As soon as they hear of me, they obey me:
Foreigners submit themselves unto me.
The foreigners fade away, (?)

And come trembling out of their fastnesses.

The Lord liveth; and blessed be my rock;
And let the God of my salvation be exalted.
Even the God that avengeth me,

And subdueth the peoples under me.

He delivereth me from mine enemies:

Yea, thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me: Thou deliverest me from the violent man.

Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among the nations,

And sing praises unto thy name.

Great deliverance giveth he to his king;

He sheweth lovingkindness to his anointed,
To David, and to his seed for evermore.

'The billows of death.' 'The onslaught of the Psalmist's foes is compared to rising waters which threatened to overwhelm him; but Jehovah, in answer to his call, descended from heaven in a thunderstorm, and rescued him from their grasp' (Driver).

'The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness.' The king is forgotten: it is the community which speaks, and moreover the community of the Messianic age which, partly by its own effort and partly by the grace of God, has shown itself worthy of the divine favour.

'With the loving thou shewest thyself loving.' I have made some comments upon this passage in Part I. In one sense the Psalmist's words are true. The laws of God are laws which in the long run make for righteousness. Wickedness in the long run is thwarted by them and turned aside. But in another sense the Psalmist's words are, we pray and believe, inadequate and even inaccurate. God is always the same. To none does he show himself 'crooked.' It is only man who changes. We may say that a man destitute of righteousness could form no conception of a righteous God, but the Divine Being, as Plato too has said, is in himself changeless for ever. And who would care to love God if he did not love us all? What son would love his father if he thought that his father only cared for him when he was good? And far more righteous and far more impartial and unwearying in his love than the most righteous and loving of human fathers is our Father who is in heaven. He is not unless he is perfect.

THE LORD'S ANOINTED

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But one of my critics thinks that I have misapprehended the meaning of the Psalmist. In her opinion all that the Psalmist meant was 'that those persons who pursue tortuous paths will be pursued in those paths by God and stopped in their designs.' Sin in the long run fails and suffers shipwreck; righteousness 'succeeds.'

'To David, and to his seed for evermore.' This is that 'Messianic article of the Jewish creed which was held fast when faith and facts presented but slight correspondence with each other. The entire Psalm appears to have been composed for the purpose of strengthening the Messianic hope that the ideal image of David would be seen at last by his people' (Wellhausen).

§ 2. The eighty-ninth Psalm.-The second of these royal" Psalms is the eighty-ninth. Here the Psalmist contrasts the promises made to the Davidic house by Nathan the prophet (Part I, p. 238) with the mournful present. He wrote in the darker days of the Persian period or during the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. The king to whom he refers is in one place the individual Messianic king of the future, but in another the royal people of Israel itself, who, as in the eighty-fourth Psalm, are described as the 'Lord's anointed.' The confusion is not difficult to explain. The 'king' was regarded as the representative, the Inbegriff, as the Germans say, of the people, while the people-far nearer and more important to the Psalmist than the monarch of the future-occupy the place of the king.

I will sing of the lovingkindness of the Lord for ever: With my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.

For I have said, 'Lovingkindness shall be built up for ever: Thy faithfulness wilt thou establish in the very heavens.' Thou hast made a covenant with thy chosen,

Thou hast sworn unto David thy servant:

'Thy seed will I establish for ever,

And build up thy throne to all generations.'

The heavens shall praise thy wonders, O Lord:

Thy faithfulness in the congregation of the holy ones. For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord?

God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the holy ones, And terrible above all them that are about him.

O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? And thy faithfulness is round about thee.

Thou rulest the raging of the sea:

When the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; Thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.

The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine:

The world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. The north and the south, thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon rejoice in thy name.

Thou hast a mighty arm:

Strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of thy throne: Lovingkindness and truth go before thy face. Happy is the people that know the festal shout: They walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance.

In thy name they rejoice all the day:

And in thy righteousness they are exalted.
For thou art the glory of their strength:
And in thy favour our horn is exalted.
For our shield belongeth unto the Lord;
And our king to the Holy One of Israel.

