי is to be understood according to ארחמך in Psa 18:2, so that it has the following יהוה as its object, not it is true grammatically, but logically. The poet is fond of this pregnant use of the verb without an expressed object, cf. אקרא in Psa 116:2, and האמנתּי in Psa 116:10. The Pasek after ישׁמע is intended to guard against the blending of the final a‛ with the initial ‘a of אדני (cf. Psa 56:1-13 :18; Psa 5:2, in Baer). In Psa 116:1 the accentuation prevents the rendering vocem orationis meae (Vulgate, lxx) by means of Mugrash. The ı̂ of קולי will therefore no more be the archaic connecting vowel (Ew. §211, b) than in Lev 26:42; the poet has varied the genitival construction of Psa 28:6 to the permutative. The second כי, following close upon the first, makes the continuation of the confirmation retrospective. “In my days” is, as in Isa 39:8, Bar. 4:20, cf. בחיּי in Psa 63:5, and frequently, equivalent to “so long as I live.” We even here hear the tone of Ps 18 (Psa 18:2), which is continued in Psa 18:3-4 as a freely borrowed passage. Instead of the “bands” (of Hades) there, the expression here is מצרי, angustiae, plural of meetsar, after the form מסב in Psa 118:5; Lam 1:3 (Böttcher, De inferis, §423); the straitnesses of Hades are deadly perils which can scarcely be escaped. The futures אמצא and אקרא, by virtue of the connection, refer to the contemporaneous past. אנּה (viz., בלישׁן בקשׁה, i.e., in a suppliant sense) is written with He instead of Aleph here and in five other instances, as the Masora observes. It has its fixed Metheg in the first syllable, in accordance with which it is to be pronounced ānna (like בּתּים, bāttim), and has an accented ultima not merely on account of the following יהוה = אדני (vid., on Psa 3:8), but in every instance; for even where (the Metheg having been changed into a conjunctive) it is supplied with two different accents, as in Gen 50:17; Exo 32:31, the second indicates the tone-syllable.^[127]
Instead now of repeating “and Jahve answered me,” the poet indulges in a laudatory confession of general truths which have been brought vividly to his mind by the answering of his prayer that he has experienced.

Verses 5-9

With “gracious” and “compassionate” is here associated, as in Psa 112:4, the term “righteous,” which comprehends within itself everything that Jahve asserts concerning Himself in Exo 34:6. from the words “and abundant in goodness and truth” onwards. His love is turned especially toward the simple (lxx τὰ νήπια, cf. Mat 11:25), who stand in need of His protection and give themselves over to it. פּתאים, as in Pro 9:6, is a mode of writing blended out of פּתאים and פּתיים. The poet also has experienced this love in a time of impotent need. דּלּותי is accented on the ultima here, and not as in Psa 142:7 on the penult. The accentuation is regulated by some phonetic or rhythmical law that has not yet been made clear (vid., on Job 19:17).^[128] יהושׁיע is a resolved Hiphil form, the use of which became common in the later period of the language, but is not alien to the earlier period, especially in poetry (Ps 45:18, cf. Psa 81:6; 1Sa 17:47; Isa 52:5). In Psa 116:7 we hear the form of soliloquy which has become familiar to us from Psa 42:1; Ps 103. שׁוּבי is Milra here, as also in two other instances. The plural מנוּחים signifies full, complete rest, as it is found only in God; and the suffix in the address to the soul is ajchi for ajich, as in Psa 103:3-5. The perfect גּמל states that which is a matter of actual experience, and is corroborated in Psa 116:8 in retrospective perfects. In Psa 116:8-9 we hear Ps 56:14 again amplified; and if we add Psa 27:13, then we see as it were to the bottom of the origin of the poet's thoughts. מן־דּמעה belongs still more decidedly than יהושׁיע to the resolved forms which multiply in the later period of the language. In Psa 116:9 the poet declares the result of the divine deliverance. The Hithpa. אתהלּך denotes a free and contented going to and fro; and instead of “the land of the living,” Psa 27:13, the expression here is “the lands (ארצות), i.e., the broad land, of the living.” There he walks forth, with nothing to hinder his feet or limit his view, in the presence of Jahve, i.e., having his Deliverer from death ever before his eyes. <nowoki/>

Verses 10-14

Since כּי אדבּר does not introduce anything that could become an object of belief, האמין is absolute here: to have faith, just as in Job 24:22; Job 29:24, with לא it signifies “to be without faith, i.e., to despair.” But how does it now proceed? The lxx renders ἐπίστευσα, διὸ ἐλάλησα, which the apostle makes use of in 2Co 4:13, without our being therefore obliged with Luther to render: I believe, therefore I speak; כי does not signify διὸ. Nevertheless כי might according to the sense be used for לכן, if it had to be rendered with Hengstenberg: “I believed, therefore I spake,hy but I was very much plagued.” But this assertion does not suit this connection, and has, moreover, no support in the syntax. It might more readily be rendered: “I have believed that I should yet speak, i.e., that I should once more have a deliverance of God to celebrate;” but the connection of the parallel members, which is then only lax, is opposed to this. Hitzig's attempted interpretation, “I trust, when (כּי as in Jer 12:1) I should speak: I am greatly afflicted,” i.e., “I have henceforth confidence, so that I shall not suffer myself to be drawn away into the expression of despondency,” does not commend itself, since Psa 116:10 is a complaining, but not therefore as yet a desponding assertion of the reality. Assuming that האמנתּי and אמרתּי in Psa 116:11 stand on the same line in point of time, it seems that it must be interpreted I had faith, for I spake (was obliged to speak); but אדבר, separated from האמנתי by כי, is opposed to the colouring relating to the contemporaneous past. Thus Psa 116:10 will consequently contain the issue of that which has been hitherto experienced: I have gathered up faith and believe henceforth, when I speak (have to speak, must speak): I am deeply afflicted (ענה as in Psa 119:67, cf. Arab. ‛nâ, to be bowed down, more particularly in captivity, whence Arab. ‘l - ‛nât, those who are bowed down). On the other hand, Psa 116:11 is manifestly a retrospect. He believes now, for he is thoroughly weaned from putting trust in men: I said in my despair (taken from Psa 31:23), the result of my deeply bowed down condition: All men are liars (πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ψεύστης, Rom 3:4). Forsaken by all the men from whom he expected succour and help, he experienced the truth and faithfulness of God. Striding away over this thought, he asks in Psa 116:12 how he is to give thanks to God for all His benefits. מה is an adverbial accusative for בּמּה, as in Gen 44:16, and the substantive תּגּמוּל, in itself a later formation, has besides the Chaldaic plural suffix ôhi, which is without example elsewhere in Hebrew. The poet says in Psa 116:13 how alone he can and will give thanks to his Deliverer, by using a figure taken from the Passover (Mat 26:27), the memorial repast in celebration of the redemption out of Egypt. The cup of salvation is that which is raised aloft and drunk amidst thanksgiving for the manifold and abundant salvation (ישׁוּעות) experienced. קרא בשׁם ה is the usual expression for a solemn and public calling upon and proclamation of the Name of God. In Psa 116:14 this thanksgiving is more minutely designated as שׁלמי נדר, which the poet now discharges. A common and joyous eating and drinking in the presence of God was associated with the shelamim. נא (vid., Psa 115:2) in the freest application gives a more animated tone to the word with which it stands. Because he is impelled frankly and freely to give thanks before the whole congregation, נא stands beside נגד, and נגד, moreover, has the intentional ah.

Verses 15-19

From what he has experienced the poet infers that the saints of Jahve are under His most especial providence. Instead of המּות the poet, who is fond of such embellishments, chooses the pathetic form המּותה, and consequently, instead of the genitival construct state (מות), the construction with the Lamed of “belonging to.” It ought properly to be “soul” or “blood,” as in the primary passage Psa 72:14. But the observation of Grotius: quae pretiosa sunt, non facile largimur, applies also to the expression “death.” The death of His saints is no trifling matter with God; He does not lightly suffer it to come about; He does not suffer His own to be torn away from Him by death.^[129]
After this the poet goes on beseechingly: ānnáh Adonaj. The prayer itself is not contained in פּתּחתּ למוסרי - for he is already rescued, and the perfect as a precative is limited to such utterances spoken in the tone of an exclamation as we find in Job 21:16 - but remains unexpressed; it lies wrapped up as it were in this heartfelt ānnáh: Oh remain still so gracious to me as Thou hast already proved Thyself to me. The poet rejoices in and is proud of the fact that he may call himself the servant of God. With אמתך he is mindful of his pious mother (cf. Psa 86:16). The Hebrew does not form a feminine, עבדּה; Arab. amata signifies a maid, who is not, as such, also Arab. ‛abdat, a slave. The dative of the object, למוסרי (from מוסרים for the more usual מוסרות), is used with פתחת instead of the accusative after the Aramaic manner, but it does also occur in the older Hebrew (e.g., Job 19:3; Isa 53:11). The purpose of publicly giving thanks to the Gracious One is now more full-toned here at the close. Since such emphasis is laid on the Temple and the congregation, what is meant is literal thank-offerings in payment of vows. In בּתוככי (as in Psa 135:9) we have in the suffix the ancient and Aramaic i (cf. Psa 116:7) for the third time. With אנּה the poet clings to Jahve, with נגדּה־נּא to the congregation, and with בּתוככי to the holy city. The one thought that fills his whole soul, and in which the song which breathes forth his soul dies away, is Hallelujah.

Psalm 117

==INVITATION TO THE PEOPLES TO COME INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD.==
1 PRAISE Jahve, all peoples,
Praise Him, all ye nations !
2 For mighty over us is His loving-kindness,
And the truth of Jahve endureth for ever,
Hallelujah !

Verses 1-2

The thanksgiving Psalm ending in Hallelujah is followed by this shortest of all the Psalms, a Hallelujah addressed to the heathen world. In its very brevity it is one of the grandest witnesses of the might with which, in the midst of the Old Testament, the world-wide mission of the religion of revelation struck against or undermined the national limitation. It is stamped by the apostle in Rom 15:11 as a locus classicus for the fore-ordained (gnadenrathschlussmässig) participation of the heathen in the promised salvation of Israel.
Even this shortest Psalm has its peculiarities in point of language. אמּים (Aramaic אמיּא, Arabic umam) is otherwise alien to Old Testament Hebrew. The Old Testament Hebrew is acquainted only with אמּות as an appellation of Ismaelitish of Midianitish tribes. כּל־גּוים are, as in Psa 72:11, Psa 72:17, all peoples without distinction, and כּל־האמּים all nations without exception. The call is confirmed from the might of the mercy or loving-kindness of Jahve, which proves itself mighty over Israel, i.e., by its intensity and fulness superabundantly covering (גּבר as in Psa 103:11; cf. ὑπερεπερίσσευσε, Rom 5:20, ὑπερεπλεόνασε, 1Ti 1:14) human sin and infirmity; and from His truth, by virtue of which history on into eternity ends in a verifying of His promises. Mercy and truth are the two divine powers which shall one day be perfectly developed and displayed in Israel, and going forth from Israel, shall conquer the world.

Psalm 118

==Festival Psalm at the Dedication of the New Temple==
What the close of Psa 117:1-2 says of God's truth, viz., that it endureth for ever, the beginning of Ps 118 says of its sister, His mercy or loving-kindness. It is the closing Psalm of the Hallel, which begins with Psa 113:1-9, and the third Hodu (vid., on Ps 105). It was Luther's favourite Psalm: his beauteous Confitemini, which “had helped him out of troubles out of which neither emperor nor king, nor any other man on earth, could have helped him.” With the exposition of this his noblest jewel, his defence and his treasure, he occupied himself in the solitude of his Patmos.
It is without any doubt a post-exilic song. Here too Hupfeld sweeps away everything into vague generality; but the history of the period after the Exile, without any necessity for our coming down to the Maccabean period, as do De Wette and Hitzig, presents three occasions which might have given birth to it; viz., (1) The first celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month of the first year of the Return, when there was only a plain altar as yet erected on the holy place, Ezr 3:1-4 (to be distinguished from a later celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles on a large scale and in exact accordance with the directions of the Law, Neh. 8). So Ewald. (2) The laying of the foundation-stone of the Temple in the second month of the second year, Ezr 3:8. So Hengstenberg. (3) The dedication of the completed temple in the twelfth month of the sixth year of Darius, Ezr 6:15. So Stier. These references to contemporary history have all three more or less in their favour. The first if favoured more especially by the fact, that at the time of the second Temple Psa 118:25 was the festal cry amidst which the altar of burnt-offering was solemnly compassed on the first six days of the Feast of Tabernacles once, and on the seventh day seven times. This seventh day was called the great Hosanna (Hosanna rabba), and not only the prayers for the Feast of Tabernacles, but even the branches of willow trees (including the myrtles) which are bound to the palm-branch (lulab), were called Hosannas (הושׁענות, Aramaic הושׁעני).^[130]
The second historical reference is favoured by the fact, that the narrative appears to point directly to our Psalm when it says: And the builders laid the foundation of the Temple of Jahve, and the priests were drawn up there in official robes with trumpets, and the Levites the descendants of Asaph with cymbals, to praise Jahve after the direction of David king of Israel, and they sang על־ישׂראל בּהלּל וּבהודת ליהוה כּי טוב כּי־לעולם חסדּו; and all the people raised a great shout בּהלּל ליהוה, because the house of Jahve was founded. But both of these derivations of the Psalm are opposed by the fact that Psa 116:19 and Psa 118:20 assume that the Temple-building is already finished; whereas the unmistakeable allusions to the events that transpired during the building of the Temple, viz., the intrigues of the Samaritans, the hostility of the neighbouring peoples, and the capriciousness of the Persian kings, favour the third. In connection with this reference of the Psalm to the post-exilic dedication of the Temple, Psa 118:19-20, too, now present no difficulty. Psa 118:22 is better understood as spoken in the presence of the now upreared Temple-building, than as spoken in the presence of the foundation-stone; and the words “unto the horns of the altar” in Psa 118:27, interpreted in many different ways, come into the light of Ezr 6:17.
The Psalm falls into two divisions. The first division (vv. 1-19) is sung by the festive procession brought up by the priests and Levites, which is ascending to the Temple with the animals for sacrifice. With Psa 118:19 the procession stands at the entrance. The second part (Psa 118:20-27) is sung by the body of Levites who receive the festive procession. Then Psa 118:28 is the answer of those who have arrived, and Psa 118:29 the concluding song of all of them. This antiphonal arrangement is recognised even by the Talmud (B. Pesachim 119a) and Midrash. The whole Psalm, too, has moreover a peculiar formation. It resembles the Mashal Psalms, for each verse has of itself its completed sense, its own scent and hue; one thought is joined to another as branch to branch and flower to flower.

Verses 1-18

The Hodu-cry is addressed first of all and every one; then the whole body of the laity of Israel and the priests, and at last (as it appears) the proselytes (vid., on Psa 115:9-11) who fear the God of revelation, are urgently admonished to echo it back; for “yea, His mercy endureth for ever,” is the required hypophon. In Psa 118:5, Israel too then begins as one man to praise the ever-gracious goodness of God. יהּ, the Jod of which might easily become inaudible after קראתי, has an emphatic Dagesh as in Psa 118:18, and המּצר has the orthophonic stroke beside צר (the so-called מקּל), which points to the correct tone-syllable of the word that has Dechî.^[131]
Instead of ענני it is here pointed ענני, which also occurs in other instances not only with distinctive, but also (though not uniformly) with conjunctive accents.^[132]
The constructions is a pregnant one (as in Psa 22:22; Psa 28:1; Psa 74:7; 2Sa 18:19; Ezr 2:62; 2Ch 32:1): He answered me by removing me to a free space (Psa 18:20). Both lines end with יהּ; nevertheless the reading במּרחביה is attested by the Masora (vid., Baer's Psalterium, pp. 132f.), instead of בּמּרחב יהּ. It has its advocates even in the Talmud (B. Pesachim 117a), and signifies a boundless extent, יה expressing the highest degree of comparison, like מאפּליה in Jer 2:31, the deepest darkness. Even the lxx appears to have read מרחביה thus as one word (εἰς πλατυσμόν, Symmachus εἰς εὐρυχωρίαν). The Targum and Jerome, however, render it as we do; it is highly improbable that in one and the same verse the divine name should not be intended to be used in the same force of meaning. Psa 56:1-13 (Psa 56:10; Psa 56:5, Psa 56:12) echoes in Psa 118:6; and in Psa 118:7 Psa 54:1-7 (Psa 54:6) is in the mind of the later poet. In that passage it is still more clear than in the passage before us that by the Beth of בּעזרי Jahve is not meant to be designated as unus e multis, but as a helper who outweighs the greatest multitude of helpers. The Jewish people had experienced this helpful succour of Jahve in opposition to the persecutions of the Samaritans and the satraps during the building of the Temple; and had at the same time learned what is expressed in Psa 118:7-8 (cf. Psa 146:3), that trust in Jahve (for which חסה ב is the proper word) proves true, and trust in men, on the contrary, and especially in princes, is deceptive; for under Pseudo-Smerdis the work, begun under Cyrus, and represented as open to suspicion even in the reign of Cambyses, was interdicted. But in the reign of Darius it again became free: Jahve showed that He disposes events and the hearts of men in favour of His people, so that out of this has grown up in the minds of His people the confident expectation of a world-subduing supremacy expressed in Psa 118:10.
The clauses Psa 118:10, Psa 118:11, and Psa 118:12, expressed in the perfect form, are intended more hypothetically than as describing facts. The perfect is here set out in relief as a hypothetical tense by the following future. כּל־גּוים signifies, as in Psa 117:1, the heathen of every kind. דּברים (in the Aramaic and Arabic with )ז are both bees and wasps, which make themselves especially troublesome in harvest time. The suffix of אמילם (from מוּל = מלל, to hew down, cut in pieces) is the same as in Exo 29:30; Exo 2:17, and also beside a conjunctive accent in Psa 74:8. Yet the reading אמילם, like יחיתן Hab 2:17, is here the better supported (vid., Gesenius, Lehrgebäude, S. 177), and it has been adopted by Norzi, Heidenheim, and Baer. The כּי is that which states the ground or reason, and then becomes directly confirmatory and assuring (Psa 128:2, Psa 128:4), which here, after the “in the name of Jahve” that precedes it, is applied and placed just as in the oath in 1Sa 14:44. And in general, as Redslob has demonstrated, כּי has not originally a relative, but a positive (determining) signification, כ being just as much a demonstrative sound as ד, ז, שׁ, and ת (cf. ἐκεῖ, ἐκεῖνος, κει'νος, ecce, hic, illic, with the Doric τηνεί, τῆνος). The notion of compassing round about is heightened in Psa 118:11 by the juxtaposition of two forms of the same verb (Ges. §67, rem. 10), as in Hos 4:18; Hab 1:5; Zep 2:1, and frequently. The figure of the bees is taken from Deu 1:44. The perfect דּעכוּ (cf. Isa 43:17) describes their destruction, which takes place instantly and unexpectedly. The Pual points to the punishing power that comes upon them: they are extinguished (exstinguuntur) like a fire of thorns, the crackling flame of which expires as quickly as it has blazed up (Psa 58:10). In Psa 118:13 the language of Israel is addressed to the hostile worldly power, as the antithesis shows. It thrust, yea thrust (inf. intens.) Israel, that it might fall (לנפּל; with reference to the pointing, vid., on Psa 40:15); but Jahve's help would not suffer it to come to that pass. Therefore the song at the Red Sea is revived in the heart and mouth of Israel. Psa 118:14 (like Isa 12:2) is taken from Exo 15:2. עזּי (in MSS also written עזּי) is a collateral form of עזּי (Ew. §255, a), and here signifies the lofty self-consciousness which is united with the possession of power: pride and its expression an exclamation of joy. Concerning זמרת vid., on Psa 16:6. As at that time, the cry of exultation and of salvation (i.e., of deliverance and of victory) is in the tabernacles of the righteous: the right hand of Jahve - they sing - עשׂה חיל (Num 24:18), practises valour, proves itself energetic, gains (maintains) the victory. רוממה is Milra, and therefore an adjective: victoriosa (Ew. §120 d), from רמם = רוּם like שׁומם from שׁמם. It is not the part. Pil. (cf. Hos 11:7), since the rejection of the participial Mem occurs in connection with Poal and Pual, but not elsewhere with Pilel (רומם = מרומם from רוּם). The word yields a simpler sense, too, as adject. participle Kal; romēmā́h is only the fuller form for ramā́h, Exo 14:8 (cf. rā́mah, Isa 26:11). It is not its own strength that avails for Israel's exultation of victory, but the energy of the right hand of Jahve. Being come to the brink of the abyss, Israel is become anew sure of its immortality through Him. God has, it is true, most severely chastened it (יסּרנּי with the suffix anni as in Gen 30:6, and יהּ with the emphatic Dagesh, which neither reduplicates nor connects, cf. Psa 118:5, Psa 94:12), but still with moderation (Isa 27:7.). He has not suffered Israel to fall a prey to death, but reserved it for its high vocation, that it may see the mighty deeds of God and proclaim them to all the world. Amidst such celebration of Jahve the festive procession of the dedication of the Temple has arrived at the enclosure wall of the Temple.

Verses 19-29

The gates of the Temple are called gates of righteousness because they are the entrance to the place of the mutual intercourse between God and His church in accordance with the order of salvation. First the “gates” are spoken of, and then the one “gate,” the principal entrance. Those entering in must be “righteous ones;” only conformity with a divine loving will gives the right to enter. With reference to the formation of the conclusion Psa 118:19, vid., Ew. §347, b. In the Temple-building Israel has before it a reflection of that which, being freed from the punishment it had had to endure, it is become through the mercy of its God. With the exultation of the multitude over the happy beginning of the rebuilding there was mingled, at the laying of the foundation-stone, the loud weeping of many of the grey-headed priests. Levites, and heads of the tribes who had also seen the first Temple (Ezr 3:12.). It was the troublous character of the present which made them thus sad in spirit; the consideration of the depressing circumstances of the time, the incongruity of which weighed so heavily upon their soul in connection with the remembrance of the former Temple, that memorably glorious monument of the royal power of David and Solomon.^[133]
And even further on there towered aloft before Zerubbabel, the leader of the building, a great mountain; gigantic difficulties and hindrances arose between the powerlessness of the present position of Zerubbabel and the completion of the building of the Temple, which had it is true been begun, but was impeded. This mountain God has made into a plain, and qualified Zerubbabel to bring forth the top and key-stone (האבן הראשׁה) out of its past concealment, and thus to complete the building, which is now consecrated amidst a loud outburst of incessant shouts of joy (Zec 4:7). Psa 118:22 points back to that disheartened disdain of the small troubles beginning which was at work among the builders (Ezr 3:10) at the laying of the foundation-stone, and then further at the interruption of the building. That rejected (disdained) corner-stone is nevertheless become ראשׁ פּנּהּ, i.e., the head-stone of the corner (Job 38:6), which being laid upon the corner, supports and protects the stately edifice - an emblem of the power and dignity to which Israel has attained in the midst of the peoples out of deep humiliation.
In connection with this only indirect reference of the assertion to Israel we avoid the question - perplexing in connection with the direct reference to the people despised by the heathen - how can the heathen be called “the builders?” Kurtz answers: “For the building which the heathen world considers it to be its life's mission and its mission in history to rear, viz., the Babel-tower of worldly power and worldly glory, they have neither been able nor willing to make use of Israel....” But this conjunction of ideas is devoid of scriptural support and without historical reality; for the empire of the world has set just as much value, according to political relations, upon the incorporation of Israel as upon that of every other people. Further, if what is meant is Israel's own despising of the small beginning of a new ear that is dawning, it is then better explained as in connection with the reference of the declaration to Jesus the Christ in Mat 21:42-44; Mar 12:10., Act 4:11 (ὑφ ̓ ὑμῶν τῶν οἰκοδομούντων), 1Pe 2:7, the builders are the chiefs and members of Israel itself, and not the heathen. From 1Pe 2:6; Rom 9:33, we see how this reference to Christ is brought about, viz., by means of Isa 28:16, where Jahve says: Behold I am He who hath laid in Zion a stone, a stone of trial, a precious corner-stone of well-founded founding - whoever believeth shall not totter. In the light of this Messianic prophecy of Isaiah Psa 118:22 of our Psalm also comes to have a Messianic meaning, which is warranted by the fact, that the history of Israel is recapitulated and culminates in the history of Christ; or, according to Joh 2:19-21 (cf. Zec 6:12.), still more accurately by the fact, that He who in His state of humiliation is the despised and rejected One is become in His state of glorification the eternal glorious Temple in which dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and is united with humanity which has been once for all atoned for. In the joy of the church at the Temple of the body of Christ which arose after the three days of burial, the joy which is here typically expressed in the words: “From with Jahve, i.e., by the might which dwells with Him, is this come to pass, wonderful is it become (has it been carried out) in our eyes,” therefore received its fulfilment. It is not נפלאת but נפלאת, like הבאת in Gen 33:11, קראת from קרא = קרה in Deu 31:29; Jer 44:23, קראת from קרא, to call, Isa 7:14. We can hear Isa 25:9 sounding through this passage, as above in Psa 118:19., Isa 26:1. The God of Israel has given this turn, so full of glory for His people, to the history.^[134]
He is able now to plead for more distant salvation and prosperity with all the more fervent confidence. אנּא (six times אנּה) is, as in every other instance (vid., on Psa 116:4), Milra. הושׁיעה is accented regularly on the penult., and draws the following נא towards itself by means of Dag. forte conj.; הצליחה on the other hand is Milra according to the Masora and other ancient testimonies, and נא is not dageshed, without Norzi being able to state any reason for this different accentuation. After this watchword of prayer of the thanksgiving feast, in Psa 118:26 those who receive them bless those who are coming (הבּא with Dechî) in the name of Jahve, i.e., bid them welcome in His name.
The expression “from the house of Jahve,” like “from the fountain of Israel” in Psa 68:27, is equivalent to, ye who belong to His house and to the church congregated around it. In the mouth of the people welcoming Jesus as the Messiah, Hoosanna' was a “God save the king” (vid., on Ps 20:10); they scattered palm branches at the same time, like the lulabs at the joyous cry of the Feast of Tabernacles, and saluted Him with the cry, “Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord,” as being the longed-for guest of the Feast (Mat 21:9). According to the Midrash, in Psa 118:26 it is the people of Jerusalem who thus greet the pilgrims. In the original sense of the Psalm, however, it is the body of Levites and priests above on the Temple-hill who thus receive the congregation that has come up. The many animals for sacrifice which they brought with them are enumerated in Ezr 6:17. On the ground of the fact that Jahve has proved Himself to be אל, the absolutely mighty One, by having granted light to His people, viz., loving-kindness, liberty, and joy, there then issues forth the ejaculation, “Bind the sacrifice,” etc. The lxx renders συστήσασθε ἑορτὴν ἐν τοῖς πυκάζουσιν, which is reproduced by the Psalterium Romanum: constituite diem solemnem in confrequentationibus, as Eusebius, Theodoret, and Chrysostom (although the last waveringly) also interpret it; on the other hand, it is rendered by the psalterium Gallicum: in condensis, as Apollinaris and Jerome (in frondosis) also understand it. But much as Luther's version, which follows the latter interpretation, “Adorn the feast with green branches even to the horns of the altar,” accords with our German taste, it is still untenable; for אסר cannot signify to encircle with garlands and the like, nor would it be altogether suited to חג in this signification.^[135]
Thus then in this instance A. Lobwasser renders it comparatively more correctly, although devoid of taste: “The Lord is great and mighty of strength who lighteneth us all; fasten your bullocks to the horns beside the altar.” To the horns?! So even Hitzig and others render it. But such a “binding to” is unheard of. And can אסר עד possibly signify to bind on to anything? And what would be the object of binding them to the horns of the altar? In order that they might not run away?! Hengstenberg and von Lengerke at least disconnect the words “unto the horns of the altar” from any relation to this precautionary measure, by interpreting: until it (the animal for the festal sacrifice) is raised upon the horns of the altar and sacrificed. But how much is then imputed to these words! No indeed, חג denotes the animals for the feast-offering, and there was so vast a number of these (according to Ezra loc. cit. seven hundred and twelve) that the whole space of the court of the priests was full of them, and the binding of them consequently had to go on as far as to the horns of the altar. Ainsworth (1627) correctly renders: “unto the hornes, that is, all the Court over, untill you come even to the hornes of the altar, intending hereby many sacrifices or boughs.” The meaning of the call is therefore: Bring your hecatombs and make them ready for sacrifice.^[136]
The words “unto (as far as) the horns of the altar” have the principal accent. In v. 28 (cf. Exo 15:2) the festal procession replies in accordance with the character of the feast, and then the Psalm closes, in correspondence with its beginning, with a Hodu in which all voices join.

Psalm 119

==A Twenty-Two-Fold String of Aphorisms by One Who Is Persecuted for the Sake of His Faith==

To the Hodu Ps 118, written in gnome-like, wreathed style, is appended the throughout gnomico-didactic Psalms 119, consisting of one hundred and seventy-six Masoretic verses, or regarded in relation to the strophe, distichs, which according to the twenty-two letters of the alphabet fall into twenty-two groups (called by the old expositors the ὀγδοάδες or octonarii of this Psalmus literatus s. alphabetites); for each group contains eight verses (distichs), each of which begins with the same consecutive letter (8 x 22 = 176). The Latin Psalters (as the Psalterium Veronense, and originally perhaps all the old Greek Psalters) have the name of the letter before each group; the Syriac has the signs of the letters; and in the Complutensian Bible, as also elsewhere, a new line begins with each group. The Talmud, B. Berachoth, says of this Psalm: “it consists of eight Alephs,” etc.; the Masora styles it אלפא ביתא רבא; the Midrash on it is called מדרשׁ אלפא ביתא, and the Pesikta פסיקתא דתמניא אפי. In our German version it has the appropriate inscription, “The Christian's golden A B C of the praise, love, power, and use of the word of God;” for here we have set forth in inexhaustible fulness what the word of God is to a man, and how a man is to behave himself in relation to it. The Masora observes that the Psalm contains only the one Psa 119:122, in which some reference or other to the word of revelation is not found as in all the 175 others^[137] - a many-linked chain of synonyms which runs through the whole Psalm. In connection with this ingenious arrangement, so artfully devised and carried out, it may also not be merely accidental that the address Jahve occurs twenty-two times, as Bengel has observed: bis et vicesies pro numero octonariorum.
All kinds of erroneous views have, however, been put forth concerning this Psalm. Köster, von Gerlach, Hengstenberg, and Hupfeld renounce all attempts to show that there is any accordance whatever with a set plan, and find here a series of maxims without any internal progression and connection. Ewald begins at once with the error, that we have before us the long prayer of an old experienced teacher. But from Psa 119:9. it is clear that the poet himself is a “young man,” a fact that is also corroborated by Psa 119:99, Psa 119:100. The poet is a young man, who finds himself in a situation which is clearly described: he is derided, oppressed, persecuted, and that by those who despise the divine word (for apostasy encompasses him round about), and more particularly by a government hostile to the true religion, Psa 119:23, Psa 119:46, Psa 119:161. He is lying in bonds (Psa 119:61, cf. Psa 119:83), expecting death (Psa 119:109), and recognises in his affliction, it is true, God's salutary humbling, and in the midst of it God's word is his comfort and his wisdom, but he also yearns for help, and earnestly prays for it. - The whole Psalm is a prayer for stedfastness in the midst of an ungodly, degenerate race, and in the midst of great trouble, which is heightened by the pain he feels at the prevailing apostasy, and a prayer for ultimate deliverance which rises in group Kaph to an urgent how long! If this sharply-defined physiognomy of the Psalm is recognised, then the internal progression will not fail to be discerned.
After the poet has praised fidelity to the word of God (Aleph), and described it as the virtue of all virtues which is of service to the young man and to which he devotes himself (Beth), he prays, in the midst of the scoffing and persecuting persons that surround him, for the grace of enlightenment (Gimel), of strengthening (Daleth), of preservation (He), of suitable and joyful confession (Vav); God's word is all his thought and pursuit (Zajin), he cleaves to those who fear God (Ḥeth), and recognises the salutary element of His humbling (Ṭeth), but is in need of comfort (Jod) and signs: how long! (Kaph). Without the eternal, sure, mighty word of God he would despair (Lamed); this is his wisdom in difficult circumstances (Mem); he has sworn fidelity to it, and maintains his fidelity as being one who is persecuted (Nun), and abhors and despises the apostates (Samech). He is oppressed, but God will not suffer him to be crushed (Ajin); He will not suffer the doings of the ungodly, which wring from him floods of tears, to prevail over him (Phe) - over him, the small (still youthful) and despised one whom zeal concerning the prevailing godlessness is consuming away (Tsade). Oh that God would hear his crying by day and by night (Ḳoph), would revive him speedily with His helpful pity (Resh) - him, viz., who being persecuted by princes clings fast to Him (Shin), and would seek him the isolated and so sorely imperilled sheep! (Tav). This outline does not exhaust the fundamental thoughts of the separate ogdoades, and they might surely be still more aptly reproduced, but this is sufficient to show that the Psalm is not wanting in coherence and progressive movement, and that it is not an ideal situation and mood, but a situation and mood based upon public relationships, from which this manifold celebration of the divine word, as a fruit of its teaching, has sprung.
It is natural to suppose that the composition of the Psalm falls in those times of the Greek domination in which the government was hostile, and a large party from among the Jews themselves, that was friendly towards the government, persecuted all decided confessors of the Tôra. Hitzig says, “It can be safely maintained that the Psalm was written in the Maccabaean age by a renowned Israelite who was in imprisonment under Gentile authorities.” It is at least probable that the plaited work of so long a Psalm, which, in connection with all that is artificial about it, from beginning to end gives a glimpse of the subdued afflicted mien of a confessor, is the work of one in prison, who whiled away his time with this plaiting together of his complaints and his consolatry thoughts.

Verses 1-8

The eightfold Aleph. Blessed are those who act according to the word of God; the poet wishes to be one of these. The alphabetical Psalm on the largest scale begins appropriately, not merely with a simple (Psa 112:1), but with a twofold ashrê. It refers principally to those integri viae (vitae). In Psa 119:3 the description of those who are accounted blessed is carried further. Perfects,a s denoting that which is habitual, alternate with futures used as presents. In Psa 119:4 לשׁמר expresses the purpose of the enjoining, as in Psa 119:5 the goal of the directing. אחלי (whence אחלי, 2Ki 5:3) is compounded of אח (vid., supra, p. 273) and לי (לוי), and consequently signifies o si. On יכּנוּ cf. Pro 4:26 (lxx κατευθυνθείησαν). The retrospective אז is expanded anew in Psa 119:6: then, when I namely. “Judgment of Thy righteousness” are the decisions concerning right and wrong which give expression to and put in execution the righteousness of God.^[138] בּלמדי refers to Scripture in comparison with history.

Verses 9-16

The eightfold Beth. Acting in accordance with the word of God, a young man walks blamelessly; the poet desires this, and supplicates God's gracious assistance in order to it. To purify or cleanse one's way or walk (זכּה, cf. Psa 73:13; Pro 20:9) signifies to maintain it pure (זך, root זך, Arab. zk, to prick, to strike the eye, nitere;^[139] vid., Fleischer in Levy's Chaldäisches Wörterbuch, i. 424) from the spotting of sin, or to free it from it. Psa 119:9 is the answer to the question in Psa 119:9; לשׁמר signifies custodiendo semetipsum, for שׁמר can also signify “to be on one's guard” without נפשׁו (Jos 6:18). The old classic (e.g., Psa 18:31) אמרתך alternates throughout with דּברך; both are intended collectively. One is said to hide (צפן) the word in one's heart when one has it continually present with him, not merely as an outward precept, but as an inward motive power in opposition to selfish action (Job 23:12). In Psa 119:12 the poet makes his way through adoration to petition. ספּרתּי in Psa 119:13 does not mean enumeration, but recounting, as in Deu 6:7. עדות is the plural to עדוּת; עדות, on the contrary, in Psa 119:138 is the plural to עדה: both are used of God's attestation of Himself and of His will in the word of revelation. כּעל signifies, according to Psa 119:162, “as over” (short for כּאשׁר על), not: as it were more than (Olshausen); the כּ would only be troublesome in connection with this interpretation. With reference to הון, which has occurred already in Psa 44:13; Psa 112:3 (from הון, Arab. hawn, to be light, levem), aisance, ease, opulence, and concrete, goods, property, vid., Fleischer in Levy's Chald. Wórterb. i. 423f. ארחתיך, Psa 119:15, are the paths traced out in the word of God; these he will studiously keep in his eye.

Verses 17-24

The eightfold Gimel. This is his life's aim: he will do it under fear of the curse of apostasy; he will do it also though he suffer persecution on account of it. In Psa 119:17 the expression is only אחיה as Psa 118:19, not ואחיה as in Psa 119:77, Psa 119:116, Psa 119:144 : the apodosis imper. only begins with ואשׁמרה, whereas אחיה is the good itself for the bestowment of which the poet prays. גּל in Psa 119:18 is imper. apoc. Piel for גּלּה, like גס in Dan 1:12. נפלאות is the expression for everything supernatural and mysterious which is incomprehensible to the ordinary understanding and is left to the perception of faith. The Tôra beneath the surface of its letter contains an abundance of such “wondrous things,” into which only eyes from which God has removed the covering of natural short-sightedness penetrate; hence the prayer in Psa 119:18. Upon earth we have no abiding resting-place, we sojourn here as in a strange land (Psa 119:19, Psa 39:13; 1Ch 29:15). Hence the poet prays in Psa 119:19 that God would keep His commandments, these rules of conduct for the journey of life, in living consciousness for him. Towards this, according to Psa 119:20, his longing tends. גּרס (Hiph. in Lam 3:16) signifies to crush in pieces, Arab. jrš, and here, like the Aramaic גּרס, גּרס, to be crushed, broken in pieces. לתאבה (from תּאב, Psa 119:40, Psa 119:174, a secondary form of אבה) states the bias of mind in or at which the soul feels itself thus overpowered even to being crushed: it is crushing form longing after God's judgment, viz., after a more and more thorough knowledge of them. In Psa 119:21 the lxx has probably caught the meaning of the poet better than the pointing has done, inasmuch as it draws ἐπικατάρατοι to Psa 119:21, so that Psa 119:21 consists of two words, just like Psa 119:59, Psa 119:89; and Kamphausen also follows this in his rendering. For ארוּרים as an attribute is unpoetical, and as an accusative of the predicate far-fetched; whereas it comes in naturally as a predicate before השּׁגים ממּצותיך: cursed (ארר = Arab. harra , detestari), viz., by God. Instead of גּל, “roll” (from גּלל, Jos 5:9), it is pointed in Psa 119:22 (מעל) גּל, “uncover” = גּלּה, as in Psa 119:18, reproach being conceived of as a covering or veil (as e.g., in Psa 69:8), cf. Isa 22:8 (perhaps also Lam 2:14; Lam 4:22, if גּלּה על there signifies “to remove the covering upon anything”). גּם in Psa 119:23, as in Jer 36:25, has the sense of גּם־כּי, etiamsi; and גּם in Psa 119:24 the sense of nevertheless, ὅμως, Ew. §354, a. On נדבּר בּ (reciprocal), cf. Eze 33:30. As in a criminal tribunal, princes sit and deliberate how they may be able to render him harmless.

Verses 25-32

The eightfold Daleth. He is in deep trouble, and prays for consolation and strengthening by means of God's word, to which he resigns himself. His soul is fixed to the dust (Psa 44:26) in connection with such non-recognition and proscription, and is incapable of raising itself. In Psa 119:25 he implores new strength and spirits (חיּה as in Psa 71:20; Psa 85:7) from God, in conformity with and by reason of His word. He has rehearsed his walk in every detail to God, and has not been left without an answer, which has assured him of His good pleasure: may He then be pleased to advance him ever further and further in the understanding of His word, in order that, though men are against him, he may nevertheless have God on his side, Psa 119:26-27. The complaint and request expressed in Psa 119:25 are renewed in Psa 119:28. דּלף refers to the soul, which is as it were melting away in the trickling down of tears; קיּם is a Piel of Aramaic formation belonging to the later language. In Psa 119:29-30 the way of lies or of treachery, and the way of faithfulness or of perseverance in the truth, stand in opposition to one another. חנן is construed with a double accusative, inasmuch as תּורה has not the rigid notion of a fixed teaching, but of living empirical instruction. שׁוּה (short for שׁוה לנגד, Psa 16:8) signifies to put or set, viz., as a norma normans that stands before one's eyes. He cleaves to the testimonies of God; may Jahve not disappoint the hope which to him springs up out of them, according to the promise, Psa 119:31. He runs, i.e., walks vigorously and cheerfully, in the way of God's commandments, for He has widened his heart, by granting and preserving to the persecuted one the joyfulness of confession and the confidence of hope.

Verses 33-40

The eightfold He. He further prays for instruction and guidance that he may escape the by-paths of selfishness and of disavowal. The noun עקב, used also elsewhere as an accus. adverb., in the signification ad extremum (Psa 119:33 and Psa 119:112) is peculiar to our poet. אצּרנּה (with a Shebâ which takes a colouring in accordance with the principal form) refers back to דּרך. In the petition “give me understanding” (which occurs six times in this Psalm) חבין is causative, as in Job 32:8, and frequently in the post-exilic writings. בּצע (from בּצע, abscindere, as κέρδος accords in sound with κείρειν) signifies gain and acquisition by means of the damage which one does to his neighbour by depreciating his property, by robbery, deceit, and extortion (1Sa 8:3), and as a name of a vice, covetousness, and in general selfishness. שׁוא is that which is without real, i.e., without divine, contents or intrinsic worth, - God-opposed teaching and life. בּדרכך^[140] is a defective plural; cf. חסדך, Psa 119:41, וּמשׁפּטך, Psa 119:43, and frequently. Establishing, in Psa 119:38, is equivalent to a realizing of the divine word or promise. The relative clause אשׁר ליראתך is not to be referred to לעבדּך according to Psa 119:85 (where the expression is different), but to אמרתך: fulfil to Thy servant Thy word or promise, as that which (quippe quae) aims at men attaining the fear of Thee and increasing therein (cf. Psa 130:4; Psa 40:4). The reproach which the poet fears in Psa 119:39 is not the reproach of confessing, but of denying God. Accordingly משׁפּטיך are not God's judgments i.e., acts of judgment, but revealed decisions or judgments: these are good, inasmuch as it is well with him who keeps them. He can appeal before God to the fact that he is set upon the knowledge and experience of these with longing of heart; and he bases his request upon the fact that God by virtue of His righteousness, i.e., the stringency with which He maintains His order of grace, both as to its promises and its duties, would quicken him, who is at present as it were dead with sorrow and weariness.

Verses 41-48

The eightfold Vav. He prays for the grace of true and fearlessly joyous confession. The lxx renders Psa 119:41: καὶ ἔλθοι ἐπ ̓ ἐμε ̓ τὸ ἔλεός σου; but the Targum and Jerome rightly (cf. Psa 119:77, Isa 63:7) have the plural: God's proofs of loving-kindness in accordance with His promises will put him in the position that he will not be obliged to be dumb in the presence of him who reproaches him (חרף, prop. a plucker, cf. Arab. charûf, a lamb = a plucker of leaves or grass), but will be able to answer him on the ground of his own experience. The verb ענה, which in itself has many meanings, acquires the signification “to give an answer” through the word, דּבר, that is added (synon. השׁיב דּבר). Psa 119:43 also refers to the duty of confessing God. The meaning of the prayer is, that God may not suffer him to come to such a pass that he will be utterly unable to witness for the truth; for language dies away in the mouth of him who is unworthy of its before God. The writer has no fear of this for himself, for his hope is set towards God's judgments (למשׁפּטך, defective plural, as also in Psa 119:149; in proof of which, compare Psa 119:156 and Psa 119:175), his confidence takes its stand upon them. The futures which follow from Psa 119:44 to Psa 119:48 declare that what he would willingly do by the grace of God, and strives to do, is to walk בּרחבה, in a broad space (elsewhere בּמּרחב), therefore unstraitened, which in this instance is not equivalent to happily, but courageously and unconstrainedly, without allowing myself to be intimidated, and said of inward freedom which makes itself known outwardly. In Psa 119:46 the Vulgate renders: Et loquebar de (in)testimoniis tuis in conspectu regum et non confundebar - the motto of the Augsburg Confession, to which it was adapted especially in connection with this historical interpretation of the two verbs, which does not correspond to the original text. The lifting up of the hands in Psa 119:48 is an expression of fervent longing desire, as in connection with prayer, Psa 28:2; Psa 63:5; Psa 134:2; Psa 141:2, and frequently. The second אשׁר אהבתי is open to the suspicion of being an inadvertent repetition. שׂיח בּ (synon. בּ הגה) signifies a still or audible meditating that is absorbed in the object.

Verses 49-56

The eightfold Zajin. God's word is his hope and his trust amidst all derision; and when he burns with indignation at the apostates, God's word is his solace. Since in Psa 119:49 the expression is not דּברך but דּבר, it is not to be interpreted according to Psa 98:3; Psa 106:45, but: remember the word addressed to Thy servant, because Thou hast made me hope (Piel causat. as e.g., נשּׁה, to cause to forget, Gen 41:51), i.e., hast comforted me by promising me a blessed issue, and hast directed my expectation thereunto. This is his comfort in his dejected condition, that God's promissory declaration has quickened him and proved its reviving power in his case. In הליצוּני (הליצוּני), ludificantur, it is implied that the זדים eht taht d are just לצים, frivolous persons, libertines, free-thinkers (Pro 21:24). משׁפּטיך, Psa 119:52, are the valid, verified decisions (judgments) of God revealed from the veriest olden times. In the remembrance of these, which determine the lot of a man according to the relation he holds towards them, the poet found comfort. It can be rendered: then I comforted myself; or according to a later usage of the Hithpa.: I was comforted. Concerning זלעפה, aestus, vid., Psa 11:6, and on the subject-matter, Psa 119:21, Psa 119:104. The poet calls his earthly life “the house of his pilgrimage;” for it is true the earth is man's (Psa 115:16), but he has no abiding resting-place there (1Ch 29:15), his בּית עולם (Ecc 12:5) is elsewhere (vid., supra, Psa 119:19, Psa 39:13). God's statutes are here his “songs,” which give him spiritual refreshing, sweeten the hardships of the pilgrimage, and measure and hasten his steps. The Name of God has been in his mind hitherto, not merely by day, but also by night; and in consequence of this he has kept God's law (ואשׁמרה, as five times besides in this Psalm, cf. Psa 3:6, and to be distinguished from ואשׁמרה, Psa 119:44). Just this, that he keeps (observat) God's precepts, has fallen to his lot. To others something else is allotted (Psa 4:8), to him this one most needful thing.

