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I will celebrate thy fingular justice.

Thou, O GOD! haft inftructed me from my earliest youth,

and, thenceforth, I have declared thy wondrous deeds:

And now, when I am old and gray-headed,

O GOD! forfake me not

until I announce thine arm to another generation; thy mighty power to all pofterity.

For fuperlative, O GOD! is thy justice:

Who, like thee, O GOD! doth fuch wonderful things?

Great and grievous troubles thou haft made me experience;

thou haft indeed made me experience:

but thou wilt revive and bring me back,

from the depths of the earth.

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My dignity thou wilt yet augment,

and wilt comfort me on every fide:

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Then thee, and thy truth, I will praise on the
pfaltery:

on the harp I will fing to thee, my God!
O Thou, the HOLY ONE of Ifrael!

My lips fhall fing aloud, when to thee I fing;
and my foul, by thee redeemed, ball rejoice.

All day long my tongue shall talk of thy justice;
when they who seek mine hurt fhall be ashamed
and confounded.

NOTES.

The variations in pfalm 70. from pfalm 40. the reader may fee by comparing them: and the notes on the latter are applicable to the former.-Pf. 71. ver. 3. Thou art engaged to preferve me. Lit. Thou

baft ordained to preserve me. Some render Thou haft promised, &c.— Ver. 7. To the many I am like a wonder. The Hebrew word, tranflated wonder, would, perhaps, be better expreffed by portent. It denotes any thing uncommon and wonderful, and admits a double meaning. Some interpreters are of opinion that it is here taken in the most favourable fense, and that the pfalmift represents himself as confidered by the many as a prodigy of God's goodness. But the whole tenor of the psalm is against this meaning: which is not badly expreffed by Green, "I am become a gazing-ftock to the multitude." I have however kept to a more general term, and rendered wonder.-Ver. 11. Purfue and feize bim. This was the precife council given by Ahitophel to Abfalom. See 2 Sam. 17. I.

PSALM LXXII.-al. LXXI.

This psalm, or prayer, is supposed to have been made by David in the last stage of his life, in favour of Solomon, newly anointed king: and, if the concluding verse be genuine, we cannot admit any other hypothesis. But as this may be an arbitrary note of the redactor of the psalms into their present form and order, Solomon bimself may have been, and probably was, the author of this very beautiful composition. The title may be rendered either

FOR SOLOMON; or, BY SOLOMON.

TO the king, O GOD! give thy judgments:

and to the son of a king thine equity :

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and with the moon from generation to generation. He shall be like rain descending on the fhorn mead, and like copious dews that moisten the ground.

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In his days fhall flourish justice,

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He fhall have dominion from sea to sea,

and profperity, till the moon be no more.

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and from the river to the limits of the land.

Barbarians fhall bow down before him,

and his enemies fhall lick the duft.

The kings of Tharshish and the ifles fhall bring
prefents;

the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts;
all the kings around fhall pay him homage,
and all the nations be fubfervient to him!

But the deftitute, who claim his aid, he shall
relieve;

and the afflicted, who have none to help them.
The weak and the needy he shall spare,

and preserve the lives of the deftitute:

From guile and extortion he shall protect them,
and their blood shall be precious in his fight..
He fhall preserve them, and share with them the
gold of Sheba :

fo fhall they continually refound his praise,

and load him with daily benedictions.

There fhall be plenty of grain on the ground;

its crops fhall ruftle, even on the tops of mountains, like thofe that grow on mount Lebanon;

and fhall spring from a fterile foil,

like the grafs of the fertile meadow !

His fame shall be perpetual !

it fhall laft, while the fun fhall be seen!

He shall be a general theme of benediction,
and all the nations fhall felicitate him.

K

Bleffed be JEHOVAH, the GOD of Ifrael,

who alone doth wonderful deeds:
be his glorious name for ever blessed;
and may his glory fill the whole earth.

Amen-and Amen!

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[Here end the hymns of David, the fon of Ifhai.] 20

NOTES.

Ver. 1. Thy judgments. i. e. Wisdom and prudence to decide causes, with a justice fimilar to thine. See the excellent prayer of Solomon, 1 Kings, 3. 6—9.—Ver. 3. That the mountains may announce peace; i. e. public felicity. It was, and ftill is, common in the East to announce good or bad news from the tops of mountains and other eminences. By this mean, acts of juftice were speedily communicated to the remotest parts of the country. Thus, when Solomon decided the controverfy between the two harlots, the decifion was quickly known over all the land: See 1 K. 3. 28.-Ver. 5. Then shall be endure with the fun, &c. I follow without hesitation the reading of Sep. Vulg. Arab. The prefent text has: "And they shall revere thee," &c.: a moft incongruous meaning, in my estimation. For the reft, the pfalmift means not that Solomon himself is to endure as long as the fun and moon: but in his pofterity. Besides, the expreffion is no more hyperbolical than "O king! live for ever!"-Ver. 8. He shall bave dominion from fea to fea, &c. This points out the extenfive limits of Judæa in the time of Solomon. The two feas are the Mediterranean and the Red fea. The river is the Euphrates, and the limits of the land are the boundaries of Egypt. See 1 K. 4. 21, 22.-Ver. 15. He Shall preferve them, &c. This verfe is commonly rendered, as in our public verfion: "And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the "gold of Sheba :" as if the words were applicable to Solomon, not to the deftitute. I am fully perfuaded, with Lewis De Dieu, that the latter is the antecedent; and that the pfalmift means to fay, that Solomon will keep fuch alive, by imparting a fhare of his own money, which he is to receive from Sheba, &c. In fact, there was no poverty nor diftress in Ifrael, during the reign of Solomon: filver and gold were (in the exaggerative ftyle of the Eaft) as plenty at Jerufalem as ftones. See 2 Chron. 1. 15.-Ver. 16. Its crops shall rufile, &c.

This is highly poetical. The very fummits of the mountains, and most naked spots, shall nod like Lebanon with full crops of corn. The hills of Judæa were in fertility inferior to thofe of Syria, especially the Lebanon and Antilebanon.-Ver. 20. This is no part of the pfalm; and is wanting in Syr. Arab. and 7 MSS.

LXXIII.-al. LXXII.

This, in the ordinary division, is the first psalm of book third. The subject is similar to that of psalms 37, 39, and 49. The title, probably a false one, is

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nor, like other men, were they afflicted.

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Against the heavens they set their mouths,
and their tongues are let loofe on the earth.
Yet with them lodgeth every dainty;

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and with water in abundance they are supplied.
They fay: "What careth GOD for this?
"Is there any knowledge in the Most High ?"

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