are others which seem to imply foreigners. Like many other Psalms in this group, this one too seems dependent upon the Book of Job. The verse, 'He that planteth the ear, shall he not hear?' &c., marks a step in religious thought, and in another form still appeals to us. The universal spirit must, we argue, be not less rational and not less good than the finite spirits of man. We can only account for human love if its ultimate source be divine.

O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth;

O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth!
Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth:
Render a recompense to the proud.

Lord, how long shall the wicked,

How long shall the wicked triumph? They pour forth and utter arrogant things, And all the workers of iniquity are proud. They crush thy people, O Lord,

They afflict thine heritage.

They slay the widow and the stranger,
And murder the fatherless.

Yet they say, 'The Lord will not see,
Neither will the God of Jacob regard it.'

Give heed, ye brutish among the people:
And ye fools, when will ye be wise?
He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?
He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
He that formeth the nations, shall not he punish?
Shall he not teach man knowledge? (?)

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man,

For they are but a breath.

Happy is the man whom thou admonishest, O Lord,
And teachest him out of thy law;

That thou mayest give him rest from the days of calamity,
While the pit is digged for the wicked. (?)

For the Lord will not cast off his people,

Neither will he forsake his inheritance.

But judgement shall return unto righteousness:
And all the upright in heart shall follow it.

Who will rise up for me against the evildoers?

Or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?

'HE THAT FORMED THE EYE'

Unless the Lord were my help,

My soul would soon dwell in Silence.

If I think, My foot slippeth;

Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, holdeth me up. In the multitude of my cares within me

Thy comforts delight my soul.

Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee,

Which frameth mischief by law?

475

They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous,

And condemn the innocent blood.

But the Lord is my high tower,

And my God is the rock of my refuge.

And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity,
And shall cut them off in their own wickedness;
Yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off.

§ 26. The one hundred and second Psalm.-The following Psalm (cii) was clearly written for communal use, and the speaker is Israel. But the subtle manner in which individual and national purposes are interwoven in the Psalter is illustrated by the heading given to this particular hymn, which dedicates it to the use of the individual sufferer. It is called: A prayer for the afflicted when he fainteth, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord.' The Israelite is so bound up with Israel in Israel's joys and sorrows, and the tact of the Psalmists is usually so delicate, that the communal Psalm is available for the individual just as in other cases Psalms for individuals may have been adapted for the community. The date of the Psalm is disputed; but there are only two alternatives. It belongs either to the period of Nehemiah before the walls were rebuilt, or to the days of desolation under Antiochus Epiphanes. The Perfects' in the penultimate stanza are an admirable and conspicuous instance of the so-called Prophetic Perfect or the Perfect of Certitude. The Psalmist describes the accomplished result of his prayer. In the last stanza he returns to the mournful Present.

Hear my prayer, O Lord,

And let my cry come unto thee.

Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; Incline thine ear unto me:

In the day when I call answer me speedily.

For my days are consumed like smoke,
And my bones are burned as an hearth.
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my bread.

By reason of the voice of my groaning
My bones cleave to

my

skin.

I am like a pelican of the wilderness:

I am become as an owl of the desert.

I watch, and make moan

As a lonely bird upon the roof.

Mine enemies reproach me all the day;

And they that are mad against me use my name as a curse. I have eaten ashes like bread,

And mingled my drink with weeping,

Because of thine indignation and thy wrath:

For thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down.

My days are like a shadow that declineth;
And I wither like the grass.

But thou, O Lord, art enthroned for ever;

And thy remembrance endureth unto all generations.

Thou wilt arise, and have mercy upon Zion:

For the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones,

They compassionate the dust thereof.

Then the nations shall fear the name of the Lord,
And all the kings of the earth thy glory.

For the Lord hath built up Zion,

He hath appeared in his glory.

He hath regarded the prayer of the destitute,

And not despised their prayer.

This shall be written for the generation to come:

And the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord.

For he hath looked down from his holy height;

From heaven did the Lord behold the earth;

To hear the groaning of the prisoner;

To loose those that were appointed to death;

That they may declare the name of the Lord in Zion,

And his praise in Jerusalem;

When the peoples are gathered together,

And the kingdoms, to serve the Lord.

THE SONGS OF ZION

He hath weakened my strength in the way;

He hath shortened my days.

477

O my God, I cry, take me not away in the midst of my days:

Thy years are throughout all generations.

Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth:

And the heavens are the work of thy hands.

They shall perish, but thou shalt endure:

Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment;

As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:

But thou art ever the same,

And thy years shall have no end.

The children of thy servants shall abide,

And their seed shall be established before thee.

§ 27. The one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm.—The following Psalm (cxxxvii) is a famous religious lyric which seems to reflect the moods of sorrow and of hatred which possessed the souls of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia. But it may have been written not during but shortly after the exile, or again it may quite possibly be a dramatic lyric' in Mr. Browning's sense, composed, perchance in the Maccabean period, by a Temple singer who identifies himself by sympathy with his exiled predecessors in Babylon.' Babylon stands to him for Syria, just as 'even to the prophets Edom and Babylon were types of the class of Jehovah's enemies.'

By the rivers of Babylon,

There we sat down and wept,

When we remembered Zion.

We hung our harps

Upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us

a song;

And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,

Sing us one of the songs of Zion.'

How shall we sing the Lord's song

In a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,

Let my right hand waste away.

If I do not remember thee,

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Remember, O Lord, unto the children of Edom
The day of Jerusalem;

6

Who cried, Rase it, rase it,

Even to the foundation thereof."

O daughter of Babylon, the destroyer,
Happy shall he be, that payeth thee back
For the deeds which thou didst do unto us.

Happy shall he be, that taketh

And dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

It would be tempting to omit the third stanza. But in a Psalm so famous as this it would be historically unfair. Doubtless the Psalmist had seen and heard of many deeds of heartless cruelty, which partly palliate the cruelty of his own heart's desire. For us, however, the close of the Psalm destroys the beauty of its opening. Realizing as we do that tit for tat is not the highest moral law, the vengeance cry of the Psalmist belongs for us to a lower and superseded religious plane. Yet it is not for us to forget that it is not our wisdom and piety which enable us to detect the religious deficiencies of our ancestors. Rather is it the sifted piety and purified wisdom of the past which enable the present to start at a higher moral and religious level. As the old saying goes, 'Dwarfs on giants' shoulders see further than giants.'

§ 28. Psalms one hundred and forty-one and one hundred and forty-two.-Part of the short Psalm which follows (cxli) is hopelessly corrupt. The date of composition is probably the Greek but pre-Maccabean period, when many of the richer and more worldly Jews were falling away from their religion. Baethgen supposes the righteous reprover to be God: in that case it is the pious community in whose name and for whose needs the prayer is put forth.

Lord, I cry unto thee; make haste unto me;

Give ear unto my voice when I cry unto thee. Let my prayer appear before thee as incense;

And the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth;

Guard the door of my lips.