Then thou spakest in vision to thy loving one,

And saidst, 'I have laid help upon one that is mighty;
I have exalted one chosen out of the people.

I have found David my servant;

With my holy oil have I anointed him : With whom my hand shall be established: Mine arm also shall strengthen him.

The enemy shall not overreach him;

Nor the son of wickedness afflict him.

And I will beat down his foes before his face,

And smite them that hate him.

My faithfulness and my lovingkindness shall be with him: And in my name shall his horn be exalted.

I will set his hand also in the sea,

And his right hand in the rivers.

He shall cry unto me, "Thou art my father,
My God, and the rock of my salvation."

Also I will make him my firstborn,

Higher than the kings of the earth.

PROMISE AND REALITY

My lovingkindness will I keep for him for evermore,
And my covenant shall stand fast with him.
His seed also will I make to endure for ever,
And his throne as the days of heaven.
If his children forsake my law,

And walk not in my judgements;

If they break my statutes,

And keep not my commandments;

Then will I visit their transgression with the rod,

And their iniquity with stripes.

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Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him,

Nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.

My covenant will I not break,

Nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.

Once have I sworn by my holiness,

Surely I will not be false unto David:

"His seed shall endure for ever,

And his throne as the sun before me.
It shall be established for ever as the moon,
And the witness in heaven is faithful."' (?)

But thou hast cast off and abhorred,

Thou hast been wroth with thine anointed.
Thou hast spurned the covenant of thy servant :
Thou hast profaned his crown even to the ground.

Thou hast broken down all his hedges;

Thou hast brought his strong holds to ruin.

All that pass by the way spoil him :

He is a reproach to his neighbours.

Thou hast exalted the right hand of his adversaries;
Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice.

Thou hast turned back the edge of his sword,
And hast not made him to stand in the battle.

Thou hast made his glory to cease,

And cast his throne down to the ground.

The days of his youth hast thou shortened:
Thou hast covered him with shame.

How long, Lord? wilt thou hide thyself for ever?
How long will thy wrath burn like fire?

Remember how short my time is:

For what vanity thou hast created all the children of men!

What man is he that liveth, and will not see death,
Who will deliver his soul from the hand of Sheol?
Lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses,

Which thou swarest unto David in thy truth?
Remember, Lord, the reproach of thy servants;

How I bear in my bosom the shame of many peoples; Wherewith thine enemies have reproached, O Lord; Wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed.

Blessed be the Lord for evermore. Amen, and Amen.

'For I have said, Lovingkindness shall be built up for ever.' If the text be correct, we must explain with Wellhausen: 'In spite of all, I hold fast to my belief in God's fidelity.'

'The holy ones' and the 'sons of the mighty' are the angels. The festal shout.' The shout with which many religious festivities were celebrated' (Driver).

'Thy loving one,' i.e. David. The Hebrew text reads 'loving ones,' which might mean that the Psalmist regarded the prophecy for all intents and purposes as addressed to the nation.

'Thine anointe': in view of what follows, the anointed' is clearly the people of Israel. But the 'king' at the end of the third stanza must be explained to refer to the ideal or Messianic king, the hoped-for descendant of David. It may however be that Wellhausen is right in translating this verse like the Authorized Version: For the Lord is our shield; and the holy one of Israel is our king.'

The Psalm ends somewhat abruptly. Perhaps the real end has been lost. The words in italics are the doxology closing the third book and the second collection of the Psalms.

§3. Psalms twenty and twenty-one.-We now hark back to the first collection and halt at Psalms xx and xxi. Here the king appears to be actually existent. Who is he? Some scholars think that these Psalms must be pre-exilic, and suppose the king to be Hezekiah or Josiah. But there is nothing else in the Psalm to specially favour a pre-exilic date, and phraseological parallels would rather point in the contrary direction. Some have thought of Simon the Maccabee. Captain and high priest of the Jews as he was, an enthusiastic Psalmist might conceivably call him 'king.' Others, again, have supposed that the anointed one' is the High Priest, who is called 'king' by an inaccuracy which is rather verbal than real. For in the post-exilic period the High Priest