Verses 57-64

The eightfold Heth. To understand and to keep God's word is his portion, the object of his incessant praying and thanksgiving, the highest grace or favour that can come to him. According to Psa 16:5; Psa 73:26, the words חלקי ה belong together. Psa 119:57 is an inference drawn from it (אמר ל as in Exo 2:14, and frequently), and the existing division of the verse is verified. חלּה פּני, as in Psa 45:13, is an expression of caressing, flattering entreaty; in Latin, caput mulcere (demulcere). His turning to the word of God the poet describes in Psa 119:59 as a result of a careful trying of his actions. After that he quickly and cheerfully, Psa 119:60, determined to keep it without any long deliberation with flesh and blood, although the snares of wicked men surround him. The meaning of חבלי is determined according to Psa 119:110 : the pointing does not distinguish so sharply as one might have expected between חבלי, ὠδῖνας, and חבלי, snares, bonds (vid., Psa 18:5.); but the plural nowhere, according to the usage of the language as we now have it, signifies bands (companies), from the singular in 1Sa 10:5 (Böttcher, §800). Thankfulness urges him to get up at midnight (acc. temp. as in Job 34:20) to prostrate himself before God and to pray. Accordingly he is on friendly terms with, he is closely connected with (Pro 28:24), all who fear God. Out of the fulness of the loving-kindness of God, which is nowhere unattested upon earth (Psa 119:64 = Psa 33:5), he implores for himself the inward teaching concerning His word as the highest and most cherished of mercies.

Verses 65-72

The eightfold Teth. The good word of the gracious God is the fountain of all good; and it is learned in the way of lowliness. He reviews his life, and sees in everything that has befallen him the good and well-meaning appointment of the God of salvation in accordance with the plan and order of salvation of His word. The form עבדּך, which is the form out of pause, is retained in Psa 119:65 beside Athnach, although not preceded by Olewejored (cf. Psa 35:19; Psa 48:11; Pro 30:21). Clinging believingly to the commandments of God, he is able confidently to pray that He would teach him “good discernment” and “knowledge.” טעם is ethically the capacity of distinguishing between good and evil, and of discovering the latter as it were by touch; טוּב טעם, good discernment, is a coupling of words like טוּב לב, a happy disposition, cheerfulness. God has brought him into this relationship to His word by humbling him, and thus setting him right out of his having gone astray. אמרה in Psa 119:67, as in Psa 119:11, is not God's utterance conveying a promise, but imposing a duty. God is called טּוב as He who is graciously disposed towards man, and מתיב as He who acts out this disposition; this loving and gracious God he implores to become his Teacher. In his fidelity to God's word he does not allow himself to be led astray by any of the lies which the proud try to impose upon him (Böttcher), or better absolutely (cf. Job 13:4): to patch together over him, making the true nature unrecognisable as it were by means of false plaster or whitewash (טפל, to smear over, bedaub, as the Targumic, Talmudic, and Syriac show). If the heart of these men, who by slander make him into a caricature of himself, is covered as it were with thick fat (a figure of insensibility and obduracy, Psa 17:10; Psa 73:7; Isa 6:10, lxx ἐτυρώθη, Aquila ἐλιπάνθη, Symmachus ἐμυαλώθη) against all the impressions of the word of God, he, on the other hand, has his delight in the law of God (שׁעשׁע with an accusative of the object, not of that which is delighted, Psa 94:19, but of that which delights). How beneficial has the school of affliction through which he has attained to this, been to him! The word proceeding from the mouth of God is now more precious to him than the greatest earthly riches.

Verses 73-80

The eightfold Jod. God humbles, but He also exalts again according to His word; for this the poet prays in order that he may be a consolatory example to the God-fearing, to the confusion of his enemies. It is impossible that God should forsake man, who is His creature, and deny to him that which makes him truly happy, viz., the understanding and knowledge of His word. For this spiritual gift the poet prays in Psa 119:73 (cf. on 73a, Deu 32:6; Job 10:8; Job 31:15); and he wishes in Psa 119:74 that all who fear God may see in him with joy an example of the way in which trust in the word of God is rewarded (cf. Psa 34:3; Psa 35:27; Psa 69:33; Psa 107:42, and other passages). He knows that God's acts of judgment are pure righteousness, i.e., regulated by God's holiness, out of which they spring, and by the salvation of men, at which they aim; and he knows that God has humbled him אמוּנה (accus. adverb. for בּאמוּנה), being faithful in His intentions towards him; for it is just in the school of affliction that one first learns rightly to estimate the worth of His word, and comes to feel its power. But trouble, though sweetened by an insight into God's salutary design, is nevertheless always bitter; hence the well-justified prayer of Psa 119:76, that God's mercy may notwithstanding be bestowed upon him for his consolation, in accordance with the promise which is become his (ל as in Psa 119:49), His servant's. עוּת, Psa 119:78, instead of being construed with the accusative of the right, or of the cause, that is perverted, is construed with the accusative of the person upon whom such perversion of right, such oppression by means of misrepresentation, is inflicted, as in Job 19:6; Lam 3:36. Chajug' reads עוּדוּני as in Psa 119:61. The wish expressed in Psa 119:79 is to be understood according to Psa 73:10; Jer 15:19, cf. Pro 9:4, Pro 9:16. If instead of וידעי (which is favoured by Psa 119:63), we read according to the Chethîb וידעוּ (cf. Psa 119:125), then what is meant by ישׁוּבוּ לּי is a turning towards him for the purpose of learning: may their knowledge be enriched from his experience. For himself, however, in Psa 119:80 he desires unreserved, faultless, unwavering adherence to God's word, for only thus is he secure against being ignominiously undeceived.

Verses 81-88

The eightfold Kaph. This strengthening according to God's promise is his earnest desire (כּלה) now, when within a very little his enemies have compassed his ruin (כּלּה). His soul and eyes languish (כּלה as in Psa 69:4; Psa 84:3, cf. Job 19:27) for God's salvation, that it may be unto him according to God's word or promise, that this word may be fulfilled. In Psa 119:83 כּי is hypothetical, as in Psa 21:12 and frequently; here, as perhaps also in Psa 27:10, in the sense of “although” (Ew. §362, b). He does not suffer anything to drive God's word out of his mind, although he is already become like a leathern bottle blackened and shrivelled up in the smoke. The custom of the ancients of placing jars with wine over the smoke in order to make the wine prematurely old, i.e., to mellow it (vid., Rosenmüller), does not yield anything towards the understanding of this passage: the skin-bottle that is not intended for present use is hung up on high; and the fact that it had to withstand the upward ascending smoke is intelligible, notwithstanding the absence of any mention of the chimney. The point of comparison, in which we agree for the most part with Hitzig, is the removal of him who in his dungeon is continually exposed to the drudgery of his persecutors. כּמּה in Psa 119:84 is equivalent to “how few.” Our life here below is short, so also is the period within which the divine righteousness can reveal itself. שׁיחות (instead of which the lxx erroneously reads שׂיחות), pits, is an old word, Psa 57:7. The relative clause, Psa 119:85, describes the “proud” as being a contradiction to the revealed law; for there was no necessity for saying that to dig a pit for others is not in accordance with this law. All God's commandments are an emanation of His faithfulness, and therefore too demand faithfulness; but it is just this faithfulness that makes the poet an object of deadly hatred. They have already almost destroyed him”in the land.” It is generally rendered “on earth;” but “in heaven” at the beginning of the following octonary is too far removed to be an antithesis to it, nor does it sound like one (cf. on the other hand ἐν τοῖς ouranoi's, Mat 5:12). It is therefore: in the land (cf. Psa 58:3; Psa 73:9), where they think they are the only ones who have any right there, they have almost destroyed him, without shaking the constancy of his faith. But he stands in need of fresh grace in order that he may not, however, at last succumb.

Verses 89-96

The eightfold Lamed. Eternal and imperishable in the constant verifying of itself is the vigorous and consolatory word of God, to which the poet will ever cling. It has heaven as its standing-place, and therefore it also has the qualities of heaven, and before all others, heaven-like stability. Ps 89 (Psa 89:3) uses similar language in reference to God's faithfulness, of which here Psa 119:90 says that it endureth into all generations. The earth hath He creatively set up, and it standeth, viz., as a practical proof and as a scene of His infinite, unchangeable faithfulness. Heaven and earth are not the subjects of Psa 119:91 (Hupfeld), for only the earth is previously mentioned; the reference to the heavens in Psa 119:89 is of a very different character. Hitzig and others see the subject in למשׁפּטיך: with respect to Thy judgments, they stand fast unto this day; but the עבדיך which follows requires another meaning to be assigned to עמדוּ: either of taking up one's place ready for service, or, since עמד למשׁפט is a current phrase in Num 35:12; Jos 20:6; Eze 44:24, of placing one's self ready to obey (Böttcher). The subject of עמדוּ, as the following הכּל shows, is meant to be thought of in the most general sense (cf. Job 38:14): all beings are God's servants (subjects), and have accordingly to be obedient and humble before His judicial decisions - היּום, “even to this day,” the poet adds, for these judicial decisions are those which are formulated beforehand in the Tôra. Joy in this ever sure, all-conditioning word has upheld the poet in his affliction, Psa 119:92. He who has been persecuted and cast down as it were to death, owes his reviving to it, Psa 119:93. From Him whose possession or property he is in faith and love he also further looks for his salvation, Psa 119:94. Let evil-doers lie in wait for him (קוּוּ in a hostile sense, as in Psa 56:7, קוּה, cf. חכּה, going back to קוה, Arab. qawiya, with the broad primary signification, to be tight, firm, strong) to destroy him, he meditates on God's testimonies. He knows from experience that all (earthly) perfection (תּכלה) has an end (inasmuch as, having reached its height, it changes into its opposite); God's commandment (singular as in Deu 11:22), on the contrary, is exceeding broad (cf. Job 11:9), unlimited in its duration and verification.

Verses 97-104

The eightfold Mem. The poet praises the practical wisdom which the word of God, on this very account so sweet to him, teaches. God's precious law, with which he unceasingly occupies himself, makes him superior in wisdom (Deu 4:6), intelligence, and judgment to his enemies, his teachers, and the aged (Job 12:20). There were therefore at that time teachers and elders (πρεσβύτεροι), who (like the Hellenizing Sadducees) were not far from apostasy in their laxness, and hostilely persecuted the young and strenuous zealot for God's law. The construction of Psa 119:98 is like Joe 1:20; Isa 59:12, and frequently. היא refers to the commandments in their unity: he has taken possession of them for ever (cf. Psa 119:111). The Mishna (Aboth iv. 1) erroneously interprets: from all my teachers do I acquire understanding. All three מן in Psa 119:98-100 signify prae (lxx ὑπὲρ). In כּלאתי, Psa 119:101, from the mode of writing we see the verb Lamed Aleph passing over into the verb Lamed He. הורתני is, as in Pro 4:11 (cf. Exo 4:15), a defective mode of writing for הוריתני. נמלצוּ, Psa 119:103, is not equivalent to נמרצוּ, Job 6:25 (vid., Job, at Job 6:25; Job 16:2-5), but signifies, in consequence of the dative of the object לחכּי, that which easily enters, or that which tastes good (lxx ὡς gluke'a); therefore surely from מלץ = מלט, to be smooth: how smooth, entering easily (Pro 23:31), are Thy words (promises) to my palate or taste! The collective singular אמרתך is construed with a plural of the predicate (cf. Exo 1:10). He has no taste for the God-estranged present, but all the stronger taste for God's promised future. From God's laws he acquires the capacity for proving the spirits, therefore he hates every path of falsehood (= Psa 119:128), i.e., all the heterodox tendencies which agree with the spirit of the age.

Verses 105-112

The eightfold Nun. The word of God is his constant guide, to which he has entrusted himself for ever. The way here below is a way through darkness, and leads close past abysses: in this danger of falling and of going astray the word of God is a lamp to his feet, i.e., to his course, and a light to his path (Pro 6:23); his lamp or torch and his sun. That which he has sworn, viz., to keep God's righteous requirements, he has also set up, i.e., brought to fulfilment, but not without being bowed down under heavy afflictions in confessing God; wherefore he prays (as in Psa 119:25) that God would revive him in accordance with His word, which promises life to those who keep it. The confessions of prayer coming from the inmost impulse of his whole heart, in which he owns his indebtedness and gives himself up entirely to God's mercy, he calls the free-will offerings of his mouth in Psa 119:108 (cf. Psa 50:14; 19:15). He bases the prayer for a gracious acceptance of these upon the fact of his being reduced to extremity. “To have one's soul in one's hand” is the same as to be in conscious peril of one's life, just as “to take one's soul into one's hand” (Jdg 12:3; 1Sa 19:5; 1Sa 28:21; Job 13:14) is the same as to be ready to give one's life for it, to risk one's life.^[141]
Although his life is threatened (Psa 119:87), yet he does not waver and depart from God's word; he has taken and obtained possession of God's testimonies for ever (cf. Psa 119:98); they are his “heritage,” for which he willingly gives up everything else, for they (המּה inexactly for הנּה) it is which bless and entrance him in his inmost soul. In Psa 119:112 it is not to be interpreted after Psa 19:12 : eternal is the reward (of the carrying out of Thy precepts), but in Psa 119:33 עקב is equivalent to לעד, and Psa 119:44 proves that Psa 119:112 need not be a thought that is complete in itself.

Verses 113-120

The eightfold Samech. His hope rests on God's word, without allowing itself to be led astray by doubters and apostates. סעפים (the form of nouns which indicate defects or failings) are those inwardly divided, halting between two opinions (סעפּים), 1Ki 18:21, who do homage partly to the worship of Jahve, partly to heathenism, and therefore are trying to combine faith and naturalism. In contrast to such, the poet's love, faith, and hope are devoted entirely to the God of revelation; and to all those who are desirous of drawing him away he addresses in Psa 119:115 (cf. Psa 6:9) an indignant “depart.” He, however, stands in need of grace in order to persevere and to conquer. For this he prays in Psa 119:116-117. The מן in משּׁברי is the same as in בּושׁ מן. The ah of ואשׁעה is the intentional ah (Ew. §228, c), as in Isa 41:23. The statement of the ground of the סלית, vilipendis, does not mean: unsuccessful is their deceit (Hengstenberg, Olshausen), but falsehood without the consistency of truth is their self-deceptive and seductive tendency. The lxx and Syriac read תּרעיתם, “their sentiment;” but this is an Aramaic word that is unintelligible in Hebrew, which the old translators have conjured into the text only on account of an apparent tautology. The reading השּׁבתּ or חשׁבתּ (Aquila, Symmachus, and Jerome; lxx ἐλογισάμην, therefore חשׁבתי) instead of חשׁבתּ might more readily be justified in Psa 119:119; but the former gives too narrow a meaning, and the reading rests on a mistaking of the construction of השׁבית with an accusative of the object and of the effect: all the wicked, as many of them as are on the earth, dost Thou put away as dross (סגים( ssor). Accordingly משׁפטיך in Psa 119:120 are God's punitive judgments, or rather (cf. Psa 119:91) God's laws (judgments) according to which He judges. What is meant are sentences of punishment, as in Lev. 26, Deut. 28. Of these the poet is afraid, for omnipotence can change words into deeds forthwith. In fear of the God who has attested Himself in Exo 34:7 and elsewhere, his skin shudders and his hair stands on end.

Verses 121-128

The eightfold Ajin. In the present time of apostasy and persecution he keeps all the more strictly to the direction of the divine word, and commends himself to the protection and teaching of God. In the consciousness of his godly behaviour (elsewhere always צדק וּמשׁפּט, here in one instance משׁפט וצדק) the poet hopes that God will surely not (בּל) leave him to the arbitrary disposal of his oppressors. This hope does not, however, raise him above the necessity and duty of constant prayer that Jahve would place Himself between him and his enemies. ערב seq. acc. signifies to stand in any one's place as furnishing a guarantee, and in general as a mediator, Job 17:3; Isa 38:14; לטוב similar to לטובה, Psa 86:17, Neh 5:19 : in my behalf, for my real advantage. The expression of longing after redemption in Psa 119:123 sounds like Psa 119:81. “The word of Thy righteousness” is the promise which proceeds from God's “righteousness,” and as surely as He is “righteous” cannot remain unfulfilled. The one chief petition of the poet, however, to which he comes back in Psa 119:124., has reference to the ever deeper knowledge of the word of God; for this knowledge is in itself at once life and blessedness, and the present calls most urgently for it. For the great multitude (which is the subject to הפרוּ) practically and fundamentally break God's law; it is therefore time to act for Jahve (עשׂה ל as in Gen 30:30, Isa 64:4, Eze 29:20), and just in order to this there is need of well-grounded, reliable knowledge. Therefore the poet attaches himself with all his love to God's commandments; to him they are above gold and fine gold (Psa 19:11), which he might perhaps gain by a disavowal of them. Therefore he is as strict as he possibly can be with God's word, inasmuch as he acknowledges and observes all precepts of all things (כּל־פּקּוּדי כל), i.e., all divine precepts, let them have reference to whatsoever they will, as ישׁרים, right (ישּׁר, to declare both in avowal and deed to be right); and every false (lying) tendency, all pseudo-Judaism, he hates. It is true Psa 119:126 may be also explained: it is time that Jahve should act, i.e., interpose judicially; but this thought is foreign to the context, and affords no equally close union for על־כן; moreover it ought then to have been accented עת לעשׂות ליהוה. On כּל־פּקּוּדי כל, “all commands of every purport,” cf. Isa 29:11, and more as to form, Num 8:16; Eze 44:30.
The expression is purposely thus heightened; and the correction כל־פקודיך (Ewald, Olshausen, and Hupfeld) is also superfluous, because the reference of what is said to the God of revelation is self-evident in this connection.

Verses 129-136

The eightfold Phe. The deeper his depression of spirit concerning those who despise the word of God, the more ardently does he yearn after the light and food of that word. The testimonies of God are פּלאות, wonderful and strange (paradoxical) things, exalted above every-day life and the common understanding. In this connection of the thoughts נצרתם is not intended of careful observance, but of attentive contemplation that is prolonged until a clear penetrating understanding of the matter is attained. The opening, disclosure (פּתח, apertio, with Tsere in distinction from פּתח, porta) of God's word giveth light, inasmuch as it makes the simple (פּתיים as in Pro 22:3) wise or sagacious; in connection with which it is assumed that it is God Himself who unfolds the mysteries of His word to those who are anxious to learn. Such an one, anxious to learn, is the poet: he pants with open mouth, viz., for the heavenly fare of such disclosures (פּער like פּער פּה in Job 29:23, cf. Psa 81:11). יאב is a hapaxlegomenon, just as תּאב is also exclusively peculiar to the Psalm before us; both are secondary forms of אבה. Love to God cannot indeed remain unresponded to. The experience of helping grace is a right belonging to those who love the God of revelation; love in return for love, salvation in return for the longing for salvation, is their prerogative. On the ground of this reciprocal relation the petitions in Psa 119:133-135 are then put up, coming back at last to the one chief prayer “teach me.” אמרה, Psa 119:133, is not merely a “promise” in this instance, but the declared will of God in general. כּל־און refers preeminently to all sin of disavowal (denying God), into which he might fall under outward and inward pressure (עשׁק). For he has round about him those who do not keep God's law. On account of these apostates (על לא as in Isa 53:9, equivalent to על־אשׁר לא) his eyes run down rivers of water (ירד as in Lam 3:48, with an accusative of the object). His mood is not that of unfeeling self-glorying, but of sorrow like that of Jeremiah, because of the contempt of Jahve, and the self-destruction of those who contemn Him.

Verses 137-144

The eightfold Tsade. God rules righteously and faithfully according to His word, for which the poet is accordingly zealous, although young and despised. The predicate ישׂר in Psa 119:137 precedes its subject משׁפּטיך (God's decisions in word and in deed) in the primary form (after the model of the verbal clause Psa 124:5), just as in German [and English] the predicative adjective remains undeclined. The accusatives צדק and אמוּנה in Psa 119:138 are not predicative (Hitzig), to which the former (“as righteousness”) - not the latter however - is not suited, but adverbial accusatives (in righteousness, in faithfulness), and מאד according to its position is subordinate to ואמונה as a virtual adjective (cf. Isa 47:9): the requirements of the revealed law proceed from a disposition towards and mode of dealing with men which is strictly determined by His holiness (צדק), and beyond measure faithfully and honestly designs the well-being of men (אמונה מאד). To see this good law of God despised by his persecutors stirs the poet up with a zeal, which brings him, from their side, to the brink of extreme destruction (Psa 69:10, cf. צמתּת, Psa 88:17). God's own utterance is indeed without spot, and therefore not to be carped at; it is pure, fire-proved, noblest metal (Psa 18:31; Psa 12:7), therefore he loves it, and does not, though young (lxx νεώτερος, Vulgate adolescentulus) and lightly esteemed, care for the remonstrances of his proud opponents who are old and more learned than himself (the organization of Psa 119:141 is like Psa 119:95, and frequently). The righteousness (צדקה) of the God of revelation becomes eternal righteousness (צדק), and His law remains eternal truth (אמת). צדקה is here the name of the attribute and of the action that is conditioned in accordance with it; צדק the name of the state that thoroughly accords with the idea of that which is right. So too in Psa 119:144 : צדק are Jahve's testimonies for ever, so that all creatures must give glory to their harmony with that which is absolutely right. To look ever deeper and deeper into this their perfection is the growing life of the spirit. The poet prays for this vivifying insight.

Verses 145-152

The eightfold Koph. Fidelity to God's word, and deliverance according to His promise, is the purport of his unceasing prayer. Even in the morning twilight (נשׁף) he was awake praying. It is not הנּשׁף, I anticipated the twilight; nor is קדּמתּי, according to Psa 89:14, equivalent to קדמתיך, but ואשׁוּע...קדּמתּי is the resolution of the otherwise customary construction קדמתי לשׁוּע, Jon 4:2, inasmuch as קדּם may signify “to go before” (Psa 68:26), and also “to make haste (with anything):” even early before the morning's dawn I cried. Instead of לדבריך the Kerî (Targum, Syriac, Jerome) more appropriately reads לדברך after Psa 119:74, Psa 119:81, Psa 119:114. But his eyes also anticipated the night-watches, inasmuch as they did not allow themselves to be caught not sleeping by any of them at their beginning (cf. לראשׁ, Lam 2:19). אמרה is here, as in Psa 119:140, Psa 119:158, and frequently, the whole word of God, whether in its requirements or its promises. In Psa 119:149 בּמשׁפּטך is a defective plural as in Psa 119:43 (vid., on Psa 119:37), according to Psa 119:156, although according to Psa 119:132 the singular (lxx, Targum, Jerome) would also be admissible: what is meant is God's order of salvation, or His appointments that relate thereto. The correlative relation of Psa 119:150 and Psa 119:151 is rendered natural by the position of the words. With קרבוּ (cf. קרב) is associated the idea of rushing upon him with hostile purpose, and with קרוב, as in Psa 69:19; Isa 58:2, of hastening to his succour. זמּה is infamy that is branded by the law: they go forth purposing this, but God's law is altogether self-verifying truth. And the poet has long gained the knowledge from it that it does not aim at merely temporary recompense. The sophisms of the apostates cannot therefore lead him astray. יסדתּם for יסדתּן, like המּה in Psa 119:111.

Verses 153-160

The eightfold Resh. Because God cannot suffer those who are faithful to His word to succumb, he supplicates His help against his persecutors. ריבה is Milra before the initial (half-guttural) Resh, as in Psa 43:1; Psa 74:22. The Lamed of לאמרתך is the Lamed of reference (with respect to Thine utterance), whether the reference be normative (= כאמרתך, Psa 119:58), as in Isa 11:3, or causal, Isa 25:2, Isa 55:5; Job 42:5. The predicate רחוק, like ישׂר in Psa 119:137, stands first in the primary, as yet indefinite form. Concerning Psa 119:156 vid., on Psa 119:149. At the sight of the faithless he felt a profound disgust; ואתקוטטה, pausal aorist, supply בּהם, Psa 139:21. It is all the same in the end whether we render אשׁר quippe qui or siquidem. ראשׁ in Psa 119:160 signifies the head-number of sum. If he reckons up the word of God in its separate parts and as a whole, truth is the denominator of the whole, truth is the sum-total. This supplicatory חיּני is repeated three times in this group. The nearer it draws towards its end the more importunate does the Psalm become.

Verses 161-168

The eightfold ש (both Shin and Sin)^[142].
In the midst of persecution God's word was still his fear, his joy, and his love, the object of his thanksgiving, and the ground of his hope. Princes persecute him without adequate cause, but his heart does not fear before them, but before God's words (the Kerî likes the singular, as in Psa 119:147), to deny which would be to him the greatest possible evil. It is, however, a fear that is associated with heartfelt joy (Psa 119:111). It is the joy of a conflict that is rewarded by rich spoil (Jdg 5:30, Isa 9:3). Not merely morning and evening, not merely three times a day (Psa 55:18), but seven times (שׁבע as in Lev 26:18; Pro 24:16), i.e., ever again and again, availing himself of every prayerful impulse, he gives thanks to God for His word, which so righteously decides and so correctly guides, is a source of transcendent peace to all who love it, and beside which one is not exposed to any danger of stumbling (מכשׁול, lxx σκάνδαλον, cf. 1Jo 2:10) without some effectual counter-working. In Psa 119:166 he speaks like Jacob in Gen 49:18, and can speak thus, inasmuch as he has followed earnestly and untiringly after sanctification. He endeavours to keep God's law most conscientiously, in proof of which he is able to appeal to God the Omniscient One. שׁמרה is here the 3rd praet., whereas in Psa 86:2 it is imperat. The future of אהב is both אהב and אהב, just as of אחז both אחז and אאחז.

Verses 169-176

The eightfold Tav. May God answer this his supplication as He has heard his praise, and interest Himself on behalf of His servant, the sheep that is exposed to great danger. The petitions “give me understanding” and “deliver me” go hand-in-hand, because the poet is one who is persecuted for the sake of his faith, and is just as much in need of the fortifying of his faith as of deliverance from the outward restraint that is put upon him. רנּה is a shrill audible prayer; תּחנּה, a fervent and urgent prayer. ענה, prop. to answer, signifies in Psa 119:172 to begin, strike up, attune (as does ἀποκρίνεσθαι also sometimes). According to the rule in Psa 50:23 the poet bases his petition for help upon the purpose of thankful praise of God and of His word. Knowing how to value rightly what he possesses, he is warranted in further supplicating and hoping for the good that he does not as yet possess. The “salvation” for which he longs (תּאב as in Psa 119:40, Psa 119:20) is redemption from the evil world, in which the life of his own soul is imperilled. May then God's judgments (defective plural, as in Psa 119:43, Psa 119:149, which the Syriac only takes a singular) succour him (יעזּרני, not יעזרני). God's hand, Psa 119:173, and God's word afford him succour; the two are involved in one another, the word is the medium of His hand. After this relationship of the poet to God's word, which is attested a hundredfold in the Psalm, it may seem strange that he can say of himself תּעיתי כּשׂה אבד; and perhaps the accentuation is correct when it does not allow itself to be determined by Isa 53:6, but interprets: If I have gone astray - seek Thou like a lost sheep Thy servant. שׂה אבד is a sheep that is lost (cf. אבדים as an appellation of the dispersion, Isa 27:13) and in imminent danger of total destruction (cf. Psa 31:13 with Lev 26:38). In connection with that interpretation which is followed by the interpunction, Psa 119:176 is also more easily connected with what precedes: his going astray is no apostasy; his home, to which he longs to return when he has been betrayed into by-ways, is beside the Lord. Refusal to Flee When in a Perilous Situation.
Psa 11:1-7, which likewise confidently sets the all-seeing eye of Jahve before the ungodly who carry out their murderous designs under cover of the darkness, is placed after Ps 10. The life of David (to whom even Hitzig and Ewald ascribe this Psalm) is threatened, the pillars of the state are shaken, they counsel the king to flee to the mountains. These are indications of the time when the rebellion of Absolom was secretly preparing, but still clearly discernible. Although hurrying on with a swift measure and clear in the principal thoughts, still this Psalm is not free from difficult points, just as it is with all the Psalms which contain similar dark passages from the internal condition of Israel. The gloomy condition of the nation seems to be reflected in the very language. The strophic plan is not easily discernible; nevertheless we cannot go far wrong in dividing the Psalm into two seven line strophes with a two line epiphonema.

The Fifteen Songs of Degrees, or Gradual Psalm - Ps. 120-134

These songs are all inscribed שׁיר המּעלות. The lxx, according to the most natural signification of the word, renders: ᾠδὴ τῶν ἀναβαθμων; the Italic and Vulgate, canticum graduum (whence the liturgical term “gradual Psalms”). The meaning at the same time remains obscure. When, however, Theodotion renders ᾆσμα τῶν ἀναβάσεων, Aquila and Symmachus ᾠδὴ εἰς τάς ἀναβάσεις (as though it were absolutely למּעלות, as in Psa 121:1), it looks even like an explanation. The fathers, more particularly Theodoret, and in general the Syria church, associate with it the idea of ἡ ἀπὸ Βαβυλῶνος ἐπάνοδος. Ewald has long advocated this view. In his Introduction to Die poetischen Bücher des Alten Bundes (1839), and elsewhere, he translated it “Songs of the Pilgrim caravans” or “of the homeward marches,” and explained these fifteen Psalms as old and new travelling songs of those returning from the Exile. The verb עלה certainly is the usual word for journeying to Palestine out of the Babylonian low country, as out of the country of the Egyptian Nile Valley. And the fact that the Return from the Exile is called המּעלה מבּבל in Ezr 7:9 is enticing. Some of these Psalms, as Psa 121:1-8, Psa 123:1, Psa 129:1-8, Psa 130:1-8, Ps 132, Psa 133:1-3, are also suited to this situation, or can at least be adapted to it. But Psa 120:1-7, if it is to be referred to the Exile, is a song that comes out of the midst of it; Psa 126:1-6 might, so far as its first half is concerned, be a travelling song of those returning, but according to its second half it is a prayer of those who have returned for the restoration of the whole of Israel, based upon thanksgiving; and Psa 122:1-9 assumes the existence and frequenting of the Temple and of the holy city, and Psa 134:1-3 the full exercise of the Temple-service. It is also inconvenient that מעלה, which in itself only expresses a journey up, not a journey homewards, is without any closer definition; and more particularly since, in connection with this form of the word, the signification of a something (a step, a sun-dial, rising thoughts. Eze 11:5) is at least just as natural as that of an action. שׁיר העלים would have been at once palpable. And what is meant by the plural? The interpretation of the plural of the different caravans or companies in which the exiles returned, assumes a usus loquendi with which we are altogether unacquainted.
Relatively more probable is the reference to the pilgrimage-journeyings at the three great feasts - according to a later Hebrew expression, the שׁלשׁ רגלים. This going up to Jerusalem required by the Law is also usually called עלה. So Agellius (1606), Herder, Eichhorn, Maurer, Hengstenberg, Keil, and others, and so now even Ewald in the second edition (1866) of the Introduction to Die Dichter des Alten Bundes, so Kamphausen, and Reuss in his treatise Chants de Pèlerinage ou petit Psautier des Pèlerins du second temple (in the Nouvelle Revue de Théologie, i. 273-311), and Liebusch in the Quedlinburg Easter Programm, 1866: “The pilgrim songs in the Fifth Book of the Psalter.” But מעלה in this signification is without precedent; and when Hupfeld says in opposition to this, “the fact that a noun accidentally does not occur in the Old Testament does not matter, since here at any rate it is a question of the interpretation of a later usage of the language,” we may reply that neither does the whole range of the post-biblical Hebrew exhibit any trace of this usage. Thenius accordingly tries another way of doing justice to the word. He understands מעלות of the different stations, i.e., stages of the journey up, that are to be found in connection with the festive journeys to high-lying Jerusalem. But the right name for “stations” would be מסּעות or מעמדות; and besides, the notion borrowed from the processions to Mount Calvary is without historical support in the religious observances of Israel. Thus, then, the needful ground in language and custom for referring this title of the Psalms to the journeyings up to the feasts is taken from under us; and the consideration that the first three and the last three songs are suited to the hymn-book of a festal pilgrimage, and that they all bear in them, as Liebusch has demonstrated, the characteristic features of the spiritual national song, is not able to decide the doubtful meaning of מעלות.
We will now put the later Jewish interpretation to the proof. According to Middoth ii. 5, Succa 15b, a semi-circular staircase with fifteen steps led out of the court of the Israelitish men (עזרת ישראל) down into the court of the women (עזרת נשׁים), and upon these fifteen steps, which correspond to the fifteen gradual Psalms, the Levites played musical instruments on the evening of the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles in connection with the joyful celebration of the water-drawing,^[143] and above them in the portal (upon the threshold of the Nicanor-gate or Agrippa-gate)^[144] stood two priests with trumpets. It has been said that this is a Talmudic fable invented on behalf of the inscription שׁיר המעלות, and that the fifteen steps are not out of Eze 40:26, Eze 40:31 by reading the two verses together. This aspersion is founded on ignorance. For the Talmud does not say in that passage that the fifteen Psalms have taken their name from the fifteen steps; it does not once say that these Psalms in particular were read aloud upon the fifteen steps, but it only places the fifteen steps on a parallel with the fifteen Psalms; and, moreover, interprets the name שׁיר המעלות quite differently, viz., from a legend concerning David and Ahithophel, Succa 53a, Maccoth 11a (differently rendered in the section Chelek of the tractate Sanhedrin in the Jerusalem Talmud). This legend to which the Targum inscription relates (vid., Buxtorf, Lex. Talmud. s.v. קפא) is absurd enough, but it has nothing to do with the fifteen steps. It is not until a later period that Jewish expositors say that the fifteen Psalms had their name from the fifteen steps.^[145]
Even Hippolytus must have heard something similar when he says (p. 190, ed. Lagarde): πάλιν τε αὐτοῦ εἰσί τινες τῶν ἀναβαθμῶν ᾠδαί, τὸν ἀριθμὸν πεντεκαίδεκα, ὅσοι καὶ οἱ ἀναβαθμοὶ τοῦ ναοῦ, τάχα δελοῦσαι τάς ἀναβάσεις περιέχεσθαι ἐν τῷ ἑβδόμῳ καὶ ὀγδόῳ ἀριθμῷ, upon which Hilary relies: esse autem in templo gradus quindecim historia nobis locuta est; viz., 15 (7 + 8) steps leading out of the court of the priests into the Holy of holies. In this, then, the allegory in which the interpretation of the church delighted for a long time seemed naturally at hand, viz., as Otmar Nachtgal explains, “Song of the steps or ascents, which indicate the spirit of those who ascend from earthly things to God.” The furtmaier Codex in Maihingen accordingly inscribes them “Psalm of the first step” (Psalm der ersten staffeln), and so on. If we leave this sensus anagogicus to itself, then the title, referred to the fifteen steps, would indeed not be inappropriate in itself (cf. Graduale or Gradale in the service of the Romish Church), but is of an external character such as we find nowhere else.^[146]
Gesenius has the merit of having first discerned the true meaning of the questioned inscription, inasmuch as first in 1812 (Hallische Lit. Zeitschrift, 1812, Nr. 205), and frequently since that time, he has taught that the fifteen songs have their name from their step-like progressive rhythm of the thoughts, and that consequently the name, like the triolet (roundelay) in Western poetry, does not refer to the liturgical usage, but to the technical structure. The correctness of this view has been duly appraised more particularly by De Wette, who adduces this rhythm of steps or degrees, too, among the more artificial rhythms. The songs are called Songs of degrees or Gradual Psalms as being songs that move onward towards a climax, and that by means of plokee' epiplokee'), i.e., a taking up again of the immediately preceding word by way of giving intensity to the expression; and they are placed together on account of this common characteristic, just like the Michtammim, which bear that name from a similar characteristic. The fact, as Liebusch objects, that there is no trace of מעלות in this figurative signification elsewhere, is of no consequence, since in the inscriptions of the Psalms in general we become acquainted with a technical language which (apart from a few echoes in the Chronicles) is without example elsewhere, in relation to poetical and musical technology. Neither are we refuted by the fact that this as it were climbing movement of the thoughts which plants upon a preceding word, and thus carried itself forward, is not without example even outside the range of these fifteen songs in the Psalter itself (e.g., Psa 93:1-5, Psa 96:1-13), as also elsewhere (Isa 17:12., Psa 26:5., and more particularly in the song of Deborah, Jdg 5:3, Jdg 5:5-6, etc.), and that it is not always carried out in the same manner in the fifteen Psalms. It is quite sufficient that the parallelism retires into the background here as nowhere else in fifteen songs that are linked together (even in Psa 125:1-5, Psa 127:1-5, Psa 128:1-6, Ps 132); ); and the onward course is represented with decided preference as a gradation or advance step by step, that which follows being based upon what goes before, and from that point advancing and ascending still higher.

Psalm 120

Cry of Distress When Surrounded by Contentious Men

1 TO Jahve in my distress Do I cry, and He answereth me. 2 O Jahve, deliver my soul from a lying lip, From a crafty tongue ! 3 What shall He give to thee, and what shall He further give Thou crafty tongue ? [to thee, 4 Arrows of a mighty one, sharpened, Together with coals of broom. 5 Woe is me that I sojourn in Meshech, That I dwell beside the tents of Kedar ! 6 Long enough hath my soul dwelt With those who hate peace. 7 I am peace ; yet when I speak, They are for war.
This first song of degrees attaches itself to Psa 119:176. The writer of Ps 119, surrounded on all sides by apostasy and persecution, compares himself to a sheep that is easily lost, which the shepherd has to seek and bring home if it is not to perish; and the writer of Psa 120:1-7 is also “as a sheep in the midst of wolves.” The period at which he lived is uncertain, and it is consequently also uncertain whether he had to endure such endless malignant attacks from foreign barbarians or from his own worldly-minded fellow-countrymen. E. Tilling has sought to establish a third possible occasion in his Disquisitio de ratione inscript. XV Pss. grad. (1765). He derives this and the following songs of degrees from the time immediately succeeding the Return from the Exile, when the secret and open hostility of the Samaritans and other neighbouring peoples (Neh 2:10, Neh 2:19; Neh 4:17, Neh 6:1) sought to keep down the rise of the young colony.

Verses 1-4

According to the pointing ויּענני, the poet appears to base his present petition, which from Psa 120:2 onwards is the substance of the whole Psalm, upon the fact of a previous answering of his prayers. For the petition in Psa 120:2 manifestly arises out of his deplorable situation, which is described in Psa 120:5. Nevertheless there are also other instances in which ויענני might have been expected, where the pointing is ויּענני (Psa 3:5; Jon 2:3), so that consequently ויּענני may, without any prejudice to the pointing, be taken as a believing expression of the result (cf. the future of the consequence in Job 9:16) of the present cry for help. צרתה, according to the original signification, is a form of the definition of a state or condition, as in Psa 3:3; 44:27; Psa 63:8, Jon 2:10, Hos 8:7, and בּצּרתה לּי = בּצּר־לּי, Psa 18:7, is based upon the customary expression צר לּי. In Psa 120:2 follows the petition which the poet sends up to Jahve in the certainty of being answered. רמיּה beside לשׁון, although there is no masc. רמי (cf. however the Aramaic רמּי, רמּאי), is taken as an adjective after the form טריּה, עניּה, which it is also perhaps in Mic 6:12. The parallelism would make לשׁון natural, like לשׁון מרמה in Psa 52:6; the pointing, which nevertheless disregarded this, will therefore rest upon tradition. The apostrophe in Psa 120:3 is addressed to the crafty tongue. לשׁון is certainly feminine as a rule; but whilst the tongue as such is feminine, the לשׁון רמיה of the address, as in Psa 52:6, refers to him who has such a kind of tongue (cf. Hitzig on Pro 12:27), and thereby the לך is justified; whereas the rendering, “what does it bring to thee, and what does it profit thee?” or, “of what use to thee and what advancement to thee is the crafty tongue?” is indeed possible so far as concerns the syntax (Ges. §147, e), but is unlikely as being ambiguous and confusing in expression. It is also to be inferred from the correspondence between מה־יּתּן לך וּמה־יּסיף לך and the formula of an oath כּה יעשׂה־לּך אלהים לכה יוסיף, 1Sa 3:17; 1Sa 20:13; 1Sa 25:22; 2Sa 3:35; Rth 1:17, that God is to be thought of as the subject of יתן and יסיף: “what will,” or rather, in accordance with the otherwise precative use of the formula and with the petition that here precedes: “what shall He (is He to) give to thee (נתן as in Hos 9:14), and what shall He add to thee, thou crafty tongue?” The reciprocal relation of Psa 120:4 to מה־יתן, and of. Psa 120:4 with the superadding עם to מה־יסיף, shows that Psa 120:4 is not now a characterizing of the tongue that continues the apostrophe to it, as Ewald supposes. Consequently Psa 120:4 gives the answer to Psa 120:3 with the twofold punishment which Jahve will cause the false tongue to feel. The question which the poet, sure of the answering of his cry for help, puts to the false tongue is designed to let the person addressed hear by a flight of sarcasm what he has to expect. The evil tongue is a sharp sword (Psa 57:5), a pointed arrow (Jer 9:7), and it is like a fire kindled of hell (Jam 3:6). The punishment, too, corresponds to this its nature and conduct (Psa 64:4). The “mighty one” (lxx δυνατός) is God Himself, as it is observed in B. Erachin 15b with a reference to Isa 42:13 : “There is none mighty by the Holy One, blessed is He.” He requites the evil tongue like with like. Arrows and coals (Psa 140:11) appear also in other instances among His means of punishment. It, which shot piercing arrows, is pierced by the sharpened arrows of an irresistibly mighty One; it, which set its neighbour in a fever of anguish, must endure the lasting, sure, and torturingly consuming heat of broom-coals. The lxx renders it in a general sense, σὺν τοῖς ἄνθραξι τοῖς ἐρημικοῖς; Aquila, following Jewish tradition, ἀρκευθίναις; but רתם, Arabic ratam , ratem , is the broom-shrub (e.g., uncommonly frequent in the Belkâ).

Verses 5-7

Since arrows and broom-fire, with which the evil tongue is requited, even now proceed from the tongue itself, the poet goes on with the deep heaving אויה (only found here). גּוּר with the accusative of that beside which one sojourns, as in Psa 5:5; Isa 33:14; Jdg 5:17. The Moschi (משׁך, the name of which the lxx takes as an appellative in the signification of long continuance; cf. the reverse instance in Isa 66:19 lxx) dwelt between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and it is impossible to dwell among them and the inhabitants of Kedar (vid., Psa 83:7) at one and the same time. Accordingly both these names of peoples are to be understood emblematically, with Saadia, Calvin, Amyraldus, and others, of homines similes ejusmodi barbaris et truculentis nationibus.^[147]
Meshech is reckoned to Magog in Eze 38:2, and the Kedarites are possessed by the lust of possession (Gen 16:12) of the bellum omnium contra omnes. These rough and quarrelsome characters have surrounded the poet (and his fellow-countrymen, with whom he perhaps comprehends himself) too long already. רבּת, abundantly (vid., Psa 65:10), appears, more particularly in 2Ch 30:17., as a later prose word. The להּ, which throws the action back upon the subject, gives a pleasant, lively colouring to the declaration, as in Psa 122:3; Psa 123:4. He on his part is peace (cf. Mic 5:5, Psa 119:4; Psa 110:3), inasmuch as the love of peace, willingness to be at peace, and a desire for peace fill his σου; but if he only opens his mouth, they are for war, they are abroad intent on war, their mood and their behaviour become forthwith hostile. Ewald (§362, b) construes it (following Saadia): and I - although I speak peace; but if כּי (like עד, Psa 141:10) might even have this position in the clause, yet וכי cannot. שׁלום is not on any account to be supplied in thought to אדבּר, as Hitzig suggests (after Psa 122:8; Psa 28:3; Psa 35:20). With the shrill dissonance of שׁלום and מלחמה the Psalm closes; and the cry for help with which it opens hovers over it, earnestly desiring its removal.

Psalm 121

The Consolation of Divine Protection

This song of degrees is the only one that is inscribed שׁיר למעלות and not שׁיר המעלות. The lxx, Targum, and Jerome render it as in the other instances; Aquila and Symmachus, on the contrary, ᾠδὴ (ᾆσμα) εἰς τάς ἀναβάσεις, as the Midrash Sifrı̂ also mystically interprets it: Song upon the steps, upon which God leads the righteous up into the other world. Those who explain המעלות of the homeward caravans or of the pilgrimages rightly regard this למעלות, occurring only once, as favouring their explanation. But the Lamed is that of the rule or standard. The most prominent distinguishing mark of Psa 121:1-8 is the step-like movement of the thoughts: it is formed למּעלות, after the manner of steps. The view that we have a pilgrim song before us is opposed by the beginning, which leads one to infer a firmly limited range of vision, and therefore a fixed place of abode and far removed from his native mountains. The tetrastichic arrangement of the Psalm is unmistakeable.

Verses 1-4

Apollinaris renders as meaninglessly as possible: ὄμματα δενδροκόμων ὀρέων ὑπερεξετάνυσσα - with a reproduction of the misapprehended ἦρα of the lxx. The expression in fact is אשּׂא, and not נשׂאתי. And the mountains towards which the psalmist raises his eyes are not any mountains whatsoever. In Ezekiel the designation of his native land from the standpoint of the Mesopotamian plain is “the mountains of Israel.” His longing gaze is directed towards the district of these mountains, they are his ḳibla, i.e., the sight-point of his prayer, as of Daniel's, Dan 6:11. To render “from which my help cometh” (Luther) is inadmissible. מאין is an interrogative even in Jos 2:4, where the question is an indirect one. The poet looks up to the mountains, the mountains of his native land, the holy mountains (Psa 133:3; Psa 137:1; Psa 125:2), when he longingly asks: whence will my help come? and to this question his longing desire itself returns the answer, that his help comes from no other quarter than from Jahve, the Maker of heaven and earth, from His who sits enthroned behind and upon these mountains, whose helpful power reaches to the remotest ends and corners of His creation, and with (עם) whom is help, i.e., both the willingness and the power to help, so that therefore help comes from nowhere but from (מן) Him alone. In Psa 121:1 the poet has propounded a question, and in Psa 121:2 replies to this question himself. In Psa 121:3 and further the answering one goes on speaking to the questioner. The poet is himself become objective, and his Ego, calm in God, promises him comfort, by unfolding to him the joyful prospects contained in that hope in Jahve. The subjective אל expresses a negative in both cases with an emotional rejection of that which is absolutely impossible. The poet says to himself: He will, indeed, surely not abandon thy foot to the tottering (למּוט, as in Psa 66:9, cf. Psa 55:23), thy Keeper will surely not slumber; and then confirms the assertion that this shall not come to pass by heightening the expression in accordance with the step-like character of the Psalm: Behold the Keeper of Israel slumbereth not and sleepeth not, i.e., He does not fall into slumber from weariness, and His life is not an alternate waking and sleeping. The eyes of His providence are ever open over Israel.

