individual life, or the World Within, and of the external universe, or the World Without. The same rhythmic form obtains in each: stanzas of five strains, changing in the middle of each psalm, with a certain change of thought, into stanzas of four strains. I [Stanzas of five strains.] Blessings from Jehovah for the personal, individual life: the reference to Israel is a suggestion how Israel from among the nations was brought into a personal relation with God. [Third and fourth stanzas: of four strains.] The frailty and brief life of man: God's tenderness and contrasting everlastingness. [Final stanza: of five strains.] From the personal life there is a rise to a climax in the higher personalities of angels and superhuman ministers of God. II [Stanzas of five strains.] God and the external universe: it constitutes his dwelling place and attendant pomp-his creation-the sphere of his government, and exhibition of his glory and order in all living things. [Sixth and seventh stanzas: of four strains.] The dependence of all these creatures on Jehovah: as he sends forth or withholds his spirit they flourish or droop. [Final stanza: of five strains.] The eternal glory of God in nature. Page 293. Psalms of Judgement.-The Scriptual word 'Judgement' expresses what the modern world calls 'Providence.' In the group of psalms celebrating this idea we have: (1) Two Visions of God manifesting himself as Judge of the Earth; with a third psalm expressing the longing for this in the familiar phrase LORD, how long? (2) The great Song of the Redeemed. (3) Two psalms dealing with what was the great trial to the faith of the ancient world, the spectacle of Wickedness allowed to go on in prosperity. One of the two faces the mystery in the tone of quiet meditation; in the other, the poet almost loses his faith, yet recovers it. Page 293. A Vision of Judgement.-The Introduction presents God emerging out of Zion in a blaze of glory, and summoning the world to judgment. [Compare the more elaborate parallel in Zion Redeemed: see pages 375 and 503.] A strophe gives the address of God to his saints; the antistrophe his remonstrance to the wicked. The thought of both sections is the same: that the spiritual things of thanksgiving and a righteous life are above all sacrifices.-Him that ordereth his conversation aright: conversation means behavior. It is a Latinization of our colloquial phrase 'running about.' Page 294. Song of the Redeemed. This favorite psalm (besides introduction and conclusion) has two sections, distinguished by a marked difference of rhythm. In I, we have four types of trouble (wandering in the wilderness, imprisonment, sickness, perils of the sea): each is described in a few lines, fol lowed by an (italic) refrain, the cry for help, and a (CAPITALS) refrain, the shout of thanksgiving. In II, there is a change to the pendulum rhythm: God bringing down [lines indented to the right] and setting up [lines indented to the left]. Structure like this lends itself to expression in music. For the descriptions of trouble (say) unison of men's voices; for the italic refrain and its following couplet, harmony of treble and alto; for the shout of thanksgiving, the full choir. For section II, alternation between two sides of the choir, or between men's and women's voices. Page 297. Judgement of a Corrupt World. A rhapsodic picture of Divine Judgment. A world is displayed as totally corrupt; a stanza expresses the Divine astonishment at the blindness of the wicked; in the next stanza this very thought in the bosom of Deity is seen to reveal itself as panic spreading among the wicked on earth.-The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. This is sometimes misquoted to imply that an atheist is a fool. It means the converse; that a fool (one whose life is morally corrupt) is practically an atheist. Compare the elaboration of this thought in the psalm on "Evil Unbounded, etc." [page 324, and note, page 500]. Page 300. The Mystery of Prosperous Wickedness.-This psalm, though fascinating to the reader, is difficult of interpretation. The topic is the great mystery of prosperous wickedness; and into the language of the closing verses it is only too easy to read the modern doctrine of a future world in which are redressed the inequalities of this life. Yet it appears to me certain that no such interpretation is possible in the present case. The general consideration applies: this conception of a future life is so revolutionizing that, if held at all, it must make itself prominent, and not appear merely as an allusion. In the present case we have, not (as might at first appear) a mystery and its sudden solution; but rather a failure of faith in a received doctrine which at the last moment is suddenly strengthened. The psalmist contemplates the prosperity of the wicked, and the scepticism as to a God of judgment which this tends to engender, until he is almost caught in the mist of doubt himself: nothing but loyalty to his faithful brethren hinders him from yielding. In this painful conflict he goes into the sanctuary of God: in a moment his failing faith is confirmed. Faith in what? That this prosperity of the wicked is only a dream: when God awakes he will overthrow them, but keep the pious by his side. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel all through the night of trouble, and afterward receive me with glory when the visitation is passed, and the righteous are found triumphant. The other view has been much assisted by the next line: Whom have I in heaven but thee? But that this can have no reference to heaven as the sphere of immortal life is sufficiently shown by the parallel line: And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. Note again the threefold surely, as a guide to the critical points in the thought of the psalm: the first emphasizes the conclusion, God is good to Israel, whatever appearances may suggest; the second marks the nadir point of the psalmist's scepticism, that piety was all vain; the third marks the healing thought, the slippery prosperity of the wicked.-One passage is difficult in its phraseology: Therefore his people return hither; And waters of a full cup are wrung out by them. Assuming the correctness of the text it is best to interpret: God's people from this spectacle of the untouched prosperity of evil men turn round to their own hard life, and wring out bitter tears at the contrast. Page 303. Psalms of Religious Experience. The religious experience in this group of psalms is mainly that of trouble and deliverance. In three of the psalms the deliverance is presented dramatically: that is to say, a change in the external circumstances making the trouble comes suddenly during the prayer for relief. [Anthem of Deliverance-Twice-told Deliverance-Salvation in Extremity.] In another [the Searcher of Hearts, etc.] there is an equally dramatic transition, but it is wholly in the psalmist's mind, not in external circumstances. The brooding over the Divine omnipresence as a burden touches the topic of childbirth; in the helplessness of the unborn babe the Divine omnipresence becomes a comfort, and at the close of the psalm the searching of heart is felt as an aspiration. One poem celebrates deliverance from the trouble of sin in the past; another [Prayer of a Sin-stricken Conscience] simply prays for the deliverance. In the great lyric, The Right Hand of the LORD changeth not, the despondent mind forces itself into confidence by meditating on God's deliverances of his people in the past. On the other hand, in The Struggle with Despair the speaker gets no further than the struggle; while in one psalm [The Declining Life, etc.] the sense of ebbing vitality is finely contrasted with contemplation of the eternally abiding God. In one poem [Exiled from the House of God] refrains convey the confidence of hope while the body of the poem dwells on the sense of trouble. Page 308. Thy way, O God, is in holiness.—The main use of the word holiness in the O. T. is to express the separateness of the chosen people from the nations. The thought here is that God's 'way' is seen in the case of his consecrated people. [Compare in the psalm King and Priest (above, page 273) the words On the mountain of holiness.] The situation of Israel at the Red Sea was a situation from which there seemed to be no outlet: sea in front, foe behind, thunderstorm above. Suddenly the way for the consecrated people opened through the sea itself, which they crossed as simply as a flock of sheep led by its shepherd. Page 309. Many bulls have compassed me. The first stanza has depicted internal trouble; in the second internal trouble is enhanced by external threatenings, under figures of bulls, robbers, lions: at its height deliverance suddenly comes. Page 311. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, etc. The new train of feeling, that welcomes the never ceasing presence of God, at this point takes fire in a burst of purity: compare in the Answer to Prayer (page 320). Page 313. Exiled from the House of God. This psalm is often interpreted of actual exile; and this seems favored by the lines Therefore do I remember thee from the land of Jordan, But I prefer to read this as Metaphor Direct (below, page 512): Like a traveller taking his last look at the home land he is leaving, so does my memory yearn after the place of my God. The context is certainly metaphorical: Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waters pouts: thrust away, plunged deeper and deeper by some cataract, as the echo of its fall goes down. And there is an absence in the psalm of any local color from a foreign land. Page 318. Drama of Night and Morning.-Despondent outlook with fatigue of night (strophe), vigor and resolution with the refreshment of waking (antistrophe): the whole is drama, because the change is brought about by external circumstances. Page 320. Under the Protection of Jehovah.-This title gives the unity of this familiar lyric. The idea is developed by imagery; first, the image of the shepherd, detailed at length; then by a rapid succession of images briefly touched—the blockade, the feast, the flowing fountain, the river following the Israelites in their wanderings through the desert, with climax in the favorite image of a dweller in God's house. Page 321. A Song of Trust.-The structure of this poem is a striking illustration of the lyric device of 'Interruption.' A quatrain gives the simplest possible expression of trust in God; point is given to it by the interruption of another lyric giving (strophe) awful threats, (antistrophe) the calm rejoinder of faith. Page 322. The Consecrated Life.-Compare the variant of this in one of the Psalms for the Inauguration of Jerusalem (page 69, and note page 475). Page 324. The transgression of the wicked uttereth its oracle within his heart.