Worship Yahwe with reverence,
Submit to him with trembling.
Do homage to the son, lest he be angry and ye perish,
For his anger is quickly kindled.
Happy are all who secure his protection.
Here again, as in Psalm 110, because of the prominence of the king in this dramatic setting forth of one of the important features of the last days, Psalm 2 must be classed as an eschatological hymn in praise of the king.
Division II
ASSYRIAN HYMNS OF PRAISE
Chapter VI
ASSYRIAN HYMNAL INTRODUCTIONS TO PRAYERS
As in the case of the Hebrew hymns of praise, so also it is right to attempt to see the Assyrian hymns in relation to the whole body of Assyrian religious poetry. Assyrian communities and Assyrian individuals inevitably had their afflictions, and like their kinsmen the Hebrews they called out unto deity in their distresses in prayers of lamentation and supplication. They experienced also on various occasions what they believed to be deliverances out of their troubles, and when they could attribute those deliverances to the aid of deity, they felt gratitude and expressed their gratitude by sacrifices and thanksgiving to the gods. Furthermore the Assyrians felt adoration for deity, trusted in deity, reflected upon the will of deity and the secret of the prosperous life, and like their kinsmen the Hebrews they strove to express their ideas and their emotions in poetry. Accordingly we have in Assyrian religious poetry much that corresponds to what is found in the Old Testament psalter.
However, one striking difference between Hebrew and Assyrian religious poetry confronts us at the very outset. The Hebrew poetry is concerned with the one god Yahwe, while Assyrian poetry has to do with many gods, Shamash, Sin, Nebo, Ninib, Nergal, Adad, Nusku, Bel, Marduk, and others. This might seem to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to form any unified conception of Assyrian religion, or to make any satisfactory comparison between the psalms of Assyrian and Israel. But from the beginning there were many points of similarity between the Assyrian gods of the various city states, who frequently bore, to be sure, different names, but who represented or were associated with the same objects or forces in nature. Furthermore the growth of political unity in Mesopotamia was accompanied there, as it has been elsewhere, by a growth in religious unity. As one city gained authority over other cities, its god not only acquired greater prestige, but he also extended his authority in greater or lesser measure over the conquered cities and over the gods of those cities. Moreover he tended to take to himself the chief prerogatives and attributes of the conquered deities. With the growth and organization of empire there developed, in the exaltation of one god to a supreme place, a tendency toward monotheism; and with the inevitable interchange of religious ideas a gradually increasing similarity in the attributes and prerogatives of the chief gods. Especially is it to be recognized that hymnal enthusiasm tends to blot out for the time the consciousness of other deities, and to exalt in wisdom and power and goodness the deity which is being worshipped, so that for the moment the attitude of the worshipper may be practically that of a monotheist. Accordingly the many names for deity have relatively little significance; they offer no serious obstacle to the student who would compare the religious ideas and experiences of Mesopotamia with the religious ideas and experiences of Israel.