As in Esther, the author had a difficult plot to handle. How was the beautiful Judith to save herself, to slay Holofernes, and, at the same time, to preserve freedom of movement through the camp for herself and her maid, and thus access to her own people of Bethulia? It looked impossible to do all these things, and yet they were accomplished with perfect ease by her courage and her woman's wit.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PSALMS

THE Book of Psalms is a collection of ancient religious poetry of various kinds, and by various authors, which was made by the selection, or the survival, of poems from a number of still earlier collections. It seems altogether probable, from the information about the music given in the prefatory inscriptions to many of the Psalms, that the book as we have it was used in connection with the services of the second Temple.1 Apart, however, from any liturgical use, the hymns were undoubtedly popular among the people and sung by them. The Songs of Ascents, or Degrees, Psalms 120-134, may be pilgrim psalms that came into existin connection with the annual journeys to Jerusalem.

No poetry ever written has been read, and studied, and sung by more people than the Hebrew Psalms, and this is true, because they express, better than any other poetry, the feeling of the devout soul towards God. Art and literature the Greeks produced of superlative excellence, but not religion. Attention has often been called to the fact that when the Jews as a people were monotheists and profoundly spiritual, the Greeks were polytheists. See Acts 17:22-34. Nowhere, except perhaps in a few of the utterances of the philosophers,

1 The Temple of Solomon was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, II Kings 25:9, II Chronicles 36:19. A second Temple was built after the captivity, Ezra 6:15. It was rebuilt by Herod the Great about 20 B. C. The Temple of Herod was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A. D.

especially of Socrates, does the ancient Greek approach the dignity and grandeur of the Hebrew's conception of God. Much we owe to the Greeks, but not our conception of God. It is the spirituality of the Psalms that is their most notable characteristic. The Jew saw clearly that happiness had a spiritual and not a material source, and that the eternal good is spiritual.

Here are expressions concerning the Psalms from two different types of men, each of whom finds the secret of their power in their deep sincerity, and in their perfect expression of the religious emotions common to humanity. Dean Milman wrote:

They have embodied so exquisitely the universal language of religious emotion, that (a few fierce and vindictive passages excepted, natural in the warrior poet of a sterner age) they have entered, with unquestioned propriety, into the ritual of the holier and more perfect religion of Christ. The Songs which cheered the solitude of the desert caves of Engedi, or resounded from the voice of the Hebrew people, as they wound along the glens or the hill-sides of Judea, have been repeated for ages in almost every part of the habitable world, in the remotest islands of the ocean, among the forests of America, or the sands of Africa. How many human hearts have they softened, purified, exalted! Of how many wretched beings have they been the secret consolation!" 1

Carlyle said of the Psalms of David:

"On the whole, we make too much of faults. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible, above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there 'the man according to God's own heart'? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes, there was no want of sins.

1 H. H. Milman, The History of the Jews, New York, 1871, vol. I, p. 353.

And therefore the unbelievers sneer and ask, 'Is this your man according to God's own heart?' The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one."

"David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest men will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his struggle be a faithful, unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what

it is." 1

The Book of Psalms in Hebrew is in five parts.2 This fact was usually ignored in the printing of English Versions until the Revision of 1881-5, when the divisions were marked.3 An examination of the contents shows that each division ends with a doxology, but that the doxologies at the close of Psalms 72 and 106 are appropriate parts of these poems, while the doxologies at the close of Psalms 41 and 89 are not, hence it has been concluded by many scholars that the fivefold division was made in imitation of the Pentateuch, as rabbinical

1 Heroes and Hero Worship, "The Hero as Prophet."

2 I 1−41, II 42–72, III 73-89, IV 90-106, V 107–150.

The divisions of the books of Psalms and the differences between poetry and prose, as to form, were indicated in some special editions of the Bible, and in various translations by individual scholars, but not in the editions that were in general use.

tradition asserts, and that the natural division is into three parts, 1-41, 42-89, 90-150.

The first of the three divisions consists of poems attributed to David. A further examination of the collection will show that Psalms 51-72, a group attributed almost entirely to David appears to have been inserted between two parts of a collection by Asaph, Psalms 50-73-83, which follows immediately the collection of Korahite, Psalms 42-49. If Psalms 51-72 are placed before Psalm 42, we have the second collection of the Psalms, consisting of I David, II Korahite, III Asaph, plus a miscellaneous supplementary collection, 84-89; comprising poems of the Sons of Korah, David, Heman and Ethan, and the note, 72:20, "The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended," appears appropriately at the end of the group bearing his name. has no meaning where it now occurs.1

It

The third collection contains the chorals or liturgical hymns; the Egyptian Hallel, 113-118; the Songs of Ascents, 120-134; a poem, the greatness of Jehovah and the impotence of idols, 135; the Great Hallel, 136;2 a poem of the exiles in Babylon, 137; two small groups attributed to David, 108-110 and 138–145, of which 108 is made up of 57:7-11 and 60:5-12, combined, perhaps for some liturgical purpose. There are no musical directions prefixed to any of the Psalms in the third collection (books IV and V) although three, 109, 139, 140, ascribed to David, are "For the chief musician." There are a number of musical directions found in the first two collections, 1-89.

That the Psalms have been edited and do not always

1 For a discussion of this see S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 372-373.

2 Jewish authorities do not agree as to the Great Hallel. Some say it is Psalm 136; some, Psalms 120-136; some, Psalms 135:4-136.