The Assyrian and Hebrew Hymns of Praise

by Charles Gordon Cumming

O Yahwe, forever.

—Psalm 93:5.

In the study of the standard hymns of praise it was observed that Deity is regularly spoken of in the third person, while in only a very few instances the second person, the usage of prayer, is employed. Of the eschatological hymns we have examined there are four in which the second person occurs, Psalms 97, 99, 93, and 82. Psalm 97 is a hymn in three sections. The first section, verses 1-6, makes the announcement of Yahwe’s appearance on earth and the third person is used. The second section, verses 7-9, speaks of Yahwe’s supremacy over the gods, and where the psalmist is speaking of the joy of Jerusalem and Judah’s towns over Yahwe’s victory he uses the second person. But the third section, treating of Yahwe’s deliverance of the righteous again uses the third person. It is difficult to account for the use of the second person in the second section of this hymn, unless it is that the very thought of Judah’s joy over Yahwe’s triumph brought Yahwe nearer to the consciousness of the psalmist, and so put the psalmist into the attitude of mind of a suppliant toward Yahwe, with the consequent use of the second person, as in prayer.

Psalm 99 seems to be a hymn of four sections. The first section consists of verses 1, 2, 3, containing six lines ending with the refrain: “Holy is he.” The second section consists of verses 4 and 5 containing also six lines and ending likewise with the refrain: “Holy is he.” There is furthermore a natural line of division at the end of verse 7, and if we can suppose that the refrain was here inadvertently omitted, we should again have six lines ending with the same refrain. This leaves us in verses 8 and 9 a fourth section of six lines ending in the refrain slightly expanded: “For holy is Yahwe our God.” Moreover the hymn is divided into two main divisions of twelve lines each, each ending with a little hymn of three lines, which is substantially the same:

Exalt ye Yahwe our God,

And worship at his footstool,

Holy is he.

—Verses 5, 9.

Again there is in this hymn the same difficulty in accounting for the use of the second person as in Psalm 97, and again the same explanation is to be offered. In verse 3a, to be sure, there may be a mistake in the text, for it is scarcely felicitous to have the second person in verse 3a and the third person in verse 3b. In verses 4 and 8 however, the very subject matter is that which would ordinarily be followed by petitions, and which would bring about the attitude of the mind in prayer, and the consequent direct address to God:

Thou has restored equity;