rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me; great prosperity showeth he unto his king, and showeth loving-kindness unto David his anointed, and unto his seed for evermore.' That may be called a classic passage for the covenant Israel always thinks and speaks of as made by God with his servant David, Israel's second founder. And this covenant was but a renewal of the covenant made with Israel's first founder, God's servant Abraham, that 'righteousness shall inherit a blessing,' and that 'in thy seed all nations of the earth shall be blessed.'[1]
But what a change in the eighty-ninth Psalm, a few hundred years later! 'Eternal, where are thy former loving-kindnesses which thou swarest unto David? thou hast abhorred and forsaken thine anointed, thou hast made void the covenant; O remember how short my time is!'[2] 'The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth!' the speaker means; 'my death is near, and death ends all; where, Eternal, is thy promise?'
Most remarkable, indeed, is the inward travail to which, in the six hundred years that followed the age of David and Solomon, the many and rude shocks befalling Israel's fundamental idea, Righteousness tendeth to life and he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death, gave occasion. 'Wherefore do the wicked live,' asks Job, 'become old, yea, are mighty in power? their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them,'[3] Job himself is righteous, and yet: 'On mine eyelids is the shadow of death, not for any injustice in mine hands.'[4] All through the Book of Job the question, how this can be, is over and over again asked and never answered; inadequate solutions are offered and repelled, but an adequate solution is never
