The Literature of the Old Testament

by George Foot Moore

"O for a thousand tongues to sing my holy Buddha's praise,
The glories of my teacher great, the triumphs of his grace,"

with similar changes throughout, and if we did not know the Christian hymn, we might take the author for a good Shin-shu Buddhist, though an indifferent poet.

The editors of the Psalter proceeded in the same way, and the older recollections on which they worked can in part be recognized. It is observed that Books II. and III. of the Psalter (Pss. 42-89), or, more exactly, Pss. 42-83, must once have formed a collection by themselves, whose editor was averse to the use of the proper name Jehovah, and accordingly altered the text of the hymns where this name occurred by substituting the appellative God (Elohim), giving rise to such strange expressions as "O God, my God." Thus Ps. 53 is the same with Ps. 14, but wherever Jehovah stands in Ps. 14, "God" takes its place in Ps. 53; Ps. 70 is merely an extract from Ps. 40 (vss. 13-17) with the same change. In the latter, however, copyists, influenced by the parallel passage, have restored "Jehovah" in one (Greek) or two (Hebrew) places, as they have done in other of these psalms. This occurrence of the same hymn in two parts of the Psalter, of which another instance is Ps. 108 (made up of parts of two psalms in the elohistic book, lvii. 7-11, and lx. 5-12), is itself presumptive evidence that these parts once existed separately. At the time when the musical directions were prefixed to the psalms, the last two books (Pss. 90-150) seem not to have been included in the temple hymn book; for these directions, scattered through Pss. 1-89, are lacking from that point on, notwithstanding the fact that a larger proportion of the psalms in Pss. 90-150 were manifestly composed for public worship than in Pss. 1-89.

The titles of Psalms give the names of other collections from which individual psalms were taken. Thus twelve psalms, Pss. 42, 44-49, 84, 85, 87, 88, are hymns or songs of the Korahites, and eleven, Pss. 50, 73-83, of Asaph, who were according to the Chronicler—a good authority on the worship of his time—families, or hereditary guilds, of temple musicians, and seem, in this capacity, to have had special hymn books containing psalms which they sang, and which may also have been composed by members of the guild. The fact that the Korahite and Asaphite psalms are not scattered through the present Psalter, but appear in groups, and only in the elohistic hymn book (Pss. 42-89), confirms this view. When they were incorporated in the collection, the source was indicated by prefixing the name of the guild book to the individual psalms.

Another group of fifteen psalms (Pss. 120-134) bear in their titles, "The Song of the Ascents," a phrase which, by the irregularity of its form, shows that it was transferred mechanically from the title of the collection ("The Songs of the Ascents") to the individual poems. The ancient interpretation makes the "ascents" the fifteen steps, or ascending platforms, on which the levitical orchestra stood at the festival of the water-drawing on the evening after the first day of Tabernacles (hence the Authorized Version, Song of Degrees, i.e. Steps). We need not discuss the question; that these psalms constitute a liturgical unit selected for a specific ceremony is plain.

A considerable number of psalms have loosely prefixed to them the words Hallelu Jah (Praise ye Jah), which in the Hebrew text are frequently found at the end, having been erroneously carried back from the beginning of a following psalm. When this displacement (which is later than the Greek translation) is corrected, the Hallelujah psalms are 105-107, 111-118, 135, 136, 146-150. Here also a liturgical collection is naturally inferred. Jewish tradition informs us about the use of the "Hallel" (Pss. 113-118) and the "Great Hallel" (Ps. 136) at the festivals, and the name Hallel is also sometimes given to Pss. 146-148. Both the Hallels and the Songs of Degrees, it will be observed, are in the last of the three parts of the Psalter (Pss. 90-150).

Of greater interest is the large collection of psalms which bear individually the name of David. This name is found in the titles of all the psalms in Book I. (Pss. 1-41), except Pss. 1 and 2, 10 (properly a part of 9, as in the Greek Bible), and 33 (in the Greek Bible Davidic); further, in Book II., two groups, Pss. 51-65, 68-70, and thereafter, scattering, Pss. 86, 101, 103, 108-110, 122, 124, 131, 133, 138-145—73 psalms in all, or almost half the Psalter. Manuscripts of the Greek Bible add a varying number of others, and other versions do the same.

In the light of the phenomena we have already observed, we may confidently infer that there was once a collection of religious lyrics bearing some such title as "Hymns of David." So long as this book had a separate existence, the name would naturally not be repeated at the head of the individual poems in it; such repetition became necessary, however, when psalms from this book were taken up into a larger hymn book containing not only psalms from the Korahite and Asaphite collections but many anonymous hymns; just as the name of Charles Wesley would be attached to one of his hymns only when it was taken out of his own volume and included in a composite hymn book. By good fortune we have the colophon of this Davidic Psalter in Ps. lxxii. 20, in the words of a scribe: "The Prayers (an older name for Psalms) of David son of Jesse are finished," that is, the roll containing them is copied to the end—a very common Oriental form of colophon. Curiously enough, the hymn to which this note is annexed is said in its title to be by Solomon, to whom Ps. 127 (one of the Songs of Degrees) is similarly attributed. In both cases the ground of the ascription is plain: the editor thought that Ps. cxxvii. 1 referred to the building of the temple, while the prayer for wisdom with which Ps. 72 begins suggested to him Solomon's dream, 1 Kings 3.

From this Davidic hymn book came what is now the first book of the Psalter entire, except Ps. 1 and probably 2; further the groups in Book II. (51-65, 68-70, with 72), which probably stood immediately after Ps. 41. For it will be noted that the second (elohistic) part of the present Psalter (Pss. 42-89) is made up of Korahite, Asaphite, and Davidic psalms, and that in their present position the Davidic psalms, say Pss. 51-72, are thrust into the otherwise solid group of Asaphite hymns Pss. 50 ... 73-83. Further, the transposition of the Davidic psalms to the beginning of the book would bring the hymns of the guilds together. The elohistic recension does not extend consistently beyond Ps. 83; and Pss. 84-89 (Korahite) may therefore be regarded as a supplementary extract from the guild book.

The titles of several of the Davidic psalms specify the occasion and circumstances in which the poem was composed; these historical notes are especially numerous in the group Pss. 51-72 (see Pss. 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63), but occur also in the First Book (Pss. 3, 7, 18, 34), and in Ps. 142 (cf. Ps. 57). The incidents referred to are, with one exception, all narrated in the Books of Samuel. There is no reason to imagine that the editor had any tradition about the origin of these particular poems, much less authentic information on the subject. Precisely as in the ascription of Pss. 72 and 127 to Solomon, he combined what he took to be allusions to a historical situation in the poems with the history as he read it. Psalm 51, for example, is a confession of deep sinfulness, and seems to specify blood-guilt (vs. 14). When had David reason to express himself in this manner? Clearly after his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. It is a very familiar procedure. Modern commentators have made many similar guesses, but nobody attaches any authority to them.