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PSALMS. 



279 



last instance appears in lien, iv. 7 : " Saying in 

 J >avid. alter so lung a time . . To-day if ye shall near 

 his voice, etc. " In this case it would nut bo difficult 

 U) understand the writer as merely citing the book that 

 commonly went by the name of David ; not necessarily 

 as testifying that David wrote the particular psalm 

 here cited. But in all the other instances the personal 

 attribution of the psalm quoted to David is, verbally, 

 at least, and, to all appearance, really, as explicit as 

 possible. See, for example, Acts ii. 25, 29, 34, or iv. 

 25, 26. If this testimony is to be believed (and there 

 is no reason for disputing it, even apart from all super 

 natural claims made for it), it confirms the titles to 

 five of the psalms, thus incidentally confirms the testi- 

 mony of the titles in general, adds IV. ii. and less 

 distinctly Ps. cxxxii. (Acts vii. 46) to the list of those 

 written by David, and strongly points out David as 

 pre-eminently the great writer of psalms. 



Tlie Testimony of the Books of Chronicles, Ezra, and 

 Ndiemiah. These books testify to the personal exist- 

 ence, in David's time, of the singers Asaph, Hcman, 

 and Jeduthun, whose names appear in the titles of 

 certain psalms, and that their function as singers was 

 handed down from the times of David, 1 Chron. yi. 

 33, 39 ; xv. 19 ; xxv. ; 2 Chron. v. 12 ; xx. 14 ; xxix. 

 13, 30 ; xxxv. 15 ; Ezra ii. 41 ; iii. 10 ; Nch. vii. 44 ; 

 xi. 17, 22 ; xii. 35, 4G, and many other passages. In 

 these same passages they testify to David's personal 

 interest in sacred song. They testify to the public use 

 in Israel of a group of songs giving thanks to Jehovah 

 because; his (oviug-kindnen is forever (such songs as 

 Ps. cvi., cvii., cxviii., cxxxvi., all anonymous) from 

 the time when David brought up the ark to Jerusalem, 

 and onward. 1 Chron. xvi. 34, 41 ; 2 Chron. v. 13; vii. 

 .'!. f, ; xx. 21 ; Ezra ill 11, etc. In 1 Chron. xvi. 7- 

 :;r. it seems to be asserted that Ps. cv., xcvi., and 

 cvi. were placed by David in the hands of his singers 

 at the time when he brought the ark to Jerusalem : 

 ami in 2 Cliron. vi. 41, 42, it seems to be affirmed 

 that Ps. cxxxii. was used at the dedication of the 

 temple. These four psalms are anonymous in the 

 Hebrew ; the Septuagmt calls Ps. xcvi. Davidic, and 

 connects it in some way with the building of the 

 " house after the captivity ; " as we have seen, Ps. 

 cxxxii. is alluded to in Acts vil 46, as containing sen- 

 timents of David. 



This cviiii !]!<; is at some points lacking in explicit- 

 ness, but there can be no doubt that it recognizes 

 David as the great original writer of psalms, that it 

 associates Asaph and the others with David, or that 

 it attributes to them a group of psalms, mostly of 

 liturgical character, which can be quite plausibly iden- 

 tifieowith several of our present psalms that have not 

 David's name in their titles. 



But it is alleged that the books containing this evi- 

 dence are of late date, and take an uncritical view of 

 the history of David's time, attributing to it the 

 characteristics that belonged only to the second temple 

 and it* worship. That the books are relatively of late 

 date is true, though there is no proof that they are 

 later than Neheniiah : whether they are untrustworthy 

 is a different question. So far as their testimony to 

 the I's.-ilms is concerned, it fits in well with what other 

 evidence there is in the case. Many conservative 

 scholars, indeed, admit that Ps. cvi., among those 

 testified to in Chronicles, cannot be of David's time, 

 because of its closing lines : 



" JI^ made them also to lie pitied, 

 ' if M!! those that carried them captives. 

 Save in, O Lord, our God, 

 And gather us from among the nations." 