Verses 5-8

That which holds good of “the Keeper of Israel” the poet applies believingly to himself, the individual among God's people, in Psa 121:5 after Gen 28:15. Jahve is his Keeper, He is his shade upon his right hand (היּמין as in Jdg 20:16; 2Sa 20:9, and frequently; the construct state instead of an apposition, cf. e.g., Arab. jânbu ‘l - grbı̂yi, the side of the western = the western side), which protecting him and keeping him fresh and cool, covers him from the sun's burning heat. על, as in Psa 109:6; Psa 110:5, with the idea of an overshadowing that screens and spreads itself out over anything (cf. Num 14:9). To the figure of the shadow is appended the consolation in Psa 121:6. הכּה of the sun signifies to smite injuriously (Isa 49:10), plants, so that they wither (Psa 102:5), and the head (Jon 4:8), so that symptoms of sun-stroke (2Ki 4:19, Judith 8:2f.) appears. The transferring of the word of the moon is not zeugmatic. Even the moon's rays may become insupportable, may affect the eyes injuriously, and (more particularly in the equatorial regions) produce fatal inflammation of the brain.^[148]
From the hurtful influences of nature that are round about him the promise extends in Psa 121:7-8 in every direction. Jahve, says the poet to himself, will keep (guard) thee against all evil, of whatever kind it may be and whencesoever it may threaten; He will keep thy soul, and therefore thy life both inwardly and outwardly; He will keep (ישׁמר־, cf. on the other hand ישׁפּט־ in Psa 9:9) thy going out and coming in, i.e., all thy business and intercourse of life (Deu 28:6, and frequently); for, as Chrysostom observes, ἐν τούτοις ὁ βίος ἅπας, ἐν εἰσόδοις καὶ ἐξόδοις, therefore: everywhere and at all times; and that from this time forth even for ever. In connection with this the thought is natural, that the life of him who stands under the so universal and unbounded protection of eternal love can suffer no injury.

Psalm 122

A Well-Wishing Glance Back at the Pilgrims' City

If by “the mountains” in Psa 121:1 the mountains of the Holy Land are to be understood, it is also clear for what reason the collector placed this Song of degrees, which begins with the expression of joy at the pilgrimage to the house of Jahve, and therefore to the holy mountain, immediately after the preceding song. By its peace-breathing (שׁלום) contents it also, however, touches closely upon Psa 120:1-7. The poet utters aloud his hearty benedictory salutation to the holy city in remembrance of the delightful time during which he sojourned there as a visitor at the feast, and enjoyed its inspiring aspect. If in respect of the לדוד the Psalm were to be regarded as an old Davidic Psalm, it would belong to the series of those Psalms of the time of the persecution by Absalom, which cast a yearning look back towards home, the house of God (Psa 23:1-6; Psa 26:1-12, Psa 55:15; Psa 61:1-8, and more particularly Psa 63:1-11). But the לדוד is wanting in the lxx, Codd. Alex. and Vat.; and the Cod Sinait., which has ΤΩ ΔΑΔ, puts this before Psa 124:1-8, ει ̓ μὴ ὅτι κύριος κ. τ. λ., also, contrary to Codd. Alex. and Vat. Here it is occasioned by Psa 122:5, but without any critical discernment. The measures adopted by Jeroboam I show, moreover, that the pilgrimages to the feasts were customary even in the time of David and Solomon. The images of calves in Dan and Bethel, and the changing of the Feast of Tabernacles to another month, were intended to strengthen the political rupture, by breaking up the religious unity of the people and weaning them from visiting Jerusalem. The poet of the Psalm before us, however, lived much later. He lived, as is to be inferred with Hupfeld from Psa 122:3, in the time of the post-exilic Jerusalem which rose again out of its ruins. Thither he had been at one of the great feasts, and here, still quite full of the inspiring memory, he looks back towards the holy city; for, in spite of Reuss, Hupfeld, and Hitzig, Psa 122:1., so far as the style is concerned, are manifestly a retrospect.

Verses 1-3

The preterite שׂמחתי may signify: I rejoice (1Sa 2:1), just as much as: I rejoiced. Here in comparison with Psa 122:2 it is a retrospect; for היה with the participle has for the most part a retrospective signification, Gen 39:22; Deu 9:22, Deu 9:24; Jdg 1:7; Job 1:14. True, עמדות היוּ might also signify: they have been standing and still stand (as in Psa 10:14; Isa 59:2; Isa 30:20); but then why was it not more briefly expressed by עמדוּ (Psa 26:12)? The lxx correctly renders: εὐφράνθην and ἑστῶτες ἦσαν. The poet, now again on the journey homewards, or having returned home, calls to mind the joy with which the cry for setting out, “Let us go up to the house of Jahve!” filled him. When he and the other visitors to the feast had reached the goal of their pilgrimage, their feet came to a stand-still, as if spell-bound by the overpowering, glorious sight.^[149]
Reviving this memory, he exclaims: Jerusalem, O thou who art built up again - true, בּנה in itself only signifies “to build,” but here, where, if there is nothing to the contrary, a closed sense is to be assumed for the line of the verse, and in the midst of songs which reflect the joy and sorrow of the post-exilic restoration period, it obtains the same meaning as in Psa 102:17; Psa 147:2, and frequently (Gesenius: O Hierosolyma restituta). The parallel member, Psa 122:3, does not indeed require this sense, but is at least favourable to it. Luther's earlier rendering, “as a city which is compacted together,” was happier than his later rendering, “a city where they shall come together,” which requires a Niph. or Hithpa. instead of the passive. חבּר signifies, as in Exo 28:7, to be joined together, to be united into a whole; and יחדּו strengthens the idea of that which is harmoniously, perfectly, and snugly closed up (cf. Psa 133:1). The Kaph of כּעיר is the so-called Kaph veritatis: Jerusalem has risen again out of its ruined and razed condition, the breaches and gaps are done away with (Isa 58:12), it stands there as a closely compacted city, in which house joins on to house. Thus has the poet seen it, and the recollection fills him with rapture.^[150]

Verses 4-5

The imposing character of the impression was still greatly enhanced by the consideration, that this is the city where at all times the twelve tribes of God's nation (which were still distinguished as its elements even after the Exile, Rom 11:1; Luk 2:36; Jam 1:1) came together at the three great feasts. The use of the שׁ twice as equivalent to אשׁר is (as in Canticles) appropriate to the ornamental, happy, miniature-like manner of these Songs of degrees. In שׁשּׁם the שׁם is, as in Ecc 1:7, equivalent to שׁמּה, which on the other hand in Psa 122:5 is no more than an emphatic שׁם (cf. Psa 76:4; Psa 68:7). עלוּ affirms a habit (cf. Job 1:4) of the past, which extends into the present. עדוּת לישׂראל is not an accusative of the definition or destination (Ew. §300, c), but an apposition to the previous clause, as e.g., in Lev 23:14, Lev 23:21, Lev 23:31 (Hitzig), referring to the appointing in Exo 23:17; Exo 34:23; Deu 16:16. The custom, which arose thus, is confirmed in Psa 122:5 from the fact, that Jerusalem, the city of the one national sanctuary, was at the same time the city of the Davidic kingship. The phrase ישׁב למשׁפּט is here transferred from the judicial persons (cf. Psa 29:10 with Psa 9:5; Psa 28:6), who sit in judgment, to the seats (thrones) which are set down and stand there fro judgment (cf. Psa 125:1, and θρόνος ἔκειτο, Rev 4:2). The Targum is thinking of seats in the Temple, viz., the raised (in the second Temple resting upon pillars) seat of the king in the court of the Israelitish men near the שׁער העליון, but למשׁפט points to the palace, 1Ki 7:7. In the flourishing age of the Davidic kingship this was also the highest court of judgment of the land; the king was the chief judge (2Sa 15:2; 1Ki 3:16), and the sons, brothers, or kinsmen of the king were his assessors and advisers. In the time of the poet it is different; but the attractiveness of Jerusalem, not only as the city of Jahve, but also as the city of David, remains the same for all times.

Verses 6-9

When the poet thus calls up the picture of his country's “city of peace” before his mind, the picture of the glory which it still ever possesses, and of the greater glory which it had formerly, he spreads out his hands over it in the distance, blessing it in the kindling of his love, and calls upon all his fellow-countrymen round about and in all places: apprecamini salutem Hierosolymis. So Gesenius correctly (Thesaurus, p. 1347); for just as שׁאל לו לשׁלום signifies to inquire after any one's well-being, and to greet him with the question: השׁלום לך (Jer 15:5), so שׁאל שׁלום signifies to find out any one's prosperity by asking, to gladly know and gladly see that it is well with him, and therefore to be animated by the wish that he may prosper; Syriac, שׁאל שׁלמא ד directly: to salute any one; for the interrogatory השׁלום לך and the well-wishing שׁלום לך, εἰρήνη σοί (Luk 10:5; Joh 20:19.), have both of them the same source and meaning. The reading אהליך, commended by Ewald, is a recollection of Job 12:6 that is violently brought in here. The loving ones are comprehended with the beloved one, the children with the mother. שׁלה forms an alliteration with שׁלום; the emphatic form ישׁליוּ occurs even in other instances out of pause (e.g., Psa 57:2). In Psa 122:7 the alliteration of שׁלום and שׁלוה is again taken up, and both accord with the name of Jerusalem. Ad elegantiam facit, as Venema observes, perpetua vocum ad se invicem et omnium ad nomen Hierosolymae alliteratio. Both together mark the Song of degrees as such. Happiness, cries out the poet to the holy city from afar, be within thy bulwarks, prosperity within thy palaces, i.e., without and within. חיל, ramparts, circumvallation (from חוּל, to surround, Arabic hawl, round about, equally correct whether written חיל or חל), and ארמנות as the parallel word, as in Psa 48:14. The twofold motive of such an earnest wish for peace is love for the brethren and love for the house of God. For the sake of the brethren is he cheerfully resolved to speak peace (τὰ πρὸς ἐιρήνην αὐτῆς, Luk 19:42) concerning (דּבּר בּ, as in Psa 87:3, Deu 6:7, lxx περὶ σοῦ; cf. דּבּר שׁלום with אל and ל, to speak peace to, Psa 85:9; Est 10:3) Jerusalem, for the sake of the house of Jahve will he strive after good (i.e., that which tends to her well-being) to her (like בּקּשׁ טובה ל in Neh 2:10, cf. דּרשׁ שׁלום, Deu 23:6, Jer 29:7). For although he is now again far from Jerusalem after the visit that is over, he still remains united in love to the holy city as being the goal of his longing, and to those who dwell there as being his brethren and friends. Jerusalem is and will remain the heart of all Israel as surely as Jahve who has His house there, is the God of all Israel.

Psalm 123

Upward Glance to the Lord in Times of Contempt

This Psalm is joined to the preceding Psalm by the community of the divine name Jahve our God. Alsted (died 1638) gives it the brief, ingenious inscription oculus sperans. It is an upward glance of waiting faith to Jahve under tyrannical oppression. The fact that this Psalm appears in a rhyming form, “as scarcely any other piece in the Old Testament” (Reuss), comes only from those inflexional rhymes which creep in of themselves in the tephilla style.

Verses 1-2

The destinies of all men, and in particular of the church, are in the hand of the King who sits enthroned in the unapproachable glory of the heavens and rules over all things, and of the Judge who decides all things. Up to Him the poet raises his eyes, and to Him the church, together with which he may call Him “Jahve our God,” just as the eyes of servants are directed towards the hand of their lord, the eyes of a maid towards the hand of her mistress; for this hand regulates the whole house, and they wait upon their winks and signs with most eager attention. Those of Israel are Jahve's servants, Israel the church is Jahve's maid. In His hand lies its future. At length He will take compassion on His own. Therefore its longing gaze goes forth towards Him, without being wearied, until He shall graciously turn its distress. With reference to the i of היּשׁבי, vid., on Psa 113:1-9, Psa 114:1-8. אדוניהם is their common lord; for since in the antitype the sovereign Lord is meant, it will be conceived of as plur. excellentiae, just as in general it occurs only rarely (Gen 19:2, Gen 19:18; Jer 27:4) as an actual plural.

Verses 3-4

The second strophe takes up the “be gracious unto us” as it were in echo. It begins with a Kyrie eleison, which is confirmed in a crescendo manner after the form of steps. The church is already abundantly satiated with ignominy. רב is an abstract “much,” and רבּה, Psa 62:3, something great (vid., Böttcher, Lehrbuch, §624). The subjectivizing, intensive להּ accords with Psa 120:6 - probably an indication of one and the same author. בּוּז is strengthened by לעג, like בּז in Eze 36:4. The article of הלּעג is restrospectively demonstrative: full of such scorn of the haughty (Ew. §290, d). הבּוּז is also retrospectively demonstrative; but since a repetition of the article for the fourth time would have been inelegant, the poet here says לגאיונים with the Lamed, which serves as a circumlocution of the genitive. The Masora reckons this word among the fifteen “words that are written as one and are to be read as two.” The Kerî runs viz., לגאי יונים, superbis oppressorum (יונים, part. Kal, like היּונה Zep 3:1, and frequently). But apart from the consideration that instead of גּאי, from the unknown גּאה, it might more readily be pointed גּאי, from גּאה (a form of nouns indicating defects, contracted גּא), this genitival construction appears to be far-fetched, and, inasmuch as it makes a distinction among the oppressors, inappropriate. The poet surely meant לגאיונים or לגּאיונים. This word גּאיון (after the form רעיון, אביון, עליון) is perhaps an intentional new formation of the poet. Saadia interprets it after the Talmudic לגיון, legio; but how could one expect to find such a Grecized Latin word (λεγεών) in the Psalter! dunash ben-Labrat (about 960) regards גאיונים as a compound word in the signification of הגּאים היונים. In fact the poet may have chosen the otherwise unused adjectival form גּאיונים because it reminds one of יונים, although it is not a compound word like דּביונים. If the Psalm is a Maccabaean Psalm, it is natural to find in לגאיונים an allusion to the despotic domination of the יונים.

Psalm 124

The Deliverer from Death in Waters and in a Snare

The statement “the stream had gone over our soul” of this fifth Son of degrees, coincides with the statement “our soul is full enough” of the fourth; the two Psalms also meet in the synonymous new formations גּאיונים and זידונים, which also look very much as though they were formed in allusion to contemporary history. The לדוד is wanting in the lxx, Codd. Alex. and Vat., here as in Psa 122:1-9, and with the exception of the Targum is wanting in general in the ancient versions, and therefore is not so much as established as a point of textual criticism. It is a Psalm in the manner of the Davidic Psalms, to which it is closely allied in the metaphors of the overwhelming waters, Psa 18:5, Psa 18:17 (cf. Psa 144:7), Psa 69:2., and of the little bird; cf. also on לוּלי Psa 27:13, on אדם used of hostile men Psa 56:12, on בּלע חיּים Psa 55:16, on בּרוּך ה Psa 28:6; Psa 31:22. This beautiful song makes its modern origin known by its Aramaizing character, and by the delight, after the manner of the later poetry, in all kinds of embellishments of language. The art of the form consists less in strophic symmetry than in this, that in order to take one step forward it always goes back half a step. Luther's imitation (1524), “Were God not with us at this time” (Wäre Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit), bears the inscription “The true believers' safeguard.”

Verses 1-5

It is commonly rendered, “If it had not been Jahve who was for us.” But, notwithstanding the subject that is placed first (cf. Gen 23:13), the שׁ belongs to the לוּלי; since in the Aramaizing Hebrew (cf. on the other hand Gen 31:42) לוּלי שׁ (cf. Arab. lawlâ an) signifies nisi (prop. nisi quod), as in the Aramaic (דּ) שׁ (לואי) לוי, o si (prop. o si quod). The אזי, peculiar to this Psalm in the Old Testament, instead of אז follows the model of the dialectic אדין, Arab. iḏan, Syr. hāden (הידין, הדין). In order to begin the apodosis of לוּלי (לוּלא) emphatically the older language makes use of the confirmatory כּי, Gen 31:42; Gen 43:10; here we have אזי (well rendered by the lxx ἄρα), as in Psa 119:92. The Lamed of היה לנו is raphe in both instances, according to the rule discussed above, p. 373. When men (אדם) rose up against Israel and their anger was kindled against them, they who were feeble in themselves over against the hostile world would have been swallowed up alive if they had not had Jahve for them, if they had not had Him on their side. This “swallowing up alive” is said elsewhere of Hades, which suddenly and forcibly snatches away its victims, Psa 55:16; Pro 1:12; here, however, as Psa 124:6 shows, it is said of the enemies, who are represented as wild beasts. In Psa 124:4 the hostile power which rolls over them is likened to an overflowing stream, as in Isa 8:7., the Assyrian. נחלה, a stream or river, is Milel; it is first of all accusative: towards the stream (Num 34:5); then, however, it is also used as a nominative, like לילה, המּותה, and the like (cf. common Greek ἡ νύχθα, ἡ νεόντητα); so that תה- is related to ת- ( ה-) as נה-, מו- to ן- and ם- (Böttcher, §615). These latest Psalms are fond of such embellishments by means of adorned forms and Aramaic or Aramaizing words. זידונים is a word which is indeed not unhebraic in its formation, but is more indigenous to Chaldee; it is the Targum word for זדים in Psa 86:14; Psa 119:51, Psa 119:78 (also in Psa 54:5 for זרים), although according to Levy the MSS do not present זידונין but זידנין. In the passage before us the Targum renders: the king who is like to the proud waters (למוי זידוניּא) of the sea (Antiochus Epiphanes? - a Scholium explains οἱ ὑπερήφανοι). With reference to עבר before a plural subject, vid., Ges. §147.

Verses 6-8

After the fact of the divine succour has been expressed, in Psa 124:6 follows the thanksgiving for it, and in Psa 124:7 the joyful shout of the rescued one. In Psa 124:6 the enemies are conceived of as beasts of prey on account of their bloodthirstiness, just as the worldly empires are in the Book of Daniel; in Psa 124:7 as “fowlers” on account of their cunning. According to the punctuation it is not to be rendered: Our soul is like a bird that is escaped, in which case it would have been accented בפשׁנו כצפור, but: our soul (subject with Rebia magnum) is as a bird (כּצפור as in Hos 11:11; Pro 23:32; Job 14:2, instead of the syntactically more usual כּצּפור) escaped out of the snare of him who lays snares (יוקשׁ, elsewhere יקושׁ, יקוּשׁ, a fowler, Psa 91:3). נשׁבר (with ā beside Rebia) is 3rd praet.: the snare was burst, and we - we became free. In Psa 124:8 (cf. Psa 121:2; Psa 134:3) the universal, and here pertinent thought, viz., the help of Israel is in the name of Jahve, the Creator of the world, i.e., in Him who is manifest as such and is continually verifying Himself, forms the epiphonematic close. Whether the power of the world seeks to make the church of Jahve like to itself or to annihilate it, it is not a disavowal of its God, but a faithful confession, stedfast even to death, that leads to its deliverance.

Psalm 125

Israel's Bulwark against Temptation to Apostasy

The favourite word Israel furnished the outward occasion for annexing this Psalm to the preceding. The situation is like that in Psa 123:1-4 and Psa 124:1-8. The people are under foreign dominion. In this lies the seductive inducement to apostasy. The pious and the apostate ones are already separated. Those who have remained faithful shall not, however, always remain enslaved. Round about Jerusalem are mountains, but more important still: Jahve, of rocks the firmest, Jahve encompasses His people.
That this Psalm is one of the latest, appears from the circumstantial expression “the upright in their hearts,” instead of the old one, “the upright of heart,” from פעלי האון instead of the former פעלי און, and also from למען לא (beside this passage occurring only in Psa 119:11, Psa 119:80; Eze 19:9; Eze 26:20; Zec 12:7) instead of למען אשׁר לא or פּן.

Verses 1-2

The stedfastness which those who trust in Jahve prove in the midst of every kind of temptation and assault is likened to Mount Zion, because the God to whom they believingly cling is He who sits enthroned on Zion. The future ישׁב signifies: He sits and will sit, that is to say, He continues to sit, cf. Psa 9:8; Psa 122:5. Older expositors are of opinion that the heavenly Zion must be understood on account of the Chaldaean and the Roman catastrophes; but these, in fact, only came upon the buildings on the mountain, not upon the mountain itself, which in itself and according to its appointed destiny (vid., Mic 3:12; Mic 4:1) remained unshaken. in Psa 125:2 also it is none other than the earthly Jerusalem that is meant. The holy city has a natural circumvallation of mountains, and the holy nation that dwells and worships therein has a still infinitely higher defence in Jahve, who encompasses it round (vid., on Psa 34:8), as perhaps a wall of fire (Zec 2:5), or an impassably broad and mighty river (Isa 33:21); a statement which is also now confirmed, for, etc. Instead of inferring from the clause Psa 125:2 that which is to be expected with לכן, the poet confirms it with כי by that which is surely to be expected.

Verse 3

The pressure of the worldly power, which now lies heavily upon the holy land, will not last for ever; the duration of the calamity is exactly proportioned to the power of resistance of the righteous, whom God proves and purifies by calamity, but not without at the same time graciously preserving them. “The rod of wickedness” is the heathen sceptre, and “the righteous” are the Israelites who hold fast to the religion of their fathers. The holy land, whose sole entitled inheritors are these righteous, is called their “lot” (גורל, κλῆρος = κληρονομία). נוּח signifies to alight or settle down anywhere, and having alighted, to lean upon or rest (cf. Isa 11:2 with Joh 1:32, ἔμεινεν). The lxx renders οὐκ ἀφφήσει, i.e., לא ינּיח (cf. on the other hand יניח, He shall let down, cause to come down, in Isa 30:32). Not for a continuance shall the sceptre of heathen tyranny rest upon the holy land, God will not suffer that: in order that the righteous may not at length, by virtue of the power which pressure and use exercises over men, also participate in the prevailing ungodly doings. שׁלח with Beth: to seize upon anything wrongfully, or even only (as in Job 28:9) to lay one's hand upon anything (frequently with על). As here in the case of עולתה, in Psa 80:3 too the form that is the same as the locative is combined with a preposition.

Verses 4-5

On the ground of the strong faith in Psa 125:1. and of the confident hope in Psa 125:3, the petition now arises that Jahve would speedily bestow the earnestly desired blessing of freedom upon the faithful ones, and on the other hand remove the cowardly lit. those afraid to confess God and those who have fellowship with apostasy, together with the declared wicked ones, out of the way. For such is the meaning of Psa 125:4. טובים (in Proverbs alternating with the “righteous,” Pro 2:20, the opposite being the “wicked,” רשׁעים, Pro 14:19) are here those who truly believe and rightly act in accordance with the good will of God,^[151] or, as the parallel member of the verse explains (where לישׁרים did not require the article on account of the addition), those who in the bottom of their heart are uprightly disposed, as God desires to have it. The poet supplicates good for them, viz., preservation against denying God and deliverance out of slavery; for those, on the contrary, who bend (הטּה) their crooked paths, i.e., turn aside their paths in a crooked direction from the right way (עקלקלּותם, cf. Jdg 5:6, no less than in Amo 2:7; Pro 17:23, an accusative of the object, which is more natural than that it is the accusative of the direction, after Num 22:23 extrem., cf. Job 23:11; Isa 30:11) - for these he wishes that Jahve would clear them away (הוליך like Arab. ahlk , perire facere = perdere) together with the workers of evil, i.e., the open, manifest sinners, to whom these lukewarm and sly, false and equivocal ones are in no way inferior as a source of danger to the church. lxx correctly: τοὺς δὲ ἐκκλίνοντας εἰς τάς στραγγαλιὰς (Aquila διαπλοκάς, Symmachus σκολιότητας, Theodotion διεστραμμένα) ἀπάξει κύριος μετὰ κ. τ. λ.. Finally, the poet, stretching out his hand over Israel as if pronouncing the benediction of the priest, gathers up all his hopes, prayers, and wishes into the one prayer: “Peace be upon Israel.” He means “the Israel of God,” Gal 6:16. Upon this Israel he calls down peace from above. Peace is the end of tyranny, hostility, dismemberment, unrest, and terror; peace is freedom and harmony and unity and security and blessedness.

Psalm 126

The Harvest of Joy after the Sowing of Tears

It is with this Psalm, which the favourite word Zion connects with the preceding Psalm, exactly as with Psa 85:1-13, which also gives thanks for the restoration of the captive ones of Israel on the one hand, and on the other hand has to complain of the wrath that is still not entirely removed, and prays for a national restoration. There are expositors indeed who also transfer the grateful retrospect with which this Song of degrees (Psa 126:1-3), like that Korahitic Psalm (Psa 126:2-4), begins, into the future (among the translators Luther is at least more consistent than the earlier ones); but they do this for reasons which are refuted by Psa 85:1-13, and which are at once silenced when brought face to face with the requirements of the syntax.

Verses 1-3

When passages like Isa 1:9; Gen 47:25, or others where והיינו is perf. consec., are appealed to in order to prove that היינוּ כּחלמים may signify erimus quasi somniantes, they are instances that are different in point of syntax. Any other rendering than that of the lxx is here impossible, viz.: Ἐν τῷ ἐπιστρέψαι κύριον τὴν αἰχμαλωσίαν Σιὼν ἐγενήθημεν ὡς παρακεκλημένοι (כּנחמים? - Jerome correctly, quasi somniantes). It is, however, just as erroneous when Jerome goes on to render: tunc implebitur risu os nostrum; for it is true the future after אז has a future signification in passages where the context relates to matters of future history, as in Psa 96:12; Zep 3:9, but it always has the signification of the imperfect after the key-note of the historical past has once been struck, Exo 15:1; Jos 8:30; Jos 10:12; 1Ki 11:7; 1Ki 16:21; 2Ki 15:16; Job 38:21; it is therefore, tunc implebatur. It is the exiles at home again upon the soil of their fatherland who here cast back a glance into the happy time when their destiny suddenly took another turn, by the God of Israel disposing the heart of the conqueror of Babylon to set them at liberty, and to send them to their native land in an honourable manner. שׁיבת is not equivalent to שׁבית, nor is there any necessity to read it thus (Olshausen, Böttcher, and Hupfeld). שׁיבה (from שׁוּב, like בּיאה, קימה) signifies the return, and then those returning; it is, certainly, an innovation of this very late poet. When Jahve brought home the homeward-bound ones of Zion - the poet means to say - we were as dreamers. Does he mean by this that the long seventy years' term of affliction lay behind us like a vanished dream (Joseph Kimchi), or that the redemption that broke upon us so suddenly seemed to us at first not to be a reality but a beautiful dream? The tenor of the language favours the latter: as those not really passing through such circumstances, but only dreaming. Then - the poet goes on to say - our mouth was filled with laughter (Job 8:21) and our tongue with a shout of joy, inasmuch, namely, as the impression of the good fortune which contrasted so strongly with our trouble hitherto, compelled us to open our mouth wide in order that our joy might break forth in a full stream, and our jubilant mood impelled our tongue to utter shouts of joy, which knew no limit because of the inexhaustible matter of our rejoicing. And how awe-inspiring was Israel's position at that time among the peoples! and what astonishment the marvellous change of Israel's lot produced upon them! Even the heathen confessed that it was Jahve's work, and that He had done great things for them (Joe 2:20., 1Sa 12:24) - the glorious predictions of Isaiah, as in Psa 45:14; 52:10, and elsewhere, were being fulfilled. The church on its part seals that confession coming from the mouth of the heathen. This it is that made them so joyful, that God had acknowledged them by such a mighty deed.

Verses 4-6

But still the work so mightily and graciously begun is not completed. Those who up to the present time have returned, out of whose heart this Psalm is, as it were, composed, are only like a small vanguard in relation to the whole nation. Instead of שׁבותנו the Kerî here reads שׁביתנוּ, from שׁבית, Num 21:29, after the form בכית in Gen 50:4. As we read elsewhere that Jerusalem yearns after her children, and Jahve solemnly assures her, “thou shalt put them all on as jewels and gird thyself like a bride” (Isa 49:18), so here the poet proceeds from the idea that the holy land yearns after an abundant, reanimating influx of population, as the Negeb (i.e., the Judaean south country, Gen 20:1, and in general the south country lying towards the desert of Sinai) thirsts for the rain-water streams, which disappear in the summer season and regularly return in the winter season. Concerning אפיק, “a water-holding channel,” vid., on Psa 18:16. If we translate converte captivitatem nostram (as Jerome does, following the lxx), we shall not know what to do with the figure, whereas in connection with the rendering reduc captivos nostros it is just as beautifully adapted to the object as to the governing verb. If we have rightly referred negeb not to the land of the Exile but to the Land of Promise, whose appearance at this time is still so unlike the promise, we shall now also understand by those who sow in tears not the exiles, but those who have already returned home, who are again sowing the old soil of their native land, and that with tears, because the ground is so parched that there is little hope of the seed springing up. But this tearful sowing will be followed by a joyful harvest. One is reminded here of the drought and failure of the crops with which the new colony was visited in the time of Haggai, and of the coming blessing promised by the prophet with a view to the work of the building of the Temple being vigorously carried forward. Here, however, the tearful sowing is only an emblem of the new foundation-laying, which really took place not without many tears (Ezr 3:12), amidst sorrowful and depressed circumstances; but in its general sense the language of the Psalm coincides with the language of the Preacher on the Mount, Mat 5:4 : Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The subject to Psa 126:6 is the husbandman, and without a figure, every member of the ecclesia pressa. The gerundial construction in Psa 126:6 (as in 2Sa 3:16; Jer 50:4, cf. the more Indo-Germanic style of expression in 2Sa 15:30) depicts the continual passing along, here the going to and fro of the sorrowfully pensive man; and Psa 126:6 the undoubted coming and sure appearing of him who is highly blessed beyond expectation. The former bears משׁך הזּרע, the seed-draught, i.e., the handful of seed taken from the rest for casting out (for משׁך הזּרע in Amo 9:13 signifies to cast forth the seed along the furrows); the latter his sheaves, the produce (תּבוּאה), such as puts him to the blush, of his, as it appeared to him, forlorn sowing. As by the sowing we are to understand everything that each individual contributes towards the building up of the kingdom of God, so by the sheaves, the wholesome fruit which, by God bestowing His blessing upon it beyond our prayer and comprehension, springs up from it.

Psalm 127

Everything Depends upon the Blessing of God^[152]

The inscribed לשׁלמה is only added to this Song of degrees because there was found in Psa 127:2 not only an allusion to the name Jedidiah, which Solomon received from Nathan (2Sa 12:25), but also to his being endowed with wisdom and riches in the dream at Gibeon (1Ki 3:5.). And to these is still to be added the Proverbs-like form of the Psalm; for, like the proverb-song, the extended form of the Mashal, it consists of a double string of proverbs, the expression of which reminds one in many ways of the Book of Proverbs (עצבים in Psa 127:2, toilsome efforts, as in Pro 5:10; מאחרי, as in Pro 23:30; בּני הנּעוּרים in Psa 127:4, sons begotten in one's youth; בּשּׁער in Psa 127:5, as in Pro 22:22; Pro 24:7), and which together are like the unfolding of the proverb, Pro 10:22 : The blessing of Jahve, it maketh rich, and labour addeth nothing beside it. Even Theodoret observes, on the natural assumption that Psa 127:1 points to the building of the Temple, how much better the Psalm suits the time of Zerubbabel and Joshua, when the building of the Temple was imperilled by the hostile neighbouring peoples; and in connection with the relatively small number of those who had returned home out of the Exile, a numerous family, and more especially many sons, must have seemed to be a doubly and threefoldly precious blessing from God.

Verses 1-2

The poet proves that everything depends upon the blessing of God from examples taken from the God-ordained life of the family and of the state. The rearing of the house which affords us protection, and the stability of the city in which we securely and peaceably dwell, the acquisition of possessions that maintain and adorn life, the begetting and rearing of sons that may contribute substantial support to the father as he grows old - all these are things which depend upon the blessing of God without natural preliminary conditions being able to guarantee them, well-devised arrangements to ensure them, unwearied labours to obtain them by force, or impatient care and murmuring to get them by defiance. Many a man builds himself a house, but he is not able to carry out the building of it, or he dies before he is able to take possession of it, or the building fails through unforeseen misfortunes, or, if it succeeds, becomes a prey to violent destruction: if God Himself do not build it, they labour thereon (עמל בּ, Jon 4:10; Ecc 2:21) in vain who build it. Many a city is well-ordered, and seems to be secured by wise precautions against every misfortune, against fire and sudden attack; but if God Himself do not guard it, it is in vain that those to whom its protection is entrusted give themselves no sleep and perform (שׁקד, a word that has only come into frequent use since the literature of the Salomonic age) the duties of their office with the utmost devotion. The perfect in the apodosis affirms what has been done on the part of man to be ineffectual if the former is not done on God's part; cf. Num 32:23. Many rise up early in order to get to their work, and delay the sitting down as along as possible; i.e., not: the lying down (Hupfeld), for that is שׁכב, not ישׁב; but to take a seat in order to rest a little, and, as what follows shows, to eat (Hitzig). קוּם and שׁבת stand opposed to one another: the latter cannot therefore mean to remain sitting at one's work, in favour of which Isa 5:11 (where בּבּקר and בּנּשׁף form an antithesis) cannot be properly compared. 1Sa 20:24 shows that prior to the incursion of the Grecian custom they did not take their meals lying or reclining (ἀνα- or κατακείμενος), but sitting. It is vain for you - the poet exclaims to them - it will not after all bring hat you think to be able to acquire; in so doing you eat only the bread of sorrow, i.e., bread that is procured with toil and trouble (cf. Gen 3:17, בּעצּבון): כּן, in like manner, i.e., the same as you are able to procure only by toilsome and anxious efforts, God gives to His beloved (Psa 60:7; Deu 33:12) שׁנא (= שׁנה), in sleep (an adverbial accusative like לילה בּּקר, ערב), i.e., without restless self-activity, in a state of self-forgetful renunciation, and modest, calm surrender to Him: “God bestows His gifts during the night,” says a German proverb, and a Greek proverb even says: εὕδοντι κύρτος αἱρεῖ. Böttcher takes כּן in the sense of “so = without anything further;” and כן certainly has this meaning sometimes (vid., introduction to Psa 110:1-7), but not in this passage, where, as referring back, it stands at the head of the clause, and where what this mimic כן would import lies in the word שׁנא.

Verses 3-5

With הנּה it goes on to refer to a specially striking example in support of the maxim that everything depends upon God's blessing. פּרי הבּטן (Gen 30:2; Deu 7:13) beside בּנים also admits of the including of daughters. It is with בּנים (recalling Gen 30:18) just as with נהלת. Just as the latter in this passage denotes an inheritance not according to hereditary right, but in accordance with the free-will of the giver, so the former denotes not a reward that is paid out as in duty bound, but a recompense that is bestowed according to one's free judgment, and in fact looked for in accordance with a promise given, but cannot by any means be demanded. Sons are a blessed gift from above. They are - especially when they are the offspring of a youthful marriage (opp. בּן־זקנים, Gen 37:3; Gen 44:20), and accordingly themselves strong and hearty (Gen 49:3), and at the time that the father is growing old are in the bloom of their years - like arrows in the hand of a warrior. This is a comparison which the circumstances of his time made natural to the poet, in which the sword was carried side by side with the trowel, and the work of national restoration had to be defended step by step against open enemies, envious neighbours, and false brethren. It was not sufficient then to have arrows in the quiver; one was obligated to have them not merely at hand, but in the hand (בּיד), in order to be able to discharge them and defend one's self. What a treasure, in such a time when it was needful to be constantly ready for fighting, defensive or offensive, was that which youthful sons afforded to the elderly father and weaker members of the family! Happy is the man - the poet exclaims - who has his quiver, i.e., his house, full of such arrows, in order to be able to deal out to the enemies as many arrows as may be needed. The father and such a host of sons surrounding him (this is the complex notion of the subject) form a phalanx not to be broken through. If they have to speak with enemies in the gate - i.e., candidly to upbraid them with their wrong, or to ward off their unjust accusation - they shall not be ashamed, i.e., not be overawed, disheartened, or disarmed. Gesenius in his Thesaurus, as Ibn-Jachja has already done, takes דּבּר here in the signification “to destroy;” but in Gen 34:13 this Piel signifies to deal behind one's back (deceitfully), and in 2Ch 22:10 to get rid of by assassination. This shade of the notion, which proceeds from Arab. dbr , pone esse (vid., Psa 18:48; Psa 28:2), does not suit the passage before us, and the expression לא־יבשׁוּ is favourable to the idea of the gate as being the forum, which arises from taking ידברו in its ordinary signification. Unjust judges, malicious accusers, and false witnesses retire shy and faint-hearted before a family so capable of defending itself. We read the opposite of this in Job 5:4 of sons upon whom the curse of their fathers rests.

Psalm 128

The Family Prosperity of the God-Fearing Man

Just as Psa 127:1-5 is appended to Psa 126:1-6 because the fact that Israel was so surprised by the redemption out of exile that they thought they were dreaming, finds its interpretation in the universal truth that God bestows upon him whom He loves, in sleep, that which others are not able to acquire by toiling and moiling the day and night: so Psa 128:1-6 follows Psa 127:1-5 for the same reason as Psa 2:1-12 follows Psa 1:1-6. In both instances they are Psalms placed together, of which one begins with ashrê and one ends with ashrê . In other respects Psa 128:1-6 and Psa 127:1-5 supplement one another. They are related to one another much as the New Testament parables of the treasure in the field and the one pearl are related. That which makes man happy is represented in Psa 127:1-5 as a gift coming as a blessing, and in Psa 128:1-6 as a reward coming as a blessing, that which is briefly indicated in the word שׂכר in Psa 127:3 being here expanded and unfolded. There it appears as a gift of grace in contrast to the God-estranged self-activity of man, here as a fruit of the ora et labora. Ewald considers this and the preceding Psalm to be songs to be sung at table. But they are ill-suited for this purpose; for they contain personal mirrorings instead of petitions, and instead of benedictions of those who are about to partake of the food provided.

Verses 1-3

The כּי in Psa 128:2 signifies neither “for” (Aquila, κόπον τῶν ταρσῶν σου ὅτι φάγεσαι), nor “when” (Symmachus, κόπον χειρῶν σου ἐωθίων); it is the directly affirmative כּי, which is sometimes thus placed after other words in a clause (Psa 118:10-12, Gen 18:20; Gen 41:32). The proof in favour of this asseverating כּי is the very usual כּי עתּה in the apodoses of hypothetical protases, or even כּי־אז in Job 11:15, or also only כּי in Isa 7:9, 1Sa 14:39; “surely then;” the transition from the confirmative to the affirmative signification is evident from Psa 128:4 of the Psalm before us. To support one's self by one's own labour is a duty which even a Paul did not wish to avoid (Act 20:34), and so it is a great good fortune (טוב לך as in Psa 119:71) to eat the produce of the labour of one's own hands (lxx , τοὺς καρποὺς τῶν πόνων, or according to an original reading, τοὺς πὸνους τῶν καρπῶν);^[153]
For he who can make himself useful to others and still is also independent of them, he eats the bread of blessing which God gives, which is sweeter than the bread of charity which men give. In close connection with this is the prosperity of a house that is at peace and contented within itself, of an amiable and tranquil and hopeful (rich in hope) family life. “Thy wife (אשׁתּך, found only here, for אשׁתּך) is as a fruit-producing vine.” פּריּה for פּרה, from פּרה = פּרי, with the Jod of the root retained, like בוכיּה, Lam 1:16. The figure of the vine is admirably suited to the wife, who is a shoot or sprig of the husband, and stands in need of the man's support as the vine needs a stick or the wall of a house (pergula). בּירכּתי ביתך does not belong to the figure, as Kimchi is of opinion, who thinks of a vine starting out of the room and climbing up in the open air outside. What is meant is the angle, corner, or nook (ירכּתי, in relation to things and artificial, equivalent to the natural ירכי), i.e., the background, the privacy of the house, where the housewife, who is not to be seen much out of doors, leads a quiet life, entirely devoted to the happiness of her husband and her family. The children springing from such a nobel vine, planted around the family table, are like olive shoots or cuttings; cf. in Euripides, Medea, 1098: τέκνων ἐν οἴκοις γλυκερὸν βλάστημα, and Herc. Fur. 839: καλλίπαις στέφανος. thus fresh as young layered small olive-trees and thus promising are they.

Verses 4-6

Pointing back to this charming picture of family life, the poet goes on to say: behold, for thus = behold, thus is the man actually blessed who fears Jahve. כּי confirms the reality of the matter of fact to which the הנּה points. The promissory future in Psa 128:5 is followed by imperatives which call upon the God-fearing man at once to do that which, in accordance with the promises, stands before him as certain. מציּון as in Psa 134:3; Psa 20:3. בּנים לבניך instead of בּני בניך gives a designed indefiniteness to the first member of the combination. Every blessing the individual enjoys comes from the God of salvation, who has taken up His abode in Zion, and is perfected in participation in the prosperity of the holy city and of the whole church, of which it is the centre. A New Testament song would here open up the prospect of the heavenly Jerusalem. But the character of limitation to this present world that is stamped upon the Old Testament does not admit of this. The promise refers only to a present participation in the well-being of Jerusalem (Zec 8:15) and to long life prolonged in one's children's children; and in this sense calls down intercessorily peace upon Israel in all its members, and in all places and all ages.

Psalm 129

The End of the Oppressors of Zion

Just as Psa 124:1-8 with the words “let Israel say” was followed by Psa 125:1-5 with “peace be upon Israel,” so Psa 128:1-6 with “peace be upon Israel” is followed by Psa 129:1-8 with “let Israel say.” This Psa 129:1-8 has not only the call “let Israel say,” but also the situation of a deliverance that has been experienced (cf. Psa 129:4 with Psa 124:6.), from which point it looks gratefully back and confidently forward into the future, and an Aramaic tinge that is noticeable here and there by the side of all other classical character of form, in common with Psa 124:1-8.

Verses 1-2

Israel is gratefully to confess that, however much and sorely it was oppressed, it still has not succumbed. רבּת, together with רבּה, has occurred already in Psa 65:10; Psa 62:3, and it becomes usual in the post-exilic language, Psa 120:6; Psa 123:4, 2Ch 30:18; Syriac rebath. The expression “from my youth” glances back to the time of the Egyptian bondage; for the time of the sojourn in Egypt was the time of Israel's youth (Hos 2:17, Hos 11:1, Jer 2:2; Eze 23:3). The protasis Psa 129:1 is repeated in an interlinked, chain-like conjunction in order to complete the thought; for Psa 129:2 is the turning-point, where גּם, having reference to the whole negative clause, signifies “also” in the sense of “nevertheless,” ὅμως (synon. בּכל־בּכל), as in Eze 16:28; Ecc 6:7, cf. above, Psa 119:24 : although they oppressed me much and sore, yet have they not overpowered me (the construction is like Num 13:30, and frequently).

Verses 3-5

Elsewhere it is said that the enemies have driven over Israel (Psa 66:12), or have gone over its back (Isa 51:23); here the customary figurative language חרשׁ און in Job 4:8 (cf. Hos 10:13) is extended to another figure of hostile dealing: without compassion and without consideration they ill-treated the stretched-forth back of the people who were held in subjection, as though it were arable land, and, without restraining their ferocity and setting a limit to their spoiling of the enslaved people and country, they drew their furrow-strip (מעניתם, according to the Kerî מענותם) long. But מענה does not signify (as Keil on 1Sa 14:14 is of opinion, although explaining the passage more correctly than Thenius) the furrow (= תּלם, גּדוּד), but, like Arab. ma‛nât, a strip of arable land which the ploughman takes in hand at one time, at both ends of which consequently the ploughing team (צמד) always comes to a stand, turns round, and ploughs a new furrow; from ענה, to bend, turn (vid., Wetzstein's Excursus II p. 861). It is therefore: they drew their furrow-turning long (dative of the object instead of the accusative with Hiph., as e.g., in Isa 29:2, cf. with Piel in Psa 34:4; Psa 116:16, and Kal Psa 69:6, after the Aramaic style, although it is not unhebraic). Righteous is Jahve - this is an universal truth, which has been verified in the present circumstances; - He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked (עבות as in Psa 2:3; here, however, it is suggested by the metaphor in Psa 129:3, cf. Job 39:10; lxx αὐχένας, i.e., ענוק), with which they held Israel bound. From that which has just been experienced Israel derives the hope that all Zion's haters (a newly coined name for the enemies of the religion of Israel) will be obliged to retreat with shame and confusion.

Verses 6-8

The poet illustrates the fate that overtakes them by means of a picture borrowed from Isaiah and worked up (Psa 37:27): they become like “grass of the housetops,” etc. שׁ is a relative to יבשׁ (quod exarescit), and קדמת, priusquam, is Hebraized after מן־קדמת דּנה in Dan 6:11, or מקּדמת דּנה in Ezr 5:11. שׁלף elsewhere has the signification “to draw forth” of a sword, shoe, or arrow, which is followed by the lxx, Theodotion, and the Quinta: πρὸ τοῦ ἐκσπασθῆναι, before it is plucked. But side by side with the ἐκσπασθῆναι of the lxx we also find the reading exanthee'sai; and in this sense Jerome renders (statim ut) viruerit, Symmachus ἐκκαυλῆσαι (to shoot into a stalk), Aquila ἀνέθαλεν, the Sexta ἐκστερεῶσαι (to attain to full solidity). The Targum paraphrases שׁלף in both senses: to shoot up and to pluck off. The former signification, after which Venema interprets: antequam se evaginet vel evaginetur, i.e., antequam e vaginulis suis se evolvat et succrescat, is also advocated by Parchon, Kimchi, and Aben-Ezra. In the same sense von Ortenberg conjectures שׁחלף. Since the grass of the house-tops or roofs, if one wishes to pull it up, can be pulled up just as well when it is withered as when it is green, and since it is the most natural thing to take חציר as the subject to שׁלף, we decide in favour of the intransitive signification, “to put itself forth, to develope, shoot forth into ear.” The roof-grass withers before it has put forth ears of blossoms, just because it has no deep root, and therefore cannot stand against the heat of the sun.^[154]
The poet pursues the figure of the grass of the house-tops still further. The encompassing lap or bosom (κόλπος) is called elsewhere חצן (Isa 49:22; Neh 5:13); here it is חצן, like the Arabic ḥiḍn (diminutive ḥoḍein), of the same root with מחוז, a creek, in Psa 107:30. The enemies of Israel are as grass upon the house-tops, which is not garnered in; their life closes with sure destruction, the germ of which they (without any need for any rooting out) carry within themselves. The observation of Knapp, that any Western poet would have left off with Psa 129:6, is based upon the error that Psa 129:7-8 are an idle embellishment. The greeting addressed to the reapers in Psa 129:8 is taken from life; it is not denied even to heathen reapers. Similarly Boaz (Rth 2:4) greets them with “Jahve be with you,” and receivers the counter-salutation, “Jahve bless thee.” Here it is the passers-by who call out to those who are harvesting: The blessing (בּרכּת) of Jahve happen to you (אליכם,^[155] as in the Aaronitish blessing), and (since “we bless you in the name of Jahve” would be a purposeless excess of politeness in the mouth of the same speakers) receive in their turn the counter-salutation: We bless you in the name of Jahve. As a contrast it follows that there is before the righteous a garnering in of that which they have sown amidst the exchange of joyful benedictory greetings.

