They appear in our English versions in untranslated form. It would serve no purpose to dwell upon them here, further than to mention in a note one or two points of special musical interest. All the notes of this sort are prefixed to Psalms ascribed to David, Asaph, or the sons of Korah, — a fact which shows how inseparable from the first were words and music (and, indeed, music of a popular sort) in this heritage from the royal "sweet Psalmist of Israel" (2 Sam. xxiii, 1).

NOTE. The Musical Disposal. One Psalm (xlvi) has the direction set to Alamoth," that is, to women's voices (cf. 1 Chron. xv, 20); two (vi, xii), "set to the Sheminith," or octave, that is, to men's voices (cf. I Chron. xv, 21); seven (iv, vi, liv, lv, lxi, lxvii, lxxvi, all but two Davidic), on stringed instruments (Heb. neginoth); and one (v), "with the Nehiloth," conjectured to be wind instruments. These directions, though early, are technical.

९

A further fact of interest, which seems to be illustrated by David's elegy over Saul and Jonathan, 2 Sam. i, 18 (see above, p. 67), may be quoted from W. R. Smith (" The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 190): A curious and interesting feature in the musical titles," he remarks," in the earlier half of the Psalter is that many of them indicate the tune to which the Psalm was set, by quoting phrases like Aijeleth hash-shahar (xxii), or Jonath elem rechokim1 (lvi), which are evidently the names of familiar songs. Of the song which gave the title Al-taschith, 'Destroy not' (lvii, lviii, lix, lxxv), a trace is still preserved in Isa. lxv, 8. When the new wine is found in the cluster,' says the prophet, men say, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it.' These words in the Hebrew have a distinct lyric rhythm. They are the first line of one of the vintage songs so often alluded to in Scripture. And so we learn that the early religious melody of Israel had a popular origin, and was closely connected with the old joyous life of the nation. In the time when the last books of the Psalter were composed, the Temple music had passed into another phase, and had differentiated itself from the melodies of the people."

The literary disposal, especially of individual Psalms, is somewhat indefinite by our modern standards, owing to the looser observance of the lyric theme. The "single thought,

1 That is, "Hind of the Dawn," "Dove of the Distant Terebinths," evidently well-known secular melodies.

feeling, or situation" desiderated in Professor Palgrave's standard 1 overflows its bounds and covers a larger devotional mood. Such terms as "a song," "a prayer," "a praise," are clear enough but not at all specific; untranslated terms like maschil, michtam, shiggaion,2 are less reducible to singleness of idea. Two of the Psalms, one (xlix) by the sons of Korah, the other (lxxviii) by Asaph, are made more definitely didactic by being put in the mashal3 style (cf. xlix, 4; lxxviii, 2). One Psalm (cxxxvi), with its constant refrain, is obviously an antiphonal anthem. Otherwise the internal sentiment of the Psalms, as, for instance, in the Hallelujah groups toward the end, must be left to speak for itself.

The Hebrews' idea of complete and finished verse form, to which perhaps their conception of a rounded thought structure corresponded, seems to our modern taste strangely arbitrary and artificial. It is founded on their alphabet of twenty-two letters, and results in acrostic poems, "in which the initial letters of successive half verses, verses, or larger stanzas make up the alphabet."4 In our English versions this structure does not appear except in Psalm cxix, which not unlikely was regarded, in its time of matured legalism, as the supreme masterpiece of this kind of composition. In the original text, however, no fewer than thirteen such poems are found, eight of them being Psalms, ranging from the Davidic type to the late Hallel or Hallelujah.5 One seems to detect in these a certain conventionalism of effect, though not so marked as materially to flatten the devotional or artistic note.

1 See above, p. 434.

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2 Maschil, by etymology, seems to mean “ [a psalm of] instruction" (well 'borne out in lxxviii); michtam (six times occurring) and shiggaion (Psa. vii in singular, Hab. iii, 1 in plural, as designating a class or setting) are of uncertain meaning.

