Robert Hatch Kennett

“ It is only in the last collection, books IV. and V., that we find any number of psalms appropriate to such a ritual as that of the Temple, and it is difficult to resist the conviction that the earlier collections were made for use, not in the Temple at Jerusalem but in some synagogue or synagogues. Thus, for example, the numerous psalms in which the poets, though speaking perhaps, not as individuals but as members of a class, describe themselves as poor and afflicted at the hands of certain ungodly men, who appear to be Jews, can hardly have been originally collected by the Temple choirs. ”

“ Since, then, the existence of separate books of psalms anterior to the present divisions of the Psalter is very doubtful, we must look for other evidences of date. Now, both the Korahite and Asaphic groups of psalms are remarkable that they hardly contain any recognition of present sin on the part of the community of Jewish faith—though they do confess the sin of Israel in the past—but are exercised with the observation that prosperity does not follow righteousness either in the case of the individual (xlix., lxxiii.) ”

“ Malachi, Ezra and Nehemiah, like Haggai and Zechariah, are still very far from holding that the sin of Israel lies all in the past. Again, a considerable number of these psalms (xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., lxxx.) point to an historical situation which can be very definitely realized. They are post-exilic in their whole tone and belong to a time when prophecy had ceased and the synagogue worship was fully established (lxxiv. 8, 9) . But the Jews are no longer the obedient slaves of the oppressing power; there has been a national rising and armies have gone forth to battle. ”

“ Exegetical works.—While some works of patriotic writers are still of value for text criticism and for the history of early exegetical tradition, the treatment of the Psalms by ancient and medieval Christian writers is as a whole such as to throw light on the ideas of the commentators and their times rather than on the sense of a text which most of them knew only through translations. ”

“ But in the comparative peace and freedom of the 3rd century B.C. the condition of Jerusalem was greatly ameliorated. Wealth accumulated to such a degree that Simon the son of Oniah was enabled practically to rebuild the Temple, and to maintain its services with a grandeur of ritual which they had probably never known before. It must be admitted that the gorgeousness of ritual described by the Chronicler is far more in harmony with the days of Simon than with any previous post-exilic period. How late the Chronicler wrote cannot perhaps be determined ”

“ In some of the following psalms there are still references to deeds of oppression and violence, but more generally Israel appears as happy under the law. The problems of divine justice are no longer burning questions, the righteousness of God is seen in the peaceful felicity of the pious (xci., xcii., &c.) . Israel, indeed, is still scattered and not triumphant over the heathen, but even in the dispersion the Jews are under a mild rule (cvi. 46) , and the commercial activity of the nation has begun to develop beyond the seas (cvii. 26 seq.) ”

“ It is surely as difficult to suppose that the Davidic psalms of the first book are a selection made from a greater collection of such psalms contained in the “Director’s Psalter” as it is to imagine that St Mark’s Gospel is an abridgment of St Matthew’s. It is true that the preposition “to” (לְ‎) may denote authorship, as it does apparently in Isaiah xxxviii. ”

“ Hippolytus tells us that in his time most Christians said “the Psalms of David,” and believed the whole book to be his; but this title and belief are both of Jewish origin, for in 2 Macc. ii. 13 τὰ τοῦ Δαυίδ means the Psalter, and the title of the apocryphal “Psalter of Solomon” implies that the previously existing Psalter was ascribed to David. Jewish tradition does not make David the author of all the psalms; but as he was regarded as the founder and legislator of the Temple psalmody (1 Chron., ut supra; Ezra iii. 10; Neh. xii. 36, 45 seq.; Ecclus. xlvii. 8 seq.) ”

“ Now we have seen that the ל‎ prefixed to בְנֵי קדַה‎ cannot refer to authorship; we seem therefore shut up to one of two alternatives, either the psalms inscribed קֹרַה‎ belonged to the repertoire of the Korahites, or they were intended to be sung in the Korahite style. It is indeed possible that. each division of the Levitical singers had its own collection; but this is hardly probable unless we are to suppose that they never officiated simultaneously, in which case we should certainly have expected that the psalm quoted by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xvi.) ”