Psalm 130

De Profundis

1 OUT of the depths do I call unto Thee, Jahve. 2 Lord, O hearken to my voice, Let Thine ears be attentive To the voice of my supplication ! 3 If Thou keepest iniquities, Jah — Lord, who can stand ? ! 4 Yet with Thee is the forgiveness, That Thou mayest be feared. 5 / hope in Jahve, my soul hopeth, And upon His word do I wait. 6 My soul waiteth for the Lord, More than the night-watchers for the morning, The night-watchers for the morning. 7 Wait, Israel, for Jahve, For with Jahve is the mercy, And abundantly is there with Him redemption. 8 And He will redeem Israel From all its iniquities.
Luther, being once asked which were the best Psalms, replied, Psalmi Paulini; and when his companions at table pressed him to say which these were, he answered: Psa 32:1-11; Ps 51; Psa 130:1-8, and Psa 143:1-12. In fact in Psa 130:1-8 the condemnability of the natural man, the freeness of mercy, and the spiritual nature of redemption are expressed in a manner thoroughly Pauline. It is the sixth among the seven Psalmi poenitentiales (Psa 6:1-10, Psa 32:1-11, Ps 38, Ps 51, Ps 102, Psa 130:1-8, Psa 143:1-12).
Even the chronicler had this Psalm before him in the present classification, which puts it near to Ps 132; ; for the independent addition with which he enriches Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the Temple, 2Ch 6:40-42, is compiled out of passages of Psa 130:1-8 (Psa 130:2, cf. the divine response, 2Ch 7:15) and Ps 132 (Psa 132:8, Psa 132:16, Psa 132:10).
The mutual relation of Psa 130:1-8 to Ps 86 has been already noticed there. The two Psalms are first attempts at adding a third, Adonajic style to the Jehovic and Elohimic Psalm-style. There Adonaj is repeated seven times, and three times in this Psalm. There are also other indications that the writer of Psa 130:1-8 was acquainted with that Ps 86 (compare Psa 130:2, שׁמעה בקולי, with Psa 86:6, והקשׁיבה בּקול; Psa 130:2, לקול תּחנוּני, with Psa 86:6, בּקול תּחנוּנותי; Psa 130:4, עמּך הסּליחה, with Psa 86:5, וסלּח; Psa 130:8, החסד עם ה/ הח, with Psa 86:5, Psa 86:15, רב־חסד). The fact that קשּׁוּב (after the form שׁכּוּל), occurs besides only in those dependent passages of the chronicler, and קשּׁב only in Neh 1:6, Neh 1:11, as סליחה besides only in Dan 9:9; Neh 9:17, brings our Psalm down into a later period of the language; and moreover Ps 86 is not Davidic.

Verses 1-4

The depths (מעמקּים) are not the depths of the soul, but the deep outward and inward distress in which the poet is sunk as in deep waters (Psa 69:3, Psa 69:15). Out of these depths he cries to the God of salvation, and importunately prays Him who rules all things and can do all things to grant him a compliant hearing (שׁמע בּ, Gen 21:12; Gen 26:13; Gen 30:6, and other passages). God heard indeed even in Himself, as being the omniscient One, the softest and most secret as well as the loudest utterance; but, as Hilary observes, fides officium suum exsequitur, ut Dei auditionem roget, ut qui per naturam suam audit per orantis precem dignetur audire. In this sense the poet prays that His ears may be turned קשּׁבות (duller collateral form of קשּׁב, to be in the condition of arrectae aures), with strained attention, to his loud and urgent petition (Psa 28:2). His life hangs upon the thread of the divine compassion. If God preserves iniquities, who can stand before Him?! He preserves them (שׁמר) when He puts them down to one (Psa 32:2) and keeps them in remembrance (Gen 37:11), or, as it is figuratively expressed in Job 14:17, sealed up as it were in custody in order to punish them when the measure is full. The inevitable consequence of this is the destruction of the sinner, for nothing can stand against the punitive justice of God (Nah 1:6; Mal 3:2; Ezr 9:15). If God should show Himself as Jāh,^[156] no creature would be able to stand before Him, who is Adonaj, and can therefore carry out His judicial will or purpose (Isa 51:16). He does not, however, act thus. He does not proceed according to the legal stringency of recompensative justice. This thought, which fills up the pause after the question, but is not directly expressed, is confirmed by the following כּי, which therefore, as in Job 22:2; Job 31:18; Job 39:14; Isa 28:28 (cf. Ecc 5:6), introduces the opposite. With the Lord is the willingness to forgive (הסּליחה), in order that He may be feared; i.e., He forgives, as it is expressed elsewhere (e.g., Psa 79:9), for His Name's sake: He seeks therein the glorifying of His Name. He will, as the sole Author of our salvation, who, putting all vain-glorying to shame, causes mercy instead of justice to take its course with us (cf. Psa 51:6), be reverenced; and gives the sinner occasion, ground, and material for reverential thanksgiving and praise by bestowing “forgiveness” upon him in the plenitude of absolutely free grace.

Verses 5-8

Therefore the sinner need not, therefore too the poet will not, despair. He hopes in Jahve (acc. obj. as in Psa 25:5, Psa 25:21; Psa 40:2), his soul hopes; hoping in and waiting upon God is the mood of his inmost and of his whole being. He waits upon God's word, the word of His salvation (Psa 119:81), which, if it penetrates into the soul and cleaves there, calms all unrest, and by the appropriated consolation of forgiveness transforms and enlightens for it everything in it and outside of it. His soul is לאדני, i.e., stedfastly and continually directed towards Him; as Chr. A. Crusius when on his death-bed, with hands and eyes uplifted to heaven, joyfully exclaimed: “My soul is full of the mercy of Jesus Christ. My whole soul is towards God.” The meaning of לאדני becomes at once clear in itself from Psa 143:6, and is defined moreover, without supplying שׁמרת (Hitzig), according to the following לבּקר. Towards the Lord he is expectantly turned, like those who in the night-time wait for the morning. The repetition of the expression “those who watch for the morning” (cf. Isa 21:11) gives the impression of protracted, painful waiting. The wrath, in the sphere of which the poet now finds himself, is a nightly darkness, out of which he wishes to be removed into the sunny realm of love (Mal 4:2); not he alone, however, but at the same time all Israel, whose need is the same, and for whom therefore believing waiting is likewise the way to salvation. With Jahve, and with Him exclusively, with Him, however, also in all its fulness, is החסד (contrary to Ps 62:13, without any pausal change in accordance with the varying of the segolates), the mercy, which removes the guilt of sin and its consequences, and puts freedom, peace, and joy into the heart. And plenteous (הרבּה, an adverbial infin. absol., used here, as in Eze 21:20, as an adjective) is with Him redemption; i.e., He possesses in the richest measure the willingness, the power, and the wisdom, which are needed to procure redemption, which rises up as a wall of partition (Exo 8:19) between destruction and those imperilled. To Him, therefore, must the individual, if he will obtain mercy, to Him must His people, look up hopingly; and this hope directed to Him shall not be put to shame: He, in the fulness of the might of His free grace (Isa 43:25), will redeem Israel from all its iniquities, by forgiving them and removing their unhappy inward and outward consequences. With this promise (cf. Psa 25:22) the poet comforts himself. He means complete and final redemption, above all, in the genuinely New Testament manner, spiritual redemption.

Psalm 131

CHILD-LIKE RESIGNATION TO GOD.

Verses 1-3

This little song is inscribed לדוד because it is like an echo of the answer (2Sa 6:21.) with which David repelled the mocking observation of Michal when he danced before the Ark in a linen ephod, and therefore not in kingly attire, but in the common raiment of the priests: I esteem myself still less than I now show it, and I appear base in mine own eyes. In general David is the model of the state of mind which the poet expresses here. He did not push himself forward, but suffered himself to be drawn forth out of seclusion. He did not take possession of the throne violently, but after Samuel has anointed him he willingly and patiently traverses the long, thorny, circuitous way of deep abasement, until he receives from God's hand that which God's promise had assured to him. The persecution by Saul lasted about ten years, and his kingship in Hebron, at first only incipient, seven years and a half. He left it entirely to God to remove Saul and Ishbosheth. He let Shimei curse. He left Jerusalem before Absalom. Submission to God's guidance, resignation to His dispensations, contentment with that which was allotted to him, are the distinguishing traits of his noble character, which the poet of this Psalm indirectly holds up to himself and to his contemporaries as a mirror, viz., to the Israel of the period after the Exile, which, in connection with small beginnings under difficult circumstances, had been taught humbly contented and calm waiting.
With לבּי לא־גבהּ the poet repudiates pride as being the state of his soul; with לא־רמוּ עיני (lo - ramū’ as in Pro 30:13, and before Ajin, e.g., also in Gen 26:10; Isa 11:2, in accordance with which the erroneous placing of the accent in Baer's text is to be corrected), pride of countenance and bearing; and with ולא־הלּכתּי, pride of endeavour and mode of action. Pride has its seat in the heart, in the eyes especially it finds its expression, and great things are its sphere in which it diligently exercises itself. The opposite of “great things” (Jer 23:3; Jer 45:5) is not that which is little, mean, but that which is small; and the opposite of “things too wonderful for me” (Gen 18:14) is not that which is trivial, but that which is attainable. אם־לא does not open a conditional protasis, for where is the indication of the apodosis to be found? Nor does it signify “but,” a meaning it also has not in Gen 24:38; Eze 3:6. In these passages too, as in the passage before us, it is asseverating, being derived from the usual formula of an oath: verily I have, etc. שׁוּה signifies (Isa 28:25) to level the surface of a field by ploughing it up, and has an ethical sense here, like ישׂר with its opposites עקב and עפּל. The Poel סּומם is to be understood according to דּוּמיּה in Psa 62:2, and דּוּמם in Lam 3:26. He has levelled or made smooth his soul, so that humility is its entire and uniform state; he has calmed it so that it is silent and at rest, and lets God speak and work in it and for it: it is like an even surface, and like the calm surface of a lake. Ewald and Hupfeld's rendering: “as a weaned child on its mother, so my soul, being weaned, lies on me,” is refuted by the consideration that it ought at least to be כּגמוּלה, but more correctly כּן גמולה; but it is also besides opposed by the article which is swallowed up in כּגּמל, according to which it is to be rendered: like one weaned beside its mother (here כּגמול on account of the determinative collateral definition), like the weaned one (here כּגּמול because without any collateral definition: cf. with Hitzig, Deu 32:2, and the like; moreover, also, because referring back to the first גמול, cf. Hab 3:8), is my soul beside me (Hitzig, Hengstenberg, and most expositors). As a weaned child - viz. not one that is only just begun to be weaned, but an actually weaned child (גּמל, cognate גּמר eta, to bring to an end, more particularly to bring suckling to an end, to wean) - lies upon its mother without crying impatiently and craving for its mother's breast, but contented with the fact that it has its mother - like such a weaned child is his soul upon him, i.e., in relation to his Ego (which is conceived of in עלי as having the soul upon itself, cf. Psa 42:7; Jer 8:18; Psychology, S. 151f., tr. p. 180): his soul, which is by nature restless and craving, is stilled; it does not long after earthly enjoyment and earthly good that God should give these to it, but it is satisfied in the fellowship of God, it finds full satisfaction in Him, it is satisfied (satiated) in Him.
By the closing strain, Psa 131:3, the individual language of the Psalm comes to have a reference to the congregation at large. Israel is to renounce all self-boasting and all self-activity, and to wait in lowliness and quietness upon its God from now and for evermore. For He resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

Psalm 132

==Prayer for the House of God and the House of David==
Psa 131:1-3 designedly precedes Psalms 132. The former has grown out of the memory of an utterance of David when he brought home the Ark, and the latter begins with the remembrance of David's humbly zealous endeavour to obtain a settled and worthy abode for the God who sits enthroned above the Ark among His people. It is the only Psalm in which the sacred Ark is mentioned. The chronicler put Psa 132:8-10 into the mouth of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple (2Ch 6:41.). After a passage borrowed from Psa 130:2 which is attached by עתּה to Solomon's Temple-dedication prayer, he appends further borrowed passages out of Psalms 132 with ועתּה. The variations in these verses of the Psalms, which are annexed by him with a free hand and from memory (Jahve Elohim for 'Jahve, לנוּחך for למנוּחתך, תּשׁוּעה for צדק, בּטּוב ישׂמחוּ for ירנּנוּ), just as much prove that he has altered the Psalm, and not reversely (as Hitzig persistently maintains), that the psalmist has borrowed from the Chronicles. It is even still distinctly to be seen how the memory of Isa 55:3 has influenced the close of 2Ch 6:42 in the chronicler, just as the memory of Isa 55:2 has perhaps also influenced the close of 2Ch 6:41.
The psalmist supplicates the divine favour for the anointed of Jahve for David's sake. In this connection this anointed one is neither the high priest, nor Israel, which is never so named (vid., Hab 3:13), nor David himself, who “in all the necessities of his race and people stands before God,” as Hengstenberg asserts, in order to be able to assign this Son of degrees, as others, likewise to the post-exilic time of the new colony. Zerubbabel might more readily be understood (Baur), with whom, according to the closing prophecy of the Book of Haggai, a new period of the Davidic dominion is said to begin. But even Zerubbabel, the פּחת יהוּדה, could not be called משׁיח, for this he was not. The chronicler applies the Psalm in accordance with its contents. It is suited to the mouth of Solomon. The view that it was composed by Solomon himself when the Ark of the covenant was removed out of the tent-temple on Zion into the Temple-building (Amyraldus, De Wette, Tholuck, and others), is favoured by the relation of the circumstances, as they are narrated in 2Ch 5:5., to the desires of the Psalm, and a close kinship of the Psalm with Ps 72 in breadth, repetitions of words, and a laboured forward movement which is here and there a somewhat uncertain advance. At all events it belongs to a time in which the Davidic throne was still standing and the sacred Ark was not as yet irrecoverably lost. That which, according to 2 Sam. 6, 2Sa 7:1, David did for the glory of Jahve, and on the other hand is promised to him by Jahve, is here made by a post-Davidic poet into the foundation of a hopeful intercessory prayer for the kingship and priesthood of Zion and the church presided over by both.
The Psalm consists of four ten-line strophes. Only in connection with the first could any objection be raised, and the strophe be looked upon as only consisting of nine lines. But the other strophes decide the question of its measure; and the breaking up of the weighty Psa 132:1 into two lines follows the accentuation, which divides it into two parts and places את by itself as being את (according to Accentssystem, xviii. 2, with Mugrash). Each strophe is adorned once with the name of David; and moreover the step-like progress which comes back to what has been said, and takes up the thread and carries it forward, cannot fail to be recognised.

Verses 1-5

One is said to remember anything to another when he requites him something that he has done for him, or when he does for him what he has promised him. It is the post-Davidic church which here reminds Jahve of the hereinafter mentioned promises (of the “mercies of David,” 2Ch 6:42, cf. Isa 55:3) with which He has responded to David's ענות. By this verbal substantive of the Pual is meant all the care and trouble which David had in order to procure a worthy abode for the sanctuary of Jahve. ענה ב signifies to trouble or harass one's self about anything, afflictari (as frequently in the Book of Ecclesiastes); the Pual here denotes the self-imposed trouble, or even that imposed by outward circumsntaces, such as the tedious wars, of long, unsuccessful, and yet never relaxed endeavours (1Ki 5:17). For he had vowed unto God that he would give himself absolutely no rest until he had obtained a fixed abode for Jahve. What he said to Nathan (2Sa 7:2) is an indication of this vowed resolve, which was now in a time of triumphant peace, as it seemed, ready for being carried out, after the first step towards it had already been taken in the removal of the Ark of the covenant to Zion (2 Sam. 6); ); for 2 Sam 7 is appended to 2 Sam. 6 out of its chronological order and only on account of the internal connection. After the bringing home of the Ark, which had been long yearned for (Psa 101:2), and did not take place without difficulties and terrors, was accomplished, a series of years again passed over, during which David always carried about with him the thought of erecting God a Temple-building. And when he had received the tidings through Nathan that he should not build God a house, but that it should be done by his son and successor, he nevertheless did as much towards the carrying out of the desire of his heart as was possible in connection with this declaration of the will of Jahve. He consecrated the site of the future Temple, he procured the necessary means and materials for the building of it, he made all the necessary arrangements for the future Temple-service, he inspirited the people for the gigantic work of building that was before them, and handed over to his son the model for it, as it is all related to us in detail by the chronicler. The divine name “the mighty One of Jacob” is taken from Gen 49:24, as in Isa 1:24; Isa 49:26; Isa 60:16. The Philistines with their Dagon had been made to feel this mighty Rock of Jacob when they took the sacred Ark along with them (1Sa 5:1-12). With אם David solemnly declares what he is resolved not to do. The meaning of the hyperbolically expressed vow in the form of an oath is that for so long he will not rejoice at his own dwelling-house, nor give himself up to sleep that is free from anxiety; in fine, for so long he will not rest. The genitives after אהל and ערשׂ are appositional genitives; Ps 44 delights in similar combinations of synonyms. יצוּעי (Latin strata mea) is a poetical plural, as also is משׁכּנות. With תּנוּמה (which is always said of the eyelids, Gen 31:40; Pro 6:4; Ecc 8:16, not of the eyes) alternates שׁנת (according to another reading שׁנת) for שׁנה. The āth is the same as in נחלת in Psa 16:6, cf. 60:13, Exo 15:2, and frequently. This Aramaizing rejection of the syllable before the tone is, however, without example elsewhere. The lxx adds to Psa 132:4, καὶ ἀνάπαυσιν τοῖς κροτάφοις μου (וּמנוּחה לרקּותי), but this is a disagreeable overloading of the verse.

Verses 6-10

In Psa 132:6 begins the language of the church, which in this Psalm reminds Jahve of His promises and comforts itself with them. Olshausen regards this Psa 132:6 as altogether inexplicable. The interpretation nevertheless has some safe starting-points. (1) Since the subject spoken of is the founding of a fixed sanctuary, and one worthy of Jahve, the suffix of שׁמענוּה (with Chateph as in Hos 8:2, Ew. §60, a) and מצאנוּה refers to the Ark of the covenant, which is fem. also in other instances (1Sa 4:17; 2Ch 8:11). (2) The Ark of the covenant, fetched up out of Shiloh by the Israelites to the battle at Ebenezer, fell into the hands of the victors, and remained, having been again given up by them, for twenty years in Kirjath-Jearim (1Sa 7:1.), until David removed it out of this Judaean district to Zion (2Sa 6:2-4; cf. 2Ch 1:4). What is then more natural than that שׂדי־יער is a poetical appellation of Kirjath-Jearim (cf. “the field of Zoan” in Psa 78:12)? Kirjath-Jearim has, as a general thing, very varying names. It is also called Kirjath-ha-jearim in Jer 26:20 (Kirjath-'arim in Ezr 2:25, cf. Jos 18:28), Kirjath-ba'al in Jos 16:1-10 :50, Ba'alah in Jos 15:9; 1Ch 13:6 (cf. Har-ha-ba'alah, Jos 15:11, with Har-Jearim in Jos 15:10), and, as it seems, even Ba'alê Jehudah in 2Sa 6:2. Why should it not also have been called Ja'ar side by side with Kirjath-Jearim, and more especially if the mountainous district, to which the mention of a hill and mountain of Jearim points, was, as the name “city of the wood” implies, at the same time a wooded district? We therefore fall in with Kühnöl's (1799) rendering: we found it in the meadows of Jaar, and with his remark: “Jaar is a shortened name of the city of Kirjath-Jearim.”
The question now further arises as to what Ephrathah is intended to mean. This is an ancient name of Bethlehem; but the Ark of the covenant never was in Bethlehem. Accordingly Hengstenberg interprets, “We knew of it in Bethlehem (where David had spent his youth) only by hearsay, no one had seen it; we found it in Kirjath-Jearim, yonder in the wooded environs of the city, where it was as it were buried in darkness and solitude.” So even Anton Hulsius (1650): Ipse David loquitur, qui dicit illam ipsam arcam, de qua quum adhuc Bethlehemi versaretur inaudivisset, postea a se (vel majroibus suis ipso adhuc minorenni) inventam fuisse in campis Jaar. But (1) the supposition that David's words are continued here does not harmonize with the way in which they are introduced in Psa 132:2, according to which they cannot possibly extend beyond the vow that follows. (2) If the church is speaking, one does not see why Bethlehem is mentioned in particular as the place of the hearsay. (3) We heard it in Ephrathah cannot well mean anything else than, per antiptosin (as in Gen 1:4, but without כּי), we heard that it was in Ephrathah. But the Ark was before Kirjath-Jearim in Shiloh. The former lay in the tribe of Judah close to the western borders of Benjamin, the latter in the midst of the tribe of Ephraim. Now since אפרתי quite as often means an Ephraimite as it does a Bethlehemite, it may be asked whether Ephrathah is not intended of the Ephraimitish territory (Kühnöl, Gesenius, Maurer, Tholuck, and others). The meaning would then be: we had heard that the sacred Ark was in Shiloh, but we found it not there, but in Kirjath-Jearim. And we can easily understand why the poet has mentioned the two places just in this way. Ephrāth, according to its etymon, is fruitful fields, with which are contrasted the fields of the wood - the sacred Ark had fallen from its original, more worthy abode, as it were, into the wilderness. But is it probable, more especially in view of Mic 5:1, that in a connection in which the memory of David is the ruling idea, Ephrathah signifies the land of Ephraim? No, Ephrathah is the name of the district in which Kirjath-Jearim lay. Caleb had, for instance, by Ephrath, his third wife, a son named Hûr (Chûr), 1Ch 2:19, This Hûr, the first-born of Ephrathah, is the father of the population of Bethlehem (1Ch 4:4), and Shobal, a son of this Hûr, is father of the population of Kirjath-Jearim (1Ch 2:50). Kirjath-Jearim is therefore, so to speak, the daughter of Bethlehem. This was called Ephrathah in ancient times, and this name of Bethlehem became the name of its district (Mic 5:1). Kirjath-Jearim belonged to Caleb-Ephrathah (1Ch 2:24), as the northern part of this district seems to have been called in distinction from Negeb-Caleb (1Sa 30:14).
But משׁכּנותיו in Psa 132:7 is now neither a designation of the house of Abinadab in Kirjath-Jearim, for the expression would be too grand, and in relation to Psa 132:5 even confusing, nor a designation of the Salomonic Temple-building, for the expression standing thus by itself is not enough alone to designate it. What is meant will therefore be the tent-temple erected by David for the Ark when removed to Zion (2Sa 7:2, יריעה). The church arouses itself to enter this, and to prostrate itself in adoration towards (vid., Psa 99:5) the footstool of Jahve, i.e., the Ark; and to what purpose? The ark of the covenant is now to have a place more worthy of it; the מנוּחה, i.e., the בּית מנוּחה, 1Ch 28:2, in which David's endeavours have through Solomon reached their goal, is erected: let Jahve and the Ark of His sovereign power, that may not be touched (see the examples of its inviolable character in 1Sa 5:1-12, 1 Sam 6, 2Sa 6:6.), now enter this fixed abode! Let His priests who are to serve Him there clothe themselves in “righteousness,” i.e., in conduct that is according to His will and pleasure; let His saints, who shall there seek and find mercy, shout for joy! More especially, however, let Jahve for David's sake, His servant, to whose restless longing this place of rest owes its origin, not turn back the face of His anointed one, i.e., not reject his face which there turns towards Him in the attitude of prayer (cf. Psa 84:10). The chronicler has understood Psa 132:10 as an intercession on behalf of Solomon, and the situation into which we are introduced by Psa 132:6-8 seems to require this. It is, however, possible that a more recent poet here, in Psa 132:7-8, reproduces words taken from the heart of the church in Solomon's time, and blends petitions of the church of the present with them. The subject all through is the church, which is ever identical although changing in the persons of its members. The Israel that brought the sacred Ark out of Kirjath-Jearim to Zion and accompanied it thence to the Temple-hill, and now worships in the sanctuary raised by David's zeal for the glory of Jahve, is one and the same. The prayer for the priests, for all the saints, and more especially for the reigning king, that then resounded at the dedication of the Temple, is continued so long as the history of Israel lasts, even in a time when Israel has no king, but has all the stronger longing for the fulfilment of the Messianic promise.

Verses 11-13

The “for the sake of David” is here set forth in detail. אמת in Psa 132:11 is not the accusative of the object, but an adverbial accusative. The first member of the verse closes with לדוד, which has the distinctive Pazer, which is preceded by Legarmeh as a sub-distinctive; then follows at the head of the second member אמת with Zinnor, then לא־ישׁוּב ממּנּה with Olewejored and its conjunctive Galgal, which regularly precedes after the sub-distinctive Zinnor. The suffix of ממּנּה refers to that which was affirmed by oath, as in Jer 4:28. Lineal descendants of David will Jahve place on the throne (לכסּא like לראשׁי in Psa 21:4) to him, i.e., so that they shall follow his as possessors of the throne. David's children shall for ever (which has been finally fulfilled in Christ) sit לכסּא to him (cf. Jer 9:5; Jer 36:7). Thus has Jahve promised, and expects in return from the sons of David the observance of His Law. Instead of עדתי זוּ it is pointed עדתי זו. In Hahn's edition עדתי has Mercha in the penult. (cf. the retreat of the tone in זה אדני, Dan 10:17), and in Baer's edition the still better attested reading Mahpach instead of the counter-tone Metheg, and Mercha on the ultima. It is not plural with a singular suffix (cf. Deu 28:59, Ges. §91, 3), but, as זו = זאת indicates, the singular for עדוּתי, like תּחנתי for תּחנוּתי in 2Ki 6:8; and signifies the revelation of God as an attestation of His will. אלמּדם has Mercha mahpach., זו Rebia parvum, and עדתי Mercha; and according to the interpunction it would have to be rendered: “and My self-attestation there” (vid., on Psa 9:16), but zow is relative: My self-attestation (revelation), which I teach them. The divine words extend to the end of Psa 132:12. The hypotheses with אם, as the fulfilment in history shows, were conditions of the continuity of the Davidic succession; not, however - because human unfaithfulness does not annul the faithfulness of God - of the endlessness of the Davidic throne. In Psa 132:13 the poet states the ground of such promissory mercy. It is based on the universal mercy of the election of Jerusalem. אוּהּ has He mappic. like ענּה in Deu 22:29, or the stroke of Raphe (Ew. §247, d), although the suffix is not absolutely necessary. In the following strophe the purport of the election of Jerusalem is also unfolded in Jahve's own words.

Verses 14-18

Shiloh has been rejected (Psa 78:60), for a time only was the sacred Ark in Bethel (Jdg 20:27) and Mizpah (Jdg 21:5), only somewhat over twenty years was it sheltered by the house of Abinadab in Kirjath-Jearim (1Sa 7:2), only three months by the house of Obed-Edom in Perez-uzzah (2Sa 6:11) - but Zion is Jahve's abiding dwelling-place, His own proper settlement, מנוּחה (as in Isa 11:10; Isa 66:1, and besides 1Ch 28:2). In Zion, His chosen and beloved dwelling-place, Jahve blesses everything that belongs to her temporal need (צידהּ for זידתהּ, vid., on Psa 27:5, note); so that her poor do not suffer want, for divine love loves the poor most especially. His second blessing refers to the priests, for by means of these He will keep up His intercourse with His people. He makes the priesthood of Zion a real institution of salvation: He clothes her priests with salvation, so that they do not merely bring it about instrumentally, but personally possess it, and their whole outward appearance is one which proclaims salvation. And to all her saints He gives cause and matter for high and lasting joy, by making Himself known also to the church, in which He has taken up His abode, in deeds of mercy (loving-kindness or grace). There (שׁם, Psa 133:3) in Zion is indeed the kingship of promise, which cannot fail of fulfilment. He will cause a horn to shoot forth, He will prepare a lamp, for the house of David, which David here represents as being its ancestor and the anointed one of God reigning at that time; and all who hostilely rise up against David in his seed, He will cover with shame as with a garment (Job 8:22), and the crown consecrated by promise, which the seed of David wears, shall blossom like an unfading wreath. The horn is an emblem of defensive might and victorious dominion, and the lamp (נר, 2Sa 21:17, cf. ניר, 2Ch 21:7, lxx λύχνον) an emblem of brilliant dignity and joyfulness. In view of Eze 29:21, of the predictions concerning the Branch (zemach) in Isa 4:2; Jer 23:5; Jer 33:15; Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12 (cf. Heb 7:14), and of the fifteenth Beracha of the Shemone - Esre (the daily Jewish prayer consisting of eighteen benedictions): “make the branch (zemach) of David Thy servant to shoot forth speedily, and let his horn rise high by virtue of Thy salvation,” - it is hardly to be doubted that the poet attached a Messianic meaning to this promise. With reference to our Psalm, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, changes that supplicatory beracha of his nation (Luk 1:68-70) into a praiseful one, joyfully anticipating the fulfilment that is at hand in Jesus.

Psalm 133

==PRAISE OF BROTHERLY FELLOWSHIP.==

Verses 1-3

In this Psalm, says Hengstenberg, “David brings to the consciousness of the church the glory of the fellowship of the saints, that had so long been wanting, the restoration of which had begun with the setting up of the Ark in Zion.” The Psalm, in fact, does not speak of the termination of the dispersion, but of the uniting of the people of all parts of the land for the purpose of divine worship in the one place of the sanctuary; and, as in the case of Psa 122:1-9, its counterpart, occasions can be found in the history of David adapted to the לדוד of the inscription. But the language witnesses against David; for the construction of שׁ with the participle, as שׁיּרד, qui descendit (cf. Psa 135:2, שׁעמדים, qui stant), is unknown in the usage of the language prior to the Exile. Moreover the inscription לדוד is wanting in the lxx Cod. Vat. and the Targum; and the Psalm may only have been so inscribed because it entirely breathes David's spirit, and is as though it had sprung out of his love for Jonathan.
With גּם the assertion passes on from the community of nature and sentiment which the word “brethren” expresses to the outward active manifestation and realization that correspond to it: good and delightful (Psa 135:3) it is when brethren united by blood and heart also (corresponding to this their brotherly nature) dwell together - a blessed joy which Israel has enjoyed during the three great Feasts, although only for a brief period (vid., Psa 122:1-9). Because the high priest, in whom the priestly mediatorial office culminates, is the chief personage in the celebration of the feast, the nature and value of that local reunion is first of all expressed by a metaphor taken from him. שׁמן הטּוב is the oil for anointing described in Exo 30:22-33, which consisted of a mixture of oil and aromatic spices strictly forbidden to be used in common life. The sons of Aaron were only sprinkled with this anointing oil; but Aaron was expressly anointed with it, inasmuch as Moses poured it upon his head; hence he is called par excellence “the anointed priest” (הכּהן המּשׁיה), whilst the other priests are only “anointed” (משׁחים, Num 3:3) in so far as their garments, like Aaron's, were also sprinkled with the oil (together with the blood of the ram of consecration), Lev 8:12, Lev 8:30. In the time of the second Temple, to which the holy oil of anointing was wanting, the installation into the office of high priest took place by his being invested in the pontifical robes. The poet, however, when he calls the high priest as such Aaron, has the high-priesthood in all the fulness of its divine consecration (Lev 21:10) before his eyes. Two drops of the holy oil of anointing, says a Haggada, remained for ever hanging on the beard of Aaron like two pearls, as an emblem of atonement and of peace. In the act of the anointing itself the precious oil freely poured out ran gently down upon his beard, which in accordance with Lev 21:5 was unshortened.
In that part of the Tôra which describes the robe of the high priest, שׁוּלי is its hems, פּי ראשׁו, or even absolutely פּה, the opening for the head, or the collar, by means of which the sleeveless garment was put on, and שׂפה the binding, the embroidery, the border of this collar (vid., Exo 28:32; Exo 39:23; cf. Job 30:18, פּי כתנתּי, the collar of my shirt). פּי must apparently be understood according to these passages of the Tôra, as also the appellation מדּות (only here for מדּים, מּדּים), beginning with Lev 6:3, denotes the whole vestment of the high priest, yet without more exact distinction. But the Targum translates פּי with אמרא (ora = fimbria) - a word which is related to אמּרא, agnus, like ᾤα to ὄΐς. This ᾤα is used both of the upper and lower edge of a garment. Accordingly Appolinaris and the Latin versions understand the ἐπὶ τὴν ὤαν of the lxx of the hem (in oram vestimenti); Theodoret, on the other hand, understands it to mean the upper edging: ὤαν ἐκάλεσεν ὃ καλοῦμεν περιτραχήλιον, τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ὁ Ἀκύλας στόμα ἐνδυμάτων εἴρηκε. So also De Sacy: sur le bord de son vêtement, c'est-à-dire, sur le haut de ses habits pontificaux. The decision of the question depends upon the aim of this and the following figure in Psa 133:3. If we compare the two figures, we find that the point of the comparison is the uniting power of brotherly feeling, as that which unites in heart and soul those who are most distant from one another locally, and also brings them together in outward circumstance. If this is the point of the comparison, then Aaron's beard and the hem of his garments stand just as diametrically opposed to one another as the dew of Hermon and the mountains of Zion. פּי is not the collar above, which gives no advance, much less the antithesis of two extremes, but the hem at the bottom (cf. שׂפה, Exo 26:4, of the edge of a curtain). It is also clear that שׁיּרד cannot now refer to the beard of Aaron, either as flowing down over the upper border of his robe, or as flowing down upon its hem; it must refer to the oil, for peaceable love that brings the most widely separated together is likened to the oil. This reference is also more appropriate to the style of the onward movement of the gradual Psalms, and is confirmed by Psa 133:3, where it refers to the dew, which takes the place of the oil in the other metaphor. When brethren united in harmonious love also meet together in one place, as is the case in Israel at the great Feasts, it is as when the holy, precious chrism, breathing forth the blended odour of many spices, upon the head of Aaron trickles down upon his beard, and from thence to the extreme end of his vestment. It becomes thoroughly perceptible, and also outwardly visible, that Israel, far and near, is pervaded by one spirit and bound together in unity of spirit.
This uniting spirit of brotherly love is now symbolised also by the dew of Hermon, which descends in drops upon the mountains of Zion. “What we read in the 133rd Psalm of the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion,” says Van de Velde in his Travels (Bd. i. S. 97), “is now become quite clear to me. Here, as I sat at the foot of Hermon, I understood how the water-drops which rose from its forest-mantled heights, and out of the highest ravines, which are filled the whole year round with snow, after the sun's rays have attenuated them and moistened the atmosphere with them, descend at evening-time as a heavy dew upon the lower mountains which lie round about as its spurs. One ought to have seen Hermon with its white-golden crown glistening aloft in the blue sky, in order to be able rightly to understand the figure. Nowhere in the whole country is so heavy a dew perceptible as in the districts near to Hermon.” To this dew the poet likens brotherly love. This is as the dew of Hermon: of such pristine freshness and thus refreshing, possessing such pristine power and thus quickening, thus born from above (Psa 110:3), and in fact like the dew of Hermon which comes down upon the mountains of Zion - a feature in the picture which is taken from the natural reality; for an abundant dew, when warm days have preceded, might very well be diverted to Jerusalem by the operation of the cold current of air sweeping down from the north over Hermon. We know, indeed, from our own experience how far off a cold air coming from the Alps is perceptible and produces its effects. The figure of the poet is therefore as true to nature as it is beautiful. When brethren bound together in love also meet together in one place, and in fact when brethren out of the north unite with brethren in the south in Jerusalem, the city which is the mother of all, at the great Feasts, it is as when the dew of Mount Hermon, which is covered with deep, almost eternal snow,^[157] descends upon the bare, unfruitful - and therefore longing for such quickening - mountains round about Zion. In Jerusalem must love and all that is good meet. For there (שׁם as in Psa 132:17) hath Jahve commanded (צוּה as in Lev 25:21, cf. Psa 42:9; Psa 68:29) the blessing, i.e., there allotted to the blessing its rendezvous and its place of issue. את־הבּרכה is appositionally explained by חיּים: life is the substance and goal of the blessing, the possession of all possessions, the blessing of all blessings. The closing words עד־העולם (cf. Psa 28:9) belong to צוּה: such is God's inviolable, ever-enduring order.

Psalm 134

Night-Watch Greeting and Counter-Greeting

This Psalm consists of a greeting, Psa 134:1-2, and the reply thereto. The greeting is addressed to those priests and Levites who have the night-watch in the Temple; and this antiphon is purposely placed at the end of the collection of Songs of degrees in order to take the place of a final beracha. In this sense Luther styles this Psalm epiphonema superiorum. It is also in other respects (vid., Symbolae, p. 66) an appropriate finale.

Verses 1-2

The Psalm begins, like its predecessor, with הנּה; there is directs attention to an attractive phenomenon, here to a duty which springs from the office. For that it is not the persons frequenting the Temple who are addressed is at once clear from the fact that the tarrying of these in the Temple through the night, when such a thing did actually occur (Luk 2:37), was only an exception. And then, however, from the fact that עמד is the customary word for the service of the priests and Levites, Deu 10:8; Deu 18:7; 1Ch 23:30; 2Ch 29:11 (cf. on Isa 61:10, and Psa 110:4), which is also continued in the night, 1Ch 9:33. Even the Targum refers Psa 134:1 to the Temple-watch. In the second Temple the matter was arranged thus. After midnight the chief over the gate-keepers took the keys of the inner Temple and went with some of the priests through the little wicket of the Fire Gate (שׁער בית המוקד). In the inner court this patrol divided into two companies, each with a burning torch; one company turned west, the other east, and so they compassed the court to see whether everything was in readiness for the service of the dawning day. At the bakers' chamber, in which the Mincha of the high priest was baked (לשׁכת עשׂי הביתין), they met with the cry: All is well. In the meanwhile the rest of the priests also arose, bathed, and put on their garments. Then they went into the stone chamber (one half of which was the place of session of the Sanhedrim), where, under the superintendence of the chief over the drawing of the lots and of a judge, around whom stood all the priests in their robes of office, the functions of the priests in the service of the coming day were assigned to them by lot (Luk 1:9). Accordingly Tholuck, with Köster, regards Psa 134:1. and Psa 134:3 as the antiphon of the Temple-watch going off duty and those coming on. It might also be the call and counter-call with which the watchmen greeted one another when they met. But according to the general keeping of the Psalm, Psa 134:1. have rather to be regarded as a call to devotion and intercession, which the congregation addresses to the priests and Levites entrusted with the night-service in the Temple. It is an error to suppose that “in the nights” can be equivalent to “early and late.” If the Psalter contains Morning Psalms (Psa 3:1-8, Psa 63:1-11) and Evening Psalms (Psa 4:1-8, Psa 141:1-10), why should it then not contain a vigil Psalm? On this very ground Venema's idea too, that בּלּילות is syncopated from בּהלּילות, “with Hallels, i.e., praises,” is useless. Nor is there any reason for drawing ἐν ταῖς νυξίν, as the lxx does, to Psa 134:2,^[158] or, what would be more natural, to the בּרכוּ that opens the Psalm, since it is surely not strange that, so long as the sanctuary was standing, a portion of the servants of God who ministered in it had to remain up at night to guard it, and to see to it that nothing was wanting in the preparations for the early service. That this ministering watching should be combined with devotional praying is the purport of the admonition in Psa 134:2. Raising suppliant hands (ידכם, negligently written for ידיכם) towards the Most Holy Place (τὰ ἅγια), they are to bless Jahve. קדשׁ (according to B. Sota 39a, the accusative of definition: in holiness, i.e., after washing of hands), in view of Psa 28:2; Psa 5:8; Psa 138:2 (cf. רום in Hab 3:10), has to be regarded as the accusative of the direction.

Verse 3

Calling thus up to the Temple-hill, the church receives from above the benedictory counter-greeting: Jahve bless thee out of Zion (as in Psa 128:5), the Creator of heaven and earth (as in Psa 115:15; Psa 121:2; Psa 124:8). From the time of Num 6:24 jebaréchja is the ground-form of the priestly benediction. It is addressed to the church as one person, and to each individual in this united, unit-like church.

Psalm 135

== Four-Voiced Hallelujah to the God of Israel, the God of Gods==
Psalms 135 is here and there (vid., Tôsefôth Pesachim 117a) taken together with Psa 134:1-3 as one Psalm. The combining of Ps 115 with Psa 114:1-8 is a misapprehension caused by the inscriptionless character of Ps 115, whereas Ps 135 and Psa 134:1-3 certainly stand in connection with one another. For the Hallelujah Psalms 135 is, as the mutual relation between the beginning and close of Psa 134:1-3 shows, a Psalm-song expanded out of this shorter hymn, that is in part drawn from Ps 115.
It is a Psalm in the mosaic style. Even the Latin poet Lucilius transfers the figure of mosaic-work to style, when he says: quam lepide lexeis compostae ut tesserulae omnes... In the case of Psalms 135 it is not the first time that we have met with this kind of style. We have already had a glimpse of it in Psa 97:1-12 and Psa 98:1-9. These Psalms were composed more especially of deutero-Isaianic passages, whereas Psalms 135 takes its tesserulae out of the Law, Prophets, and Psalms.

Verses 1-4

The beginning is taken from Psa 134:1; Psa 135:2 recalls Psa 116:19 (cf. Psa 92:14); and Psa 135:4 is an echo of Deu 7:6. The servants of Jahve to whom the summons is addressed, are not, as in Psa 134:1., His official servants in particular, but according to Psa 135:2, where the courts, in the plural, are allotted to them as their standing-place, and according to Psa 135:19-20, those who fear Him as a body. The threefold Jahve at the beginning is then repeated in Jāh (הללוּ־יהּ, cf. note 1 to PsPsa 104:35), Jahve, and Jāh. The subject of כּי נעים is by no means Jahve (Hupfeld), whom they did not dare to call נעים in the Old Testament, but either the Name, according to Ps 54:8 (Luther, Hitzig), or, which is favoured by Psa 147:1 (cf. Pro 22:18), the praising of His Name (Appolinaris: ἐπεὶ τόδε καλὸν ἀείδειν): His Name to praise is a delightful employ, which is incumbent on Israel as the people of His choice and of His possession.

Verses 5-7

The praise itself now begins. כּי in Psa 135:4 set forth the ground of the pleasant duty, and the כי that begins this strophe confirms that which warrants the summons out of the riches of the material existing for such a hymn of praise. Worthy is He to be praised, for Israel knows full well that He who hath chosen it is the God of gods. The beginning is taken from Psa 115:3, and Psa 135:7 from Jer 10:13 (Psa 51:16). Heaven, earth, and water are the three kingdoms of created things, as in Exo 20:4. נשׂיא signifies that which is lifted up, ascended; here, as in Jeremiah, a cloud. The meaning of בּרקים למּטר עשׂה is not: He makes lightnings into rain, i.e., resolves them as it were into rain, which is unnatural; but either according to Zec 10:1 : He produces lightnings in behalf of rain, in order that the rain may pour down in consequence of the thunder and lightning, or poetically: He makes lightnings for the rain, so that the rain is announced (Apollinaris) and accompanied by them. Instead of מוצא (cf. Psa 78:16; Psa 105:43), which does not admit of the retreating of the tone, the expression is מוצא, the ground-form of the part. Hiph. for plurals like מחצרים, מחלמים, מעזרים, perhaps not without being influenced by the ויּוצא in Jeremiah, for it is not מוצא from מצא that signifies “producing,” but מוציא = מפיק. The metaphor of the treasuries is like Job 38:22. What is intended is the fulness of divine power, in which lie the grounds of the origin and the impulses of all things in nature.

Verses 8-9

Worthy is He to be praised, for He is the Redeemer out of Egypt. בּתוככי as in Psa 116:19, cf. Psa 105:27.

Verses 10-12

Worthy is He to be praised, for He is the Conqueror of the Land of Promise. in connection with Psa 135:10 one is reminded of Deu 4:38; Deu 7:1; Deu 9:1; Deu 11:23; Jos 23:9. גּוים רבּים are here not many, but great peoples (cf. גּדלים in Psa 136:17), since the parallel word עצוּמים is by no means intended of a powerful number, but of powerful might (cf. Isa 53:12). As to the rest also, the poet follows the Book of Deuteronomy: viz., לכל ממלכות as in Deu 3:21, and נתן נחלה as in Deu 4:38 and other passages. It is all Deuteronomic with the exception of the שׁ, and the ל e in Psa 135:11 as the nota accus. (as in Psa 136:19., cf. Psa 69:6; Psa 116:16; Psa 129:3); the construction of הרג is just as Aramaizing in Job 5:2; 2Sa 3:30 (where 2Sa 3:30-31, like 2Sa 3:36-37, are a later explanatory addition). The הרג alternating with הכּה is, next to the two kings, also referred to the kingdoms of Canaan, viz., their inhabitants. Og was also an Amoritish king, Deu 3:8.

Verses 13-14

This God who rules so praiseworthily in the universe and in the history of Israel is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. Just as Psa 135:13 (cf. Psa 102:13) is taken from Exo 3:15, so Psa 135:14 is taken from Deu 32:36, cf. Psa 90:13, and vid., on Heb 10:30-31.

