the one who is praying is satisfied with the present lot; there is no more trouble, it is passed and all is well.

We have then a prayer, or, better, a psalm of thanksgiving, not by Jonah, for he was submerged in the belly of the fish, but by some one who had been delivered from shipwreck, or more probably from trouble. The psalmist had been cast into the sea, probably the sea of trouble; the waves and billows and floods of misfortune had passed over him;—a favorite figurative expression in the Hebrew psalms; but at last hope and deliverance came. He would now direct his steps to the temple, or he was already there to pay his vows and offer his sacrifices of thankfulness.

There are two solutions, either of which may account for the inappropriate contents of the prayer. It may once have been a psalm used in the temple worship, although it is not included in the Psalter. The author of the book of Jonah may

have borrowed it and inserted it at the proper place as though it were the prayer of Jonah. Keunen and Knobel may be right in saying that the psalm existed as a whole and was borrowed bodily for this purpose. If this is true, the date of the original psalm was when the temple was standing, probably of post-exilic origin, as its style in comparison with other psalms would indicate.

The other solution accepted by many of the ablest critics is that the prayer is composed of verses selected from various psalms, and united they form a new psalm which the author thought would be appropriate for his purpose. C. H. H. Wright says: "It is highly significant that almost every sentence of the song of Jonah is either directly borrowed from or can be illustrated by the songs sung either in anticipation of the captivity or during the dark days of Israel's exile from the land" (Biblical Essays, p. 61).

That the reader may easily compare

the verses from which the psalm may have been borrowed they are quoted and arranged in order below.

V. 2. "I called by reason of mine affliction unto Yahveh, And he answered me; Out of the belly of Sheol cried I, And thou heardest my voice."

V. 3- "For thou didst cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas, And the flood was round about me; All thy waves and thy billows passed over me."

V. 4. "And I said, I am cast out from before thine eyes; Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple."

V. 5. "The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; The deep was round about me; The weeds were wrapped about my head."

V. 6. "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; The earth with her bars closed upon me forever; Yet hast thou brought up my life from the pit, Ŏ Yahveh my God."

"Save me, O God; For the waters are come in unto my soul" (Ps. lxix. 1). "Let not the waterflood overwhelm me, Neither let the deep swallow me up " (Ps. lxix. 15).

"I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me (Ps. lxix. 2). "O Yahveh, thou hast brought my soul from Sheol: Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit " (Ps. xxx. 3).

There is but very little difference between these psalms; one is as appropriate, as poetic, as beautiful as the other. The one is made by uniting verses selected from various psalms; undoubtedly the other had precisely the same origin.

Whichever of these two explanations we may accept, one thing is certain. The psalm was never a prayer uttered by Jonah while in the fish's belly.

7-SOME MINOR INCONSISTENCIES.

The Hebrew historian, as every historian should be, is very particular in the minor details. The writers of the Pentateuch have told us exactly how many years each of the old characters are supposed to have lived, how many children each had, as well as many less important. things. The authors of the books of Kings and Chronicles have generally given the dates and names of the contemporary kings. Many of the Minor Prophets mention the year in which they delivered their prophecies, and if the book of Jonah records history we may reasonably expect similar evidences of its historical nature.

A real historian would certainly have made some statement by which the date of Jonah's journey could be determined; it seems that the author of the book intentionally omitted every clew, as if expecting the reader to understand that the