3 For the mashal in native literary forms, see above, pp. 68, 69.

4 W. R. Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 182.

5 Psa. ix-x, xxv, xxxiv, xxxvii, cxi, cxii, cxix, cxlv.

The most charming and, so 'to say, domestic section of the whole Psalter, perhaps, occurs in Book V, just after the huge and formal bulk of Psalm cxix. It is the group of poems, cxx to cxxxiv, called Songs of Degrees in the King James version, of Ascents in the Revised, — lit." songs of the steps." What specific employment or occasion they connote is a matter of varied conjecture; the prevailing opinion holds them to be songs chanted by pilgrims on their way up to Jerusalem at the numerous feast times which were observed in the matured Judaism (cf. Psa. cxxii), a custom which had a parallel in the reading of the little classics, or Megilloth, on these festival occasions. One likes to think so. One is gratified to find this whole Book V, the latest compiled, of which these songs are a characteristic feature, so well rounding out the long utterance of the nation's lyric soul by gathering materials new and old to meet the spiritual needs of a time of settledness and abiding, when law and liturgy and domestic sentiment were ripened into peace and harmony. Of this state of things these Songs of Ascents, sandwiched between the austere cultus and the exuberant Hallel elements, are a fitting symbol. Their origin is less clear. They were evidently introduced into the book as a group, from an earlier source. Five of them, indeed, are by title ascribed to David and Solomon. My opinion is that their first compilation (and, in part, composition) fits best with the later years of King Hezekiah, whose reign had weathered the suspense and pang of the Assyrian invasion, and who after his wonderful recovery from a mortal illness was minded to devote himself to the choral service of the Temple (cf. 2 Kings xx, 5, 8; Isa. xxxviii, 19, 20).2 It would take little if any modification to fit the devout sentiments of the earlier era to the later, for the psalm elements of both are deeper than specific events.

1 See below, pp. 482 f.

2 Connect this with what is said above, pp. 198-201.

II

Proverbs: Garnered Counsel from the Wise. Like the Book of Psalms, the Book of Proverbs is a collection of literary utterances signalized by a royal name and yet confessedly the work of many authors, named or nameless. The name Solomon prefixed both to the whole book (Prov. i, 1) and to the most characteristic section of it (x, 1) is rather a class term than one of authorship; the book's distinctive contents being mashals of a specific kind which the phrase "of Solomon," or, as we should say, Solomonic, defines.

NOTE. Much of the preliminary discussion pertaining to the Book of Proverbs has already been given in Chapters I and II, above. The mashal, its unit of expression, is explained on pages 68-70; Solomon's traditional connection with song and mashal in the Scripture books ascribed to him, on page 85; and the broader subject of the Wisdom Strain and the Sages, on pages 92-96. The supplementary section of Hezekian proverbs (Prov. xxv-xxix), with remarks on the vogue of Wisdom literature in the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah, is treated on pages 202-204.

No book of Scripture seems to reveal more clearly than does this Book of Proverbs the steps and stages of its literary progress; not in time, indeed, for there are few if any indications when particular proverbs or groups of proverbs became current, but in the gradual shaping and refining of its chosen vehicle of expression, the mashal. Its literary art is more self-conscious than that of other books, more mindful not only of what is said but of how it is said, in word and phrase. The thought-texture of the book, although its maxims are so detached and miscellaneous, is eminently homogeneous both with itself and with the rest of Scripture; it is in the workmanship that one traces a reflection of different periods and perhaps different schools or guilds of proverb literature.

"The last thing that we find in making a book," says Pascal, is to know what we must put first." The remark

Wisdom

applies aptly to the process apparent in the Book of Proverbs by which a multitude of apothegms, of different ages and The Shaping schools, were fused into the unity and organism of of a Book of a book. The first section, comprising chapters i to ix, was evidently the latest (unless we except the last two chapters) to be added to the collection; and this was clearly not compiled from earlier sources but composed as a kind of introduction to and commendation of the whole. It is in this section, accordingly, that we look for the focal idea of the book, the ruling truth to which all its detached maxims have a more or less intimate relation.

That focal idea we find in the Hebrew conception of Wisdom, which, as already remarked,1 was to the Hebrew mind what philosophy was to the Greeks and is to us. If, however, the name is applicable to it at all, it is to be regarded as philosophy of a peculiar kind, as a view of life which connotes certitude rather than speculation, which does not deduce truth but asserts it, and whose nature may be roughly symbolized in its chosen term, "Wisdom," the thing itself, as distinguished from "Philosophy," the love of the thing. It deals accordingly with such values of life as will bear such absolute statement, practical elements of character and conduct which require rather to be enforced or enlivened than to be discovered. It is the truth fitted to the man who is sincere, teachable, right-minded; it is in the most wholesome sense the gospel of prudence, sagacity, success.

To a modern mind the outstanding feature of this Wisdom is the entire harmony it assumes between the secular and the religious, the intellectual and the moral. It is in unison with the great Hebrew ideal of right living. To be wise is to be righteous; to be wicked is to be a fool.2 Or to put it

1 See above, p. 94, and cf. p. 37. For an informal discussion of Wisdom I may perhaps refer the reader to my book on "The Hebrew Literature of Wisdom in the Light of To-Day," chaps. i, iii.

2 Cf. above, p. 95.