Psalms.
The collection of hymns and prayers used in public worship by Jews and Christians, and called the Psalms, stands first in importance as a religious book in the Hagiographa. Christians accept it not only as a book of praise, but as a prophetic revelation and doctrinal authority.
It is popularly supposed that David wrote all, or nearly all, of the Psalms. Many commentators attribute to him the authorship of one hundred or more. He wrote, at the most, but a few of them.
The Jews divided them into five books: 1. Chapters i-xli; 2. xlii-lxii; 3. lxiii-lxxxix; 4. xc-cvi; 5. cvii-cl. Smith’s “Bible Dictionary,” a standard orthodox authority, claims for David the authorship of the first book only. The second book, while including a few of his psalms, was not compiled, it says, until the time of Hezekiah, three hundred years after his reign. The psalms of the third book, it states, were composed during Hezekiah’s reign; those of the fourth book following these, and prior to the Captivity; and those of the fifth book after the return from Babylon, four hundred years after David’s time.
There are psalms in the third, fourth, and fifth books ascribed to David, but they are clearly of much later origin. The “Bible Dictionary” admits that they were not composed by him, and attempts to account for the Davidic superscription by assuming that they were written by Hezekiah, Josiah, and others who were lineal descendants and belonged to the house of David. But there is nothing to warrant the assumption that they were written by these Jewish kings. They were anonymous pieces to which the name of David was affixed to add to their authority.
The second book concludes with these words: “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” This is accepted to mean that none of the psalms following this book belong to David. The Korahite psalms, assigned to David’s reign, belong to a later age. Twelve psalms are ascribed to Asaph, who lived in David’s reign. This passage from one of them was written at least 430 years after David’s death:
“O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled: they have laid Jerusalem on heaps” (lxxix, 1).
In the second and third books the word God occurs 206 times, while Jehovah, translated “Lord God,” occurs but 44 times; in the remaining three books, God occurs but 23 times, while Jehovah occurs 640 times.
Psalms xlii and xliii are merely parts of the same psalm. Psalm xix consists of two distinct psalms, the first eleven verses constituting one, the last three another. Psalms xiv and liii are the same; lx and cviii, omitting the first four or five verses, are also the same. The Septuagint version and the Alexandrian manuscript contain 151 psalms, the last one being omitted from other versions.
Some of the more conservative German critics credit David with as many as thirty psalms. Dr. Lyman Abbott contends that he did not write more than fifteen. The Dutch scholars, Kuenen and Oort, believe that he wrote none. And this is probably the truth. While collections of these psalms doubtless existed at an earlier period, the book, in its present form, was compiled during the Maccabean age, about one hundred and fifty years before the Christian era.
Many of these psalms are fine poetical compositions; but the greater portion of them are crude in construction, and some of them fiendish in sentiment.