Verses 15-18

For the good of His proved church He ever proves Himself to be the Living God, whereas idols and idol-worshippers are vain - throughout following Psa 115:4-8, but with some abridgments. Here only the אף used as a particle recalls what is said there of the organ of smell (אף) of the idols that smells not, just as the רוּח which is here (as in Jer 10:14) denied to the idols recalls the הריח denied to them there. It is to be rendered: also there is not a being of breath, i.e., there is no breath at all, not a trace thereof, in their mouth. It is different in 1Sa 21:9, where אין ישׁ (not אין) is meant to be equivalent to the Aramaic אין אית, num (an) est; אין is North-Palestinian, and equivalent to the interrogatory אם (after which the Targum renders אלּוּ אית).

Verses 19-21

A call to the praise of Jahve, who is exalted above the gods of the nations, addressed to Israel as a whole, rounds off the Psalm by recurring to its beginning. The threefold call in Psa 115:9-11; Psa 118:2-4, is rendered fourfold here by the introduction of the house of the Levites, and the wishing of a blessing in Psa 134:3 is turned into an ascription of praise. Zion, whence Jahve's self-attestation, so rich in power and loving-kindness, is spread abroad, is also to be the place whence His glorious attestation by the mouth of men is spread abroad. History has realized this.

Psalm 136

O Give Thanks unto the Lord, for He Is Good

The cry Psa 135:3, Praise ye Jāh , for good is Jahve, is here followed by a Hodu, the last of the collection, with “for His goodness endureth for ever” repeated twenty-six times as a versus intercalaris. In the liturgical language this Psalm is called par excellence the great Hallel, for according to its broadest compass the great Hallel comprehends Ps 120-136,<,^[159] whilst the Hallel which is absolutely so called extends from Psa 113:1-9 to Ps 118. Down to Psa 136:18 the song and counter-song organize themselves into hexastichic groups or strophes, which, however, from Psa 136:19 (and therefore from the point where the dependence on Ps 135, already begun with Psa 136:17, becomes a borrowing, onwards) pass over into octastichs. In Heidenheim's Psalter the Psalm appears (after Norzi) in two columns (like Deut. 32), which it is true has neither tradition (vid., Ps 18) nor MSS precedent in its favour, but really corresponds to its structure.

Verses 1-9

Like the preceding Psalm, this Psalm allies itself to the Book of Deuteronomy. Psa 136:2 and Psa 136:3 (God of gods and Lord of lords) are taken from Deu 10:17; Psa 136:12 (with a strong hand and stretched-out arm) from Deu 4:34; Deu 5:15, and frequently (cf. Jer 32:21); Psa 136:16 like Deu 8:15 (cf. Jer 2:6). With reference to the Deuteronomic colouring of Psa 136:19-22, vid., on Psa 135:10-12; also the expression “Israel His servant” recalls Deu 32:36 (cf. Psa 135:14; Psa 90:13), and still more Isa 40:1, where the comprehension of Israel under the unity of this notion has its own proper place. In other respects, too, the Psalm is an echo of earlier model passages. Who alone doeth great wonders sounds like Psa 72:18 (Psa 86:10); and the adjective “great” that is added to “wonders” shows that the poet found the formula already in existence. In connection with Psa 136:5 he has Pro 3:19 or Jer 10:12 in his mind; תּבוּנה, like חכמה, is the demiurgic wisdom. Psa 136:6 calls to mind Isa 42:5; Isa 44:24; the expression is “above the waters,” as in Psa 34:2 “upon the seas,” because the water is partly visible and partly invisible מתּחת לארץ (Exo 20:4). The plural אורים, luces, instead of מארות, lumina (cf. Eze 32:8, מאורי אור), is without precedent. It is a controverted point whether אורת in Isa 26:19 signifies lights (cf. אורה, Psa 139:12) or herbs (2Ki 4:39). The plural ממשׁלות is also rare (occurring only besides in Psa 114:2): it here denotes the dominion of the moon on the one hand, and (going beyond Gen 1:16) of the stars on the other. בּלּילה, like בּיּום, is the second member of the stat. construct.

Verses 10-26

Up to this point it is God the absolute in general, the Creator of all things, to the celebration of whose praise they are summoned; and from this point onwards the God of the history of salvation. In Psa 136:13 גּזר (instead of בּקע, Psa 78:13; Exo 14:21; Neh 9:11) of the dividing of the Red Sea is peculiar; גּזרים (Gen 15:17, side by side with בּתרים) are the pieces or parts of a thing that is cut up into pieces. נער is a favourite word taken from Exo 14:27. With reference to the name of the Egyptian ruler Pharaoh (Herodotus also, ii. 111, calls the Pharaoh of the Exodus the son of Sesostris-Rameses Miumun, not Μενόφθας, as he is properly called, but absolutely Φερῶν), vid., on Psa 73:22. After the God to whom the praise is to be ascribed has been introduced with ל by always fresh attributes, the ל before the names of Sihon and of Og is perplexing. The words are taken over, as are the six lines of Psa 136:17-22 in the main, from Psa 135:10-12, with only a slight alteration in the expression. In Psa 136:23 the continued influence of the construction הודוּ ל is at an end. The connection by means of שׁ (cf. Psa 135:8, Psa 135:10) therefore has reference to the preceding “for His goodness endureth for ever.” The language here has the stamp of the latest period. It is true זכר with Lamed of the object is used even in the earliest Hebrew, but שׁפל is only authenticated by Ecc 10:6, and פּרק, to break loose = to rescue (the customary Aramaic word for redemption), by Lam 5:8, just as in the closing verse, which recurs to the beginning, “God of heaven” is a name for God belonging to the latest literature, Neh 1:4; Neh 2:4. In Psa 136:23 the praise changes suddenly to that which has been experienced very recently. The attribute in Psa 136:25 (cf. Psa 147:9; Psa 145:15) leads one to look back to a time in which famine befell them together with slavery.

Psalm 137

By the Rivers of Babylon

The Hallelujah Ps 135 and the Hodu Ps 136 are followed by a Psalm which glances back into the time of the Exile, when such cheerful songs as they once sang to the accompaniment of the music of the Levites at the worship of God on Mount Zion were obliged to be silent. It is anonymous. The inscription Τῷ Δαυίδ (διὰ) Ἱιερεμίου found in codices of the lxx, which is meant to say that it is a Davidic song coming from the heart of Jeremiah,^[160] is all the more erroneous as Jeremiah never was one of the Babylonian exiles.
The שׁ, which is repeated three times in Psa 136:8., corresponds to the time of the composition of the Psalm which is required by its contents. It is just the same with the paragogic i in the future in Psa 136:6. But in other respects the language is classic; and the rhythm, at the beginning softly elegiac, then more and more excited, and abounding in guttural and sibilant sounds, is so expressive that scarcely any Psalm is so easily impressed on the memory as this, which is so pictorial even in sound.
The metre resembles the elegiac as it appears in the so-called caesura schema of the Lamentations and in the cadence of Isa 16:9-10, which is like the Sapphic strophe. Every second lien corresponds to the pentameter of the elegiac metre.

Verses 1-6

Beginning with perfects, the Psalm has the appearance of being a Psalm not belonging to the Exile, but written in memory of the Exile. The bank of a river, like the seashore, is a favourite place of sojourn of those whom deep grief drives forth from the bustle of men into solitude. The boundary line of the river gives to solitude a safe back; the monotonous splashing of the waves keeps up the dull, melancholy alternation of thoughts and feelings; and at the same time the sight of the cool, fresh water exercises a soothing influence upon the consuming fever within the heart. The rivers of Babylon are here those of the Babylonian empire: not merely the Euphrates with its canals, and the Tigris, but also the Chaboras (Chebar) and Eulaeos ('Ulai), on whose lonesome banks Ezekiel (Eze 1:3) and Daniel (ch. Dan 8:2) beheld divine visions. The שׁם is important: there, in a strange land, as captives under the dominion of the power of the world. And גּם is purposely chosen instead of ו: with the sitting down in the solitude of the river's banks weeping immediately came on; when the natural scenery around contrasted so strongly with that of their native land, the remembrance of Zion only forced itself upon them all the more powerfully, and the pain at the isolation from their home would have all the freer course where no hostilely observant eyes were present to suppress it. The willow (צפצפה) and viburnum, those trees which are associated with flowing water in hot low-lying districts, are indigenous in the richly watered lowlands of Babylonia. ערב (ערבה), if one and the same with Arab. grb, is not the willow, least of all the weeping-willow, which is called ṣafsâf mustahı̂ in Arabic, “the bending-down willow,” but the viburnum with dentate leaves, described by Wetzstein on Isa 44:4. The Talmud even distinguishes between tsaph - tsapha and ‛araba, but without our being able to obtain any sure botanic picture from it. The ערבה, whose branches belong to the constituents of the lulab of the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev 23:40), is understood of the crack-willow [Salix fragilis], and even in the passage before us is surely not distinguished with such botanical precision but that the gharab and willow together with the weeping-willow (Salix Babylonica) might be comprehended under the word ערבה. On these trees of the country abounding in streams the exiles hung their citherns. The time to take delight in music was past, for μουσικὰ ἐν πένθει ἄκαιρος διήγησις, Sir. 22:6. Joyous songs, as the word שׁיר designates them, were ill suited to their situation.
In order to understand the כּי in Psa 137:3, Psa 137:3 and Psa 137:4 must be taken together. They hung up their citherns; for though their lords called upon them to sing in order that they might divert themselves with their national songs, they did not feel themselves in the mind for singing songs as they once resounded at the divine services of their native land. The lxx, Targum, and Syriac take תּוללינוּ as a synonym of שׁובינוּ, synonymous with שׁוללינוּ, and so, in fact, that it signifies not, like שׁולל, the spoiled and captive one, but the spoiler and he who takes other prisoners. But there is no Aramaic תּלל = שׁלל. It might more readily be referred back to a Poel תּולל (= התל), to disappoint, deride (Hitzig); but the usage of the language does not favour this, and a stronger meaning for the word would be welcome. Either תּולל = תּהולל, like מהולל, Psa 102:9, signifies the raving one, i.e., a bloodthirsty man or a tyrant, or from ילל, ejulare, one who causes the cry of woe or a tormentor, - a signification which commends itself in view of the words תּושׁב and תּלמיד, which are likewise formed with the preformative ת. According to the sense the word ranks itself with an Hiph. הוליל, like תּועלת, תּוכחה, with הועיל and הוכיח, in a mainly abstract signification (Dietrich, Abhandlungen, S. 160f.). The דּברי beside שׁיר is used as in Psa 35:20; Psa 65:4; Psa 105:27; Psa 145:5, viz., partitively, dividing up the genitival notion of the species: words of songs as being parts or fragments of the national treasury of song, similar to משּׁיר a little further on, on which Rosenmüller correctly says: sacrum aliquod carmen ex veteribus illis suis Sionicis. With the expression “song of Zion” alternates in Psa 137:4 “song of Jahve,” which, as in 2Ch 29:27, cf. 1Ch 25:7, denotes sacred or liturgical songs, that is to say, songs belonging to Psalm poesy (including the Cantica).
Before Psa 137:4 we have to imagine that they answered the request of the Babylonians at that time in the language that follows, or thought thus within themselves when they withdrew themselves from them. The meaning of the interrogatory exclamation is not that the singing of sacred songs in a foreign land (חוצה לארץ) is contrary to the law, for the Psalms continued to be sung even during the Exile, and were also enriched by new ones. But the shir had an end during the Exile, in so far as that it was obliged to retire from publicity into the quiet of the family worship and of the houses of prayer, in order that that which is holy might not be profaned; and since it was not, as at home, accompanied by the trumpets of the priests and the music of the Levites, it became more recitative than singing properly so called, and therefore could not afford any idea of the singing of their native land in connection with the worship of God on Zion. From the striking contrast between the present and the former times the people of the Exile had in fact to come to the knowledge of their sins, in order that they might get back by the way of penitence and earnest longing to that which they had lost Penitence and home-sickness were at that time inseparable; for all those in whom the remembrance of Zion was lost gave themselves over to heathenism and were excluded from the redemption. The poet, translated into the situation of the exiles, and arming himself against the temptation to apostasy and the danger of denying God, therefore says: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, ימיני תּשׁכּח. תּשׁכּח has been taken as an address to Jahve: obliviscaris dexterae meae (e.g., Wolfgang Dachstein in his song “An Wasserflüssen Babylon”), but it is far from natural that Jerusalem and Jahve should be addressed in one clause. Others take ימיני as the subject and תּשׁכּח transitively: obliviscatur dextera mea, scil. artem psallendi (Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Pagninus, Grotius, Hengstenberg, and others); but this ellipsis is arbitrary, and the interpolation of מנּי after ימיני (von Ortenberg, following Olshausen) produces an inelegant cadence. Others again assign a passive sense to תשׁכח: oblivioni detur (lxx, Italic, Vulgate, and Luther), or a half-passive sense, in oblivione sit (Jerome); but the thought: let my right hand be forgotten, is awkward and tame. Obliviscatur me (Syriac, Saadia, and the Psalterium Romanum) comes nearer to the true meaning. תּשׁכּח is to be taken reflexively: obliviscatur sui ipsius, let it forget itself, or its service (Amyraldus, Schultens, Ewald, and Hitzig), which is equivalent to let it refuse or fail, become lame, become benumbed, much the same as we say of the arms of legs that they “go to sleep,” and just as the Arabic nasiya signifies both to forget and to become lame (cf. Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 921b). La Harpe correctly renders: O Jerusalem! si je t'oublie jamais, que ma main oublie aussi le mouvement! Thus there is a correspondence between Psa 137:5 and Psa 137:6 : My tongue shall cleave to my palate if I do not remember thee, if I do not raise Jerusalem above the sum of my joy. אזכּרכי has the affixed Chirek, with which these later Psalms are so fond of adorning themselves. ראשׁ is apparently used as in Psa 119:160 : supra summam (the totality) laetitiae meae, as Coccejus explains, h.e. supra omnem laetitiam meam. But why not then more simply על כּל, above the totality? ראשׁ here signifies not κεφάλαιον, but κεφαλή: if I do not place Jerusalem upon the summit of my joy, i.e., my highest joy; therefore, if I do not cause Jerusalem to be my very highest joy. His spiritual joy over the city of God is to soar above all earthly joys.

Verses 7-9

The second part of the Psalm supplicates vengeance upon Edom and Babylon. We see from Obadiah's prophecy, which is taken up again by Jeremiah, how shamefully the Edomites, that brother-people related by descent to Israel and yet pre-eminently hostile to it, behaved in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans as their malignant, rapacious, and inhuman helpers. The repeated imper. Piel ערוּ, from ערה (not imper. Kal from ערר, which would be ערוּ), ought to have been accented on the ult.; it is, however, in both cases accented on the first syllable, the pausal ערוּ (cf. כּלוּ in Psa 37:20, and also הסּוּ, Neh 8:11) giving rise to the same accentuation of the other (in order that two tone-syllables might not come together). The Pasek also stands between the two repeated words in order that they may be duly separated, and secures, moreover, to the guttural initial of the second ערוּ its distinct pronunciation (cf. Gen 26:28; Num 35:16). It is to be construed: lay bare, lay bare (as in Hab 3:13, cf. גּלּה in Mic 1:6) in it (Beth of the place), of in respect of it (Beth of the object), even to the foundation, i.e., raze it even to the ground, leave not one stone upon another. From the false brethren the imprecation turns to Babylon, the city of the imperial power of the world. The daughter, i.e., the population, of Babylon is addressed as השּׁדוּדה. It certainly seems the most natural to take this epithet as a designation of its doings which cry for vengeance. But it cannot in any case be translated: thou plunderer (Syriac like the Targum: bozuzto; Symmachus ἡ λῃστρίς), for שׁדד does not mean to rob and plunder, but to offer violence and to devastate. Therefore: thou devastator; but the word so pointed as we have it before us cannot have this signification: it ought to be השּׁדודה, like בּגודה in Jer 3:7, Jer 3:10, or השּׁדוּדה (with an unchangeable ā), corresponding to the Syriac active intensive form ālûṣo, oppressor, gōdûfo, slanderer, and the Arabic likewise active intensive form Arab. fâ‛ûl, e.g., fâshûs, a boaster, and also as an adjective: ǵôz fâshûs, empty nuts, cf. יקוּשׁ = יקושׁ, a fowler, like nâṭûr (נאטור), a field-watcher. The form as it stands is part. pass., and signifies προνενομευμένη (Aquila), vastata (Jerome). It is possible that this may be said in the sense of vastanda, although in this sense of a part. fut. pass. the participles of the Niphal (e.g., Ps 22:32; Psa 102:19) and of the Pual (Psa 18:4) are more commonly used. It cannot at any rate signify vastata in an historical sense, with reference to the destruction of Babylon by Darius Hystaspes (Hengstenberg); for Psa 137:7 only prays that the retribution may come: it cannot therefore as yet have been executed; but if השׁדודה signified the already devastated one, it must (at least in the main) have been executed already. It might be more readily understood as a prophetical representation of the executed judgment of devastation; but this prophetic rendering coincides with the imprecative: the imagination of the Semite when he utters a curse sees the future as a realized fact. “Didst thou see the smitten one (maḍrûb),” i.e., he whom God must smite? Thus the Arab inquires for a person who is detested. “Pursue him who is seized (ilḥaḳ el̇ma'chûdh),” i.e., him whom God must allow thee to seize! Thy speak thus inasmuch as the imagination at once anticipates the seizure at the same time with the pursuit. Just as here both maḍrûb and ma'chûdh are participles of Kasl, so therefore השּׁדוּודה may also have the sense of vastanda (which must be laid waste!). That which is then further desired for Babylon is the requital of that which it has done to Israel, Isa 47:6. It is the same penal destiny, comprehending the children also, which is predicted against it in Isa 13:16-18, as that which was to be executed by the Medes. The young children (with reference to עולל, עולל, vid., on Psa 8:3) are to be dashed to pieces in order that a new generation may not raise up again the world-wide dominion that has been overthrown, Isa 14:21. It is zeal for God that puts such harsh words into the mouth of the poet. “That which is Israel's excellency and special good fortune the believing Israelite desires to have bestowed upon the whole world, but for this very reason he desires to see the hostility of the present world of nations against the church of God broken” (Hofmann). On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the “blessed” of this Psalm is not suited to the mouth of the New Testament church. In the Old Testament the church as yet had the form of a nation, and the longing for the revelation of divine righteousness clothed itself accordingly in a warlike garb.

Psalm 138

The Mediator and Perfecter

There will come a time when the praise of Jahve, which according to Psa 137:3 was obliged to be dumb in the presence of the heathen, will, according to Psa 138:5, be sung by the kings of the heathen themselves. In the lxx Psa 137:1-9 side by side with τῷ Δαυίδ also has the inscription Ἱιερεμίου, and Psa 138:1-8 has Ἀγγαίου καὶ Ζαχαρίου. Perhaps these statements are meant to refer back the existing recension of the text of the respective Psalms to the prophets named (vid., Köhler, Haggai, S. 33). From the fact that these names of psalmodists added by the lxx do not come down beyond Malachi, it follows that the Psalm-collection in the mind of the lxx was made not later than in the time of Nehemiah.
The speaker in Psa 138:1-8, to follow the lofty expectation expressed in Psa 138:4, is himself a king, and according to the inscription, David. There is, however, nothing to favour his being the author; the Psalm is, in respect for the Davidic Psalms, composed as it were out of the soul of David - an echo of 2 Sam. 7 (1 Chr. 17). The superabundant promise which made the throne of David and of his seed an eternal throne is here gratefully glorified. The Psalm can at any rate be understood, if with Hengstenberg we suppose that it expresses the lofty self-consciousness to which David was raised after victorious battles, when he humbly ascribed the glory to God and resolved to build Him a Temple in place of the tent upon Zion.

Verses 1-2

The poet will give thanks to Him, whom he means without mentioning Him by name, for His mercy, i.e., His anticipating, condescending love, and for His truth, i.e., truthfulness and faithfulness, and more definitely for having magnified His promise (אמרה) above all His Name, i.e., that He has given a promise which infinitely surpasses everything by which He has hitherto established a name and memorial for Himself (על־כּל־שׁמך, with ō instead of ŏ, an anomaly that is noted by the Masora, vid., Baer's Psalterium, p. 133). If the promise by the mouth of Nathan (2 Sam. 7) is meant, then we may compare 2Sa 7:21. גּדל, גּדול, גּדלּה are repeated in that promise and its echo coming from the heart of David so frequently, that this הגדּלתּ seems like a hint pointing to that history, which is one of the most important crises in the history of salvation. The expression נגד אלהים also becomes intelligible from this history. Ewald renders it: “in the presence of God!” which is surely meant to say: in the holy place (De Wette, Olshausen). But “before God will I sing praise to Thee (O God!)” - what a jumble! The lxx renders ἐναντίον ἀγγέλων, which is in itself admissible and full of meaning,^[161] but without coherence in the context of the Psalm, and also is to be rejected because it is on the whole very questionable whether the Old Testament language uses אלהים thus, without anything further to define it, in the sense of “angels.” It might be more readily rendered “in the presence of the gods,” viz., of the gods of the peoples (Hengstenberg, Hupfeld, and Hitzig); but in order to be understood of gods which are only seemingly such, it would require some addition. Whereas אלהים can without any addition denote the magisterial possessors of the dignity that is the type of the divine, as follows from Psa 82:1 (cf. Psa 45:7) in spite of Knobel, Graf, and Hupfeld; and thus, too (cf. נגד מלכים in Psa 119:46), we understand it here, with Rashi, Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Falminius, Bucer, Clericus, and others. What is meant are “the great who are in the earth,” 2Sa 7:9, with whom David, inasmuch as he became king from being a shepherd, is ranked, and above whom he has been lifted up by the promise of an eternal kingship. Before these earthly “gods” will David praise the God of the promise; they shall hear for their salutary confusion, for their willing rendering of homage, that God hath made him “the highest with respect to the kings of the earth” (Psa 89:28).

Verses 3-6

There are two things for which the poet gives thanks to God: He has answered him in the days of trouble connected with his persecution by Saul and in all distresses; and by raising him to the throne, and granting him victory upon victory, and promising him the everlasting possession of the throne, He has filled him with a proud courage, so that lofty feeling has taken up its abode in his soul, which was formerly fearful about help. Just as רהב signifies impetuosity, vehemence, and then also a monster, so הרהיב signifies both to break in upon one violently and overpowerlingly (Sol 6:5; cf. Syriac arheb, Arabic arhaba, to terrify), and to make any one courageous, bold, and confident of victory. בּנפשׁי עז forms a corollary to the verb that is marked by Mugrash or Dechî: so that in my soul there was עז, i.e., power, viz., a consciousness of power (cf. Jdg 5:21). The thanksgiving, which he, the king of the promise, offers to God on account of this, will be transmitted to all the kings of the earth when they shall hear (שׁמעוּ in the sense of a fut. exactum) the words of His mouth, i.e., the divine אמרה, and they shall sing of (שׁיר with בּ, like דּבּר בּ in Psa 87:3, שׂיח בּ in Psa 105:2 and frequently, הלּל בּ in Psa 44:9, הזכּיר בּ in Psa 20:8, and the like) the ways of the God of the history of salvation, they shall sing that great is the glory of Jahve. Psa 138:6 tells us by what means He has so super-gloriously manifested Himself in His leadings of David. He has shown Himself to be the Exalted One who is His all-embracing rule does not leave the lowly (cf. David's confessions in Psa 131:1; 2Sa 6:22) unnoticed (Psa 113:6), but on the contrary makes him the especial object of His regard; and on the other hand even from afar (cf. Psa 139:2) He sees through (ידע as in Psa 94:11; Jer 29:23) the lofty one who thinks himself unobserved and conducts himself as if he were answerable to no higher being (Psa 10:4). In correct texts וגבה has Mugrash, and ממרחק Mercha. The form of the fut. Kal יידע is formed after the analogy of the Hiphil forms ייליל in Isa 16:7, and frequently, and ייטיב in Job 24:21; probably the word is intended to be all the more emphatic, inasmuch as the first radical, which disappears in ידע, is thus in a certain measure restored.^[162]

Verses 7-8

Out of these experiences-so important for all mankind - of David, who has been exalted by passing through humiliation, there arise from him confident hopes concerning the future. The beginning of this strophe calls Psa 23:4 to mind. Though his way may lead through the midst of heart - oppressing trouble, Jahve will loose these bands of death and quicken him afresh (חיּה as in Psa 30:4; Psa 71:20, and frequently). Though his enemies may rage, Jahve will stretch forth His hand threateningly and tranquillizingly over their wrath, and His right hand will save him. ימינך is the subject according to Psa 139:10 and other passages, and not (for why should it be supposed to be this?) accus. instrumenti (vid., Psa 60:7). In Psa 138:8 יגמר is intended just as in Psa 57:3 : the word begun He will carry out, ἐπιτελεῖν (Phi 1:6); and בּעדי (according to its meaning, properly: covering me) is the same as עלי in that passage (cf. Psa 13:6; 142:8). The pledge of this completion is Jahve's everlasting mercy, which will not rest until the promise is become perfect truth and reality. Thus, therefore, He will not leave, forsake the works of His hands (vid., Psa 90:16.), i.e., as Hengstenberg correctly explains, everything that He has hitherto accomplished for David, from his deliverance out of the hands of Saul down to the bestowment of the promise - He will not let one of His works stand still, and least of all one that has been so gloriously begun. הרפּה (whence תּרף) signifies to slacken, to leave slack, i.e., leave uncarried out, to leave to itself, as in Neh 6:3. אל expresses a negation with a measure of inward excitement.

Psalm 139

Adoration of the Omniscient and Omnipresent One

In this Aramaizing Psalm what the preceding Psalm says in Psa 139:6 comes to be carried into effect, viz.: for Jahve is exalted and He seeth the lowly, and the proud He knoweth from afar. This Psalm has manifold points of contact with its predecessor. From a theological point of view it is one of the most instructive of the Psalms, and both as regards its contents and poetic character in every way worthy of David. But it is only inscribed לדוד because it is composed after the Davidic model, and is a counterpart to such Psalms as Psa 19:1-14 and to other Davidic didactic Psalms. For the addition למנצח neither proves its ancient Davidic origin, nor in a general way its origin in the period prior to the Exile, as Ps 74 for example shows, which was at any rate not composed prior to the time of the Chaldaean catastrophe.
The Psalm falls into three parts: Psa 139:1, Psa 139:13, Psa 139:19; the strophic arrangement is not clear. The first part celebrates the Omniscient and Omnipresent One. The poet knows that he is surrounded on all sides by God's knowledge and His presence; His Spirit is everywhere and cannot be avoided; and His countenance is turned in every direction and inevitably, in wrath or in love. In the second part the poet continues this celebration with reference to the origin of man; and in the third part he turns in profound vexation of spirit towards the enemies of such a God, and supplicates for himself His proving and guidance. In Psa 139:1 and Psa 139:4 God is called Jahve, in Psa 139:17 El, in Psa 139:19 Eloha, in Psa 139:21 again Jahve, and in Psa 139:23 again El. Strongly as this Psalm is marked by the depth and pristine freshness of its ideas and feeling, the form of its language is still such as is without precedent in the Davidic age. To all appearance it is the Aramaeo-Hebrew idiom of the post-exilic period pressed into the service of poetry. The Psalm apparently belongs to those Psalms which, in connection with a thoroughly classical character of form, bear marks of the influence which the Aramaic language of the Babylonian kingdom exerted over the exiles. This influence affected the popular dialect in the first instance, but the written language also did not escape it, as the Books of Daniel and Ezra show; and even the poetry of the Psalms is not without traces of this retrograde movement of the language of Israel towards the language of the patriarchal ancestral house. In the Cod. Alex. Ζαχαρίου is added to the τῷ Δαυίδ ψαλμός, and by a second hand ἐν τῇ διασπορᾷ, which Origen also met with “in some copies.”

Verses 1-7

The Aramaic forms in this strophe are the ἅπαξ λεγομ רע (ground-form רעי) in Psa 139:2 and Psa 139:17, endeavour, desire, thinking, like רעוּת and רעיון in the post-exilic books, from רעה (רעא), cupere, cogitare; and the ἅπ. λεγ. רבע in Psa 139:3, equivalent to רבץ, a lying down, if רבעי be not rather an infinitive like בּלעי in Job 7:19, since ארחי is undoubtedly not inflected from ארח, but, as being infinitive, like עברי in Deu 4:21, from ארח; and the verb ארח also, with the exception of this passage, only occurs in the speeches of Elihu (Job 34:8), which are almost more strongly Aramaizing than the Book of Job itself. Further, as an Aramaizing feature we have the objective relation marked by Lamed in the expression בּנתּה לרעי, Thou understandest my thinking, as in Psa 116:16; Psa 129:3; Psa 135:11; Psa 136:19. The monostichic opening is after the Davidic style, e.g., Psa 23:1. Among the prophets, Isaiah in particular is fond of such thematic introductions as we have here in Psa 139:1. On ותּדע instead of ותּדעני vid., on Psa 107:20; the pronominal object stands once beside the first verb, or even beside the second (2Ki 9:25), instead of twice (Hitzig). The “me” is then expanded: sitting down, rising up, walking and lying, are the sum of human conditions or states. רעי is the totality or sum of the life of the spirit and soul of man, and דּרכי the sum of human action. The divine knowledge, as ותּדע says, is the result of the scrutiny of man. The poet, however, in Psa 139:2 and Psa 139:3 uses the perfect throughout as a mood of that which is practically existing, because that scrutiny is a scrutiny that is never unexecuted, and the knowledge is consequently an ever-present knowledge. מרחוק is meant to say that He sees into not merely the thought that is fully fashioned and matured, but even that which is being evolved. זרית from זרה is combined by Luther (with Azulai and others) with זר, a wreath (from זרר, constringere, cingere), inasmuch as he renders: whether I walk or lie down, Thou art round about me (Ich gehe oder lige , so bistu umb mich). זרה ought to have the same meaning here, if with Wetzstein one were to compare the Arabic, and more particularly Beduin, drrâ , dherrâ, to protect; the notion of affording protection does not accord with this train of thought, which has reference to God's omniscience: what ought therefore to be meant is a hedging round which secures its object to the knowledge, or even a protecting that places it in security against any exchanging, which will not suffer the object to escape it.^[163]
The Arabic ḏrâ, to know, which is far removed in sound, is by no means to be compared; it is related to Arab. dr', to push, urge forward, and denotes knowledge that is gained by testing and experimenting. But we also have no need of that Arab. ḏrâ, to protect, since we can remain within the range of the guaranteed Hebrew usage, inasmuch as זרה, to winnow, i.e., to spread out that which has been threshed and expose it to the current of the wind, in Arabic likewise ḏrrâ, (whence מזרה, midhrâ, a winnowing-fork, like רחת, racht, a winnowing-shovel), gives an appropriate metaphor. Here it is equivalent to: to investigate and search out to the very bottom; lxx, Symmachus, and Theodotion, ἐξιξηνίασας, after which the Italic renders investigasti, and Jerome eventilasti. הסכּין with the accusative, as in Job 22:21 with עם: to enter into neighbourly, close, familiar relationship, or to stand in such relationship, with any one; cogn. שׁכן, Arab. skn. God is acquainted with all our ways not only superficially, but closely and thoroughly, as that to which He is accustomed.
In Psa 139:4 this omniscience of God is illustratively corroborated with כּי; Psa 139:4 has the value of a relative clause, which, however, takes the form of an independent clause. מלּה (pronounced by Jerome in his letter to Sunnia and Fretela, §82, MALA) is an Aramaic word that has been already incorporated in the poetry of the Davidico-Salomonic age. כלּהּ signifies both all of it and every one. In Psa 139:5 Luther has been misled by the lxx and Vulgate, which take צוּר in the signification formare (whence צוּרה, forma); it signifies, as the definition “behind and before” shows, to surround, encompass. God is acquainted with man, for He holds him surrounded on all sides, and man can do nothing, if God, whose confining hand he has lying upon him (Job 9:23), does not allow him the requisite freedom of motion. Instead of דּעתּך (XX ἡ γνῶσίς σου) the poet purposely says in Psa 139:6 merely דּעת: a knowledge, so all-penetrating, all-comprehensive as God's knowledge. The Kerî reads פּליאה, but the Chethîb פּלאיּה is supported by the Chethîb פּלאי in Jdg 13:18, the Kerî of which there is not פּליא, but פּלי (the pausal form of an adjective פּלי, the feminine of which would be פּליּה). With ממּנּי the transcendence, with נשׂגּבה the unattainableness, and with להּ לא־אוּכל the incomprehensibleness of the fact of the omniscience of God is expressed, and with this, to the mind of the poet, coincides God's omnipresence; for true, not merely phenomenal, knowledge is not possible without the immanence of the knowing one in the thing known. God, however, is omnipresent, sustaining the life of all things by His Spirit, and revealing Himself either in love or in wrath - what the poet styles His countenance. To flee from this omnipresence (מן, away from), as the sinner and he who is conscious of his guilt would gladly do, is impossible. Concerning the first אנּה, which is here accented on the ultima, vid., on Psa 116:4.

Verses 8-12

The future form אסּק, customary in the Aramaic, may be derived just as well from סלק (סלק), by means of the same mode of assimilation as in יסּב = יסבּב, as from נסק (נסק), which latter is certainly only insecurely established by Dan 6:24, להנסקה (cf. להנזקת, Ezr 4:22; הנפּק, Dan 5:2), since the Nun, as in להנעלה, Dan 4:3, can also be a compensation for the resolved doubling (vid., Bernstein in the Lexicon Chrestom. Kirschianae, and Levy s.v. נסק). אם with the simple future is followed by cohortatives (vid., on Psa 73:16) with the equivalent אשּׂא among them: et si stratum facerem (mihi) infernum (accusative of the object as in Isa 58:5), etc. In other passages the wings of the sun (Mal 4:2) and of the wind (Psa 18:11) are mentioned, here we have the wings of the morning's dawn. Pennae aurorae, Eugubinus observes (1548), est velocissimus aurorae per omnem mundum decursus. It is therefore to be rendered: If I should lift wings (נשׂא כנפים as in Eze 10:16, and frequently) such as the dawn of the morning has, i.e., could I fly with the swiftness with which the dawn of the morning spreads itself over the eastern sky, towards the extreme west and alight there. Heaven and Hades, as being that which is superterrestrial and subterrestrial, and the east and west are set over against one another. אחרית ים is the extreme end of the sea (of the Mediterranean with the “isles of the Gentiles”). In Psa 139:10 follows the apodosis: nowhere is the hand of God, which governs everything, to be escaped, for dextera Dei ubique est. ואמר (not ואמר, Eze 13:15), “therefore I spake,” also has the value of a hypothetical protasis: quodsi dixerim. אך and חשׁך belongs together: merae tenebrae (vid: Psa 39:6.); but ישׁוּפני is obscure. The signification secured to it of conterere, contundere, in Gen 3:15; Job 9:17, which is followed by the lxx (Vulgate) καταπατήσει, is inappropriate to darkness. The signification inhiare, which may be deduced as possible from שׁאף, suits relatively better, yet not thoroughly well (why should it not have been יבלעני?). The signification obvelare, however, which one expects to find, and after which the Targum, Symmachus, Jerome, Saadia, and others render it, seems only to be guessed at from the connection, since שׁוּף has not this signification in any other instance, and in favour of it we cannot appeal either to נשׁף - whence נשׁף, which belongs together with נשׁב, נשׁם, and נפשׁ - or to עטף, the root of which is עת (עתה), or to צעף, whence צעיף, which does not signify to cover, veil, but according to Arab. ḍ‛f, to fold, fold together, to double. We must therefore either assign to ישׁוּפני the signification operiat me without being able to prove it, or we must put a verb of this signification in its place, viz., ישׂוּכני (Ewald) or יעוּפני (Böttcher), which latter is the more commendable here, where darkness (חשׁך, synon. עיפה, מעוּף) is the subject: and if I should say, let nothing but darkness cover me, and as night (the predicate placed first, as in Amo 4:13) let the light become about me, i.e., let the light become night that shall surround and cover me (בּעדני, poetic for בּעדי, like תּחתּני in 2 Sam. 22) -) - the darkness would spread abroad no obscurity (Psa 105:28) that should extend beyond (מן) Thy piercing eye and remove me from Thee. In the word יאיר, too, the Hiphil signification is not lost: the night would give out light from itself, as if it were the day; for the distinction of day and night has no conditioning influence upon God, who is above and superior to all created things (der Uebercreatürliche), who is light in Himself. The two כ are correlative, as e.g., in 1Ki 22:4. חשׁיכה (with a superfluous Jod) is an old word, but אורה (cf. Aramaic אורתּא) is a later one.

Verses 13-18

The fact that man is manifest to God even to the very bottom of his nature, and in every place, is now confirmed from the origin of man. The development of the child in the womb was looked upon by the Israelitish Chokma as one of the greatest mysteries, Ecc 11:5; and here the poet praises this coming into being as a marvellous work of the omniscient and omnipresent omnipotence of God. קנה here signifies condere; and סכך not: to cover, protect, as in Psa 140:8; Job 40:22, prop. to cover with network, to hedge in, but: to plait, interweave, viz., with bones, sinews, and veins, like שׂכך in Job 10:11. The reins are made specially prominent in order to mark the, the seat of the tenderest, most secret emotions, as the work of Him who trieth the heart and the reins. The προσευχή becomes in Psa 139:14 the εὐχαριστία: I give thanks unto Thee that I have wonderfully come into being under fearful circumstances, i.e., circumstances exciting a shudder, viz., of astonishment (נוראות as in Psa 65:6). נפלה (= נפלא) is the passive to הפלה, Psa 4:4; Psa 17:7. Hitzig regards נפליתה (Thou hast shown Thyself wonderful), after the lxx, Syriac, Vulgate, and Jerome, as the only correct reading; but the thought which is thereby gained comes indeed to be expressed in the following line, Psa 139:14, which sinks down into tautology in connection with this reading. `otsem (collectively equivalent to עצמים, Ecc 11:5) is the bones, the skeleton, and, starting from that idea, more generally the state of being as a sum-total of elements of being. אשׁר, without being necessarily a conjunction (Ew. §333, a), attaches itself to the suffix of עצמי. רקּם, “to be worked in different colours, or also embroidered,” of the system of veins ramifying the body, and of the variegated colouring of its individual members, more particularly of the inward parts; perhaps, however, more generally with a retrospective conception of the colours of the outline following the undeveloped beginning, and of the forming of the members and of the organism in general.^[164]
The mother's womb is here called not merely סתר (cf. Aeschylus' Eumenides, 665: ἐν σκοτοισι νηδύος τεθραμμένη, and the designation of the place where the foetus is formed as “a threefold darkness' in the Koran, Sur. xxxix. 8), the ē of which is retained here in pause (vid., Böttcher, Lehrbuch, §298), but by a bolder appellation תּחתּיּות ארץ, the lowest parts of the earth, i.e., the interior of the earth (vid., on Psa 63:10) as being the secret laboratory of the earthly origin, with the same retrospective reference to the first formation of the human body out of the dust of the earth, as when Job says, Job 1:21 : “naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither” - שׁמּה, viz., εἰς τὴν γῆν τὴν μητέρα πάντων, Sir. 40:1. The interior of Hades is also called בּטן שׁאול in Jon 2:2, Sir. 51:5. According to the view of Scripture the mode of Adam's creation is repeated in the formation of every man, Job 33:6, cf. Job 33:4. The earth was the mother's womb of Adam, and the mother's womb out of which the child of Adam comes forth is the earth out of which it is taken.

Verse 16

The embryo folded up in the shape of an egg is here called גּלם, from גּלם, to roll or wrap together (cf. glomus, a ball), in the Talmud said of any kind of unshapen mass (lxx ἀκατέργαστον, Symmachus ἀμόρφωτον) and raw material, e.g., of the wood or metal that is to be formed into a vessel (Chullin 25a, to which Saadia has already referred).^[165]
As to the rest, compare similar retrospective glances into the embryonic state in Job 10:8-12, 2 Macc. 7:22f. (Psychology, S. 209ff., tr. pp. 247f.). On the words in libro tuo Bellarmine makes the following correct observation: quia habes apud te exemplaria sive ideas omnium, quomodo pictor vel sculptor scit ex informi materia quid futurum sit, quia videt exemplar. The signification of the future יכּתבוּ is regulated by ראוּ, and becomes, as relating to the synchronous past, scribebantur. The days יצּרוּ, which were already formed, are the subject. It is usually rendered: “the days which had first to be formed.” If יצּרוּ could be equivalent to ייצּרוּ, it would be to be preferred; but this rejection of the praeform. fut. is only allowed in the fut. Piel of the verbs Pe Jod, and that after a Waw convertens, e.g., ויּבּשׁ = וייבּשׁ, Nah 1:4 (cf. Caspari on Oba 1:11).^[166]
Accordingly, assuming the original character of the לא in a negative signification, it is to be rendered: The days which were (already) formed, and there was not one among them, i.e., when none among them had as yet become a reality. The suffix of כּלּם points to the succeeding ימים, to which יצּרוּ is appended as an attributive clause; ולא אחד בּהם is subordinated to this יצּרוּ: cum non or nondum (Job 22:16) unus inter eos = unus eorum (Exo 14:28) esset. But the expression (instead of ועוד לא היה or טרם יהיה) remains doubtful, and it becomes a question whether the Kerî ולו (vid., on Psa 100:3), which stands side by side with the Chethîb ולא (which the lxx, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targum, Syriac, Jerome, and Saadia follow), is not to be preferred. This ולו, referred to גלמי, gives the acceptable meaning: and for it (viz., its birth) one among them (these days), without our needing to make any change in the proposed exposition down to יצרו. We decide in favour of this, because this ולו אחד בהם does not, as ולא אחד בהם, make one feel to miss any היה, and because the ולי which begins Psa 139:17 connects itself to it by way of continuation. The accentuation has failed to discern the reference of כלם to the following ימים, inasmuch as it places Olewejored against יכתבו. Hupfeld follows this accentuation, referring כלם back to גלמי as a coil of days of one's life; and Hitzig does the same, referring it to the embryos. But the precedence of the relative pronoun occurs in other instances also,^[167] and is devoid of all harshness, especially in connection with כּלּם, which directly signifies altogether (e.g., Isa 43:14).
It is the confession of the omniscience that is united with the omnipotence of God, which the poet here gives utterance to with reference to himself, just as Jahve says with reference to Jeremiah, Jer 1:5. Among the days which were preformed in the idea of God (cf. on יצרו, Isa 22:11; Isa 37:26) there was also one, says the poet, for the embryonic beginning of my life. The divine knowledge embraces the beginning, development, and completion of all things (Psychology, S. 37ff., tr. pp. 46ff.). The knowledge of the thoughts of God which are written in the book of creation and revelation is the poet's cherished possession, and to ponder over them is his favourite pursuit: they are precious to him, יקרוּ (after Psa 36:8), not: difficult of comprehension (schwerbegreiflich, Maurer, Olshausen), after Dan 2:11, which would surely have been expressed by עמקוּ (Psa 92:6), more readily: very weighty (schwergewichtig, Hitzig), but better according to the prevailing Hebrew usage: highly valued (schwergewerthet), cara.^[168] “Their sums” are powerful, prodigious (Psa 40:6), and cannot be brought to a summa summarum. If he desires to count them (fut. hypothet. as in Psa 91:7; Job 20:24), they prove themselves to be more than the sand with its grains, that is to say, innumerable. He falls asleep over the pondering upon them, wearied out; and when he wakes up, he is still with God, i.e., still ever absorbed in the contemplation of the Unsearchable One, which even the sleep of fatigue could not entirely interrupt. Ewald explains it somewhat differently: if I am lost in the stream of thoughts and images, and recover myself from this state of reverie, yet I am still ever with Thee, without coming to an end. But it could only perhaps be interpreted thus if it were העירותי or התעוררתּי. Hofmann's interpretation is altogether different: I will count them, the more numerous than the sand, when I awake and am continually with Thee, viz., in the other world, after the awaking from the sleep of death. This is at once impossible, because הקיצתי cannot here, according to its position, be a perf. hypotheticum. Also in connection with this interpretation עוד would be an inappropriate expression for “continually,” since the word only has the sense of the continual duration of an action or a state already existing; here of one that has not even been closed and broken off by sleep. He has not done; waking and dreaming and waking up, he is carried away by that endless, and yet also endlessly attractive, pursuit, the most fitting occupation of one who is awake, and the sweetest (cf. Jer 31:26) of one who is asleep and dreaming.

Verses 19-21

And this God is by many not only not believed in and loved, but even hated and blasphemed! The poet now turns towards these enemies of God in profound vexation of spirit. The אם, which is conditional in Psa 139:8, here is an optative o si, as in Psa 81:9; Psa 95:7. The expression תּקטל אלוהּ reminds one of the Book of Job, for, with the exception of our Psalm, this is the only book that uses the verb קטל, which is more Aramaic than Hebrew, and the divine name Eloah occurs more frequently in it than anywhere else. The transition from the optative to the imperative סוּרוּ is difficult; it would have been less so if the Waw copul. had been left out: cf. the easier expression in Psa 6:9; Psa 119:115. But we may not on this account seek to read יסוּרוּ, as Olshausen does. Everything here is remarkable; the whole Psalm has a characteristic form in respect to the language. מנּי is the ground-form of the overloaded ממּנּי, and is also like the Book of Job, Job 21:16, cf. מנהוּ Job 4:12, Psa 68:24. The mode of writing ימרוּך (instead of which, however, the Babylonian texts had יאמרוּך) is the same as in 2Sa 19:15, cf. in 2Sa 20:9 the same melting away of the Aleph into the preceding vowel in connection with אחז, in 2Sa 22:40 in connection with אזּר, and in Isa 13:20 with אהל. Construed with the accusative of the person, אמר here signifies to declare any one, profiteri, a meaning which, we confess, does not occur elsewhere. But למזמּה (cf. למרמה, Psa 24:4; the Targum: who swear by Thy name for wantonness) and the parallel member of the verse, which as it runs is moulded after Exo 20:7, show that it has not to be read ימרוּך (Quinta: παρεπικρανάν σε). The form נשׁוּא, with Aleph otians, is also remarkable; it ought at least to have been written נשׂאוּ (cf. נרפּוּא, Eze 47:8) instead of the customary נשׂאוּ; yet the same mode of writing is found in the Niphal in Jer 10:5, ינשׁוּא, it assumes a ground-form נשׂה (Psa 32:1) = נשׂא, and is to be judged of according to אבוּא in Isa 28:12 [Ges. §23, 3, rem. 3]. Also one feels the absence of the object to נשׁוּא לשּׁוא. It is meant to be supplied according to the decalogue, Exo 20:7, which certainly makes the alteration שׁמך (Böttcher, Olsh.) or זכרך (Hitzig on Isa 26:13), instead of עריך, natural. But the text as we now have it is also intelligible: the object to נשׂוא is derived from ימרוך, and the following עריך is an explanation of the subject intended in נשׂוא that is introduced subsequently. Psa 89:52 proves the possibility of this structure of a clause. It is correctly rendered by Aquila ἀντίζηλοί σου, and Symmachus οἱ ἐναντίοι σου. ער, an enemy, prop. one who is zealous, a zealot (from עוּר, or rather עיר, = Arab. gâr , med . Je, ζηλοῦν, whence עיר, Arab. gayrat = קנאה), is a word that is guaranteed by 1Sa 28:16; Dan 4:16, and as being an Aramaism is appropriate to this Psalm. The form תּקומם for מתּקומם has cast away the preformative Mem (cf. שׁפתּים and משׁפּתים, מקּרה in Deu 23:11 for ממּקּרה); the suffix is to be understood according to Psa 17:7. Pasek stands between יהוה and אשׂנה in order that the two words may not be read together (cf. Job 27:13, and above Psa 10:3). התקוטט as in the recent Psa 119:158. The emphasis in Psa 139:22 lies on לי; the poet regards the adversaries of God as enemies of his own. תּכלית takes the place of the adjective: extremo (odio) odi eos. Such is the relation of the poet to the enemies of God, but without indulging any self-glorying.