“ There is nothing even to connect these Jews with Palestine; they may have formed a part of the very considerable Jewish community which we know to have been settled in Egypt as early as the 5th century B.C. On the other hand, it is extremely improbable that the Jews of Judaea, whom Nehemiah had entirely detached from their immediate neighbours, would have taken part in any general rising against Persia. ”

“ In point of fact books IV. and V. have so many common characters that there is every reason to regard them as a single great group. Again, the main part of books II. and III. (Ps. xlii.–lxxxiii.) is distinguished from the rest of the Psalter by habitually avoiding the name Jehovah (the Lord) and using Elohim (God) instead, even in cases like Ps. l. 7, where “I am Jehovah thy God” of Exod. xx. 2 is quoted but changed very awkwardly to “I am God thy God.” This is not due to the authors of the individual psalms, but to an editor; for Ps. liii. is only another recension of Ps. ”

“ Both include psalms which are most naturally understood as referring to the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes and to the Maccabaean victories, and cannot therefore be separated by a long interval of time. Moreover the scruple as to the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton seems to have arisen earlier, as in the LXX. version of the Pentateuch יהוה‎ is represented by Κύριος. And further, if the Elohistic redaction was due merely to a desire to avoid pronouncing the divine name, why was not the presumably earlier collection of psalms in book I. subjected to a similar redaction? ”

“ The oldest version, the LXX., follows a text generally closely corresponding to the Massoretic Hebrew, the main variations being in the titles and in the addition (lacking in some MSS.) of an apocryphal psalm ascribed to David when he fought with Goliath. Ps. ix. and x. are rightly taken as one psalm, but conversely Ps. cxlvii. is divided into two. The LXX. text has many “ daughters, ” of which may be noticed (a) the Memphitic (ed. Lagarde, 1875) ”

“ It is, however, probable that the title soon came to be understood of David’s authorship, with the result that further notes were added indicating the situation in David’s life to which the psalms appeared to be appropriate. It is certainly not impossible that the two groups of “Davidic” psalms once formed separate collections independently compiled, and that the subscription to Ps. lxxii. originally stood at the end of the second collection ”

“ All this does not, of course, imply that there are not in books IV. and V. any pieces older than the completion of books II. and III., for the composition of a poem and its acceptance as part of the Levitical liturgy are not necessarily coincident in date, except in psalms written with a direct liturgical purpose. ”

“ Certainly in happier times, when the worst period of storm and stress was over, there would be a desire to enliven the services with music, which would naturally be borrowed from the traditional music of the great national sanctuary. ”

“ A friend has written to the author that for συγχρονίσας we ought perhaps to read συχνὸν ἐγχρονίσας. ↑ The threefold division of the singers appears in the same list according to the Hebrew text of verse 17, but the occurrence of jeduthun as a proper name instead of a musical note is suspicious, and makes the text of LXX. preferable. The first clear trace of the triple choir is therefore in Neh. xii. 24. ↑ Some confirmation of this explanation of the titles may be found in the fact that in place of לִידוּחוּן‎ (Ps. xxxix. 1) we find in lxii. ”

“ Bickell, Die Dichlungerl der Hebräer (3 der Psalter, 1883) , from a revised and metrically arranged text; Baethgen, in Nowack’s Hand-Komm. (1892) ; Wellhausen, in Sacred Books of the Old Test. (Eng. trans. by Furness, J. Taylor and Paterson, 1898) ; Duhm, in Marti’s Kurzer Hand-Comm. (1899) ; Kirkpatrick, in Cambridge Bible for Schools (1893-1895) ; W. T. Davison, in Hastings’s Dict. Bible (1902) ; Driver, The Parallel Psalter (1904) ; C. A. and E. G. Briggs, “Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Psalms,” vol. i. (1906) , vol. ii. (1907) , in International Critical Commentary. ”

“ No canon of literary criticism can treat as valuable external evidence an attestation which first appears so many centuries after the supposed date of the poems, especially when it is confronted by facts so conclusive as that Ps. ”