Psalms

“ The most essential thing in the appreciation of the poetry in the Psalms is the recognition of the three great spiritual qualities which distinguish them.
The first of these is the deep and genuine love of nature. The psalmists delight in the vision of the world, and their joy quickens their senses to read both the larger hieroglyphs of glory written in the stars and the delicate tracings of transient beauty on leaf and flower ”

“ These psalms climb higher and higher in their rapturous call to all creatures, animate and inanimate, on earth and in heaven, to praise Him. The golden waves of music and song pour out ever faster and fuller. At last we hear this invocation to every instrument of music to praise Him, responded to, as we may suppose, by each, in turn as summoned, adding its tributary notes to the broadening river of harmony—until all, with gathered might of glad sound blended with the crash of many voices, unite in the final words, 'Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. ”

“ The third quality of the poetry of the Psalms is their intense joy in God. No lover ever poured out the longings of his heart toward his mistress more eagerly than the Psalmist voices his desire and thirst for God. No conqueror ever sang of victory more exultantly than the Psalmist rejoices in the Lord, who is his light and his salvation, the strength of his life and his portion forever. ”

“ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another with 12 psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto God. And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
Psalms are, no doubt, primarily, if not exclusively, those of the Old Testament, which would naturally form the basis of the hymn-book of the Christian Church. ”

“ There are psalms of deep religious experience like the 32d.—“Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and whose sin is covered . . . Thou art a place to hide me in. . . . Thy hand is heavy upon me day and night . . . I will acknowledge my sin unto Thee.”
There are psalms, and these are almost the most important of all, such as the 9th, the 24th and 36th Psalms, which declare the providence and the kingdom of the Living God, with that great and prophetic 2d Psalm (ver. 1-5) : “Why do the heathen so furiously rage together, and the people imagine vain things. ”

“ I declare that the effect of this amazing lyric grows upon me every time that I hear it. Some Psalms, like the delicate and tender cxix., steal into the heart after long and quiet use. How dull I used to find it as a child; how I love it now! But this is not the case with the Venite; its noble simplicity and directness has no touch of intentional subtlety about it. Rather the subtlety was in the true insight, which saw that, if ever there was a Psalm which should at once give the reins to joy, and at the same time pierce the careless heart with a sharp arrow of thought, this was the Psalm. ”

“ The Psalms are all poems of the lyric kind, that is, adapted to music, but with great variety in the style of composition. Some are simply odes. An ode is a dignified sort of song, narrative of the facts, either of public history or private life, in a highly adorned and figured style. But the figure in the Psalms is that which is peculiar to the Hebrew language, in which the figure gives its meaning with as much perspicuity as the plainest speech. ”

“ These alphabetic psalms are characterized by poverty of action and richness of expression.
II
Milton has already reminded us that the Psalms belong to the second of the three orders into which the Greeks, with clear discernment, divided all [48] poetry: the epic, the lyric, and the dramatic. The Psalms are rightly called lyrics because they are chiefly concerned with the immediate and imaginative expression of real feeling. It is the personal and emotional note that predominates. They are inward, confessional, intense; outpourings of the quickened spirit; self-revelations of the heart. ”

“ Undoubtedly greater far than any of the preceding psalms is Psalm 90, which, transcending the limitations of the nation and the sect, laments the brevity and troubled nature of human life, and pleads for some knowledge of the plan of the eternal God, some permanency for human effort, some small measure of happiness in life’s brief day. ”

“ The Psalms are not merely the response to revelation, they are part of that revelation themselves. The Church uses them not as mere human utterances, but as the inspired words which God Himself has given her, and which the Lord Jesus consecrated by His own personal use of them. God cannot contradict Himself. ”

“ A study of any Commentary on the Psalms will show us that nearly all of these devotional utterances were prompted by some human experiences. They are the shoutings and sobbings of living men. The book of Psalms is not the liturgy of academicians. Its processionals and its recessionals show actual men and women in the real march of life. ”

“ If the community is a large one, let the Psalms be sung with antiphons; but if small, let them be sung straight through.
Let the Psalms of the Vesper Office be limited to four, with antiphons. After these Psalms the lesson is to be recited, then the responsory, the Ambrosian hymn, the verse, the canticle from the Gospel book, the litany, the Lord’s Prayer and the concluding prayers. ”

“ The most casual reader is struck by the constancy with which an outlook of hope and joy succeeds to the sorrow and stress of the opening verses of Psalm after Psalm. Even the darkest have their gleams of promise. And so the Christian Church, having learned what the hope of Israel meant, found the Psalms come naturally to her lips. ”

“ Psalms (‏תהלים‎) .—The Psalms are hymns containing [88] praises of God’s greatness, prayers for His mercy, and meditations on His wisdom, power, justice, and goodness. However various the Psalms are in form and contents, they have this in common, that they all are based on the purest and sincerest trust in God’s justice and goodness. “The mighty and proud, ‏זדים‎ who rely on their own strength and are guided by the dictates of their own will, cannot succeed for ever; the poor and humble, ‏ענוים‎ who rely on God’s mercy and are guided by the word of God, will not suffer for ever.” ”

“ Another Psalmist has sung of the man who can stand in the holy place, 'He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, even righteousness from the God of his salvation,' and our psalms hint, if they do not articulately declare, how that reception is possible for us, when they set forth waiting upon God as the condition of being made like Him. ”

“ The chief representative of this literature is the book of Psalms, which is aptly described by Johannes Arnd in these words: "What the heart is in man, that is the Psalter in the Bible." The Psalms contain in the form of sacred lyrics the outpourings of devout souls—prophets, priests, kings, wise men, and peasants—who came into the very presence of God, held communion with him, and were privileged to hear the sweet sound of his voice. No other literary compositions lift us into such atmosphere of religious thought and emotion. ”