Verses 23-24

He sees in them the danger which threatens himself, and prays God not to give him over to the judgment of self-delusion, but to lay bare the true state of his soul. The fact “Thou hast searched me,” which the beginning of the Psalm confesses, is here turned into a petitioning “search me.” Instead of רעים in Psa 139:17, the poet here says שׂרעפּים, which signifies branches (Eze 31:5) and branchings of the act of thinking (thoughts and cares, Psa 94:19). The Resh is epenthetic, for the first form is שׂעפּים, Job 4:13; Job 20:2. The poet thus sets the very ground and life of his heart, with all its outward manifestations, in the light of the divine omniscience. And in Psa 139:24 he prays that God would see whether any דּרך־עצב cleaves to him (בּי as in 1Sa 25:24), by which is not meant “a way of idols” (Rosenmüller, Gesenius, and Maurer), after Isa 48:5, since an inclination towards, or even apostasy to, heathenism cannot be an unknown sin; nor to a man like the writer of this Psalm is heathenism any power of temptation. דוך בּצע (Grätz) might more readily be admissible, but דוך עצב is a more comprehensive notion, and one more in accordance with this closing petition. The poet gives this name to the way that leads to the pain, torture, viz., of the inward and outward punishments of sin; and, on the other hand, the way along which he wishes to be guided he calls דּרך עולם, the way of endless continuance (lxx, Vulgate, Luther), not the way of the former times, after Jer 6:16 (Maurer, Olshausen), which thus by itself is ambiguous (as becomes evident from Job 22:15; Jer 18:15), and also does not furnish any direct antithesis. The “everlasting way” is the way of God (Psa 27:11), the way of the righteous, which stands fast for ever and shall not “perish” (Psa 1:6).

Psalm 140

Prayer for Protection against Wicked, Crafty Men

2 DELIVER me, Jahve, from wicked men, From the violent man preserve me, 3 Who plot wickedness in the heart, Daily do they stir up wars. 4 They sharpen their tongue like a serpent, Adder's poison is under their lips. (Sela.) 5 Keep me, Jahve, from the hands of the wicked, From the violent man preserve me, Who purpose to thrust aside my footsteps 6 The proud hide snares for me and cords, They spread nets close hy the path, They set traps for me. (Sela.) 7 I say to Jahve : My God art Thou, Oh give ear, Jahve, to the cry of my supplication. 8 Jahve the Lord is the stronghold of my salvatiou, Thou coverest my head in the day of equipment. 9 Grant not, Jahve, the desires of the wicked ; Let not his device prosper, that they may not be lifted up. (Sela.) 10 The head of those who compass me about — let the trouble of their lips cover them ! 11 Let burning coals be cast down upon them, let them be cast into the fire, Into abysses out of which they may never rise up ! 12 Let not the man of the tongue be established on the earth, The man of violence — let wickedness hunt him in violent haste ! 13 I know that Jahve will carry through the cause of the afflicted, The right of the poor. 14 Yea, the righteous shall give thanks unto Thy Name, The upright shall dwell beside Thy countenance.
The close of the preceding Psalm is the key to David's position and mood in the presence of his enemies which find expression in this Psalm. He complains here of serpent-like, crafty, slanderous adversaries, who are preparing themselves for war against him, and with whom he will at length have to fight in open battle. The Psalm, in its form more bold than beautiful, justifies its לדוד in so far as it is Davidic in thoughts and figures, and may be explained from the circumstances of the rebellion of Absalom, to which as an outbreak of Ephraimitish jealousy the rebellion of Sheba ben Bichri the Benjamite attached itself. Psa 58:1-11 and Psa 64:1-10 are very similar. The close of all three Psalms sounds much alike, they agree in the use of rare forms of expression, and their language becomes fearfully obscure in style and sound where they are directed against the enemies.

Verses 1-3

The assimilation of the Nun of the verb נצר is given up, as in Psa 61:8; Psa 78:7, and frequently, in order to make the form more full-toned. The relative clause shows that אישׁ חמסים is not intended to be understood exclusively of one person. בּלב strengthens the notion of that which is deeply concealed and premeditated. It is doubtful whether יגוּרוּ signifies to form into troops or to stir up. But from the fact that גּוּר in Psa 56:7; Psa 59:4, Isa 54:15, signifies not congregare but se congregare, it is to be inferred that גּוּר in the passage before us, like גּרה (or התגּרה in Deu 2:9, Deu 2:24), in Syriac and Targumic גּרג, signifies concitare, to excite (cf. שׂוּר together with שׂרה, Hos 12:4.). In Psa 140:4 the Psalm coincides with Psa 64:4; Psa 58:5. They sharpen their tongue, so that it inflicts a fatal sting like the tongue of a serpent, and under their lips, shooting out from thence, is the poison of the adder (cf. Sol 4:11). עכשׁוּב is a ἅπαξ λεγομ. not from כּשׁב (Jesurun, p. 207), but from עכשׁ, Arab. ‛ks and ‛kš, root ‛k (vid., Fleischer on Isa 59:5, עכּבישׁ), both of which have the significations of bending, turning, and coiling after the manner of a serpent; the Beth is an organic addition modifying the meaning of the root.^[169]

Verses 4-5

The course of this second strophe is exactly parallel with the first. The perfects describe their conduct hitherto, as a comparison of Psa 140:3 with Psa 140:3 shows. פּעמים is poetically equivalent to רגלים, and signifies both the foot that steps (Psa 57:5; Psa 58:11) and the step that is made by the foot (Ps 85:14; Psa 119:133), and here the two senses are undistinguishable. They are called גּאים on account of the inordinate ambition that infatuates them. The metaphors taken from the life of the hunter (Psa 141:9; Psa 142:4) are here brought together as it were into a body of synonyms. The meaning of ליד־מעגּל becomes explicable from Psa 142:4; ליד, at hand, is equivalent to “immediately beside” (1Ch 18:17; Neh 11:24). Close by the path along which he has to pass, lie gins ready to spring together and ensnare him when he appears.

Verses 6-8

Such is the conduct of his enemies; he, however, prays to his God and gets his weapons from beside Him. The day of equipment is the day of the crisis when the battle is fought in full array. The perfect סכּותה states what will then take place on the part of God: He protects the head of His anointed against the deadly blow. Both Psa 140:8 and Psa 140:8 point to the helmet as being מעוז ראשׁ, Psa 60:9; cf. the expression “the helmet of salvation” in Isa 59:17. Beside מאויּי, from the ἅπ. λεγ. מאוה, there is also the reading מאויי, which Abulwalîd found in his Jerusalem codex (in Saragossa). The regular form would be מאוי, and the boldly irregular ma'awajjê follows the example of מחשׁכּי, מחמדּי, and the like, in a manner that is without example elsewhere. זממז for מזמּתו is also a hapaxlegomenon; according to Gesenius the principal form is זמם, but surely ore correctly זמם (like קרב), which in Aramaic signifies a bridle, and here a plan, device. The Hiph. חפיק (root פק, whence נפק, Arab. nfq) signifies educere in the sense of reportare, Pro 3:13; Pro 8:35; Pro 12:2; Pro 18:22, and of porrigere, Psa 144:13, Isa 58:10. A reaching forth of the plan is equivalent to the reaching forth of that which is projected. The choice of the words used in this Psalm coincides here, as already in מעגּל, with Proverbs and Isaiah. The future ירוּמוּ expresses the consequence (cf. Psa 61:8) against which the poet wishes to guard.

Verses 9-11

The strophic symmetry is now at an end. The longer the poet lingers over the contemplation of the rebels the more lofty and dignified does his language become, the more particular the choice of the expressions, and the more difficult and unmanageable the construction. The Hiph. הסב signifies, causatively, to cause to go round about (Exo 13:18), and to raise round about (2Ch 14:6); here, after Jos 6:11, where with an accusative following it signifies to go round about: to make the circuit of anything, as enemies who surround a city on all sides and seek the most favourable point for assault; מסבּי from the participle מסב. Even when derived from the substantive מסב (Hupfeld), “my surroundings” is equivalent to איבי סביבותי in Psa 27:6. Hitzig, on the other hand, renders it: the head of my slanderers, from סבב, to go round about, Arabic to tell tales of any one, defame; but the Arabic sbb , fut. u, to abuse, the IV form (Hiphil) of which moreover is not used either in the ancient or in the modern language, has nothing to do with the Hebrew סבב, but signifies originally to cut off round about, then to clip (injure) any one's honour and good name.<ref> The lexicographer Neshwân says, i. 279b: Arab. ‘l - sbb 'l - šatm w- qı̂l an aṣl 'l - sbb 'l - qaṭ‛ ṯm ṣâr 'l - štm, “sebb is to abuse; still, the more original signification of cutting off is said to lie at the foundation of this signification.” That Arab. qṭ‛ is synonymous with it, e.g., Arab. lı̂štqt‛fı̂nâ, why dost thou cut into us? i.e., why dost thou insult our honour? - Wetzstein.</ref>
The fact that the enemies who surround the psalmist on every side are just such calumniators, is intimated here in the word שׂפתימו. He wishes that the trouble which the enemies' slanderous lips occasion him may fall back upon their own head. ראשׁ is head in the first and literal sense according to Psa 7:17; and יכסּימו (with the Jod of the groundform kcy, as in Deu 32:26; 1Ki 20:35; Chethîb יכסּוּמו,^[170] after the attractional schema, 2Sa 2:4; Isa 2:11, and frequently; cf. on the masculine form, Pro 5:2; Pro 10:21) refers back to ראשׁ, which is meant of the heads of all persons individually. In Psa 140:11 ימיטוּ (with an indefinite subject of the higher punitive powers, Ges. §137, note), in the signification to cause to descend, has a support in Psa 55:4, whereas the Niph. נמוט, fut. ימּט, which is preferred by the Kerî, in the signification to be made to descend, is contrary to the usage of the language. The ἅπ. λεγ. מהמרות has been combined by Parchon and others with the Arabic hmr, which, together with other significations (to strike, stamp, cast down, and the like), also has the signification to flow (whence e.g., in the Koran, mâ 'munhamir, flowing water). “Fire” and “water” are emblems of perils that cannot be escaped, Psa 66:12, and the mention of fire is therefore appropriately succeeded by places of flowing water, pits of water. The signification “pits” is attested by the Targum, Symmachus, Jerome, and the quotation in Kimchi: “first of all they buried them in מהמורות; when the flesh was consumed they collected the bones and buried them in coffins.” On בּל־יקוּמוּ cf. Isa 26:14. Like Psa 140:10-11, Psa 140:12 is also not to be taken as a general maxim, but as expressing a wish in accordance with the excited tone of this strophe. אישׁ לשׁון is not a great talker, i.e., boaster, but an idle talker, i.e., slanderer (lxx ἀνὴρ γλωσσώδης, cf. Sir. 8:4). According to the accents, אישׁ חמס רע is the parallel; but what would be the object of this designation of violence as worse or more malignant? With Sommer, Olshausen, and others, we take רע as the subject to יצוּדנּוּ: let evil, i.e., the punishment which arises out of evil, hunt him; cf. Pro 13:21, חטּאים תּרדּף רעה, and the opposite in Psa 23:6. It would have to be accented, according to this our construction of the words, אישׁ חמס רע יצודני למדחפת. The ἅπ. λεγ. למדחפת we do not render, with Hengstenberg, Olshausen, and others: push upon push, with repeated pushes, which, to say nothing more, is not suited to the figure of hunting, but, since דּחף always has the signification of precipitate hastening: by hastenings, that is to say, forced marches.

Verses 12-13

With Psa 140:13 the mood and language now again become cheerful, the rage has spent itself; therefore the style and tone are now changed, and the Psalm trips along merrily as it were to the close. With reference to ידעת for ידעתי (as in Job 42:2), vid., Psa 16:2. That which David in Psa 9:5 confidently expects on his own behalf is here generalized into the certain prospect of the triumph of the good cause in the person of all its representatives at that time oppressed. אך, like ידעתּי, is an expression of certainty. After seeming abandonment God again makes Himself known to His own, and those whom they wanted to sweep away out of the land of the living have an ever sure dwelling-place with His joyful countenance (Psa 16:11).

Psalm 141

Evening Psalm in the Times of Absalom

The four Psalms, Psa 140:1-13, Psa 141:1-10, Psa 142:1-7, and Psa 143:1-12, are interwoven with one another in many ways (Symbolae, pp. 67f.). The following passages are very similar, viz., Psa 140:7; Psa 141:1; Psa 142:2, and Psa 143:1. Just as the poet complains in Psa 142:4, “when my spirit veils itself within me,” so too in Psa 143:4; as he prays in Ps 142:8, “Oh bring my soul out of prison,” so in Psa 143:11, “bring my soul out of distress,” where צרה takes the place of the metaphorical מסגר. Besides these, compare Psa 140:5-6 with Psa 141:9; Psa 142:7 with Psa 143:9; Psa 140:3 with Psa 141:5, רעות; Ps 140:14 with Ps 142:8; Psa 142:4 with Psa 143:8.
The right understanding of the Psalm depends upon the right understanding of the situation. Since it is inscribed לדוד, it is presumably a situation corresponding to the history of David, out of the midst of which the Psalm is composed, either by David himself or by some one else who desired to give expression in Davidic strains to David's mood when in this situation. For the gleaning of Davidic Psalms which we find in the last two Books of the Psalter is for the most part derived from historical works in which these Psalms, in some instances only free reproductions of the feelings of David with respect to old Davidic models, adorned the historic narrative. The Psalm before us adorned the history of the time of the persecution by Absalom. At that time David was driven out of Jerusalem, and consequently cut off from the sacrificial worship of God upon Zion; and our Psalm is an evening hymn of one of those troublous days. The ancient church, even prior to the time of Gregory (Constitutiones Apostolicae, ii. 59), had chosen it for its evening hymn, just as it had chosen Psa 63:1-11 for its morning hymn. Just as Psa 63:1-11 was called ὁ ὀρθρινός (ibid. 8:37), so this Psalm, as being the Vesper Psalm, was called ὁ ἐπιλύχνιος (vid., 8:35).

Verses 1-2

The very beginning of Psa 141:1-10 is more after the manner of David than really Davidic; for instead of haste thee to me, David always says, haste thee for my help, Psa 22:20; 38:23; Psa 40:14. The לך that is added to בּקראי (as in Psa 4:2) is to be explained, as in Psa 57:3 : when I call to Thee, i.e., when I call Thee, who art now far from me, to me. The general cry for help is followed in Psa 141:2 by a petition for the answering of his prayer. Luther has given an excellent rendering: Let my prayer avail to Thee as an offering of incense; the lifting up of my hands, as an evening sacrifice (Mein Gebet müsse fur dir tügen wie ein Reuchopffer, Meine Hende auffheben, wie ein Abendopffer). תּכּון is the fut. Niph. of כּוּן, and signifies properly to be set up, and to be established, or reflexive: to place and arrange or prepare one's self, Amo 4:12; then to continue, e.g., Psa 101:7; therefore, either let it place itself, let it appear, sistat se, or better: let it stand, continue, i.e., let my prayer find acceptance, recognition with Thee קטרת, and the lifting up of my hands מנחת־ערב. Expositors say that this in both instances is the comparatio decurtata, as in Psa 11:1 and elsewhere: as an incense-offering, as an evening mincha. But the poet purposely omits the כּ of the comparison. He wishes that God may be pleased to regard his prayer as sweet-smelling smoke or as incense, just as this was added to the azcara of the meal-offering, and gave it, in its ascending perfume, the direction upward to God,^[171] and that He may be pleased to regard the lifting up of his hands (משׂאת, the construct with the reduplication given up, from משּׂאת, or even, after the form מתּנת, from משּׂאה, here not oblatio, but according to the phrase נשׂא כפּים ידים, elevatio, Jdg 20:38, Jdg 20:40, cf. Psa 28:2, and frequently) as an evening mincha, just as it was added to the evening tamı̂d according to Exo 29:38-42, and concluded the work of the service of the day.^[172]

Verses 3-4

The prayer now begins to be particularized, and that in the first instance as a petition fore the grace of silence, calling to mind old Davidic passages like Psa 39:2; Psa 34:14. The situation of David, the betrayed one, requires caution in speaking; and the consciousness of having sinned, not indeed against the rebels, but against God, who would not visit him thus without his deserving it, stood in the way of any outspoken self-vindication. In pone custodiam ori meo שׁמרה is ἅπ. λεγ., after the infinitive form דּבקה, עזבה, עצמה. In Psa 141:3 דּל is ἅπ. λεγ. for דּלת; cf. “doors of the mouth” in Mic 7:5, and πύλαι στόματος in Euripides. נצּרה might be imper. Kal: keep I pray, with Dag. dirimens as in Pro 4:13. But נצר על is not in use; and also as the parallel word to שׁמרה, which likewise has the appearance of being imperative, נצּרה is explicable as regards its pointing by a comparison of יקּהה in Gen 49:10, דּבּרה in Deu 33:3, and קרבה in Psa 73:28. The prayer for the grace of silence is followed in Psa 141:4 by a prayer for the breaking off of all fellowship with the existing rulers. By a flight of irony they are called אישׁים, lords, in the sense of בּני אישׁ, Psa 4:3 (cf. the Spanish hidalgos = hijos d'algo, sons of somebody). The evil thing (רע | דּבר, with Pasek between the two ר, as in Num 7:13; Deu 7:1 between the two מ, and in 1Ch 22:3 between the two )ל, to which Jahve may be pleased never to incline his heart (תּט, fut. apoc. Hiph. as in Psa 27:9), is forthwith more particularly designated: perpetrare facinora maligne cum dominis, etc. עללות of great achievements in the sense of infamous deeds, also occurs in Psa 14:1; Psa 99:8. Here, however, we have the Hithpo. התעלל, which, with the accusative of the object עללות, signifies: wilfully to make such actions the object of one's acting (cf. Arab. ta‛allala b - 'l - š', to meddle with any matter, to amuse, entertain one's self with a thing). The expression is made to express disgust as strongly as possible; this poet is fond of glaring colouring in his language. In the dependent passage neve eorum vescar cupediis, לחם is used poetically for אכל, and בּ is the partitive Beth, as in Job 21:25. מנעמּים is another hapaxlegomenon, but as being a designation of dainties (from נעם, to be mild, tender, pleasant), it may not have been an unusual word. It is a well-known thing that usurpers revel in the cuisine and cellars of those whom they have driven away.

Verses 5-7

Thus far the Psalm is comparatively easy of exposition; but now it becomes difficult, yet not hopelessly so. David, thoroughly conscious of his sins against God and of his imperfection as a monarch, says, in opposition to the abuse which he is now suffering, that he would gladly accept any friendly reproof: “let a righteous man smite in kindness and reprove me - head-oil (i.e., oil upon the head, to which such reproof is likened) shall my head not refuse.” So we render it, following the accents, and not as Hupfeld, Kurtz, and Hitzig do: “if a righteous man smites me, it is love; if he reproves me, an anointing of the head is it unto me;” in connection with which the designation of the subject with היא would be twice wanting, which is more than is admissible. צדּיק stands here as an abstract substantive: the righteous man, whoever he may be, in antithesis, namely, to the rebels and to the people who have joined them. Amyraldus, Maurer, and Hengstenberg understand it of God; but it only occurs of God as an attribute, and never as a direct appellation. חסד, as in Jer 31:3, is equivalent to בּחסד, cum benignitate = benigne. What is meant is, as in Job 6:14, what Paul (Gal 6:1) styles πνεῦμα πραΰ́τητος. and הלם, tundere, is used of the strokes of earnest but well-meant reproof, which is called “the blows of a friend” in Pro 27:6. Such reproof shall be to him as head-oil (Psa 23:5; Psa 133:2), which his head does not despise. יני, written defectively for יניא, like ישּׁי, in Psa 55:16, אבי, 1Ki 21:29 and frequently; הניא (root נא, Arab. n', with the nasal n, which also expresses the negation in the Indo-Germanic languages) here signifies to deny, as in Psa 33:10 to bring to nought, to destroy. On the other hand, the lxx renders μὴ λιπανάτω τὴν κεφαλήν μου, which is also followed by the Syriac and Jerome, perhaps after the Arabic nawiya, to become or to be fat, which is, however, altogether foreign to the Aramaic, and is, moreover, only used of fatness of the body, and in fact of camels. The meaning of the figure is this: well-meant reproof shall be acceptable and spiritually useful to him. The confirmation כּי־עוד וגו follows, which is enigmatical both in meaning and expression. This עוד is the cipher of a whole clause, and the following ו is related to this עוד as the Waw that introduces the apodosis, not to כּי as in 2Ch 24:20, since no progression and connection is discernible if כי is taken as a subordinating quia. We interpret thus: for it is still so (the matter still stands thus), that my prayer is against their wickednesses; i.e., that I use no weapon but that of prayer against these, therefore let me always be in that spiritual state of mind which is alive to well-meant reproof. Mendelssohn's rendering is similar: I still pray, whilst they practise infamy. On עוד ו cf. Zec 8:20 עוד אשׁר (vid., Köhler), and Pro 24:27 אחר ו. He who has prayed God in Psa 141:3 to set a watch upon his mouth is dumb in the presence of those who now have dominion, and seeks to keep himself clear of their sinful doings, whereas he willingly allows himself to be chastened by the righteous; and the more silent he is towards the world (see Amo 5:13), the more constant is he in his intercourse with God. But there will come a time when those who now behave as lords shall fall a prey to the revenge of the people who have been misled by them; and on the other hand, the confession of the salvation, and of the order of the salvation, of God, that has hitherto been put to silence, will again be able to make itself freely heard, and find a ready hearing.
As Psa 141:6 says, the new rulers fall a prey to the indignation of the people and are thrown down the precipices, whilst the people, having again come to their right mind, obey the words of David and find them pleasant and beneficial (vid., Pro 15:26; Pro 16:24). נשׁמטוּ is to be explained according to 2Ki 9:33. The casting of persons down from the rock was not an unusual mode of execution (2Ch 25:12). ידי־סלע are the sides (Psa 140:6; Jdg 11:26) of the rock, after which the expression ἐχόμενα πέτρας of the lxx, which has been misunderstood by Jerome, is intended to be understood;^[173] they are therefore the sides of the rock conceived of as it were as the hands of the body of rock, if we are not rather with Böttcher to compare the expressions בּידי and על־ידי construed with verbs of abandoning and casting down, Lam 1:14; Job 16:11, and frequently. In Psa 141:7 there follows a further statement of the issue on the side of David and his followers: instar findentis et secantis terram (בּקע with Beth, elsewhere in the hostile signification of irrumpere) dispersa sunt ossa nostra ad ostium (לפי as in Pro 8:3) orci; Symmachus: ὥσπερ γεωργὸς ὅταν ῥήσσῃ τὴν τὴν, οὕτως ἐσκορπίσθη τὰ ὀστᾶ ἡμῶν εἰς στόμα ᾅδου; Quinta: ὡς καλλιεργῶν καὶ σκάπτων ἐν τῇ γῇ κ. τ. λ. Assuming the very extreme, it is a look of hope into the future: should his bones and the bones of his followers be even scattered about the mouth of Sheôl (cf. the Syrian picture of Sheôl: “the dust upon its threshold ‛al - escûfteh ,” Deutsche Morgenländ. Zeitschrift, xx. 513), their soul below, their bones above - it would nevertheless be only as when on in ploughing cleaves the earth; i.e., they do not lie there in order that they may continue lying, but that they may rise up anew, as the seed that is sown sprouts up out of the upturned earth. lxx Codd. Vat. et Sinait. τὰ ὀστᾶ ἡμῶν, beside which, however, is found the reading αὐτῶν (Cod. Alex. by a second hand, and the Syriac, Arabic, and Aethiopic versions), as Böttcher also, pro ineptissimo utcunque, thinks עצמינו must be read, understanding this, according to 2Ch 25:12 extrem., of the mangled bodies of those cast down from the rock. We here discern the hope of a resurrection, if not directly, at least (cf. Oehler in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie, concluding volume, S. 422) as am emblem of victory in spite of having succumbed. That which authorizes this interpretation lies in the figure of the husbandman, and in the conditional clause (Psa 141:8), which leads to the true point of the comparison; for as a complaint concerning a defeat that had been suffered: “so are our bones scattered for the mouth of the grave (in order to be swallowed up by it),” Psa 141:7, would be alien and isolated with respect to what precedes and what follows.

Verses 8-10

If Psa 141:7 is not merely an expression of the complaint, but at the same time of hope, we now have no need to give the כּי the adversative sense of imo, but we may leave it its most natural confirmatory signification namque. From this point the Psalm gradually dies away in strains comparatively easy to be understood and in perfect keeping with the situation. In connection with Psa 141:8 one is reminded of Psa 25:15; Psa 31:2; with Psa 141:9., of Psa 7:16; Psa 69:23, and other passages. In “pour not out (תּער with sharpened vowel instead of תּער, Ges. §75, rem. 8) my soul,” ערה, Piel, is equivalent to the Hiph. הערה in Isa 53:12. ידי פח are as it were the hands of the seizing and capturing snare; and יקשׂוּ לּי is virtually a genitive: qui insidias tendunt mihi, since one cannot say יקשׁ פח, ponere laqueum. מכמרים, nets, in Psa 141:10 is another hapaxlegomenon; the enallage numeri is as in Psa 62:5; Isa 2:8; Isa 5:23, - the singular that slips in refers what is said of the many to each individual in particular. The plural מקשׁות for מקשׁים, Psa 18:6; Psa 64:6, also occurs only here. יחד is to be explained as in 4:9: it is intended to express the coincidence of the overthrow of the enemies and the going forth free of the persecuted one. With יחד אנכי the poet gives prominence to his simultaneous, distinct destiny: simul ego dum (עד as in Job 8:21, cf. Job 1:18) praetereo h.e. evado. The inverted position of the כּי in Psa 18:10-12 may be compared; with Psa 120:7 and 2Ki 2:14, however (where instead of אף־הוּא it is with Thenius to be read אפוא), the case is different.

Psalm 142

==Cry Sent Forth from the Prison to the Best of Friends==
This the last of the eight Davidic Psalms, which are derived by their inscriptions from the time of the persecution by Saul (vid., on Ps 34), is inscribed: A Meditation by David, when he was in the cave, a Prayer. Of these eight Psalms, Psa 52:1-9 and Psa 54:1-7 also bear the name of Maskı̂l (vid., on Psa 32:1-11); and in this instance תּפּלּה (which occurs besides as an inscription only in Psa 90:1; Psa 102:1; Psa 3:1) is further added, which looks like an explanation of the word maskı̂l (not in use out of the range of Psalm-poetry). The article of במערה, as in Psa 57:1, points to the cave of Adullam (1 Sam. 22) or the cave of Engedi (1 Sam. 24), which latter, starting from a narrow concealed entrance, forms such a labyrinthine maze of passages and vaults that the torches and lines of explorers have not to the present time been able to reach the extremities of it.
The Psalm does not contain any sure signs of a post-Davidic age; still it appears throughout to be an imitation of older models, and pre-eminently by means of Psa 142:2. (cf. Psa 77:2.) and Psa 142:4 (cf. Psa 77:4) it comes into a relation of dependence to Ps 77, which is also noticeable in Psa 143:1-12 (cf. Psa 142:5 with Psa 77:12.). The referring back of the two Psalms to David comes under one and the same judgment.

Verses 1-3

The emphasis of the first two lines rests upon אל־ה. Forsaken by all created beings, he confides in Jahve. He turns to Him in pathetic and importunate prayer (זעק, the parallel word being התחנּן, as in Psa 30:9), and that not merely inwardly (Exo 14:15), but with his voice (vid., on Psa 3:5) - for audible prayer reacts soothingly, strengtheningly, and sanctifyingly upon the praying one - he pours out before Him his trouble which distracts his thoughts (שׁפך שׂיח as in Psa 102:1, cf. Psa 62:9; Psa 64:2; 1Sa 1:16), he lays open before Him everything that burdens and distresses him. Not as though He did not also know it without all this; on the contrary, when his spirit (רוּחי as in Psa 143:4; Psa 77:4, cf. נפשׁי Jon 2:7, Psa 107:5, לבּי Psa 61:3) within him (עלי, see Psa 42:5) is enshrouded and languishes, just this is his consolation, that Jahve is intimately acquainted with his way together with the dangers that threaten him at every step, and therefore also understands how to estimate the title (right) and meaning of his complaints. The Waw of ואתּה is the same as in 1Ki 8:36, cf. Ps 35. Instead of saying: then I comfort myself with the fact that, etc., he at once declares the fact with which he comforts himself. Supposing this to be the case, there is no need for any alteration of the text in order to get over that which is apparently incongruous in the relation of Psa 142:4 to Psa 142:4.

Verses 3-5

The prayer of the poet now becomes deep-breathed and excited, inasmuch as he goes more minutely into the details of his straitened situation. Everywhere, whithersoever he has to go (cf. on Psa 143:8), the snares of craftily calculating foes threaten him. Even God's all-seeing eye will not discover any one who would right faithfully and carefully interest himself in him. הבּיט, look! is a graphic hybrid form of הבּט and הבּיט, the usual and the rare imperative form; cf. הביא 1Sa 20:40 (cf. Jer 17:18), and the same modes of writing the inf. absol. in Jdg 1:28; Amo 9:8, and the fut. conv. in Eze 40:3. מכּיר is, as in Rth 2:19, cf. Ps 10, one who looks kindly upon any one, a considerate (cf. the phrase הכּיר פּנים) well-wisher and friend. Such an one, if he had one, would be עמד על־ימינו or מימינו (Psa 16:8), for an open attack is directed to the arms-bearing right side (Psa 109:6), and there too the helper in battle (Psa 110:5) and the defender or advocate (Psa 109:31) takes his place in order to cover him who is imperilled (Psa 121:5). But then if God looks in that direction, He will find him, who is praying to Him, unprotected. Instead of ואין one would certainly have sooner expected אשׁר or כי as the form of introducing the condition in which he is found; but Hitzig's conjecture, הבּיט ימין וראה, “looking for days and seeing,” gives us in the place of this difficulty a confusing half-Aramaism in ימין = יומין in the sense of ימים in Dan 8:27; Neh 1:4. Ewald's rendering is better: “though I look to the right hand and see (וראה), yet no friend appears for me;” but this use of the inf. absol. with an adversative apodosis is without example. Thus therefore the pointing appears to have lighted upon the correct idea, inasmuch as it recognises here the current formula הבּט וּראה, e.g., Job 35:5; Lam 5:1. The fact that David, although surrounded by a band of loyal subjects, confesses to having no true fiend, is to be understood similarly to the language of Paul when he says in Phi 2:20 : “I have no man like-minded.” All human love, since sin has taken possession of humanity, is more or less selfish, and all fellowship of faith and of love imperfect; and there are circumstances in life in which these dark sides make themselves felt overpoweringly, so that a man seems to himself to be perfectly isolated and turns all the more urgently to God, who alone is able to supply the soul's want of some object to love, whose love is absolutely unselfish, and unchangeable, and unbeclouded, to whom the soul can confide without reserve whatever burdens it, and who not only honestly desires its good, but is able also to compass it in spite of every obstacle. Surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, and misunderstood, or at least not thoroughly understood, by his friends, David feels himself broken off from all created beings. On this earth every kind of refuge is for him lost (the expression is like Job 11:20). There is no one there who should ask after or care for his soul, and should right earnestly exert himself for its deliverance. Thus, then, despairing of all visible things, he cries to the Invisible One. He is his “refuge” (Psa 91:9) and his “portion” (Psa 16:5; Psa 73:26), 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” (Psa 27:13; Psa 52:7). He cannot die, he cannot perish.

Verses 6-7

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 Psa 142:7 רנּתי calls to mind Psa 17:1; the first confirmation, Psa 79:8, and the second, Psa 18:18. But this is the only passage in the whole Psalter where the poet designates the “distress” in which he finds himself as a prison (מסגּר). V. 8b 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 might seem according to Psa 142:5. 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” (1Co 12:26). We understand the differently interpreted יכתּירוּ after this “rejoicing with” (συγχαίρει). The lxx, Syriac, and Aquilaz render: the righteous wait for me; but to wait is כּתּר and not הכתּיר. 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, בּי denotes the tender sympathy they fell with him: crowding closely upon me. But there is no instance of a verb of surrounding (אפף, סבב, סבב, עוּד, עטר, הקּיף) taking בּ; the accusative stands with הכתּיר in Hab 1:4, and כּתּר in Psa 22:13, in the signification cingere. Symmachus (although erroneously rendering: τὸ ὄνομά σου στεφανώσονται δίκαιοι), Jerome (in me coronabuntur justi), Parchon, Aben-Ezra, Coccejus, and others, rightly take יכתּירוּ as a denominative from כּתר, to put on a crown or to crown (cf. Pro 14:18): 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 Psa 13:6). According to passages like Ps 64:11; Psa 40:17, one might have expected בּו instead of בּי. But the close of Ps 22 (Psa 22:23.), cf. Psa 140:12., shows that בי is also admissible. The very fact that David contemplates his own destiny and the destiny of his foes in a not merely ideal but foreordainedly 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 the time of Saul's persecution.

Psalm 143

Longing after Mercy in the Midst of Dark Imprisonment

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: Ψαλμὸς τῷ Δαυεὶδ ὅτε αὐτὸν ἐδίωκεν Ἀβεσσαλὼμ ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ (Cod. Sinait. οτε αυτον ο υς καταδιωκει). Perhaps by the same poet as Psa 142:1-7, with which it accords in Psa 143:4, Psa 143:8, Psa 143:11 (cf. Psa 142:4, 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 Psa 143:1-12 for the last of its seven Psalmi poenitentiales. The Sela at the close of Psa 143:6 divides the Psalm into two halves.

Verses 1-6

The poet pleads two motives for the answering of his prayer which are to be found in God Himself, viz., God's אמוּנה, truthfulness, with which He verifies the truth of His promises, that is to say, His faithfulness to His promises; and His צדקה, 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 “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 again - because of all this, the poet prays that He would not also enter into judgment (בּוא בּמשׁפּט as in Job 9:32; Job 22:4; Job 14:3) 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 Psa 51:7, 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 4:17; Job 9:2; Job 14:3., Job 15:14, and frequently).^[174]
With כּי (Psa 143:3) 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 persecuteth my soul” is a variation of language taken from Psa 7:6 (חיּה for חיּים, as in Psa 78:50, and frequently in the Book of Job, more particularly in the speeches of Elihu). Psa 143:3 also recalls Psa 7:6, but as to the words it sounds like Lam 3:6 (cf. Psa 88:7). מתי עולם (lxx νεκροὺς αἰῶνος) are either those for ever dead (the Syriac), after שׁנת עולם in Jer 51:39, cf. בּית עולמו in Ecc 12:5, or those dead time out of mind (Jerome), after עם עולם in Eze 26:20. The genitive construction admits both senses; the former, however, is rendered more natural by the consideration that הושׁיבני 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 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 Psa 142:4; Psa 77:4); and in his inward part his heart falls into a state of disturbance (ישׁתּומם, a Hithpo. 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 has hitherto been unfolded; he meditates upon the doing (בּמעשׂה, Ben-Naphtali בּמעשׂה) of His hands, i.e., the hitherto so wondrously moulded history of himself and of his people. They are echoes out of Psa 77:4-7, Psa 77:12. The contrast which presents itself to the Psalmist in connection with this comparison of his present circumsntaces 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., Hölemann, Bibelstudien, i. 150f.). Like parched land is his soul turned towards Him, - language in which we recognise a bending round of the primary passage Psa 63:2. Instead of לך it would be לך, if סלה (Targum לעלמין) were not, as it always is, taken up and included in the sequence of the accents.

Verses 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 Psa 69:18; Psa 27:9, cf. Psa 102:3. The expression of languishing longing, כּלתה רוּחי, is like Psa 84:3. And the apodosis, “else I should become like those who go down into the pit,” agrees word for word with Psa 28:1, cf. Psa 88:5. In connection with the words, “cause me to hear Thy loving-kindness in the early morning,” one is reminded of the similar prayer of Moses in Psa 90:14, and with the confirmatory “for in Thee do I trust” of Psa 25:2, 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 Exo 33:13, and in the Psalter in Psa 25:4 (cf. Psa 142:4); 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 Psa 25:1; Psa 86:4. But the words אליך כסּיתי, which are added to the petition “deliver me from mine enemies” (Psa 59:2; Psa 31:16), are peculiar, and in their expression without example. The Syriac version leaves them untranslated. The lxx renders: ὅτι πρὸς σὲ κατέφυγον, by which the defective mode of writing כסתי is indirectly attested, instead of which the translators read נסתי (cf. נוּס על in Isa 10:3); for elsewhere not חסה but נוּס is reproduced with καταφυγεῖν. The Targum renders it מימרך מנּתי לפריק, 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, כסּיתי = כּסתּי, Exo 12:4. Luther closely follows the lxx: “to Thee have I fled for refuge.” Jerome, however, inasmuch as he renders: ad te protectus sum, has pointed כסּיתי (כסּיתי). Hitzig (on the passage before us and Pro 7:20) reads כסתי from כּסא = סכא, to look (“towards Thee do I look”). But the Hebrew contains no trace of that verb; the full moon is called כסא (כסה), not as being “a sight or vision, species,” but from its covered orb.
The כסּתי 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. Michalis, Rosenmüller, Gesenius, and De Wette). But such a constructio praegnans, in connection with which כּסּה would veer round from the signification to veil (cf. כסה מן, Gen 18:17) into its opposite, and the clause have the meaning of כּי אליך גּלּיתי, Jer 11:20; Jer 20:12, 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 38:14; Deu 22:12, cf. Jon 3:6, that כּסּה 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 חסיתּי, as Hupfeld (with a few MSS) wishes to read; but Abulwalîd has already remarked that the same goal is reached with כסּתי. 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 carry out the recognised will of God (“the will of God, good and well-pleasing and perfect,” Rom 12:2); and this it is for which he prays to Him in Psa 143:10 (רצונך; another reading, רצונך). 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 (רוּחך טובה for הטּובה, Neh 9:20)^[175] lead him in a level country, for, as it is said in Isaiah, Isa 26:7, 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 ארץ מישׁור, Deu 4:43; Jer 48:21, is here applied spiritually. Here, too, reminiscences of Psalms already read meet us everywhere: cf. on “to do Thy will,” Psa 40:9; on “for Thou art my God,” Psa 40:6, and frequently; on “Thy good Spirit,” Psa 51:14; on “a level country,” and the whole petition, Psa 27:11 (where the expression is “a level path”), together with Psa 5:9; Psa 25:4., Psa 31:4. And the Psalm also further unrolls itself in such now well-known thoughts of the Psalms: For Thy Name's sake, Jahve (Psa 25:11), quicken me again (Psa 71:20, and frequently); by virtue of Thy righteousness be pleased to bring my soul out of distress (Ps 142:8; Psa 25:17, and frequently); and by virtue of Thy loving-kindness cut off mine enemies (Psa 54:7). As in Psa 143:1 faithfulness and righteousness, here loving-kindness (mercy) and righteousness, are coupled together; and that so that mercy is not named beside towtsiy', nor righteousness beside תּצמית, but the reverse (vid., on Psa 143:1). 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 the prayer for the cutting off (הצמית as in Psa 94:23) of his enemies and the destruction (האביד, elsewhere אבּד) of the oppressors of his soul (elsewhere צררי) with the words: for I am Thy servant.

Psalm 144

Taking Courage in God before a Decisive Combat==
Praised be Jahve who teacheth me to fight and conquer (Psa 144:1, Psa 144:2), me the feeble mortal, who am strong only in Him, Psa 144:3-4. May Jahve then be pleased to grant a victory this time also over the boastful, lying enemies, Psa 144:5-8; so will I sing new songs of thanksgiving unto Him, the bestower of victory, Psa 144:9-10. 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, Psa 144:11-15. A glance at this course of the thought commends the additional inscription of the lxx (according to Origen only “in a few copies”), πρὸς τὸν Γολιάδ, and the Targumist's reference of the “evil sword” in Psa 144:10 to the sword of Goliath (after the example of the Midrash). Read 1Sa 17:47. 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 1Sa 16:13; 1Sa 10:1. And this victory was for him a gigantic stride to the throne.
If אשׁר in Psa 144:12 is taken as eo quod, so that envy is brought under consideration as a motive for the causeless (שׁוא), lyingly treacherous rising (ימין שׁקר) of the neighbouring peoples, then the passage Psa 144:12-15 can at any rate be comprehended as a part of the form of the whole. But only thus, and not otherwise; for אשׁר 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 אשׁר never has an assuring sense (Vaihinger). It is also evident that we cannot, with Saadia, go back to Psa 144:9 for the interpretation of the אשׁר (Arab. asbh 'lâ mâ). But that junction by means of eo quod is hazardous, since envy or ill-will (קנאה) is not previously mentioned, and וימינם ימין שׁקר 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 Psa 144:11, it becomes all the more doubtful whether Psa 144:12-15 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 Psa 147:13 and Psa 147:14 of Ps 147. 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 Psa 144:1-15, 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 Psa 144:10., cf. Ps 18:51.

Verses 1-2

The whole of this first strophe is an imitation of David's great song of thanksgiving, Ps 18. Hence the calling of Jahve “my rock,” Psa 18:3, Psa 18:47; hence the heaping up of other appellations in Psa 144:2, in which Psa 18:3 is echoed; but וּמפלּטי־לי (with Lamed deprived of the Dagesh) follows the model of 2Sa 22:2. The naming of Jahve with חסדּי is a bold abbreviation of אלהי חסדּי in Psa 59:11, 18, as also in Jon 2:8 the God whom the idolatrous ones forsake is called הסדּם. Instead of מלחמה the Davidic Psalms also poetically say קרב, Psa 55:22, cf. Psa 78:9. The expression “who traineth my hands for the fight” we have already read in Psa 18:35. The last words of the strophe, too, are after Psa 18:48; but instead of ויּדבּר this poet says הרודד, from רדד = רדה (cf. Isa 45:1; Isa 41:2), perhaps under the influence of uwmoriyd in 2Sa 22:48. In Psa 18:48 we however read עמּים, and the Masora has enumerated Psa 144:2, together with 2Sa 22:44; Lam 3:14, as the three passages in which it is written עמי, whilst one expects עמים (ג דסבירין עמים), 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 עמּי for עמּים in such an ambiguous connection. Either, therefore, we have to read עמים,^[176] 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 to 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.

Verses 3-4

It is evident that Psa 144:3 is a variation of Psa 8:5 with the use of other verbs. ידע in the sense of loving intimacy; חשּׁב, properly to count, compute, here rationem habere. Instead of כּי followed by the future there are consecutive futures here, and בּן־אדם is aramaizingly (בּר אנשׁ) metamorphosed into בּן־אנושׁ. Psa 144:4 is just such another imitation, like a miniature of Psa 39:6., Psa 39:11, cf. Psa 62:10. The figure of the shadow is the same as in Psa 102:12, cf. Psa 109:23. The connection of the third stanza with the second is still more disrupt than that of the second with the first.

Verses 5-8

The deeds of God which Ps 18 celebrates are here made an object of prayer. We see from Psa 18:10 that ותרד, Psa 144:5, has Jahve and not the heavens as its subject; and from Psa 18:15 that the suffix em in Psa 144:6 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 Psa 18:45. The fact that Jahve stretches forth His hand out of the heavens and rescues David out of great waters, is taken verbatim from Psa 18:17; and the poet has added the interpretation to the figure here. On Psa 144:8 cf. Psa 12:3; Psa 41:7. The combination of words “right hand of falsehood” is the same as in Psa 109:2. But our poet, although so great an imitator, has, however, much also that is peculiar to himself. The verb בּרק, “to send forth lightning;” the verb פּצה in the Aramaeo-Arabic signification “to tear out of, rescue,” which in David always only signifies “to tear open, open wide” (one's mouth), Psa 22:14; Psa 66:14; and the combination “the right hand of falsehood” (like “the tongue of falsehood” in Psa 109:2), 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 Psa 104:32, taken from the mountains that smoked at the giving of the Law, Exo 19:18; Exo 20:15. The mountains, as in Psa 68:17 (cf. Psa 76:5), 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.

Verses 9-11

With the exception of Psa 108:1-13, which is composed of two Davidic Elohim-Psalms, the Elohim in Psa 144:9 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 Psa 33:3; Psa 40:4; and נבל עשׂור also recalls Psa 33:2 (which see). The fact that David mentions himself by name in his own song comes about in imitation of Ps 18:51. From the eminence of thanksgiving the song finally descends again to petition, Psa 144:7-8, being repeated as a refrain. The petition developes itself afresh out of the attributes of the Being invoked (Psa 144:10), and these are a pledge of its fulfilment. For how could the God to whom all victorious kings owe their victory (Psa 33:16, cf. 2Ki 5:1; 1Sa 17:47) possibly suffer His servant David to succumb to the sword of the enemy! חרב רעה is the sword that is engaged in the service of evil.

