It appears strange, however, that Professor Dillon has not included among The Sceptics of the Old Testament three writers in the composite eighty-ninth Psalm, nor remarked its relation to the Book of Job. At the head of this wonderful composition the mythical wise man of 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan, rises (“Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite,” perhaps meaning Wisdom of the Everlasting Helper) to attest the divine mercies and faithfulness in all generations. This is in two verses, evidently ancient, which a later hand, apparently, has pointed with a specification of the covenant with David. After the “Selah” which ends these four verses come fourteen verses of sermonising upon them, in which nearly all of the points made by Job’s “comforters” are put in a nutshell. The sons of God who presented themselves, Satan among them, in his council (Job i. 6) appear here also (Ps. lxxxix. 6):
“Who among the sons of the gods is like unto Jahveh,
A God very terrible in the council of the holy ones.”
After the mighty things that “Jah” had done to his enemies have been affirmed an Elohist takes up the burden and a “vision” like that of Eliphaz (Job iv. 13) is appealed to:
“Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones.”
The vision’s revelation (Job v. 17) “Happy is the man whom God correcteth” is also in this psalm (32, 33): “Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, but my mercy will I not utterly take from him.” And Eliphaz’s assurance “thy seed will be great” (v. 25) corresponds with that in our psalm (verse 36), “His seed shall endure forever.”
When the psalmist of the vision has pictured, as if in dissolving views, the military renown of David, God’s “servant,” and his “horn,” pointing to Solomon, God’s “first-born,” the transgressions of the latter are intimated (30–33), but the seer continues to utter the divine promises:
“My covenant will I not break,
Nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.
One thing have I sworn by my holiness;