PSALMS. 



277 



cxxxvii., for example, with its picture of the chil- 

 dren of Zion weeping by the rivers of Babylon, 

 was evidently written after the beginniuK of the Baby- 

 lonish exile, and apparently within the lifetime of some 

 of the very persons whom Nebuchadnezzar had car- 

 ried away. And this case allows us what we are to ex- 

 pect in other cases. The writers of the Psalms were 

 not men who took pains to rover up the signs of the 

 date when a psalm was written. If a psalm is really 

 of late date, it is likely, in most cases, that there will 

 be, as there is in Ps. cxxxvii. , some evident and dis- 

 tinct sign of that fact. The absence of such signs has 

 weight against attributing a late date to a psalm. But 

 if any one will take pains to examine the reasons thnt 

 are given when it is proposed to assign an apparently 

 Davidic psalm to later ages, or any psalm to a date 

 later than Neheiuiah, he will find that the reason, in 

 most instances, is not very distinct or very strong ; in 

 many instances it is as attenuated as possible. 



The fact, for example, that a psalm mentions the 

 temple or its service is no strong proof .of its having 

 originated later than David. To say nothing of the 

 earlier temple of Eli's time, the accounts of the reign 

 of David inform us that he and other devout Israel- 

 ites used much time and treasure, making preparations 

 for the temple that was to be built by his snr 

 and arranging for its services. Nothing could be more 

 n.itural. during this period, than that a sacred poet 

 should look forward to the times when the proposed 

 building and its' ritual should be in existence, mention- 

 ing them in his gong. 



Nor is a psalm proved to be of post-exilic origin by 

 its speaking of Israel as in distress, or as needing to be 

 saved, or even of Israel as scattered among the na- 

 tions. At half a dozen different periods between the 

 reign of David and the Babylonian exile the history 

 of Israel or Judah was such that language of this 

 sort would be appropriate. During the later years of 

 Saul, and the earlier years of David\ there was a period 

 ot this sort ; witness the battle of Gilbpa, and, later, 

 the two desperate attempts of the Philistines against 

 David, after he took the throne of all Israel. War 

 always means the driving of people as fugitives from 

 their homes ; wars in ancient times involved the selling 

 of the conquered into slavery. Nothing could be 

 more superficial than to regard every expatriated Is- 

 raelite spoken of in the Bible as an exile of Nebuchad- 

 nezzar's time. There never was a century of Israel- 

 itish history that had not its own cases of this sort. 



Nor is a psalm proved to be post-exilic by the fact 

 of its containing Aramaic or Syriac peculiarities of 

 language, nor even by its containing peculiarities that 

 are also found in prose in the later Hebrew. No fact 

 is more familiar than that the poetic forms of a lan- 

 guage, or of one period of a language, are apt to show 

 affiliations with the prose forms of some cognate lan- 

 guage, or of some different period. The colloquialisms 

 of one language or period correspond to the literary 

 usage of a cognate language, or a different period. 

 The times of David were times when the Israelites 

 were rapidly changing in culture, and largely through 

 the fact of their having conquered certain Arani:i-an 

 peoples more cultured than themselves. In the cir- 

 cumstances, the literature of the times of David ought 

 to show the marks of the times. And later, in the 

 times of Benhadad, Hazael, and the successive Assyr- 

 ian conquerors (see 2 Kings xviii. 26), there existed 

 facts that might easily account for linguistic peculiar- 

 ities of this sort. 



Nor is a psalm proved to be non-Davidic by its not 

 having a title, in the Hebrew, attributing it to David. 

 We have no sufficient knowledge as to the origin of the 

 titles to justify any inference of tbis sort. It is easy 



As a matter of fact, several of the psalms that are moat 

 specifically attributed to David in the New Testament 

 and in the Books of Chronicles are those that have no 

 titles. 



A psalm is not necessarily proved to be of late date 

 by agreements of its phraseology with that of pas- 

 sages in the later books. Nothing could be move 

 natural than that the authors of these later books shouli I 

 quote the psalms. Nothing could be more natural 

 than that they should be so familiar with the national 

 sacred songs that their own phraseology should be influ- 

 enced thereby, even when they made no formal quota- 

 tions. 



The positive proof that a majority of the psalms 

 date from the lifetime of David and of men who were 

 contemporary with him, that a large proportion of the 

 rest are pre-exilic. and that none are later than the 

 possible lifetime of Nehemiah, includes many different 

 items, and applies differently to different psalms. Of 

 course it is possible here to consider this evidence only 

 in general. 



The Tettimony of the Helretc Titles. To begin with, 

 the Hebrew titles of about ninety psalms (the same 

 titles that are found in the English versions) contain 

 the name of David or of one of his contemporaries, 

 Asaph, Heman, Ethan (or Jeduthun), or Solomon. 

 Save in a'very few instances these titles are corrobor- 

 ated bytheSeptuagint,and the various copiesof this ver- 

 sion also prefix the name of David to a considerable num- 

 ber of the psalms where it is not found in the Hebrew. 

 It is not necessary, in all cases, to suppose that tbe 

 man who wrote the title intended to be understood that 

 the man named in the title is the author of the psalm. 

 Supposably, the words "to David," prefixed to a 

 psalm, might mean, not that David wrote the psalm, 

 but that he is the subject of it, or that it was dedicated 

 to him, or that it was regarded as Davidio in its char- 

 acter, or that it belonged to a collection that was con- 

 sidered as in some sense Davidic ; and there are other 

 ways in which a psalm might be regarded as Davidic, 

 though not written by David. Any one who will look- 

 up the Septuagint titles to the psalms with care will 

 readily see that, in some cases, the Septuagint writers 

 and annotators did not regard the man named in the 

 title of a psalm as its author. But after making all 

 due allowances of this sort, no one would dispute the 

 statement that, prevailingly, the prefixing of a name to 

 a psalm, in its title, was intended as an indication of 

 its authorship. In any given case, therefore, this in- 

 terpretation of the title is to be preferred until reasons 

 appear for a different interpretation. 



But it is said that the titles originated in a later and 

 uncritical age, and are therefore of little value. If it 

 were known that they are of late origin, that would 

 not prove them valueless, but would merely open the 

 way for proving them so ; on comparing them with 

 other evidence, external and internal, it might still ap- 

 pear that they were thoroughly trustworthy. But 

 what evidence can any one adduce that the titles are 

 of late origin? This is a thing to be proved, not to 

 be assumed. The titles have been there as far back 

 as we can trace the psalms themselves. In the Hebrew, 

 they are printed with nothing to distinguish them from 

 the rest of the psalm : if a title is long enough to 

 make a verse, it is numbered as the first verse of the 

 psalm, and not, as in the versions, as a separate 

 paragraph. No one has a right to reason from the 

 premises that the titles are some centuries, or some 

 generations, later than the psalms to which they are 

 prefixed, until he has first proved these premises. 



But it is said that the titles are inconsistent with the 

 contents of the psalms to which they are prefixed, and 

 are by this shown to be unhistorical. If this incon- 



to say that the collectors of the psalms would naturally sistency really exists, in some cases, then it shows that 

 ascribe a psalm to David, if they knew of the least in those cases the title is either erroneous or else is to 

 shred of evidence tojnstify tbcni i in doing so ; and that be understood as indicating something else than the 



a evidence j authorship of the psalm. But to justify this, the in- 



their failing to do so therefore shows that no 



existed in their day ; but of this we have no proof. 



consistency must be clearly made out, not slimly guessed 



