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of the expression, Job xlii. 10, 'The Lord turned the captivity of Job.' Here there can by no possibility be the remotest allusion to the Babylonish Captivity; and as we never heard of Job's incarceration in a dungeon, we have no hesitation in setting down the expression as a proverbial one, not necessarily to be understood literally; and we are confirmed in our decision by finding that Ezekiel has adopted the same phrase in reference to the cities of the plain, 'When I shall bring again the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then I will bring again the captivity of thy captives in the midst of thee' (Ezek. xvi. 53). We conclude, therefore, that there is nothing in the expression inconsistent with the Davidic authorship of those Psalms in which it occurs.

So far our criticisms on the supposed anachronisms in the Psalms have referred mainly to the work of the Four Friends.' In their explanation, however, of the remaining phrase, 'build the walls of Jerusalem,' they have the support of the far abler Commentaries of the Dean of Peterborough and Mr. Jennings : the former of whom believes that the last two verses of Ps. li. 'bear evident marks of having been added at a date subsequent to the exile,' and says that 'otherwise the whole Psalm must be of that date; while the latter expresses himself to the same effect: 'If these verses be indeed a portion of the original composition, the prayer for the building (i.e. rebuilding), of Jerusalem is conclusive against the Davidic authorship of the Psalm.'2 Now, so far as the actual word n is concerned, there can be no question that it may mean rebuild, but on the other side, there can be no question that it may also mean build, and therefore the notes in the Speaker's Commentary, and in Dr. Kay's admirable little book, pointing out that at the time of David's fall the walls of Jerusalem had yet to be built,3 would serve to show that the prayer in question is not conclusive against the Davidic authorship of the Psalm. But there is another interpretation of the phrase that seems to us never to have had justice done to it. It is, that the terms used are figurative, and that the words are simply a prayer for God's protection, and for the establishment of the city. This interpretation is noticed by the Dean of Peterborough only to be rejected, but there seems to be much that might be urged in its favour. (1) The phrase 'to build a house'

1 The Psalms, vol. 1. p. 423.

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2 Ibid. vol. 1. p. 224.

3 That the walls of Jerusalem had yet to be built, literally, appears from 1 Kings iii. 1; ix. 15, 19.'-Kay, cf. Speaker's Commentary, vol. iv. p. 290.

(n) is a not uncommon one for expressing (a) the foundation of a family, or (b) God's protection and support whether it be of an individual or of a line of men. In the former sense, the words occur in Deut. xxv. 9, and Ruth iv. 111 (cf. the similar use of the verb in Gen. xvi. 2; xxx. 3), and with the latter meaning in 1 Sam. ii. 35, of the faithful priest to be raised up, I will build him a sure house,' and 1 Kings xi. 38, 'I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built for David,' cf. Ps. lxxxix. 4, 'Thy seed will I establish for ever and build up (a) thy throne to all generations.' (2) The word 'build' without the addition of 'house' is used to express the ideas of prosperity, establishment, and security, e.g. Job xxii. 23, 'If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up (n)'; Ps. xxviii. 5, 'Because they regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operations of His hands, He shall destroy them, and not build them up (nɔɔ);' Mal. iii. 15, 'They that work wickedness are set up (Heb. na; A. V. Marg. built).' The word is used metaphorically again and again by the prophet Jeremiah (i. 10; xviii. 9; xxiv. 6; xxxi. 4, 28; xxxiii. 7), and in the following passages the usage of the term seems to approach very closely to the figurative sense for which we are pleading in Ps. li. Micah iii. 9, 10, 'Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity. They build up (2) Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.' Hab. ii. 12, 'To him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city with iniquity;'2 and the figurative sense suits the context best in Micah vii. 11, 'In the day that thy walls are to be built, in that day shall the decree be far removed.'3 (3) Thirdly, we notice that similar figures are employed by the Prophets to denote God's protection of His people, e.g., by Isaiah (xxvi. 1), 'Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks,' and by Zechariah (ii. 5), 'For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her.' (4) And lastly, we claim the parallelism as being in favour of the figurative sense, the

1 A somewhat different, though still figurative, use of the words may be seen in Prov. ix. I ; xiv. 1.

2 In this passage the parallelism should not be overlooked, buildeth in one clause answering to stablisheth in the other.

3 However we may interpret this passage, there can be no question that it was written about a hundred years before the destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore it is sufficient to prove that there is no necessity for Ps. li. 18 to be placed after that event. We should note, however, that the word for 'walls' is different in the two passages.

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clauses answering to one another in this way, three words being given to each :

Do-good in Thy - good - pleasure | to - Zion:

Build - Thou | the walls of | Jerusalem.

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We trust that sufficient has now been said to show that there is absolutely no reason for rejecting the traditional view that David is the author of the whole of Ps. li. Our readers must choose, between the various explanations of the prayer, 'build Thou the walls;' but to us it seems that the figurative meaning is by far the most probable; 1 and we cannot conclude without a protest against the extreme literalism that is so marked a feature in our modern Commentaries. Words are taken au pied de la lettre, and statistical exactness is demanded in poetry that comes to us from a nation whose very prose might almost be said to consist of metaphor and hyperbole. In no other case is a poet supposed to weigh his words with the exactness of a logician or mathematician; and yet this is what men look for from the Psalmist. Only think what havoc this kind of criticism would make if applied to one of our modern Hymn-books! We should then have the critic of the future gravely asserting that the 'Rock of Ages' was composed by Toplady, in a state of nudity, or that the hymn beginning, 'Soldiers of Christ arise, And put your armour on,' was not the work of Charles Wesley, to whom it has been attributed, because in his day, the troops of his Majesty's Army had ceased to wear armour!