“ I have made psalms of praise in the holy assembly the chief delightful exercise of my religion and my life, and have helped to bear down all the objections which I have heard against church music and against the 149th and 150th Psalms. It was not the least comfort I had in the converse with my late dear wife, that our first in the morning and last at night was a psalm of praise, till the hearing of others interrupted it. Let those that savour not melody leave others to their different appetites, and be content to be so far strangers to their delights. ”

“ I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart; and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: 'Oh! the verse of a Psalm! Angels sing Psalms;' says he, 'I wish to be a little angel here below;' he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety." ”

“ The feelings contained in the Psalms are those which were wrought first in the soul of Our Lord by the Holy Ghost, and then through Him in all those who are members of His mystical body. Therefore they are ours as well as David’s, or any of the saints. ”

“ As nothing is so ordinary amongst us as the reading of Psalms, I thought fit to help them to a better understanding of that divine book. I could have given abundance of notes to clear many places which are dark in the translation, but I think I have given light enough by a short preface, and by the arguments which are prefixed to every psalm, if the readers are willing to consult diligently the places which I have remitted them to, and to consider them attentively. ”

“ PSALM (from the Gr. word ψάλλειν, to play the harp) , the name used to designate the religious poems of the Hebrews, which are contained in the Psalter (see Psalms, Book of) . Modern collections of religious poetry sometimes bear the title of Psalms and Hymns, but these are always more or less directly connected with the actual Psalms of David. ”

“ Some psalms are there from the Bible, though seldom a whole one that is true to the soul of man,—now and then an oracle from a Hebrew prophet, full of faith in God, a warrior of piety,—which keep their place in the cabinet of religion, though two or three thousand years have passed by since their authors ceased to be mortal. ”

“ It may be thought that these selections of the Psalms have been chosen for their crudeness and grotesqueness. I have tried in vain to find othersome that would show more elegant finish or more of the spirit of poetry; the most poetical lines I can discover are these, which are beautiful for the reason that the noble thoughts of the Psalmist cannot be hidden, even by the wording of the learned Puritan minister:--
1. ”

“ Appoint, O Lord, a lawgiver over them: that the Gentiles may know themselves to be but men.
Here the late Hebrew doctors divide this psalm into two, making ver. 22 the beginning of psalm 10. And again they join Psalms 146 and 147 into one, in order that the whole number of psalms should not exceed 150. ”

“ Not only do they breathe through every part a divine spirit of eloquence, but they contain numberless illustrious prophecies that were remarkably accomplished, and are frequently appealed to by the evangelical writers. The sacred character of the whole book is established by the testimony of our Saviour and his Apostles, who, in various parts of the New Testament, appropriate the predictions of the Psalms as obviously apposite to the circumstances of their lives, and as intentionally composed to describe them. The veneration 795for the Psalms has in all ages of the church been considerable. ”

“ A great many psalms have welled out of men's hearts, just like fountains away among the hills, and valleys, {176} and slopes. This 73rd Psalm is brimful of human thoughts, and duties, and longings, pains, and battles, and victories, just like bits of your life when you were all alive to the real grandeur of your human existence, when your heart longed to think loftily of life, and to hold fast to God, and precisely because your heart was all alive you found it was not easy. ”

“ The great themes of the Psalms are, Christ, Jehovah, the Law, Creation, the future of Israel, and the exercises of the renewed heart in suffering, in joy, in perplexity. The promises of the Psalms are primarily Jewish, and suited to a people under the law, but are spiritually true in Christian experience also, in the sense that they disclose the mind of God, and the exercises of His heart toward those who are perplexed, afflicted, or cast down. ”

“ In 1698 ‘A Supplement to the New Version of the Psalms’ by the same authors was advertised, containing paraphrases of the Lord's Prayer, Creed, Commandments, Canticles, &c., after the precedent of Sternhold and Hopkins, and several additional psalms in peculiar measures. ”

“ PSALM vi. Domine, ne in furore
Ash Wednesday, morning (Prayer Book)
The prayer of the human soul suffering the temporal punishments, bodily and mental, of sin. Christ Himself endured these sufferings to the utmost, not for Himself, but for His people, and in this sense it, with the other penitential Psalms, may be called a Psalm of the Incarnation.
PSALM vii. Domine, Deus meus
The declaration of the Innocency of Christ against the persecution and treachery of His enemies; His appeal to the Father's justice. ”

“ They cover the whole field of religious experience for both individual believers and the church at large. Many of them—the so-called Messianic psalms—are prophetic of the Saviour's offices and work. We need not wonder, therefore, that the Psalms are quoted in the New Testament oftener than any other book of the Old Testament, Isaiah not excepted. ”

“ The Psalms.—The Psalter is that part of the Old Testament in which the devotional aspect of the religious character finds its completest expression; and in lyrics of exquisite tenderness and beauty the most varied emotions are poured forth by the psalmists to their God—despondency and distress, penitence and resignation, hope and confidence, jubilation and thankfulness, adoration and praise. The Psalter, it is clear from many indications, is not the work of a single compiler, but was formed gradually. ”

“ This psalm has for its burden a cry for deliverance; but the Psalmist begins where it is very hard for a struggling man to begin, but where we always should begin, with grateful remembrance of God's mercy. His wondrous dealings seem to the Psalmist's thankful heart as numberless as the blades of grass which carpet the fields, or as the wavelets which glance in the moonlight and break in silver upon the sand. They come pouring out continuously, like the innumerable undulations of the ether which make upon the eyeballs the single sensation of light. ”