But if it were sure that these words refer to the 

 Babylonian exile, it would be easy to regard them as an 

 addition : and it is not at all sure that they have any 

 such reference. At the time when David brought up 



the ark, a few year- after the <i>s>- of a series of Phil- 

 invasions th.it had laMcd for a generation, it is 



certain that there were yet Israeli! ish fugitives, both 

 slaves _and sojourners, scattered in the neighboring 

 countries ; on that joyful occasion, why should not 

 the minds of the people turn to these, their suffering 

 brethren, just as naturally as if they had lived several 

 hundred years later? 



Ot/i<-r Tutttnnniy. The testimony of the psalm- 

 titles, the New Testament, and the Books of Chron- 

 icles is confirmed by many incidental notices in the 

 earlier books. Psalm cxxxvii. distinctly presupposes 

 that Judah, before the time of the exile, had well- 

 known songs of Zion. The songs giving thanks to 

 Jehovah because his loving-kindness is eternal ara 

 alluded to as something familiarly known in Isa. liv. 8; 

 Jer. xxxiii. Jl. In the times of Amos the name of 

 David was celebrated among lovers of music and song. 

 Amps vi. 5. In 2 Sam. xxii. the Eighteenth psalm is 

 attributed to David, and the habit of lyrical produc- 

 tion is ascribed to him in 2 Sam. xxiii. 1-7 ; i. 17, 

 xeq. ; iii. 33, 34. According to 1 Sam. xvi. 14-23, etc., 

 David's first entrance into public life was due to his 

 celebrity as a skilled musician. Facts like these have 

 no small value as corroborative evidence. 



Considerable additional testimony, dating earlier 

 than_the Christian era, might be drawn from the Sep- 

 tuagint translation, from the additional titles to the 

 psalms found in the Septuagint, and from the Apoc- 

 rypha and the other Jewish-Greek literature, and it 

 would all be to the same effect with that already cited. 

 As contradicting the idea that some of the psalms are 

 later than the Persian period, it may be noticed that 

 the Septuagint titles often contain the names of Jere- 

 miah. Hlggai, and Zechariah, but no later names. If 

 the Septuagint translation of the psalms had not been 

 made till nearly 130 B. C. , and c good many of the 

 psalms had then onjyjust been written, the signs of 

 this in the Septuagint would certainly be very differ- 

 ent from the phenomena actually presented there. 



Internal Evidence. A full consideration would re- 

 quire us now to take up each particular psalm, com- 

 paring its internal phenomena with the evidence at 

 which we have been looking, and reaching a separate 

 conclusion in the case of each psalm by itself. This 

 we cannot do, but there are certain general facts of in- 

 ternal evidence that are worth looking at. 



Among the psalms that are attributed to the times 

 of David, either by their titles or by the notices in the 

 history, are several that recapitulate the history of 

 Israel Ps. IxxviL, Ixxviii., assigned to Asaph, cv., 

 cvi., called Davidic in 1 Chron. xvi., cxxxvi., with the 

 refrain "his loving-kindness is forever." In each 

 case the psalm recapitulates the history as now found 

 in the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, 

 stopping with the times of David or a little earlier. 

 The most natural explanation of this fact certainly is 

 that the writers lived in the times of David, and 

 brought the history up to their own times ; in proof of 

 this compare the similar repetitions in Neh. ix. or 

 Ecclus. xliv.-l. "The view of Israel's past history 

 taken in Ps. Ixxviii., where the final rejection of the 

 house of Joseph is co-ordinated with the fall of Shiloh 

 and the rise of Zion and the Davidic kingdom, indi- 

 cates a stand point very near to that of Chronicles." 

 But Ps. Ixxviii. 00-64 is evidently a description of the 

 capture of the ark and the killing of Hophrii and 

 Phinehas in Eli's time. The refusing of Joseph in the 

 following verses is not the ultimate casting off of 

 Northern Israel, but the transfer of the sanctuary 

 from .Shiloh to Jerusalem, from the territory of 

 Ephraim to that of Judah. It is true that the passage 

 "indicates a standpoint very near to that of Chron- 

 icles," in the sense that the psalm takes the same 

 view of the history that is taken in the Books of 

 Chronicles ; but that is to be accounted for by the fact 

 that both luok at the history correctly. It has no 

 weight at all to show that this psalm is of even date 

 witii the Books of Chronicles. 



This reasoning is not necessarily vitiated by the (act 