— This fine rendering of R. V. margin turns on the use of the word oracle for the actual utterances of God (compare page 470, note to page 38). There are three stages of moral decline: at first the sinner has to sin in the teeth of remonstrating conscience; then conscience is dead and he sins peaceably; there is a lower depth when conscience takes the side of evil, and its secret promptings replace the oracles of God. Page 324. From the Alphabet of the Law.-What is here given is a fragment, to illustrate what is too prominent in the Psalter to be wholly unnoticed. Many psalms are 'alphabetical': that is, in the original language successive verses begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Our translators have not attempted to represent this. [In the Golden Treasury Psalter (Macmillan) the translation is altered to bring this out.] The great example of this alphabetical idea is Psalm 119. Here we have twenty-two sections, corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; each section is made up of eight couplets commencing with the special letter; and in every couplet there is a word which is a synonym of the word law. An idea of the effect can be caught from the specimen given. Such tours de force of alphabetical and similar ingenuity have been prominent at certain periods of literary history. Modern taste retains them in the 'acrostic.' Page 326. Liturgies.-The modern usage of the word 'Liturgy' applies it to Divine Service in which various moods of the soul are represented-penitence, supplication, prayer, exposition, and the like, perhaps differentiated by different postures of kneeling, standing, sitting, but with no links of transition from one to another. It is remarkable that several of the psalms, sometimes short psalms, are made up of these moods of the soul, standing side by side, without transitions. From the way these are printed in the present work no further explanation is necessary. Page 326. By terrible things thou wilt answer us in righteousness.-From the Scriptural use of this word righteousness (compare page 519) the answer in righteousness becomes the vindication of right by Divine Providence. Page 327. I waited patiently, etc.-In this first section of the psalm a strophe presents a great deliverance which has put a new song in the psalmist's mouth; the antistrophe gives the new song.-But wherein consists the 'newness'? If the second section be read apart from the italic passages, it is found to lay down the supremacy of righteousness over sacrifice (compare the Vision of Judgment, pp. 293-4). The italic passages are parenthetic interruptions bringing out how this doctrine is one to which the speaker's ears have been opened by the experience narrated in the first section; he is resolved to bear testimony to this new reading of "the law." Page 331. Song of God's House. The main point of this poem will be treated in the Note on Direct Metaphor (page 514): it is a song of the pilgrimages to the sacred feasts. The structure is noticeable: triplet stanzas express the worshippers' longings for these pilgrimages; the rest is made up of a strophe, presenting the pilgrimages, and an antistrophe containing the pilgrims' hymn. [The antistrophe is 'interrupted' by one of the triplet stanzas.]—In whose heart are the highways to Zion: the lover of these pilgrimages: the way to Zion runs through his heart.—Passing through the valley of Weeping, etc. Dreary spots on the route are converted for the season into gaiety by the flocking pilgrims, like dry places covered for a while with blessings by the brief spring rains. (Another example of metaphor direct.)-They go from strength to strength: from stage to stage of the ascent to Zion. Page 332. Votive Hymns. Page 342. Votive Anthems.-The Bible regularly treats the fulfilment of a vow by a combination of the personal experience with the general topic of Divine deliverances. In the hymn, My soul shall make her boast, etc., the personal element appears in the Solo part, the general topic in the Chorus part.-In the hymn that follows this, the two elements are less clearly separated: on the whole the strophe is general, the antistrophe personal.— In the great Votive Anthem (342-51), only two out of the seven sections are personal, while the other five put general or national thanksgiving. See below. Pages 336 to 358. Festal Anthems.-What are presented under these titles are made by putting together successive psalms of the traditional Bible. Such Anthems make an approach to the modern oratorio. Of course, the indications of Chorus, Semichorus, and the like, are only editorial suggestions: their value will be tested if the arrangement is carried out in practice. Page 336. Jehovah Reigneth.-The successive psalms (95–100) have sometimes been called Accession Hymns, as emphasizing the thought of Jehovah as king over all the nations. As here arranged, the Anthem is in five parts. Parts I, III, V (that is, the beginning, the middle, and the close) have the pendulum rhythm of alternation between praise and motives for that praise. [Compare below, the Anthem Hallelujah.] Separating these we have II, in the more measured joy of antistrophic structure; and IV, distinguished by refrains: the (italic) refrain of awe, and the refrain of ecstasy (printed in capital letters). Page 342. Votive anthem: The Egyptian Hallel.—In this case, the putting |