Let the poor and needy praise thy name.
Arise, O God, plead thine own cause:

Remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily. Forget not the voice of thine enemies:

The tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.

The book of Psalms is in five volumes, the end of each being marked by a doxology. Thus after the Forty-first Psalm.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel

From everlasting, and to everlasting.
Amen, and Amen.

And after the Seventy-second Psalm.

Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel,

Who only doeth wondrous things.

And blessed be his glorious name for ever:
And let the whole earth be filled with his glory;
Amen, and Amen.

A like doxology closes the Eighty-ninth and the One-hundred-and-sixth Psalms; the One-hundred-andfiftieth Psalm is itself a doxology.

The First Book is made up mainly of Personal Lyrics. Whether as speaking the thoughts of his own experience, or as representing the mind of his people, the psalmist is in soliloquy. The Second Book is made up largely of National Lyrics. This is true also of the Third Book. In these poems the writer deals with the glories and with the distresses of the nation. In the Fourth and in the Fifth Books there are Liturgical

Lyrics, related to the service of the temple, or to occasions of fasts and festivals.

Behind these five collections scholars find traces of older hymn-books out of which they were made. These are indicated in the names of Asaph, of Korah, and of David.

In the description of the service at the dedication of the restored temple after the exile (Ezra 3:10) the "sons of Asaph" are in the choir. "When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David king of Israel, and they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, because he is good, for his mercy endureth forever toward Israel." (Compare Ps. 136.) The sons of Korah, the Korhites (II Chron. 20:19) are mentioned in the reign of Jehoshaphat as those who "stood up to praise the Lord God of Israel with a loud voice on high." Ethan is spoken of as a singer (I Chron. 15:19) in a description of the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem: "So the singers, Heman, Asaph and Ethan were appointed to sound with cymbals of brass.' In the Second Book, 42-49 are entitled "of the sons of Korah." The inference is that there were collections of psalms in use by different guilds of singers in the second temple, that some psalms were taken into the Second Book from the Korah book, and others from the Korah book and from the Asaph book were used to make the Third Book. The title "of the Chief Musician," in a number of psalms, may indicate an

other collection; also the title "Psalms of Ascents" (120-134).

The collection from which the largest number of psalms were taken (seventy-three in all) is entitled "of David." Probably this title, as in the case of Asaph and Korah, refers to a hymn-book of that name. The use of the name accords, indeed, with the account of David as a skilful player on the harp, and as a composer of poems in honor of Saul and of Abner; and Jewish editors have noted in the case of a number of the psalms a statement of the circumstances under which they believed David to have written them. It would be pleasant to hear the voice of David the shepherd in the Twenty-third Psalm, and of David the penitent in the Fifty-First. For the most part, however, these traditions are of little value, and add nothing to our understanding of the psalms. In this respect the Hebrew psalms are like the Christian hymns, which are sung for their own sake, their authorship being of interest only to literary persons for literary reasons.

Musical directions accompanying many of the psalms show that they were intended to be sung, sometimes with stringed instruments, as the harp, neginoth (4, 6, and others), sometimes with wind instruments, as the flute or the trumpet, nehiloth (5). Instruments of percussion, as cymbals, are often mentioned. In some cases the tunes are given: "the hind of the morning" (22) "the lilies" (45). Thus they were sung in the temple, for whose service, after the exile, the various collections were brought together, old and new, to make the completed book.

Some of the psalms are alphabet acrostics, notably the One-hundred-and-nineteenth, each of whose first eight verses begins with the Hebrew A, the next with B. As in all collections of hymns, some are better than others, in interest, in literary form, in the ideas which they express. In some psalms the poet curses his enemies (58, 69); in some he speaks without expectation of individual immortality: "In death there is no remembrance of thee" (6:5), "What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth?" (30:9). So devout, however, is the spirit of the Psalms, so filled with the consciousness of God, with the sense of sin and of the divine pardon of the penitent, with the inevitable grief of life and with the divine compassion, that Christians as well as Jews find in them the expression of their own praise and prayer.

XII

THE WISE MEN

W

HEN the hero of the book of Job is in the midst

of his misfortunes, and his distress is increased by the distrust and disrespect of his neighbors, he recalls the departed happiness of the days when his fellow-citizens honored him as a Wise Man.

Oh that I were as in months past,

As in the days when God preserved me;
When his candle shined upon my head,

And when by his light I walked through darkness;
As I was in the days of my youth,

When the secret of God was upon my tabernacle;
When the Almighty was yet with me,

When my children were about me;

When I washed my steps with butter,

And the rock poured me out rivers of oil;

When I went out to the gate through the city,
When I prepared my seat in the street!
The young men saw me, and hid themselves:
And the aged arose, and stood up.

The princes refrained talking,

And laid their hand on their mouth.

The nobles held their peace,

And their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.

When the ear heard me, then it blessed me;

And when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me:
Because I delivered the poor that cried,

And the fatherless, and him that had none to help

him.