Verses 12-15

With reference to the relation of this passage to the preceding, vid., the introduction. אשׁר (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 quoniam, as in Jdg 9:17; Jer 16:13, and frequently. lxx ὢν οἱ υίοὶ (אשׁר בניהם); so that the temporal prosperity of the enemies is pictured here, and in Psa 144:15 the spiritual possession of Israel is contrasted with it. The union becomes satisfactorily close in connection with this reading, but the reference of the description, so designedly set forth, to the enemies is improbable. In Psa 144:12-14 we hear a language that is altogether peculiar, without any assignable earlier model. Instead of נטעים we read נטעים elsewhere; “in their youth” belongs to “our sons.” מזוינוּ, our garners or treasuries, from a singular מזו or מזוּ (apparently from a verb מזה, but contracted out of מזוה), is a hapaxlegomenon; the older language has the words אסם, אוצר, ממּגוּרה instead of it. In like manner זן, genus (vid., Ewald, Lehrbuch, S. 380), is a later word (found besides only in 2Ch 16:14, where וּזנים signifies et varia quidem, Syriac zenonoje, or directly spices from species); the older language has miyn for this word. Instead of אלּוּפים, kine, which signifies “princes” in the older language, the older language says אלפים in Psa 8:8. The plena scriptio צאוננוּ, in which the Waw is even inaccurate, corresponds to the later period; and to this corresponds שׁ = אשׁר in Psa 144:15, cf. on the other hand Psa 33:12. Also מסבּלים, laden = bearing, like the Latin forda from ferre (cf. מעבּר in Job 21:10), is not found elsewhere. צאן is (contrary to Gen 30:39) treated as a feminine collective, and אלּוּף (cf. שׁור in Job 21:10) as a nomen epicaenum. Contrary to the usage of the word, Maurer, Köster, Von Lengerke, and Fürst render it: our princes are set up (after Ezr 6:3); 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. זוית 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) זוית does not signify a projection, but a corner, an angle, Arabic Arab. zâwyt , zâwia (in the terminology of the stone-mason the square-stone = אבן פּנּהּ, in the terminology of the carpenter the square), from Arab. zwâ , abdere (cf. e.g., the proverb: fı̂'l zawâjâ chabâjâ, in the corners 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 זוית. 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 מחתּבות does here signify “sculptured,” and not rather “striped in colours, variegated,” which we prefer, since חטב (cogn. חצב) signifies nothing more than to hew firewood;^[177] and on the other side, the signification of the Arabic chaṭiba, to be striped, many-coloured (IV to become green-striped, of the coloquintida), is also secured to the verb חטב side by side with that signification by Pro 7:16. It is therefore to be rendered: our daughters are as corners adorned in varied colours after the architecture of palaces.<ref> Corners with variegated carved work are found even in the present day in Damascus in every reception-room (the so-called Arab. qâ‛t) or 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 ḳâ‛a may have as many as sixteen, since three wings frequently abut upon the bêt el - baḥǎra, 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 the walls and the ceiling. If this crowning of the corners, the technical designation of which, if I remember rightly, is Arab. ‘l - qrnyt , ḳornı̂a, 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 mesturât, a veiled woman, in opposition to memshushât, 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.</ref>
The words האליף, to bring forth by thousands, and מרבּב (denominative from רבבה), which surpasses it, multiplied by tens of thousands, are freely formed. Concerning חוּצות, meadows, vid., on Job 18:17. פּרץ, in a martial sense a defeat, clades, e.g., in Jdg 21:15, is here any violent misfortune whatever, as murrain, which causes a breach, and יוצאת any head of cattle which goes off by a single misfortune. The lamentation in the streets is intended as in Jer 14:2. שׁכּכה is also found in Sol 5:9; nor does the poet, however, hesitate to blend this שׁ with the tetragrammaton into one word. The Jod is not dageshed (cf. Psa 123:2), because it is to be read שׁאדני, cf. מיהוה = מאדני in Gen 18:14. Luther takes Psa 144:15 and Psa 144:15 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 (Psa 33:12).

Psalm 145

==Hymn in Praise of the All-Bountiful King==
With Psa 144:1-15 the collection draws doxologically towards its close. This Psalm, which begins in the form of the beracha (ברוך ה), is followed by another in which benedicam (Psa 145:1-2) and benedicat (Psa 145:21) is the favourite word. It is the only Psalm that bears the title תּהלּה, whose plural תּהלּים is become the collective name of the Psalms. In B. Berachoth 4b it is distinguished by the apophthegm: “Every one who repeats the תהלה לדוד three times a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come (בן העולם הבא).” And why? Not merely because this Psalm, as the Gemara says, אתיא באלף בית, i.e., follows the course of the alphabet (for Ps 119 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, Psa 136:25), but because it unites both these prominent qualities in itself (משׁום דאית ביה תרתי). In fact, Psa 145:16 is a celebration of the goodness of God which embraces every living thing, with which only Psa 136:25, and not Psa 111:5, can be compared. Valde sententiosus hic Psalmus est, says Bakius; and do we not find in this Psalm our favourite Benedicite and Oculi omnium which our children repeat before a meal? It is the ancient church's Psalm for the noon-day repast (vid., Armknecht, Die heilige Psalmodie, 1855, S. 54); Psa 145:15 was also used at the holy communion, hence Chrysostom says it contains τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα, ἅπερ οἱ μεμυημένοι συνεχῶς ὑποψάλλουσι λέγοντες· Οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ πάντων εἰς σὲ ἐλπίζουσιν καὶ σὺ δίδως τὴν τροφὴν αὐτῶν ἐν εὐκαιρίᾳ. Κατὰ στοιχεῖον, observes Theodoret, καὶ οὗτος ὁ ὕμνος σύγκειται. 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 נפלה (Amo 5:2), which David, going on at once with סומך ה לכל־הנפלים, skips over, begins with Nun. On the other hand, Ewald, Vaihinger, and Sommer, like Grotius, think that the Nun-strophe has been lost. The lxx (but not Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, nor Jerome in his translation after the original text) gives such a strophe, perhaps out of a MS (like the Dublin Cod. Kennicot, 142) in which it was supplied: Πιστὸς (נאמן as in Psa 111:7) κύριος ἐν (πᾶσι) τοῖς λόγοις αὐτοῦ καὶ ὅσιος ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἔργοις αὐτοῦ (according with Psa 145:17, with the change only of two words of this distich). Hitzig is of opinion that the original Nun-strophe has been welded into Psa 141:1-10; but only his clairvoyant-like historical discernment is able to amalgamate Psa 145:6 of this Psalm with our Psalms 145. We are contented to see in the omission of the Nun-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 there fact that Jeremiah has chosen in Lam 2:1, Lam 3:1, and Lam 4:1 of the Lamentations to make the Ajin-strophe follow the Pe-strophe three times, whilst in Lam 1:1 it precedes it.

Verses 1-7

The strains with which this hymn opens are familiar Psalm-strains. We are reminded of Psa 30:2, and the likewise alphabetical song of praise and thanksgiving Psa 34:2. The plena scriptio אלוהי in Psa 143:10; Psa 98:6. The language of address “my God the King,” which sounds harsh in comparison with the otherwise usual “my King and my God” (Psa 5:3; Psa 84:4), 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 this confessory act of exalting Him who in Himself is the absolutely lofty One that is here called רומם. But who 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 highest, noblest delight. The idea of the silent Hades, which forces itself forward elsewhere, as in Psa 6:6, 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 Psa 145:2 also does not concede the possibility of any interruption of the praise: the poet will daily (Psa 68:20) bless God, be they days of prosperity or of sorrow, uninterruptedly in all eternity will he glorify His Name (אהללה as in Psa 69:31). There is no worthier and more exhaustless object of praise (Psa 145:3): Jahve is great, and greatly to be praised (מהלּל, taken from Psa 48:2, as in Psa 96:4, cf. Psa 18:4), and of His “greatness” (cf. 1Ch 29:11, 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 40:28; Job 11:7.). It has, however, been revealed, and is being revealed continually, and is for this very reason thus celebrated in Psa 145:4 : one generation propagates to the next the growing praise of the works that He has wrought out (עשׂה מעשׁים), and men are able to relate all manner of proofs of His victorious power which prevails over everything, and makes everything subject to itself (גּבוּרת as in Psa 20:7, and frequently). This historically manifest and traditional divine doxa and the facts (דּברי as in Psa 105:27) of the divine wonders the poet will devoutly consider. הדר stands in attributive relation to כּבוד, as this on its part does to הודך. Thy brilliantly gloriously (kingly) majesty (cf. Jer 22:18; Dan 11:21). The poet does not say גּם אני, nor may we insert it, either here in Psa 145:5, or in Psa 145:6, where the same sequence of thoughts recurs, more briefly expressed. The emphasis lies on the objects. The mightiness (עזוּז as in Psa 78:4, and in Isa 42:25, where it signifies violence) of His terrible acts shall pass from mouth to mouth (אמר with a substantival object as in Psa 40:11), and His mighty acts (גּדלּות, magnalia, as in 1Ch 17:19, 1Ch 17:21) - according to the Kerî (which is determined by the suffix of אספּרנּה; cf. however, 2Sa 22:23; 2Ki 3:3; 2Ki 10:26, and frequently): His greatness (גּדלּה) 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 (רב used as a substantive as in Psa 31:20; Isa 63:7; Isa 21:7, whereas רבּים in Psa 32:10; Psa 89:51 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 acknowledgement and the righteousness of God is the object of universal exultation (רנּן with the accusative as in Psa 51:16; Psa 59:17). 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 Exo 34:6.

Verses 8-13

This memorable utterance of Jahve concerning Himself the writer of Ps 103, which is of kindred import, also interweaves into his celebration of the revelation of divine love in Psa 145:8. Instead of רב־חסד the expression here, however, is וגדול חסד (Kerî, as in Nah 1:3, cf. Psa 89:29, with Makkeph וּגדל־). The real will of God tends towards favour, which gladly giving stoops to give (חנּוּן), and towards compassion, which interests itself on behalf of the sinner for his help and comfort (רחוּם). Wrath is only the background of His nature, which He reluctantly and only after long waiting (ארך אפּים) lets loose against those who spurn His great mercy. For His goodness embraces, as Psa 145:9 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 (יברכוּכה written as in 1Ki 18:44): their mouth overflows with the declaration (יאמרוּ) of the glory of the kingdom of this loving God, and in speaking (ידבּרוּ) 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 Psa 145:12 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 (בּכל־דּור ודר as in Ps 45:18, Est 9:28, a pleonastic strengthening of the expression בּדר ודר, Psa 90:1). 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 (ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι, Eph 1:10) 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 Psa 145:13 (cf. Dan. 3:33, Dan 4:31, according to Hitzig the primary passages) another paragraph is brought to a close.

Verses 14-21

The poet now celebrates in detail the deeds of the gracious King. The words with ל are pure datives, cf. the accusative expression in Psa 146:8. He in person is the support which holds fast the falling ones (נופלים, here not the fallen ones, see Psa 28:1) in the midst of falling (Nicephorus: τοὺς καταπεσεῖν μέλλοντας ἑδραιοῖ, ὥστε μὴ καταπεσεῖν), 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 world the eyes (עיני with the second ê toneless, Ew. §100, b) of all beings, endowed with reason and irrational, are directed with calm confidence (Mat 6:26), and who gives them their food in its, i.e., in due season. The language of Psa 104:27 is very similar, and it proceeds here, too, as there in Psa 104:28 (cf. Sir. 40:14). He opens His hand, which is ever full, much as a man who feeds the doves in his court does, and gives רצון, 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 Deu 33:23 (after which here in the lxx the reading varies between εὐδοκίας and εὐλογίας), cf. Act 14:17, ἐμπιπλών τροφῆς καὶ εὐφροσύνης τάς καρδίας ἡμῶν. השׂבּיע 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 רצון as an adverb in the sense of “willingly” (Hitzig), which would rather be ברצונך. 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 (חסיד), i.e., He practises mercy (חסד, see Psa 12:2); 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 29:13); but as for the rest, with impartial equality He is nigh (קרוב as in Psa 34:19) to all who call upon Him בּאמת, in firmness, certainty, truth, i.e., so that the prayer comes from their heart and is holy fervour (cf. Isa 10:20; Isa 48:1). What is meant is true and real prayer in opposition to the νεκρὸν ἔργον, as is also meant in the main in Joh 4:23. 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 (σωτηρία) prayed for. Those who are called in Psa 145:19 those who fear Him, are called in Psa 145:20 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, bold-faced 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 (פּי ידבּר with Olewejored, the Mahpach or rather Jethib sign of which above represents the Makkeph), and without wishing that all flesh, i.e., all men, who αρε σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα, בּשׂר ודם, 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 Deu 32:43 of the great song in Deut. 32 - - Jahve one and His Name one (Zec 14:9), Israel praising God ὑπὲρ ἀληθείας, and the Gentiles ὑπὲρ ἐλέους (Rom 15:8.).

Psalm 146

Hallelujah to God the One True Helper

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 אחללה in Psa 146:2 with Psa 145:2; שׂברו in Psa 146:5 with Psa 145:15; “who giveth bread to the hungry” in Psa 146:7 with Psa 145:15.; “who maketh the blind to see” in Psa 146:8 with Psa 145:14; “Jahve reigneth, etc.,” in Psa 146:10 with Psa 145:13) - the same range of thought betrays one author. In the lxx Psa 146:1 (according to its enumeration four Psalms, viz., Psa 145:1, Psalms 147 being split up into two) have the inscription Ἀλληλούια. Ἀγγαίου καὶ Ζαχαρίου, 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 Psa 149:1, an integral part of the daily morning prayer, and in fact of the פסוקי דזמרה, i.e., of the mosaic-work of Psalms and other poetical pieces that was incorporated in the morning prayer, and are called eve in Shabbath 118b Hallel,^[178] but expressly distinguished from the Hallel to be recited 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 Macc. 2:63 (ἔστρεψεν εἰς τὸν χοῦν αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁ διαλογισμὸς αὐτοῦ ἀπώλετο) and Psa 146:4 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.

Verses 1-4

Instead of “bless,” as in Psa 103:1; Psa 104:1, the poet of this Psalm says “praise.” When he attunes his sole 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 כּחיּי (vid., on Psa 63:5), fillling up his life with it, or בּעודי (prop. “in my yet-being,” with the suffix of the noun, whereas עודנּי with the verbal suffix is “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 commencment of the Psalm) of the God and Kings 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 Psa 118:8. The clause: the son of man, who has no help that he could afford, is to be understood according to Ps 60:13. The following לאדמתו shows that the poet by expression בּן־אדם combines the thoughts of Gen 2:7 and Gen 3:19. 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 אל־עפרם, after which the εἰς τὴν γῆν αὐτοῦ of the lxx is exchanged for εἰς τὸν χοῦν αὐτοῦ in 1 Macc. 2:63: On the hypothetical relation of the first future clause to the second, cf. Psa 139:8-10, Psa 139:18; Ew. §357, b. In that day, the inevitable day of death, the projects or plans of man are at once and forever at an end. The ἅπ. λεγ. עשׁתּנת describes these with the collateral notion of the subtleness and magnitude.

Verses 5-7

Man's help is of no avail; blessed is he (this is the last of the twenty-five אשׁרי of the Psalter), on the contrary, who has the God of Jacob (שׁאל like שׁיהוה in Psa 144:15) as Him in whom is his succour (בּעזרו with Beth essentiae, vid., on Psa 35:2) - he, whose confidence (שׂבר as in Psa 119:116) 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 9:6). 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. שׁמר אמת is in form equivalent substantially to שׁמר חסד and שׁמר הבּרית. 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 השּׁמר, the only determinate participle, the faithfulness of God to His promises is made especially prominent.

Verses 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. התּיר is transferred from the yoke and chains to the person himself who is bound, and פּקח is transferred from the eyes of the blind to the person himself. The five lines celebrate the God of the five-divisioned Tôra, 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 עודד see Psa 20:9; Psa 31:12). Valde gratus mihi est hic Psalmus, Bakius observes, ob Trifolium illud Dei: Advenas, Pupillos, et Viduas, versu uno luculentissime depictum, id quod in toto Psalterio nullibi fit. Whilst Jahve, however, makes the manifold sorrows of His saints to have a blessed issue, He bends (יאוּת) the way of the wicked, so that it leads into error and ends in the abyss (Psa 1:6). 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.

Psalm 147

Hallelujah! Hallelujah to the Sustainer of All Things, the Restorer of Jerusalem

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. Psa 147:6 with Psa 146:9). In Psalms 147 thanksgiving is rendered to God for the restoration of Jerusalem, which is now once more a city with walls and gates; in Psa 148:1-14 for the restoration of the national independence; and in Psa 149:1-9 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 Tirshâtha (vid., Isaiah, p. 4). 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 Neh 2:1 of the Book that is extracted from his memoirs, how indefatigably and cautiously he laboured to accomplish this work. Neh 12:27 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 fore 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 (תּודת)^[179] and processions (תּחלכת). 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 Psa 147:1 were all sung at this dedication of the walls under Nehemiah (Hengstenberg) cannot be supported; but as regards Psalms 147, 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, Psa 147:1-11, Psa 147:12, which exhibit a progression both in respect of the building of the walls (Psa 147:2, Psa 147:13), and in respect of the circumstances of the weather, from which the poet takes occasion to sing the praise of God (Psa 147:8, Psa 147:16). 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.

Verses 1-6

The Hallelujah, as in Psa 135:3, is based upon the fact, that to sing of our God, or to celebrate our God in song (זמּר with an accusative of the object, as in Ps 30:13, and frequently), is a discharge of duty that reacts healthfully and beneficially upon ourselves: “comely is a hymn of praise” (taken from Psa 33:1), both in respect of the worthiness of God to be praised, and of the gratitude that is due to Him. Instead of זמּר or לזמּר, Psa 92:2, the expression is זמּרה, a form of the infin. Piel, which at least can still be proved to be possible by ליסּרה in Lev 26:18. The two כּי are co-ordinate, and כּי־נעים no more refers to God here than in Psa 135:3, as Hitzig supposes when he alters Psa 147:1 so that it reads: “Praise ye Jah because He is good, play unto our God because He is lovely.” Psa 92:2 shows that כּי־טוב can refer to God; but נעים said of God is contrary to the custom and spirit of the Old Testament, whereas טוב and נעים are also in Psa 133:1 neuter predicates of a subject that is set forth in the infinitive form. In Psa 147:2 the praise begins, and at the same time the confirmation of the delightful duty. Jahve is the builder up of Jerusalem, He brings together (כּנּס as in Ezekiel, the later wozd for אסף and קבּץ) the outcasts of Israel (as in Isa 11:12; Isa 56:8); 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 heart-broken, as He has shown in the case of the exiles, and bindeth up their pains (Psa 16:4), i.e., smarting wounds; רפא, which is here followed by חבּשׁ, also takes to itself a dative object in other instances, both in an active and (Isa 6:10) an impersonal application; but for שׁבוּרי לב the older language says נשׁבּרי לב, Psa 34:19, Isa 61:1. The connection of the thoughts, which the poet now brings to the stars, becomes clear from the primary passage, Isa 40:26, cf. Isa 40:27. 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 15:5), 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 (מנה, the part. praes., 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 (Isa 40:26) with the words, “because of the greatness of might, and as being strong in power,” and (Isa 40:28) “His understanding is unsearchable,” is here asserted in Psa 147:5 (cf. Psa 145:3): great is our Lord, and capable of much (as in Job 37:23, שׂגּיא כּח), 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 (ענוים) He strengthens (מעודד as in Psa 146:9); malevolent sinners (רשׁעים), on the other hand, He casts down to the earth (עדי־ארץ, cf. Isa 26:5), casting deep down to the ground those who exalt themselves to the skies. ==Verses 7-11==
With Psa 147:7 the song takes a new flight. ענה ל signifies to strike up or sing in honour of any one, Num 21:27; Isa 27:2. The object of the action is conceived of in בּתּודה as the medium of it (cf. e.g., Job 16:4). The participles in Psa 147:8. are attributive clauses that are attached in a free manner to לאלהינוּ. הכין signifies to prepare, procure, as e.g., in Job 38:41 - a passage which the psalmist has had in his mind in connection with Psa 147:9. מצמיח, 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 “He causeth grass to grow for the cattle” of the model passage Psa 104:14, just as the only hinting אשׁר יקראוּ, which is said of the young of the raven (which are forsaken and cast off by their mothers very early), is explained from ילדיו אל־אל ישׁוּעוּ in Job loc. cit. The verb קרא brev ehT .tic .col boJ ni , κράζειν (cf. κρώζειν), is still more expressive for the cry of the raven, κόραξ, Sanscrit kârava, than that שׁוּע; κοράττειν and κορακεύεσθαι 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. Luk 12:24, “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 (יחפּץ, pausal form like יחבּשׁ) 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. שׁוק, Arab. sâq, is the leg from the knee to the foot, from Arab. sâqa, root sq, to drive, urge forward, more particularly to urge on to a gallop (like curs, 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 (Psa 33:16., Amo 2:14.), 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 (רצה with the accusative), those who, renouncing all carnal defiance and self-confident self-working, hope in His mercy.

Verses 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 7:1-4). 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 60:17); and since the land can now again be cultivated in peace, the ancient promise (Ps 81:17) 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 (אמרתו after the manner of the ויּאמר of the history of creation, cf. Psa 33:9) earthwards (ארץ, the accusative of the direction). The word is His messenger (vid., on Psa 107:20), עד־מהרה, 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.^[180]
He scatters hoar-frost (כּפור from כּפר, to cover 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 ice^[181] (קרחו from קרח; or according to another reading, קרחו from קרח) down like morsels, fragments, כפתּים, viz., as hail-stones, or as sleet. The question: before His cold - who can stand? is formed as in Nah 1:6, cf. Psa 130:3. It further comes to pass that God sends forth His word and causes them (snow, hoar-frost, 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, Deu 4:7., 32-34. Since the poet says מגּיד and not הגּיד, he is thinking not only of the Tôra, but also of prophecy as the continuous self-attestation of God, the Lawgiver. The Kerî דּבריו, occasioned by the plurals of the parallel member of the verse, gives an unlimited indistinct idea. We must keep to דברו, 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. Deu 4:7., Baruch 4:4) 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.

Psalm 148

Hallelujah of All Heavenly and Earthly Beings

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 Dan 3:1 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 alleluiatici, and all the three Psalms which close the Psalter are called αἶνοι, Syriac shabchûh (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 - ἀφορ ᾶν εἰς ταῦτα, as Theodoret says, καὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ τὴν σοφίαν καταμανθάνειν καὶ διὰ πάντων αὐτῷ πλέκειν τὴν ὑμνῳδίαν? 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 44:23; Isa 49:13, cf. Psa 52:9, and the descriptions in Isa 35:1., Isa 41:19; Isa 55:12., proceed from the view to which Paul gives clear expression from the stand-point of the New Testament in Rom 8:18.

Verses 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 16:19; Job 25:2; Job 31:2). The מן might, it is true, also denote the birth or origin: ye of the heavens, i.e., ye celestial beings (cf. Psa 68:27), but the parallel בּמּרומים renders the immediate construction with הללוּ more natural. Psa 148:2-4 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 צבאו (Chethîb) or צבאיו (Kerî as in Psa 103:21) is the name of the heavenly host armed with light which God Tsebaoth commands (vid., on Gen 2:1), - a name including both stars (e.g., in Deu 4:19) and angels (e.g., in Jos 5:14., 1Ki 22:19); angels and stars are also united in the Scriptures in other instances (e.g., Job 38:7). 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 Psa 29:1-11; Ps 103), 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 Deu 10:14; 1Ki 8:27, Sir. 16:18, 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 Hupfeld, “a product of the fancy, like the upper heavens and the whole of the inhabitants of heaven.” 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 1:7). All these beings belonging to the superterrestrial world are to praise the Name of Jahve, for He, the God of Israel, it is by whose fiat (צוּה, like אמר in Psa 33:9)^[182] the heavens and all their host are created (Psa 33:6). He has set them, which did not previously exist, up (העמיד as e.g., in Neh 6:7, the causative to עמד in Psa 33:9, cf. Psa 119:91), and that for ever and ever (Psa 111:8), 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 (חק) 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 ולא יעבר is to be understood, according to Job 14:5, cf. Jer 5:22; Job 38:10; Psa 104:9. Hitzig makes the Creator Himself the subject; but then the poet would have at least been obliged to say חק־נתן למו, and moreover it may be clearly seen from Jer 31:36; Jer 33:20, how the thought that God inviolably keeps the orders of nature in check is expressed θεοπρεπῶς. Jer 5:22, 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 חק, עבר always signifies “to pass over, transgress.”

Verses 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 מן־הארץ, like מן־השּׁמים, Psa 148:1, is intended of the place whence the praise is to resound, and not according to Psa 10:18 of earthly beings. The call is addressed in the first instance to the sea-monsters or dragons (Psa 74:13), i.e., as Pindar (Nem. iii. 23f.) expresses it, θῆρας ἐν πελάγεΐ ὑπερο'χους, and to the surging mass of waters (תּהמות) above and within the earth. Then to four phenomena of nature, coming down from heaven and ascending heavenwards, which are so arranged in Psa 148:8, after the model of the chiasmus (crosswise position), that fire and smoke (קטור), more especially of the mountains (Exo 19:18), hail and snow stand in reciprocal relation; and to the storm-wind (רוּח סערה, an appositional construction, as in Psa 107:25), 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, Psa 104:4, cf. Psa 103:20. 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 fruit-trees, and to the cedars, the kings among the trees of the forest; to the wild beasts, which are called חחיּה 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 בּהמה; to the creeping things (רמשׂ) which cleave to the ground as they move along; and to the birds, which are named with the descriptive epithet winged (צפּור כּנף as in Deu 4:17, cf. Gen 7:14; Eze 39:17, instead of עוף כּנף, Gen 1:21). And just as the call in Ps 103 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 Psa 148:1 onwards are to praise the Name of Jahve; for His Name, He (the God of this Name) alone (Isa 2:11; Psa 72:18) is נשׂגּב, 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., Psa 8:2). כּי, 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 יהללוּ 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 2:4). In Psa 148:14 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 central-point 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 Psa 132:17 : 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 Psa 89:18, Psa 89:25; Psa 92:11, 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 132, 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 ויּרם קרן לעמּו: He has raised up a horn for His people - praise (we say: to the praise of; cf. the New Testament εἰς ἔπαινον) to all His saints, the children of Israel, the people who stand near Him. Others, as Hengstenberg, take תּהלּה as a second object, but we cannot say הרים תּהלּה. Israel is called עם קרבו, the people of His near = of His nearness or vicinity (Köster), as Jerusalem is called in Ecc 8:10 מקום קדושׁ instead of קדשׁ מקום (Ew. §287, a, b). It might also be said, according to Lev 10:3, עם קרביו, the nation of those who are near to Him (as the Targum renders it). In both instances עם is the governing noun, as, too, surely גּבר is in גּבר עמיתי ni, Zec 13:7, which need not signify, by going back to the abstract primary signification of עמית, a man of my near fellowship, but can also signify a man of my neighbour, i.e., my nearest man, according to Ew. loc. cit. (cf. above on Psa 145:10). As a rule, the principal form of עם is pointed עם; and it is all the more unnecessary, with Olshausen and Hupfeld, to take the construction as adjectival for עם קרוב לו. It might, with Hitzig after Aben-Ezra, be more readily regarded as appositional (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 = propinquitas, but also to propinquus (literally: a people of the kind of one that is near to Him). Thus is Israel styled in Deu 4:7. 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.

Psalm 149

Hallelujah to the God of Victory of His People

This Psalm is also explained, as we have already seen on Psalms 147, 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 Psa 148:14 the fact that Jahve has raised up a horn for His people is called תּהלּה לכל־חסדיו, so here in Psa 149:9 the fact that Israel takes vengeance upon the nations and their rulers is called הדר לכל־חסדיו. 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, Psa 149:1-9 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 Münzer 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, “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2Co 10:4). The praying Christian must there 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 contemporary history.

Verses 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 (עשׂיו, plural, with the plural suffix, like עשׂי in Job 35:10, עשׂיך in Isa 54:5, cf. עשׂו in Job 40:19; 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 63:19; Isa 26:13). 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 54:7.). The futures that follow state that which is going on at the present time. ענוים 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 ישׁוּעה, help against the victory over the hostile world; now the saints, hitherto enslaved and contemned, exult בכבוד, in honour, or on account of the honour which vindicates them before the world and is anew bestowed upon them (בּ of the reason, or, which is more probable in connection with the boldness of the expression, of the state and mood);^[183] they shout for joy upon their beds, upon which they have hitherto poured forth their complaints over the present (cf. Hos 7:14), and ardently longed for a better future (Isa 26:8); for the bed is the place of soliloquy (Psa 4:5), and the tears shed there (Psa 6:7) are turned into shouts of joy in the case of Israel.

Verses 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 (רוממות, plural of רומם, or, according to another reading, רומם, Psa 56:1-13 :17), and as servants of this God, the rightful Lord of all the heathen (Psa 82:8), they hold in their hand a many-mouthed, i.e., many edged sword (vid., supra, p. 580), in order to take the field on behalf of the true religion, as the Maccabees actually did, not long after: ταῖς μὲν χερσὶν ἀγωνιζόμενοι ταῖς δὲ καρδίαις πρὸς τὸν Θεόν εὐχόμενοι (2 Macc. 15:27). The meaning of Psa 149:9 becomes a different one, according as we take this line as co-ordinate or subordinate to what goes before. Subordinated, it would imply the execution of a penal jurisdiction over those whom they carried away, and כּתוּב would refer to prescriptive facts such as are recorded in Num 31:8; 1Sa 15:32. (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 Psa 149:9 is taken as co-ordinate, the “written judgment” (Recht) consists in the complete carrying out of the subjugation; and this is commended by the perfectly valid parallel, Isa 45:14. The poet, however, in connection with the expression “written,” 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 משׁפּט 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 הדר, splendour and glory, to all who are in love devoted to Him. The glorifying of Jahve is also the glorifying of Israel.

Psalm 150

THE FINAL HALLELUJAH.

1 Hallelujah, Praise ye God in His sanctuary, Praise Him in His strong firmament ! 2 Praise Him in His mighty acts, Praise Him according to the abundance of Hi8 greatness ! 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 ! 6 Let everything that hath breath praise Jah, Hallelujah.
The call to praise Jahve “with dance and with timbrel” in Psa 149:3 is put forth here anew in Psa 150:4, but with the introduction of all the instruments; and is addressed not merely to Israel, but to every individual soul.

Verses 1-5

The Synagogue reckons up thirteen divine attributes according to ex. Psa 34:6. (שׁלשׁ עשׂרה מדּות), to which, according to an observation of Kimchi, correspond the thirteen הלּל of this Psalm. It is, however, more probable that in the mind of the poet the tenfold halaluw encompassed by Hallelujah's is significative; for ten is the number of rounding off, completeness, exclusiveness, and of the extreme of exhaustibleness. The local definitions in Psa 150:1 are related attributively to God, and designate that which is heavenly, belonging to the other world, as an object of praise. קדשוּ (the possible local meaning of which is proved by the קדשׁ and קדשׁ קדשׁים of the Tabernacle and of the Temple) is in this passage the heavenly היכל; and רקיע עזּו is the firmament spread out by God's omnipotence and testifying of God's omnipotence (Psa 68:35), 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 hălalu give as the object of the praise that which is at the same time the ground of the praise: the tokens of His גּבוּרה, i.e., of His all-subduing strength, and the plenitude of His greatness (גּדלו = גּדלו), i.e., His absolute, infinite greatness. The fifth and sixth hălalu bring into the concert in praise of God the ram's horn, שׁופר, the name of which came to be improperly used as the name also of the metallic חצצרה (vid., on Psa 81:4), and the two kinds of stringed instruments (vid., Psa 33:2), viz., the nabla (i.e., the harp and lyre) and the kinnor (the cithern), the ψαλτήριον and the κιθάρα (κινύρα). The seventh hălalu invites to the festive dance, of which the chief instrumental accompaniment is the תּף (Arabic duff, Spanish adufe, derived from the Moorish) or tambourine. The eighth hălalu brings on the stringed instruments in their widest compass, מנּים (cf. Psa 45:9) from מן, Syriac menı̂n, and the shepherd's pipe, עגב (with the Gimel raphe = עוּגב); and the ninth and tenth, the two kinds of castanets (צלצלי, construct form of צלצלים, singular צלצל), viz., the smaller clear-sounding, and the larger deeper-toned, more noisy kinds (cf. κύμβαλον ἀλαλάζον, 1Co 13:1), as צלצלי שׁמע (pausal form of שׁמע = שׁמע, like סתר in Deu 27:15, and frequently, from סתר = סתר) and צלצלי תרוּעה are, with Schlultens, Pfeifer, Burk, Köster, and others, to be distinguished.

Verse 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 who are endowed by God with the breath of lie (Hebrew_Bible_נשׁמת חיּים), 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 (εἰς μίαν χοροστασίαν), 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 (τῷ τροπαιούχῳ), 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 (Psa 106:48, cf. 1Ch 16:36). The Hallelujah includes it within itself and exceeds it.