Admirable as are the notes on the Psalter in the Speaker's Commentary, they are, it seems to us, often disfigured by this tendency to over-literalism. For example, in the note on Ps. lxix. ver. 1-2: 'Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me,' we read that the Psalm 'is supposed by some to refer to Jeremiah's being let down into a pit or cistern, but we are expressly told that there was no water in that.' And, what if the pit was dry? Yet there is surely an illusion to this incident in Jeremiah's life in Lam. iii. 53-4: They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. Waters went over my head; then I said, I am cut off.' In

It is perhaps accidental, but it is worth noticing that the word for 'walls' in the Psalm is in the plural (ninin), whereas in Nehemiah the singular occurs thirty times, while the plural is only found twice in the whole book, viz. ii. 13 (where the LXX. and Vulgate have the sing.) and iv. i. (A. V. iv. 7).

both passages, the expressions are figurative, and the fact that the cistern was one in which there was no water proves nothing either way concerning the authorship of Ps. lxix. There is more point in the remark made curiously enough in the first half of the very same note already quoted: "This expression appears to be metaphorical, it occurs in other Psalms, especially in those attributed by all critics to David'

To take another instance. Everybody knows the sort of language used by David in the Penitential Psalms, language which taken in the letter implies that he was suffering from a severe illness, e.g. :—

'Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am weak: O LORD, heal me, for my bones are vexed.' Ps. vi. 2.

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My strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed.' xxxi. 10.

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There is no soundness in my flesh because of Thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. My wounds stink and are corrupt, because of my foolishness. My loins are filled with a loathsome disease; and there is no soundness in my flesh.' xxxviii. 3-5-7.

Now, all these passages are taken by Canon Cook and his colleagues, as if David was describing his symptoms to a medical man. We are told that these Psalms were composed ‘in a season of extreme depression, probably when the Psalmist was dangerously sick,' (p. 182), and we are referred to a note on Job xxx. 17, which tells us that 'leprosy eats away the flesh and nerves, and then corrodes the bones, so that the limbs fall off piecemeal.' But it has always seemed to us that the true key to the language of David quoted above is given by Ps. li. ver. 7, 'Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.' Was not the leprosy from which David was suffering a moral one, and a moral one only?' and is there not sound sense as well as humour in the remark of Bishop Lowth:

'Some who were but little acquainted with the genius of the Hebrew poetry, have pretended to inquire into the nature of the disease with which the poet was affected; not less absurdly, in my opinion, than if they had perplexed themselves to discover in what river he was plunged when he complains that the deep waters had gone over his soul.'2

1 The language of the Prophets is instructive, as they often describe their sufferings and the calamities of the nation under the same figure of a sore disease, e.g. Isa. i. 5, 6; Jer. xv. 18; xxx. 12-17; and for the mention of the bones, see Lam. i. 13; iii. 4; and notice the absence of all allusion to the symptoms of the actual disease in Hezekiah's hymn, Isa. xxxviii. 10-20.

2 Lectures on Hebrew Poetry, p. 84.

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Little more remains to be said. We have endeavoured to show (1) that there is strong historical evidence in favour of the titles of the Psalms, and no counter historical evidence to be brought against them; and (2) that the arguments from internal evidence that have led the majority of modern critics to discard them are wholly insufficient to bear the weight that has been laid upon them. If we have succeeded in making good these assertions, we may claim that the Titles have a right to be regarded as an integral portion of the text of the Old Testament; but we would point out that there is still room for different interpretations of them. The question is still an open one whether the lamed auctoris in every case denotes the actual composer of the Psalm, and whether Asaph invariably means the great Precentor of that name in David's reign; and it is yet a fair subject for discussion whether the fact that a Psalm is assigned to such and such an event necessarily implies that it was composed at that particular time any more than the lines on 'The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk' imply the presence of William Cowper on a desert island, or compel us to identify him with the man into whose mouth the verses are put.

We conclude by reminding our readers of the words of 'the Eagle of Meaux,' himself no mean critic of the Holy Scriptures:-'Qui titulos non uno modo intelligant, video esse quam plurimos: qui de titulorum auctoritate dubitarit, ex antiquis omnino neminem.'1

ART. V.-HOMER ILLUSTRATED BY RECENT DISCOVERY.

1. Troy and its Remains. By Dr. H. SCHLIEMANN. (London, 1875.)

2. Mycena. By Dr. H. SCHLIEMANN. (London, 1877.)

SCHOLARSHIP and its cognate culture have struck so deep a root that this latter has shot down to the kingdom of night and broken the rest of the nameless ones who lived 'before Agamemnon.' Like the earlier examples of Egypt, Rhodes, Caria, and Assyria, a list of sites too long to enu

1 Bossuet, Dissert. § 28, quoted in Dict. of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 954.

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