THE LORD'S BOWER

from me.

I am a sore reproach to my neighbours,
And a fear to mine acquaintance;
They that see me without flee away
I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind;
I am like a broken vessel.

For I hear the whispering of

many:

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Terror is on every side: they take counsel together against me,

They devise to take away my life.

But I trust in thee, O Lord:

I say, Thou art my God.

My times are in thy hand:

Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.

Make thy face to shine upon thy servant:

Save me for thy lovingkindness' sake.

Let me not be ashamed, O Lord, for I have called upon thee: Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in Sheol. Let the lying lips be put to silence,

Which speak arrogant things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous.

Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee;

Which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!

Thou hidest them in the hiding-place of thy face from slanderers among men:

Thou concealest them in a bower from the accusing of tongues.

Blessed be the Lord:

For he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a time of distress.

I said in mine alarm, I am cut off from before thine eyes: Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.

O love the Lord, all ye his loving ones:
For the Lord keepeth faithfulness;
And amply requiteth the proud doer.

Be of good courage, and let your heart be strong,
All ye that hope in the Lord.

§ 11. The thirty-eighth Psalm: 'Domine, ne in furore.'-One of the greatest of the penitential Psalms follows (xxxviii). The speaker is once more a representative of his party. The whole body of pious believers is concentrated in the single 'I.' And in this Psalm they acknowledge and confess their sins. Some interpreters indeed suppose that the sins for which they accept responsibility are not really theirs: they are the sins of the people at large, for whose sake they suffer. The sufferer of this Psalm must in that case be compared with the Servant of the Second Isaiah. The solidarity of feeling in ancient Israel was so intense and vivid that it was quite possible for any single Israelite to confess and bewail the sins of his people as if they were his own. On the other hand, we know that in the Persian period the divisions in the community had become acute, and it is doubtful whether the sins of the one party would have been acknowledged by the other. It might be urged that the result of those sins-the continued delaying of the Messianic age-affected the pious believers more sorely than the careless or the apostate. But it is much the best and the most natural interpretation to suppose that the pious community acknowledges and deplores its own misdoings, its own lapses from the Law to which it owed allegiance. (The descriptions of sickness are metaphors of suffering.)

O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath,

Neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.

For thine arrows stick fast in me,

And thy hand presseth me sore.

There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; Neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin.

For mine iniquities are gone over mine head:

As an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.

My wounds stink and are corrupt

Because of my foolishness.

I am afflicted; I am bowed down greatly;
I go mourning all the day long.
For my loins are filled with burning,

And there is no soundness in my flesh.

I am benumbed and sore broken :

I moan more than the roaring of a lion.

Lord, all my desire is before thee;

And my groaning is not hid from thee.

My heart throbbeth, my strength faileth me:

As for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.

'I AM SORRY FOR MY SIN'

My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague;
And my kinsmen stand afar off.

They also that seek after my life lay snares for me;
And they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things,
And imagine deceits all the day long.

But I, as a deaf man, hear not;

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I am become as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. For in thee, O Lord, do I hope:

Thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.

For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice

over me:

When my foot slippeth, they magnify themselves against me. For I am near to fall,

And my pain is continually before me.

For I declare mine iniquity;

I am sorry for my sin.

But mine enemies without cause are strong:

And they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied. They also that render evil for good are mine adversaries, Because I follow after the good.

Forsake me not, O Lord:

O my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me,

O Lord, my salvation.

§ 12. The thirty-ninth Psalm.-The next Psalm (xxxix) has been called the most beautiful of all the elegies in the Psalter.' The pious believer, in spite of calamity, must not complain of God's dispensations and decrees; all the more must he be patient and silent in the presence of the ungodly,' lest he increase their mockery and give them occasion to blaspheme. Such is the original meaning, but this Psalm is one of those which each reader will interpret for himself. For purposes of edification and prayer, why should we not read into the Psalms whatever we will? There is genius in these lyrics, and it is a characteristic of the writings of genius that there is more in them than their author knew, and that they have various applications and implications for different ages and readers.

I said, 'I will take heed to my ways,
That I sin not with my tongue:
I will put a bridle on my mouth,
While the wicked is before me.'

I was dumb with silence,

I held my peace altogether; (?)
But my sorrow was stirred.
My heart was hot within me,
As I mused the fire burned;
Then spake I with my tongue:

'Lord, make me to know mine end,

And the measure of my days, what it is;
That I may know how frail I am.

Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth;
And mine age is as nothing before thee;

Verily every man is but a breath.

Surely as a mere semblance every man walketh to and fro; His tumult is but a breath;

He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.'

And now, Lord, what wait I for?

My hope is in thee.

Deliver me from all my transgressions:

Make me not the reproach of the foolish.
I am dumb, I open not my mouth;
Because thou hast done it.

Remove thy stroke away from me:

I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: Surely every man is but a breath.

Hear my prayer, O Lord,

And give ear unto my cry;

Hold not thy peace at my tears:

For I am a stranger with thee,

And a sojourner, as all my fathers were.

Look away from me, that I may be glad again,

Before I go hence, and be no more.

'Look away from me,' in the last paragraph, recalls a phrase in Job. It is metaphor, and means: Cease to be angry.' Even as the law bids the Israelites be kind and charitable to all strangers

THE HEROISM OF FAITH

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and foreign settlers, so does the Psalmist claim a like protection from God. For the earth is his, and man comes and goes upon it, as a guest who tarries for a season. Commenting on the last verse of this Psalm, Professor Wellhausen observes: The Psalmist's resignation borders upon despair. It is remarkable how little he desires from God. The present is cheerless; of a future world there is no thought. Faith longs for sight, but longs in vain; yet it persists, though it is almost extinguished by the painful contradiction which experience brings. A prayer like this cannot be found except in the Old Testament.' But Professor Delitzsch has said more truly of this same Psalm: This is just the heroic feature in the faith of the Old Testament, that, in the midst of the riddles of this life, and face to face with the impenetrable darkness resting on the life beyond, it throws itself without reserve into the arms of God.'

'Socrates, called Scholasticus, an ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century, tells of a plain man named Pambo, who came to a learned man and asked him to teach him some Psalm. He began to read to him the thirty-ninth: "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue." Having heard this first sentence, Pambo took his leave, saying he would make this his first lesson. He did not return, and when his teacher met him after the space of two months, and asked him when he would proceed, he replied that he had not yet mastered his first lesson; and he gave the like answer to one who asked the same question forty-nine years after' (Ker, The Psalms in History and Biography). But Pambo became a great saint all the same. The story is humorously told by Mr. Browning with a comic application to himself in Jocoseria-the last poem in that volume.

§ 13. The forty-first Psalm.-The subject of the next Psalm (xli) is somewhat obscure. Some scholars regard it as a Psalm of Thanksgiving for deliverance from trouble; others as a didactic Psalm; others as a prayer for help. I have chosen the last interpretation. Perhaps when the Psalm was adopted for liturgical purposes its original opening was modified. The disease is a metaphor for communal calamity, but originally the Psalm must have been the result and record of an individual's sorrow. The writer is conscious of personal sin, but he belongs to the party of integrity. It is to that party, the true Israel, to whose continual existence the honour of God is pledged. They will abide before God's face for ever. In the opening line 'considereth' is Coverdale's very happy and accurate rendering of the Hebrew word 'maskil. 'Consideration' implies both thought and benevolence.