1. Neshwân and the Kâmûs say: “hawwata and hajjata bi - fulân-in signifies to call out to any one in order to put him in terror (Arab. ṣâḥ bh);” “but in Syria,” as Wetzstein goes on to say, “the verb does not occur as med. Jod, nor is hawwata there construed with Arab. b, but only with ‛lâ. A very ready phrase with the street boys in Damascus is Arab. l - 'yy š 'thwwt ‛lı̂, 'why dost thou threaten me?' “
2. The reading of Ben-Asher תּרצּחוּ is followed by Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, and others, taking this form (which could not possibly be anything else) as Pual. The reading of Ben-Naphtali תּרצּחוּ is already assumed in B. Sanhedrin 119a. Besides these the reading תּרצּחוּ without Dag.) is also found, which cannot be taken as a resolved Piel, since the Metheg is wanting, but is to be read terotzchu, and is to be taken (as also the reading מלשׁני, Psa 101:5, and ויּחלקם, 1Ch 23:6; 1Ch 24:3) as Poal (vid., on Psa 94:20; Psa 109:10).
3. Constitutiones Apostolicae, ii. 59: Ἑεκάστης ἡμέρᾳς συναθροίζεσθε ὄρθρου καὶ ἑσπέρας ψάλλοντες καὶ προσευχόμενοι ἐν τοῖς κυριακοῖς· ὄρθρου μὲν λέγοντες ψαλμὸν τὸν ξβ ̓ (Psa 63:1-11), ἐσπέρας δὲ τὸν ρμ ̓ (Psa 141:1-10). Athanasius says just the same in his De virginitate: πρὸς ὄρθρον τὸν ψαλμὸν τοῦτον λέγετε κ. τ. λ. Hence Psa 63:1-11 is called directly ὁ ὀρθρινός (the morning hymn) in Constit. Apostol. viii. 37. Eusebius alludes to the fact of its being so in Ps 91 (92), p. 608, ed. Montfaucon. In the Syrian order of service it is likewise the morning Psalm κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, vid., Dietrich, De psalterii usu publico et divione in Ecclesia Syriaca, p. 3. The lxx renders אשׁחרך in Psa 63:2, πρὸς σὲ ὀρθρίχω, and באשׁמרות in Psa 63:7, ἐν τοῖς ὄρθροις (in matutinis).
4. In this passage in Isaiah are meant the depths of the earth (lxx θεμέλια τῆς γῆς), the earth down to its inmost part, with its caverns, abysses, and subterranean passages. The apostle, however, in Eph 4:9 by τὰ κατώτερα τῆς γῆς means exactly the same as what in our passage is called in the lxx τὰ κατώτατα τῆς γῆς: the interior of the earth = the under world, just as it is understood by all the Greek fathers (so far as my knowledge extends); the comparative κατώτερος is used just like ἐνέρτερος.
5. תּמּנוּ in Baer's Psalterium is an error that has been carried over from Heidenheim's.
6. Fürst erroneously explains תּלם as a bed or strip of ground between two deep furrows, in distinction from מענה or מענית (vid., on Psa 129:3), a furrow. Beds such as we have in our potato fields are unknown to Syrian agriculture. There is a mode which may be approximately compared with it called ketif (כּתף), another far wider called meskeba (משׂכּבה). The Arabic tilm (תּלם, Hebrew תּלם = talm), according to the Kamûs (as actually in Magrebinish Arabic) talam (תּלם), corresponds exact to our furrow, i.e., (as the Turkish Kamûs explains) a ditch-like fissure which the iron of the plough cuts into the field. Neshwân (i. 491) says: “The verb talam, fut. jatlum and jatlim, signifies in Jemen and in the Ghôr (the land on the shore of the Red Sea) the crevices (Arab. ‘l - šuqûq) which the ploughman forms, and tilm, collective plural tilâm, is, in the countries mentioned, a furrow of the corn-field. Some persons pronounce the word even thilm, collective plural thilâm.” Thus it is at the present day universally in Ḥaurân; in Edre‛ât I heard the water-furrow of a corn-field called thilm el-kanâh (Arab. ṯlm 'l - qnât). But this pronunciation with Arab. ṯ is certainly not the original one, but has arisen through a substitution of the cognate and more familiar verbal stem Arab. ṯlm , cf. šrm, to slit (shurêm, a harelip). In other parts of Syria and Palestine, also where the distinction between the sounds Arab. t and ṯ is carefully observed, I have only heard the pronunciation tilm. - Wetzstein.)
7. If it were meant to be rendered canticum psalmus (not psalmi) it would surely have been accented למנצּח שׁיר מזמור (for למנצח שׁיר מזמור, according to section xviii. of the Accentuationssystem).
8. Kimchi (Michlol 146a) and Parchon (under רמם) read רומם with Pathach; and Heidenheim and Baer have adopted it.
9. Vid., Sonntag's Tituli Psalmorum (1687), where it is on this account laid out as the Rogate Psalm.
10. “Hausehre,” says he, is the housewife or matron as being the adornment of the house; vid., F. Dietrich, Frau und Dame, a lecture bearing upon the history of language (1864), S. 13.
11. Ewald remarks, “Arabian poets also call the dove Arab. ‘l - wrq'â, the greenish yellow, golden gleaming one, vid., Kosegarten, Chrestom. p. 156, 5.” But this Arabic poetical word for the dove signifies rather the ash-green, whity blackish one. Nevertheless the signification greenish for the Hebrew ירקרק is established. Bartenoro, on Negaim xi. 4, calls the colour of the wings of the peacock ירקרק; and I am here reminded of what Wetzstein once told me, that, according to an Arab proverb, the surface of good coffee ought to be “like the neck of the dove,” i.e., so oily that it gleams like the eye of a peacock. A way for the transition from green to grey in aurak as the name of a colour is already, however, opened up in post-biblical Hebrew, when to frighten any one is expressed by פנים הוריק, Genesis Rabba, 47a. The intermediate notions that of fawn colour, i.e., yellowish grey. In the Talmud the plumage of the full-grown dove is called זהוב and צהוב, Chullin, 22b.
12. In Tosifta Para, ch. viii., a river of the name of יורדת הצלמון is mentioned, the waters of which might not be used in preparing the water of expiation (מי חטאת), because they were dried up at the time of the war, and thereby hastened the defeat of Israel (viz., the overthrow of Barcochba). Grätz “Geschichte der Juden, iv. 157, 459f.) sees in it the Nahar Arsuf, which flows down the mountains of Ephraim past Bethar into the Mediterranean. The village of Zalmon occurs in the Mishna, Jebamoth xvi. 6, and frequently. The Jerusalem Gemara (Maaseroth i. 1) gives pre-eminence to the carob-trees of Zalmona side by side with those of Shitta and Gadara.
13. Wetzstein gives a different explanation (Reise in den beiden Trachonen und um das Haura=ngebirge in the Zeitscheift für allgem. Erdkunde, 1859, S. 198). “Then fell snow on Zalmon, i.e., the mountain clothed itself in a bright garment of light in celebration of this joyous event. Any one who has been in Palestine knows how very refreshing is the spectacle of the distant mountain-top capped with snow. The beauty of this poetical figure is enhanced by the fact that Zalmon (Arab. ḏlmân), according to its etymology, signifies a mountain range dark and dusky, either from shade, forest, or black rock. The last would well suit the mountains of Haurân, among which Ptolemaeus (p. 365 and 370, Ed. Wilberg) mentions a mountain (according to one of the various readings) Ἀσαλμάνος.”
14. This is all the more probable as Semitism has no proper word for basalt; in Syria it is called hag'ar aswad, “black stone.”
15. Tradition (Targum, Saadia, and Abulwalîd) takes שׂנאן forthwith as a synonym of מלאך, an angel. So also the lxx (Jerome): χιλιάδες εὐθηνούντων (שׁנאן = שׁאנן), and Symmachus, χιλιάδες ὴχούντων (from שׁאה?). The stem-word is, however, שׁנה, just as שׁנים, Arabic thinân , ithnân, is also formed from a singular that is to be assumed, viz., שׁן, Arab. ṯinun ( iṯnun ), and this from שׁנה, Arab. ṯnâ (cf. בּן from בּנה, Arab. banâ).
16. This is one of the three passages (the others being Isa 34:11; Eze 23:42; cf. Ew. §93, b) in which the dageshing of the opening mute of the following word is given up after a soft final consonant, when the words are connected by a conjunctive accent or Makkeph.)
17. Cf. the epigram in Sadi's Garden of Roses, “Of all mountains Sinai is the smallest, and yet the greatest in rank and worth in the estimation of God,” etc. On the words סיני בקדשׁ which follow we may to a certain extent compare the name of honour given to it in Arabic, ṭûr m‛ana, “Sinai of Pensiveness” (Pertsch, Die persischen Handschriften der Gothaer Bibliothek, 1859, S. 24).
18. In this respect Ps 68 is the most appropriate Psalm for the Dominica Pentecostes, just as it is also, in the Jewish ritual, the Psalm of the second Shabuoth day.
19. Just so Hölemann in the second division of his Bibelstudien (1861); whereas to Hormann (Schriftbeweis, ii. 482ff.) the New Testament application of the citation from the Psalm is differently brought about, because he refers neither ᾐχμαλώτευσεν αἰχμαλωσίαν nor κατέβη εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς to the descent of the Lord into Hades.
20. Just so that portion of the Gospel of Nicodemus that treats of Christ's descent into Hades; vis. Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocryph. (1853), p. 307.
21. According to the customary accentuation the second יום has Mercha or Olewejored, and יעמס־לנוּ, Mugrash. But this Mugrash has the position of the accents of the Silluk-member against it; for although it does exceptionally occur that two conjunctives follow Mugrash (Accentsystem, xvii. §5), yet these cannot in any case be Mahpach sarkatum and Illui.
22. So also the Targum, which understands the promise to refer to the restoration of the righteous who have been eaten by wild beasts and drowned in the sea (Midrash: מבשׁן = מבין שׁני אריות); cf. also the things related from the time of the Khaliphs in Jost's Geschichte des Judenthums, ii. 399, and Grätz' Gesch. der Juden, v. 347.
23. The Gaja of the first closed syllable warns one to make a proper pause upon it, in order that the guttural of the second, so apt to be slurred over, may be distinctly pronounced; cf. תּבחר, Psa 65:5; הרחיק, Psa 103:12. So also with the sibilants at the beginning of the second syllable, e.g., תּדשׁא, Gen 1:11, in accordance with which, in Gen 14:1; 53:2, we must write השׁתיתו והתעיבו.
24. This אחר, according to B. Nedarim 37b, is a so-called עטור סופרים (ablatio scribarum), the sopherim (sofrim) who watched over the faithful preservation of the text having removed the reading ואחר, so natural according to the sense, here as in Gen 18:5; Gen 24:55; Num 31:2, and marked it as not genuine.
25. Tertullian calls the Apostle Paul, with reference to his name and his Benjamitish origin, parvus Benjamin, just as Augustine calls the poetess of the Magnificat, nostra tympanistria.
26. The accentuation does not decide; it admits of our taking it in both ways. Cf. Psa 14:5; Psa 41:2; Psa 58:7; Psa 68:28; Pro 13:22; Pro 27:1.
27. The Munach of בצום is a transformation of Dechî (just as the Munach of לחרפות is a transformation of Mugrash), in connection with which נקשי might certainly be conceived of even as object (cf. Psa 26:6); but this after ואבכּה (not ואבכּה), and as being without example, could hardly have entered the minds of the punctuists.
28. Originally - was the sign for every kind of o6, hence the Masora includes the חטוף also under the name קמץ חטף; vid., Luther. Zeitschrift, 1863, S. 412,f., cf. Wright, Genesis, p. xxix.)
29. Both נפשׁי and איבי, contrary to logical interpunction, are marked with Munach; the former ought properly to have Dechî, and the latter Mugrash. But since neither the Athnach-word nor the Silluk-word has two syllables preceding the tone syllable, the accents are transformed according to Accentuationssystem, xviii. §2, 4.
30. The lxx renders οὐκ ἔγνων πραγματείας; the Psalterium Romanum, non cognovi negotiationes; Psalt. Gallicum (Vulgate), non cognovi literaturam (instead of which the Psalt. Hebr., literaturas). According to Böttcher, the poet really means that he did not understand the art of writing.
31. Heidenheim reads תּרנּנּה with Segol, following the statement of Ibn-Bil'am in his טעמי המקרא and of Mose ha-Nakdan in his דרכי הנקוד, that Segol always precedes the ending נּה, with the exception only of הנּה and האזנּה. Baer, on the other hand, reads תונּנּה, following Aben-Ezra and Kimchi (Michlol 66b).
32. Pronounce wejithbārchu, because the tone rests on the first letter of the root; whereas in Psa 72:15 it is jebārachenu with Chateph. vid., the rule in the Luther. Zeitschrift, 1863, S. 412.
33. Hitzig calls to mind οὖλος, “corporeal;” but this word is Ionic and equivalent to ὅλος, solidus, the ground-word of which is the Sanscrit sarvas, whole, complete.
34. On the other hand, Redslob (Deutsch. Morgenländ. Zeitschr. 1860, S. 675) interprets it thus: they run over the fencings of the heart, from שׂכה in the signification to put or stick through, to stick into (infigere), by comparing קירות לבּי, Jer 4:19, and ἕρκος ὀδόντων. He regards משׂכית sdrag and mosaic as one word, just as the Italian ricamare (to stitch) and רקם is one word. Certainly the root זך, Arab. zk, ḏk, has the primary notion of piercing (cf. זכר), and also the notion of purity, which it obtains, proceeds from the idea of the brilliance which pierces into the eye; but the primary notion of שׂכה is that of cutting through (whence שׂכּין, like מחלף, a knife, from חלף, Jdg 5:26).
35. In general שׁוּב does not necessarily signify to turn back, but, like the Arabic ‛âda, Persic gashten, to enter into a new (active or passive) state.)
36. The Targum version is, “As the dream of a drunken man, who awakes out of his sleep, wilt Thou, O Lord, on the day of the great judgment, when they awake out of their graves, in wrath abandon their image to contempt.” The text of our editions is to be thus corrected according to Bechai (on Deu 33:29) and Nachmani (in his treatise שׁער הגמול).
37. The Egyptian p frequently passes over into the Hebrew b, and vice versâ, as in the name Aperiu = עברים; p, however, is retained in פרעה = phar - aa, grand-house (οἶκος μέγας in Horapollo), the name of the Egyptian rulers, which begins with the sign of the plan of a house = p.
38. Miss Winkworth's translation.
39. The reading מעודיך is received, e.g., by Elias Hutter and Nissel; the Targum translates it, Kimchi follows it in his interpretation, and Abraham of Zante follows it in his paraphrase; it is tolerably widely known, but, according to the lxx and Syriac versions and MSS, it is to be rejected.
40. The head is called in Sanscrit çiras, in Zend çaranh, = κάρα; the horn in Sanscrit, çringa, i.e., (according to Burnlouf, Etudes, p. 19) that which proceeds from and projects out of the head (çiras), Zend çrva = κέρας, קרן (ḳarn).
41. E.g., Bamidbar Rabba ch. xxii.; whereas according to Berêshı̂th Rabba ch. lii. הרים is equivalent to דּרום.
42. The pointing is here just as inconsistent as in ילדוּת, and on the contrary מרדּוּת.)
43. One verse of a beautiful poem of the Muḥammel which Ibn Dûchı̂, the phylarch of the Beni Zumeir, an honoured poet of the steppe, dictated to Consul Wetzstein runs thus: The noble are like a very lofty hill-side upon which, when thou comest to it, thou findest an evening meal and protection (Arab. ‘l - ‛š 'w - ḏry).
44. With orthophonic Gaja, vid., Baer's Metheg-Setzung, §45.
45. Dukes, Rabbinische Blumenlese, S. 191.
46. The joining of the second word, accented on the first syllable and closely allied in sense, on to the first, which is accented on the ultima (the tone of which, under certain circumstances, retreats to the penult., נסוג אחור) or monosyllabic, by means of the hardening Dagesh (the so-called דחיק), only takes place when that first word ends in ה- or ה-, not when it ends in ה-.)
47. We have indicated on Psa 18:12; Psa 36:6, that the שׁהקים are so called from their thinness, but passages like Psa 18:12 and the one before us do not favour this idea. One would think that we have more likely to go back to Arab. sḥq, to be distant (whence suḥḳ, distance; saḥı̂ḳ, distant), and that שׁהקים signifies the distances, like שׁמים, the heights, from שׁחק = suḥḳ, in distinction from שׁחק, an atom (Wetzstein). But the Hebrew affords no trace of this verbal stem, whereas שׁחק, Arab. sḥq , contundere , comminuere (Neshwân: to pound to dust, used e.g., of the apothecary's drugs), is just as much Hebrew as Arabic. And the word is actually associated with this verb by the Arabic mind, inasmuch as Arab. saḥâbun saḥqun ( nubes tenues , nubila tenuia ) is explained by Arab. sḥâb rqı̂q. Accordingly שׁהקים, according to its primary notion, signifies that which spreads itself out thin and fine over a wide surface, and according to the usage of the language, in contrast with the thick and heavy פני הארץ, the uppermost stratum of the atmosphere, and then the clouds, as also Arab. a‛nân, and the collective ‛anan and ‛anân (vid., Isaiah, at Isa 4:5, note), is not first of all the clouds, but the surface of the sky that is turned to us (Fleischer).
48. The reading διὰ Ἠσαΐ́ου τοῦ προφήτου is, although erroneous, nevertheless ancient; since even the Clementine Homilies introduce this passage as the language of Isaiah.
49. The identity of Avaris and Tanis is in the meanwhile again become doubtful. Tanis was the Hyksos city, but Pelusium = Avaris the Hyksos fortress; vid., Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1866, S. 296-298.
50. According to the reckoning of the Masora this Psa 78:36 is the middle verse of the 2527 verses of the Psalter (Buxtorf, Tiberias, 1620, p. 133).
51. According to B. Kiddushin 30a, this Psa 78:38 is the middle one of the 5896 פסוקין, στίχοι, of the Psalter. According to B. Maccoth 22b, Psa 78:38, and previously Deu 28:58-59; Deu 29:8 [9], were recited when the forty strokes of the lash save one, which according to 2Co 11:24 Paul received five times, were being counted out to the culprit.
52. According to B. Menachoth 53b, Jedidiah (Solomon, 2Sa 12:25) built the Temple in the province of Jedidiah (of Benjamin, Deu 33:12).
53. According to Sofrim xviii. §3, Psa 79:1-13 and Psa 137:1-9 are the Psalms for the Kînoth-day, i.e., the 9th day of Ab, the day commemorative of the Chaldaean and Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
54. Cassiodorus and Bruno observe: deplorat Antiochi persecutionem tempore Machabeorum factam, tunc futuram. And Notker adds: To those who have read the First Book of the Maccabees it (viz., the destruction bewailed in the Psalm) is familiar.
55. The Arabic has just this notion in an active application, viz., benı̂ el - môt = the heroes (destroyers) in the battle.
56. It is true we read that Benjamin stood on the side of Rehoboam with Judah after the division of the kingdom (1Ki 12:21), Judah and Benjamin appear as parts of the kingdom of Judah (2Ch 11:3, 2Ch 11:23; 2Ch 15:8., and frequently); but if, according to 1Ki 11:13, 1Ki 11:32, 1Ki 11:36, only שׁבט אחד remains to the house of David, this is Judah, inasmuch as Benjamin did not remain entirely under the Davidic sceptre, and Simeon is to be left out of account (cf. Genesis, S. 603); the Benjamitish cities of Bethel, Gilgal, and Jericho belonged to the northern kingdom, but, as in the case of Rama (1Ki 15:21.), not without being contested (cf. e.g., 2Ch 13:19); the boundaries were therefore fluctuating, vid., Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (3rd ed.), S. 439-441.
57. Not a pronoun: to Thee it belongs to be for salvation for us, as the Talmud, Midrash, and Masora (vid., Norzi) take it; wherefore in J. Succa 54c it is straightway written לך. Such a לכה = לך is called in the language of the Masora, and even in the Midrash (Exod. Rabba, fol. 121), לכה ודאית (vid., Buxtorf, Tiberias, p. 245).
58. Exod. Rabba, ch. 44, with reference to this passage, says: “When husbandmen seek to improve a vine, what do they do? They root (עוקרין) it out of its place and plant (שׁותלין) it in another.” And Levit. Rabba, ch. 36, says: “As one does not plant a vine in a place where there are great, rough stones, but examines the ground and then plants it, so didst Thou drive out peoples and didst plant it,” etc.
59. According to Kiddushin, 30a, because this Ajin is the middle letter of the Psalter as the Waw of גחון, Lev 11:42, is the middle letter of the Tôra. One would hardly like to be at the pains of proving the correctness of this statement; nevertheless in the seventeenth century there lived one Laymarius, a clergyman, who was not afraid of this trouble, and found the calculations of the Masora (e.g., that אדני ה occurs 222 times) in part inaccurate; vid., Monatliche Unterredungen, 1691, S. 467, and besides, Geiger, Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, S. 258f.)
60. Saadia appropriately renders it Arab. yqrḍhâ, by referring, as does Dunash also, to the Talmudic קרסם, which occurs of ants, like Arab. qrḍ, of rodents. So Peah ii. §7, Menachoth 71b, on which Rashi observes, “the locust (חגב) is accustomed to eat from above, the ant tears off the corn-stalk from below.” Elsewhere קירסם denotes the breaking off of dry branches from the tree, as זרד the removal of green branches.)
61. Perhaps the Caph majusculum is the result of an erasure that required to be made, vid., Geiger, Urschrift, S. 295. Accordingly the Ajin suspensum might also be the result of a later inserted correction, for there is a Phoenician inscription that has יר (wood, forest); vid., Levy, Phönizisches Wörterbuch, S. 22.
62. The תהי has Gaja, like שׂאו־זמרה (Psa 81:3), בני־נכר (Psa 144:7), and the like. This Gaja beside the Shebâ (instead of beside the following vowel) belongs to the peculiarities of the metrical books, which in general, on account of their more melodious mode of delivery, have many such a Gaja beside Shebâ, which does not occur in the prose books. Thus, e.g., יהוה and אלהים always have Gaja beside the Shebâ when they have Rebia magnum without a conjunctive, probably because Rebia and Dechî had such a fulness of tone that a first stroke fell even upon the Shebâ-letters.
63. Pinsker punctuates thus: Let Thy hand be upon the man, Thy right hand upon the son of man, whom, etc.; but the impression that ימינך and אמצתה לך coincide is so strong, that no one of the old interpreters (from the lxx and Targum onwards) has been able to free himself from it.
64. In the first of his Commentationes de primitiva et vera festorum apud Hebraeos ratione, 1851, 4to.
65. Vid., my essay on the Passover rites during the time of the second Temple in the Luther. Zeitschr. 1855; and cf. Armknecht, Die heilige Psalmidoe (1855), S. 5.
66. In the Papyrus Leydensis i. 346 the Israelites are called the “Aperiu (עברים), who dragged along the stones for the great watch-tower of the city of Rameses,” and in the Pap. Leyd. i. 349, according to Lauth, the “Aperiu, who dragged along the stones for the storehouse of the city of Rameses.”
67. In the English authorized version, Exo 21:6; Exo 22:8. (“judges”), Ex 28 (“gods,” margin “judges”) . - Tr.
68. Concerning the υίοὶ Βαΐάν (Benı̂ Baijân), 1 Macc. 5:4, the difficulty respecting which is to the present time unsolved, vid., Wetzstein's Excursus II, pp. 559f..
69. The Syriac Hexapla has (Hos 10:14) צלמנע instead of שׁלמן, a substitution which is accepted by Geiger, Deutsch. Morgenländ. Zeitschr. 1862, S. 729f. Concerning the signification of the above names of Midianitish princes, vid., Nöldeke, Ueber die Amalekiter, S. 9.
70. Nic. Nonnen takes a different view in his Dissertatio de Tzippor et Deror, etc., 1741. He considers one of the Ephraimites who were brought back to the fellowship of the true worship of God in the reign of Jehoshaphat (2Ch 19:4) to be the subject of the Psalm.
71. Vid., Knobel on Exodus, S. 253-257, especially S. 255.
72. Vid., Tobler, Denkblätter aus Jerusalem, 1853, S. 117.
73. Concerning St. Bernard's beautiful parable of the reconciliation of the inviolability of divine threatening and of justice with mercy and peace in the work of redemption, which has grown out of this passage of the Psalms, Misericordia et veritas obviaverunt sibi, justitia et pax osculatae sunt, and has been transferred to the painting, poetry, and drama of the middle ages, vid., Piper's Evangelischer Kalender, 1859, S. 24-34, and the beautiful miniature representing the ἀσπασμός of δικαιοσύνη and εἰρήνη of a Greek Psalter, 1867, S. 63.
74. For the genuine reading in Psa 86:4 (where Heidenheim reads יהוה) and in Psa 86:5 (where Nissel reads יהוה) is also אדני (Bomberg, Hutter, etc.). Both the divine names in Psa 86:4 and Psa 86:5 belong to the 134 ודּאין. The divine name אדני, which is written and is not merely substituted for יהוה, is called in the language of the Masora ודאי (the true and real one).
75. Hupfeld cites Rashi as having thus explained it; but his gloss is to be rendered: my whole inmost part (after the Aramaic = מעי) is with thee, i.e., they salvation.)
76. The derivation is not contrary to the genius of the language; the supplementing productive force of the language displayed in the liturgical poetry of the synagogue, also changes particles into verbs: vid., Zunz, Die synagogaie Poesie des Mittelalters, S. 421.
77. Abulwalîd also explains אפוּנה after the Arabic, but in a way that cannot be accepted, viz., “for a long time onwards,” from the Arabic iffân ( ibbân , iff , afaf , ifâf , taiffah ), time, period - time conceived of in the onward rush, the constant succession of its moments.
78. Heidenheim interprets: Thy terrors are become to me as צמתת (Lev 25:23), i.e., inalienably my own.
79. This name איתן is also Phoenician in the form יתן, Itan, Ἰτανός; ליתן, litan, is Phoenician, and equivalent to לעלם.)
80. Vid., Blau, Sisags Zug gegen Juda, illustrated from the monument in Karnak, Deutsche Morgenländ. Zeitschr. xv. 233-250.
81. The Vulgate renders: Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo. The second Sunday after Easter takes its name from this rendering.
82. Zur Geschichte des Karaismus, pp. קפא and קפב, according to which, reversely, in Jos 5:1 עברוּ is to be read instead of עברם, and Isa 33:2 זרענוּ instead of זרעם, Psa 12:8 תשמרנּוּ instead of תשמרם, Mic 7:19 חטאתנוּ instead of חטאתם, Job 32:8 תביננּוּ instead of תבינם, Pro 25:27 כבודנוּ instead of כבודם (the limiting of our honour brings honour, - an unlikely interpretation of the חקר).
83. In the list of the nations and cities conquered by King Sheshonk I are found even cities of the tribe of Issachar, e.g., Shen - ma - an , Sunem; vid., Brugsch, Reiseberichte, S. 141-145, and Blau as referred to above.
84. The view of Pinsker (Einleitung, S. 69), that this Dag. is not a sign of the doubling of the letter, but a diacritic point (that preceded the invention of the system of vowel-points), which indicated that the respective letter was to be pronounced with a Chateph vowel (e.g., miṭŏhar), is incorrect. The doubling Dag. renders the Shebâ audible, and having once become audible it readily receives this or that colouring according to the nature of its consonant and of the neighbouring vowel.
85. The Pasek between חראשׁנים and אדני is not designed merely to remove the limited predicate from the Lord, who is indeed the First and the Last, but also to secure its pronunciation to the guttural Aleph, which might be easily passed over after Mem; cf. Gen 1:27; Gen 21:17; Gen 30:20; Gen 42:21, and frequently.
86. Hence in J. Shabbath 8, col. 2, and Midrash Shocher tob on Psa 91:1 and elsewhere, it is called, together with Psa 3:1-8, (פגעים) שיר פגועין, a song of occurrences, i.e., a protective (or talismanic) song in times of dangers that may befall one, just as Sebald Heyden's Psalm-song, “He who is in the protection of the Most High and resigns himself to God,” is inscribed “Preservative against the pestilence.”
87. Vid., Lewysohn, Zoologie des Talmud, §§146 and 174.
88. In the former passage כהן ראשׁ is taken as one notion (chief priest), and in the latter אנשׁים בקשׁת (men with the bow) is, with Keil, to be regarded as an apposition.
89. It is well known that his pausal form of the 3rd masc. praet. occurs in connection with Zakeph; but it is also found with Rebia in Psa 112:10 (the reading וכעס), Lev 6:2 (גּזל), Jos 10:13 (עמד), Lam 2:17 (זמם; but not in Deu 19:19; Zec 1:6, which passages Kimchi counts up with them in his grammar Michlol); with Tarcha in Isa 14:27 (יעץ), Hos 6:1 (טרף), Amo 3:8 (שׁאג); with Teb|=r in Lev 5:18 (שׁגג); and even with Munach in 1Sa 7:17 (שׁפט), and according to Abulwalîd with Mercha in 1Ki 11:2 (דּבק).)
90. These passages, together with Psa 93:1; Psa 104:1, are cited in Cant. Rabba 26b (cf. Debarim Rabba 29d), where it is said that the Holy One calls Israel כלה (bride) ten times in the Scriptures, and that Israel on the other hand ten times assigns kingly judicial robes to Him.
91. A Talmudic enigmatical utterance of R. Azaria runs: באדירים יבא אדיר ויפרע לאדירים מאדירים, Let the glorious One (Jahve, Psa 93:4, cf. Isa 10:34; Isa 33:21) come and maintain the right of the glorious ones (Israel, Psa 16:3) against the glorious ones (the Egyptians, Exo 15:10 according to the construction of the Talmud) in the glorious ones (the waves of the sea, Psa 93:4).)
92. The Masora on Ps 147 reckons four נאוה, one ונאוה, and one נאוה eno d, and therefore our נאוה is one of the יז מלין דמפקין אלף וכל חד לית מפיק (cf. Frensdorf's Ochla we-Ochla, p. 123), i.e., one of the seventeen words whose Aleph is audible, whilst it is otherwise always quiescent; e.g., כּמוצאת, otherwise מוצאת.
93. According to B. Erachin 11a, at the time of the Chaldaean destruction of Jerusalem the Levites on their pulpits were singing this 94th Psalm, and as they came to the words “and He turneth back upon them their iniquity” (Psa 94:23), the enemies pressed into the Temple, so that they were not able to sing the closing words, “Jahve, our God, will destroy them.” To the scruple that Ps 94 is a Wednesday, not a Sunday, Psalm (that fatal day, however, was a Sunday, מוצאי שׁבת), it is replied, it may have been a lamentation song that had just been put into their mouths by the circumstances of that time (אלייא בעלמא דעלמא דנפל להו בפומייהו).
94. The questions are not: ought He to have no ear, etc.; as Jerome pertinently observes in opposition to the anthropomorphites, membra tulit, efficientias dedit.
95. If it is correct that, as Aben-Ezra and Parchon testify, the וּ, as being compounded of o (u) + i, was pronounced ü like the u in the French word pur by the inhabitants of Palestine, then this Dagesh, in accordance with its orthophonic function, is the more intelligible in cases like תיסרנו יּה and קראתי יּה, cf. Pinsker, Einleitung, S. 153, and Geiger, Urschrift, S. 277. In קומו צּאו, Gen 19:14; Exo 12:31, קומו סּעו, Deu 2:24, Tsade and Samech have this Dagesh for the same reason as the Sin in תשׁביתו שּׁאור, Exo 12:15 (vid., Heidenheim on that passage), viz., because there is a danger in all these cases of slurring over the sharp sibilant. Even Chajug' (vid., Ewald and Dukes' Beiträge, iii. 23) confuses this Dag. orthophonicum with the Dag. forte conjunctivum.
96. By means of a similar transposition of the vowel as is to be assumed in תּאהבוּ, Pro 1:22, it also appears that מדוּבּין = מוּסבּין (lying upon the table, ἀνακείμενοι) of the Pesach-Haggada has to be explained, which Joseph Kimchi finds so inexplicable that he regards it as a clerical error that has become traditional.
97. In the Psalterium Veronense with the addition apo xylu, Cod. 156, Latinizing ἀπὸ τῷ ξύλῳ; in the Latin Psalters (the Vulgate excepted) a ligno, undoubtedly an addition by an early Christian hand, upon which, however, great value is set by Justin and all the early Latin Fathers.
98. Luther renders: “the water-floods exult” (frohlocken); and Eychman's Vocabularius predicantium explains plaudere by “to exult (frohlocken) for joy, to smite the hands together prae gaudio;” cf. Luther's version of Eze 21:17.
99. Vid., Raemdonck in his David propheta cet. 1800: in omnes injurias ipsis illatas, uti patuit in Core cet.
100. According to the reckoning of the Masora, there are fifteen passages in the Old Testament in which לא is written and לו is read, viz., Exo 21:8; Lev 11:21; Lev 25:30; 1Sa 2:3; 2Sa 16:18; 2Ki 8:10; Isa 9:2; Isa 63:9; Psa 100:3; Psa 139:16; Job 13:15 cf. the note there, Psa 41:4; Pro 19:7; Pro 26:2; Ezr 4:2. Because doubtful, Isa 49:5; 1Ch 11:20 are not reckoned with these.
101. Eyring, in his Vita of Ernest the Pious Duke of Saxe-Gotha, v. 1601, d. 1675, relates that he sent an unfaithful minister a copy of the 101st Psalm, and that it became a proverb in the country, when an official had done anything wrong: He will certainty soon receive the prince's Psalm to read.
102. In both instances the Masora writes אותו (plene), but the Talmud, B. Erachin 15b, had אתו before it when it says: “Of the slanderer God says: I and he cannot dwell together in the world, I cannot bear it any longer with him (אתּו).”
103. The lxx renders it: I am like a pelican of the desert, I am become as a night-raven upon a ruined place (οἰκοπέδῳ). In harmony with the lxx, Saadia (as also the Arabic version edited by Erpenius, the Samaritan Arabic, and Abulwalîd) renders קאת by Arab. qûq (here and in Lev 11:18; Deu 14:17; Isa 34:17), and כוס by Arab. bûm; the latter (bum) is an onomatopoetic name of the owl, and the former (k[uk[) does not even signify the owl or horned-owl (although the small horned-owl is called um kuéik in Egypt, and in Africa abu kuéik; vid., the dictionaries of Bocthor and Marcel s.v. chouette), but the pelican, the “long-necked water-bird” (Damiri after the lexicon el - ‛Obâb of Hasan ben-Mohammed el-Saghani). The Graeco-Veneta also renders קאת with πελεκάν, - the Peshito, however, with Syr. qāqā'. What Ephrem on Deu 14:17 and the Physiologus Syrus (ed. Tychsen, p. 13, cf. pp. 110 f). say of Syr. qāqā', viz., that it is a marsh-bird, is very fond of its young ones, dwells in desolate places, and is incessantly noisy, likewise points to the pelican, although the Syrian lexicographers vary. Cf. also Oedmann, Vermischte Sammlungen, Heft 3, Cap. 6. (Fleischer after a communication from Rodiger.)
104. It is a Talmudic view that God really makes the angels out of fire, B. Chagiga, 14a (cf. Koran, xxxviii. 77): Day by day are the angels of the service created out of the stream of fire (נהר דינור), and sing their song of praise and perish.
105. Proben, i.e., Specimens of Old Testament interpretation, Leipzig 1833, and Aehrenlese (Gleanings), referred to in the preface of these volumes. - Tr.
106. In the Merg& district, where the stork is not called leklek as it is elsewhere, but charnuk[ on account of its bill like a long horn (Arab. chrn) standing out in front, the women and children call it Arab. ‘bû sa‛d, “bringer of good luck.” Like the חסידה, the long-legged carrion-vulture (Vultur percnopterus) or mountain-stork, ὀρειπελαργός, is called רחם (Arab. rḥm) on account of its στοργή.
107. Vide Chabas, Le papyrus magique Harris, p. 246, No. 826: HANI (אני), vaisseau, navire, and the Book of the Dead 1. 10, where hani occurs with the determinative picture of a ship. As to the form ana, vid., Chabas loc. cit. p. 33.
108. More accurately הללוּיהּ with Chateph, as Jekuthiël ha-Nakdan expressly demands. Moreover the mode of writing it as one word is the rule, since the Masora notes the הללוּ־יהּ, occurring only once, in Psa 135:3, with לית בטעם as being the only instance of the kind.
109. Yet even in the Talmud (J. Megilla i. 9, Sofrim v. 10) it is a matter of controversy concerning the mode of writing this word, whether it is to be separate or combined; and in B. Pesachim 117a Rab appeals to a Psalter of the school of Chabibi (תילי דבי חביבי) that he has seen, in which הללו stood in one line and יה in the other. In the same place Rab Chasda appeals to a תילי דבי רב חנין that he has seen, in which the Hallelujah standing between two Psalms, which might be regarded as the close of the Psalm preceding it or as the beginning of the Psalm following it, as written in the middle between the two (בעמצע פירקא). In the הלליה written as one word, יה is not regarded as strictly the divine name, only as an addition strengthening the notion of the הללו, as in במרחביה Psa 118:5; with reference to this, vide Geiger, Urschrift, S. 275.
110. The Mugrash of ישׂמח with the following Legarme seems here to be of equal value with Zakeph, 1Ch 16:10.
111. For this reason a king says עמּי, not גּויי; and גּוי only occurs twice with a suffix, which refers to Jahve (Psa 106:5; Zep 2:9); for this reason גּוי, frequently side by side with עם, is the nobler word, e.g., in Deu 32:21; Jer 2:11; for this reason עם is frequently added to גּוי as a dignitative predicate, Exo 33:13; Deu 4:6; and for this reason גּוים and עם ה are used antithetically.
112. Also in ancient Arabic firzil (after the Aramaic פרזלא) directly signifies an iron fetter (and the large smith's shears for cutting the iron), whence the verb. denom. Arab. farzala , c. acc. pers., to put any one into iron chains. Iron is called בּרזל from בּרז, to pierce, like the Arabic ḥdı̂d, as being the material of which pointed tools are made.
113. Here שׁלח is united by Makkeph with the following word, to which it hurries on, whereas in Psa 105:28 it has its own accent, a circumstance to which the Masora has directed attention in the apophthegm: שׁלוחי דמלכא זריזין שׁלוחי דחשׁוכא מתינין (the emissaries of the king are in haste, those of darkness are tardy); vid., Baer, Thorath Emeth, p. 22.
114. In the second section of Aboda zara, on the words of the Mishna: “The flesh which is intended to be offered first of all to idols is allowed, but that which comes out of the temple is forbidden, because it is like sacrifices of the dead,” it is observed, fol. 32b: “Whence, said R. Jehuda ben Bethêra, do I know that that which is offered to idols (תקרובת לעבדה זרה) pollutes like a dead body? From Psa 106:28. As the dead body pollutes everything that is under the same roof with it, so also does everything that is offered to idols.” The Apostle Paul declares the objectivity of this pollution to be vain, cf. more particularly 1Co 10:28.
115. In exact editions like Norzi, Heidenheim, and Baer's, before Psa 107:23, Psa 107:24, Psa 107:25, Psa 107:26, Psa 107:27, Psa 107:28, and Psa 107:40 there stand reversed Nuns (נונין הפוכין, in the language of the Masora נונין מנזרות), as before Num 10:35 and between Num 10:36 and Num 11:1 (nine in all). Their signification is unknown.
116. In connection with the strong verb it frequently represents the Piel which does not occur, as with דּרשׁ, לשׁן, שׁפט, or even represents the Piel which, as in the case of שׁרשׁ, is already made use of in another signification (Piel, to root out; Poel, to take root).
117. The verbal group כחשׁ, כחד, Arab. ḥajda , kaḥuṭa, etc. has the primary signification of withdrawal and taking away or decrease; to deny is the same as to withdraw from agreement, and he becomes thin from whom the fat withdraws, goes away. Saadia compares on this passage (פרה) בהמה כחושׁה, a lean cow, Berachoth 32a. In like manner Targum II renders Gen 41:27 תּורתא כהישׁתא, the lean kine.
118. Cf. the custom of the old Arabian kings to have their viceroy (ridf) sitting at their right hand, Monumenta antiquiss. hist. Arabum, ed. Eichhorn, p. 220.
119. The lxx renders it: ἐν ταῖς λαμπρότησι τῶν ἁγίων σου (belonging to the preceding clause), ἐκ γαστρὸς πρὸ ἑωσφόρου ἐγέννησά σε (Psalt. Veron. exegennesa se; Bamberg. gegennica se). The Vulgate, following the Italic closely: in splendoribus sanctorum; ex utero ante luciferum genui te. The Fathers in some cases interpret it of the birth of the Lord at Christmas, but most of them of His antemundane birth, and accordingly Apollinaris paraphrases: γαστρὸς καρπὸς ἐμῆς πρὸ ἑωσφόρου αὐτὸς ἐτύχθης. In his own independent translation Jerome reads בהררי (as in Psa 87:1), in montibus sanctis quasi de vulva orietur tibi ros adolescentiae tuae, as Symmachus ἐν ὄρεσιν ἁγίοις, - elsewhere, however, ἐν δόξῃ ἁγίων. The substitution is not unmeaning, since the ideas of dew and of mountains (Psa 133:3) are easily united; but it was more important to give prominence to the holiness of the equipment than to that of the place of meeting.
120. The Arabic lexicographers explain Arab. kâhin by mn yqûm b - 'mr ‘l - rjl w - ys‛â fı̂ ḥâjth, “he who stands and does any one's business and managest his affair.” That Arab. qâm, קום, and Arab. mṯl, משׁל, side by side with עמד are synonyms of בהן in this sense of standing ready for service and in an official capacity.
121. G. Enjedin the Socinian (died 1597) accordingly, in referring this Psalm to David, started from the assumption that priestly functions have been granted exceptionally by God to this king as to no other, vid., the literature of the controversy to which this gave rise in Serpilius, Personalia Davidis, S. 268-274.
122. Just so Kurtz, Zur Theologie der Psalmen, loc. cit. S. 523.
123. Böttcher transposes the verses in Psa 111:1-10, and in Psa 112:5 corrects יכלכל into וכלכל; in the warmth of his critical zeal he runs against the boundary-posts of the letters marking the order, without observing it.
124. Vid., the tractate Sofrim, xviii. §2. Apart from the new moons, at which the recitation of the Hallel κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, i.e., Psalms 113-118, is only according to custom (מנהג), not according to the law, the Hallel was recited eighteen times a year during the continuance of the Temple (and in Palestine even in the present day), viz., once at the Passover, once at Shabuoth, eight times at Succoth, eight times at Chanucca (the feast of the Dedication); and now in the Exile twenty-one times, because the Passover and Succoth have received two feast-days and Shabuoth one as an addition, viz., twice at the Passover, twice at Shabuoth, nine times at Succoth. Instead of Hallel absolutely we also find the appellation “the Egyptian Hallel” (הלּל המּצרי) for Psalms 113-118. The ancient ritual only makes a distinction between this (Egyptian) Hallel and the Great Hallel, Ps 136 (see there).
125. One usually compares Arab. chlnbûs , chalnabûs the Karaite lexicographer Abraham ben David writes חלמבוס]; but this obsolete word, as a compound from Arab. chls, to be black-grey, and Arab. chnbs, to be hard, may originally signify a hard black-grey stone, whereas חלמישׁ looks like a mingling of the verbal stems Arab. ḥms, to be hard, and Arab. ḥls, to be black-brown (as Arab. jlmûd, a detached block of rock, is of the verbal stems Arab. jld, to be hard, and Arab. jmd, to be massive). In Hauran the doors of the houses and the window-shutters are called Arab. ḥalasat when they consist of a massive slab of dolerite, probably from their blackish hue. Perhaps חלמישׁ is the ancient name for basalt; and in connection with the hardness of this form of rock, which resembles a mass of cast metal, the breaking through of springs is a great miracle. - Wetzstein. For other views vid., on Isa 49:21; Isa 50:7.
126. The appellation φοβούμενοι does not however occur, if we do not bring Act 10:2 in here; but in Latin inscriptions in Orelli-Hentzen No. 2523, and in Auer in the Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 1852, S. 80, the proselyte (religionis Judaicae) is called metuens.)
127. Kimchi, mistaking the vocation of the Metheg, regards אנּה (אנּא) as Milel. But the Palestinian and the Babylonian systems of pointing coincide in this, that the beseeching אנא (אנה) is Milra, and the interrogatory אנה Milel (with only two exceptions in our text, which is fixed according to the Palestinian Masora, viz., Psa 139:7; Deu 1:28, where the following word begins with Aleph), and these modes of accenting accord with the origin of the two particles. Pinsker (Einleitung, S. xiii.) insinuates against the Palestinian system, that in the cases where אנא has two accents the pointing was not certain of the correct accentuation, only from a deficient knowledge of the bearings of the case.
128. The national grammarians, so far as we are acquainted with them, furnish no explanation. De Balmis believes that these Milra forms דּלּותי, בּלּותי, and the like, must be regarded as infinitives, but at the same time confirms the difference of views existing on this point.
129. The Apostolic Constitutions (vi. 30) commend the singing of these and other words of the Psalms at the funerals of those who have departed in the faith (cf. Augusti, Denkwürdigkeiten, ix. 563). In the reign of the Emperor Decius, Babylas Bishop of Antioch, full of blessed hope, met death singing these words.
130. Vid., my Talmudic Studies, vi. (Der Hosianna-Ruf), in the Lutherische Zeischrift, 1855, S. 653-656.
131. Vid., Baer's Thorath Emeth, p. 7 note, and p. 21, end of note 1.
132. Hitzig on Pro 8:22 considers the pointing קנני to be occasioned by Dechî, and in fact ענני in the passage before us has Tarcha, and in 1Sa 28:15 Munach; but in the passage before us, if we read במרחביה as one word according to the Masora, ענני is rather to be accented with Mugrash; and in 1Sa 28:15 the reading ענני is found side by side with ענני (e.g., in Bibl. Bomberg. 1521). Nevertheless צרפתני Psa 17:3, and הרני Job 30:19 (according to Kimchi's Michlol, 30a), beside Mercha, show that the pointing beside conjunctive as beside disjunctive accents wavers between a& and a4, although a4 is properly only justified beside disjunctive accents, and צוּני also really only occurs in pause.
133. Kurtz, in combating our interpretation, reduces the number of the weeping ones to “some few,” but the narrative says the very opposite.
134. The verse, “This is the day which the Lord hath made,” etc., was, according to Chrysostom, an ancient hypophon of the church. It has a glorious history.
135. Symmachus has felt this, for instead of συστήσασθε ἑορτὴν ἐν τοῖς πυκάζουσιν (in condensis) of the lxx, he renders it, transposing the notions, συνδήσατε ἐν πανηγύρει πυκάσματα. Chrysostom interprets this: στεφανώματα καὶ κλάδους ἀνάψατε τῷ ναῷ, for Montfaucon, who regards this as the version of the Sexta, is in error.
136. In the language of the Jewish ritual Isru-chag is become the name of the after-feast day which follows the last day of the feast. Ps 118 is the customary Psalm for the Isru-chag of all מועדים.
137. “In every verse,” this is the observation of the Masora on Psa 119:122, “v. 122 only excepted, we find one of the ten (pointing to the ten fundamental words or decalogue of the Sinaitic Law) expressions: word, saying, testimonies, way, judgment, precept, commandment (צוּוּי), law, statute, truth” (according to another reading, righteousness).
138. The word “judgments” of our English authorized version is retained in the text as being the most convenient word; it must, however, be borne in mind that in this Psalm it belongs to the “chain of synonyms,” and does not mean God's acts of judgment, its more usual meaning in the Old Testament Scriptures, but is used as defined above, and is the equivalent here of the German Rechte, not Gerichte. - Tr.
139. The word receives the meaning of νικᾶν (vid., supra, p. 367), like Arab. ḏhr and bhr, from the signification of outshining = overpowering.
140. Heidenheim and Baer erroneously have בּדרכיך with Jod. plural., contrary to the Masora.
141. Cf. B. Taanîth 8a: “The prayer of a man is not answered אלא אם כן משׂים נפשׁו בכפו, i.e., if he is not ready to sacrifice his life.”
142. Whilst even in the oldest alphabetical Pijutim the Sin perhaps represents the Samech as well, but never the Shin, it is the reverse in the Biblical alphabetical pieces. Here Sin and Shin coincide, and Samech is specially represented.)
143. Vid., my Geschichte der jüdischen Poesie, S. 193f.
144. It was called the Nicanor-gate in the Temple of Zerubbabel, and the Agrippa-gate in the Temple of Herod: in both of them they ascended to its threshold by fifteen steps; vid., Unruh, Das alte Jerusalem und seine Bauwerke (1861), S. 137, cf. 194.
145. Lyra in his Postillae, and Jacob Leonitius in his Hebrew Libellus effigiei templi Salomonis (Amsterdam 1650, 4to), even say that the Levites sang one of the fifteen songs of degrees on each step. Luther has again generalized this view; for his rendering “a song in the higher choir” is intended to say, cantores harum odarum stetisse in loco eminentiori (Bakius).
146. Hitzig, in his Commentary (1865), has attempted a new combination of these Psalms, in regard to the number of verses of 120 and 121 (7 + 8) and their total number, with the steps of the temple.
147. If the Psalm were a Maccabaean Psalm, one might think משׁך, from משׁך, σύρειν, alluded to the Syrians or even to the Jewish apostates with reference to משׁך ערלה, ἐπισπᾶσθαι τὴν ἀκροβυστίαν (1Co 7:18).
148. Many expositors, nevertheless, understand the destructive influence of the moon meant here of the nightly cold, which is mentioned elsewhere in the same antithesis. Gen 31:40; Jer 36:30. De Sacy observes also: On dit quelquefois d'un grand froid, comme d'un grand chaud, qu'il est brulant. The Arabs also say of snow and of cold as of fire: jaḥrik, it burns.
149. So also Veith in his, in many points, beautiful Lectures on twelve gradual Psalms (Vienna 1863), S. 72, “They arrested their steps, in order to give time to the amazement with which the sight of the Temple, the citadel of the king, and the magnificent city filled them.”
150. In the synagogue and church it is become customary to interpret Psa 122:3 of the parallelism of the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem.
151. The Midrash here calls to mind a Talmudic riddle: There came a good one (Moses, Exo 2:2) and received a good thing (the Tôra, Pro 4:2) from the good One (God, Psa 145:9) for the good ones (Israel, Psa 125:4).
152. An Gottes Segen ist alles gelegen.
153. The fact that the τῶν καρπῶν of the lxx here, as in Pro 31:20, is intended to refer to the hands is noted by Theodoret and also by Didymus (in Rosenmuller): καρποὺς φησὶνῦν ὡς ἀπὸ μέρους τὰς χεῖρας (i.e., per synecdochen partis pro toto), τουτέστι τῶν πρακτικῶν σου δυνάμεων φάγεσαι τοὺς πόνους.
154. So, too, Geiger in the Deutsche Morgenländische Zeitschrift, xiv. 278f., according to whom Arab. slf (šlf) occurs in Saadia and Abu-Said in the signification “to be in the first maturity, to blossom,” - a sense שׁלף may also have here; cf. the Talmudic שׁלופפי used of unripe dates that are still in blossom.
155. Here and there עליכם is found as an error of the copyist. The Hebrew Psalter, Basel 1547, 12mo, notes it as a various reading.
156. Eusebius on Ps 68 (67):5 observes that the Logos is called Ἴα as μορφὴν δούλον λαβὼν καὶ τάς ἀκτῖνας τῆς ἑαυτοῦ θεότητος συστείλας καὶ ὥσπερ καταδὺς ἐν τῷ σώματι. There is a similar passage in Vicentius Ciconia (1567), which we introduced into our larger Commentary on the Psalms (1859-60).
157. A Haraunitish poem in Wetzstein's Lieder-Sammlungen begins: Arab. - - 'l - bâriḥat habbat ‛lynâ šarârt mn ‛âliya 'l - ṯlj, “Yesterday there blew across to me a spark | from the lofty snow-mountain (the Hermon),” on which the commentator dictated to him the remark, that Arab. šarârt, the glowing spark, is either the snow-capped summit of the mountain glowing in the morning sun or a burning cold breath of air, for one says in everyday life Arab. ‘l - ṣaqa‛ yaḥriq, the frost burns [vid. note to Psa 121:6].
158. The lxx adjusts the shortening of Psa 134:1 arising from this, by reading בחצרות בית אלהינו העמדים בבית ה after Psa 135:2.
159. There are three opinions in the Talmud and Midrash concerning the compass of the “Great Hallel,” viz., (1) Ps 136, (2) Ps. 135:4-136:26, (3) Ps 120-136.
160. Reversely Ellies du Pin (in the preface of his Bibliotèque des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques) says: Le Pseaume 136 porte le nom de David et de Jeremie, ce qu'il faut apparement entendre ainsi: Pseaume de Jeremie fait à l'imitation de David.
161. Bellarmine: Scio me psallentem tibi ab angelis, qui tibi assistunt, videri et attendi et ideo ita considerate me geram in psallendo, ut qui intelligam, in quo theatro consistam.
162. The Greek imperfects with the double (syllabic and temporal) augment, as ἑώρων, ἀνέῳγον, are similar. Chajuǵ also regards the first Jod in these forms as the preformative and the second as the radical, whereas Abulwalîd, Gramm. ch. xxvi. p. 170, explains the first as a prosthesis and the second as the preformative. According to the view of others, e.g., of Kimchi, יידע might be fut. Hiph. weakened from יהדע (יהידיע), which, apart from the unsuitable meaning, assumes a change of consonants that is all the more inadmissible as ידע itself springs from ודע. Nor is it to be supposed that יידע is modified from יידע (Luzzatto, §197), because it is nowhere written יידע.
163. This Verb. tert. Arab. w et y is old, and the derivative dherâ, protection, is an elegant word; with reference to another derivative, dherwe, a wall of rock protecting one from the winds, vid., Job, at Job 24:7, note. The II form (Piel) signifies to protect in the widest possible sense, e.g., (in Neshwân, ii. 343b), “[Arab.] drâ 'l - šâh, he protected the sheep (against being exchanged) by leaving a lock of wool upon their backs when they were shorn, by which they might be recognised among other sheep.”
164. In the Talmud the egg of a bird or of a reptile is called מרקּמת, when the outlines of the developed embryo are visible in it; and likewise the mole (mola), when traces of human; organization can be discerned in it.
165. Epiphanius, Haer, xxx. §31, says the Hebrew γολμη signifies the peeled grains of spelt or wheat before they are mixed up and backed, the still raw (only bruised) flour-grains - a signification that can now no longer be supported by examples.
166. But outside the Old Testament it also occurs in the Pual, though as a wrong use of the word; vide my Anekdota (1841), S. 372f.
167. The Hebrew poet, says Gesenius (Lehrgebäude, S. 739f.), sometimes uses the pronoun before the thing to which it referred has even been spoken of. This phenomenon belongs to the Hebrew style generally, vid., my Anekdota (1841), S. 382.
168. It should be noted that the radical idea of the verb, viz., being heavy (German schwer), is retained in all these renderings. - Tr.
169. According to the original Lexicons Arab. ‛ks signifies to bend one's self, to wriggle, to creep sideways like the roots of the vine, in the V form to move one's self like an adder (according to the Ḳamûs) and to walk like a drunken man (according to Neshwân); but Arab. ‛kš signifies to be intertwined, knit or closely united together, said of hairs and of the branches of trees, in the V form to fight hand to hand and to get in among the crowd. The root is apparently expanded into עכשׁוב by an added Beth which serves as a notional speciality, as in Arab. ‛rqûb the convex bend of the steep side of a rock, or in the case of the knee of the hind-legs of animals, and in Arab. charnûb (in the dialect of the country along the coast of Palestine, where the tree is plentiful, in Neshwân churnûb), the horn-like curved pod of the carob-tree (Ceratonia Siliqua), syncopated Arab. charrûb, charrûb (not charûb), from Arab. charn, cogn. qarn, a horn, cf. Arab. chrnâyt, the beak of a bird of prey, Arab. chrnûq, the stork [vid. on Psa 104:17], Arab. chrnı̂n, the rhinoceros [vid. on Psa 29:6], Arab. chrnuı̂t, the unicorn [vid. ibid.]. - Wetzstein.
170. Which is favoured by Exo 15:5, jechasjûmû with mû instead of mô, which is otherwise without example.
171. It is not the priestly קטרת תּמיד, i.e., the daily morning and evening incense-offering upon the golden altar of the holy place, Exo 30:8, that is meant (since it is a non-priest who is speaking, according to Hitzig, of course John Hyrcanus), but rather, as also in Isa 1:13, the incense of the azcara of the meal-offering which the priest burnt (הקטיר) upon the altar; the incense (Isa 66:3) was entirely consumed, and not merely a handful taken from it.
172. The reason of it is this, that the evening mincha is oftener mentioned than the morning mincha (see, however, 2Ki 3:20). The whole burnt-offering of the morning and the meat-offering of the evening (2Ki 16:15; 1Ki 18:29, 1Ki 18:36) are the beginning and close of the daily principal service; whence, according to the example of the usus loquendi in Dan 9:21; Ezr 9:4., later on mincha directly signifies the afternoon or evening.
173. Beda Pieringer in his Psalterium Romana Lyra Radditum (Ratisbonae 1859) interprets κατεπόθησαν ἐχόμενα πέτρας οἱ κραταιοὶ τὐτῶν, absorpti, i.e., operti sunt loco ad petram pertinente signiferi turpis consilii eorum.
174. Gerson observes on this point (vid., 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.
175. Properly, “Thy Spirit, רוּח הטּובה, a spirit, the good one, although such irregularities may also be a negligent usage of the language, like the Arabic msjd 'l - jâm‛, the chief mosque, which many grammarians regard as a construct relationship, others as an ellipsis (inasmuch as they supply Arab. ‘l - mkân between the words); the former is confirmed from the Hebrew, vid., Ewald, §287, a.)
176. Rashi is acquainted with an otherwise unknown note of the Masora: תחתיו קרי; but this Kerî is imaginary.
177. In every instance where חטב (cogn. חצב) occurs, frequently side by side with שׁאב מים (to draw water), it signifies to hew wood for kindling; wherefore in Arabic, in which the verb has been lost, Arab. ḥaṭab signifies firewood (in distinction from Arab. chšb, wood for building, timber), and not merely this, but fuel in the widest sense, e.g., in villages where wood is scarce, cow-dung (vid., Job, at Job 20:6-11, note), and the hemp-stalk, or stalk of the maize, in the desert the Arab. b‛rt, i.e., camel-dung (which blazes up with a blue flame), and the perennial steppe-plant or its root. In relation to Arab. ḥaṭab , aḥṭb signifies lopped, pruned, robbed of its branches (of a tree), and Arab. ḥrb ḥâtb a pruning war, which devastates a country, just as the wood-gathering women of a settlement (styled Arab. ‘l - ḥâťbât or ‘l - ȟwâṭt) with their small hatchet (Arab. miḥṭab) 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 Arab. bnât ḥâṭbât, בּנות הטבות. - Wetzstein.
178. Rashi, however, understands only Psa 148:1-14 and Psa 150:1-6 by פסוקי דזמרה in that passage.
179. The word has been so understood by Menahem, Juda ben Koreish, and Abulwalîd; whereas Herzfeld is thinking of hecatombs for a thank-offering, which might have formed the beginning of both festive processions.)
180. Bochart in his Hierozoicon on this passage compares an observation of Eustathius on Dionysius Periegetes: τὴν χιόνα ἐριῶδες ὕδωρ ἀστείως οἱ παλαιοὶ ἐκάλουν.
181. lxx (Italic, Vulgate) κρύσταλλον, i.e., ice, from the root κρυ, to freeze, to congeal (Jerome glaciem). Quid est crystallum? asks Augustine, and replies: Nix est glacie durata per multos annos ita ut a sole vel igne acile dissolvi non possit.
182. The interpolated parallel member, αὐτὸς εἶπε καὶ ἐγενήθησαν, here in the lxx is taken over from that passage.)
183. Such, too (with pomp, not “with an army”), is the meaning of μετὰ δόξης in 1 Macc. 10:60; 14:4, 5, vid., Grimm in loc.)