MISERERE MEI, DEUS' 489 CHAPTER III THE FIFTY-FIRST PSALM §1. A whole chapter for a single Psalm.-Some thirty-eight Psalms constituted the last chapter. The present chapter is to be occupied by but one. Nor is that single Psalm of any considerable length. It has only seventeen (or perhaps nineteen) verses. But I place it in a chapter by itself, both because it is very great and noble, as well as because it is not easy to classify it with any of the other categories into which I have roughly divided these selections from the Psalter. It has affinities with several Psalms of the group just ended, as well as with several other Psalms which are to follow it, but yet it stands out sufficiently from them all to justify its possessing a special and separate chapter for itself. The Psalm for which I make this lofty claim is the fifty-first. It has already been quoted in Part I, where I ventured to call it perhaps the noblest penitential hymn in all the world.' Professor Cheyne says of it that there is no passage in the Hebrew Bible at once more inspiring and inspired.' Mr. Mason says, 'None of the other Psalms have had half the effect upon men's minds that this one has exercised. It has a library of its own. The more one meditates upon it, the richer it seems, and that unendingly, is most folks' comment.' The Psalm has occupied, as is only natural, a high place of honour in the Synagogue and in the Church. The opening words are well known both in the Greek and the Latin versions. In the Greek Eleêson me, ho theos, 'Pity me, O God,' produced Kurie eleison, Lord, have pity,' a famous liturgical formula. We often read of Roman Catholic priests chanting the miserere without perhaps at once calling to mind that it is the fifty-first Psalm: Miserere mei, Deus. In the Christian Church seven Psalms out of the whole are specially known as the penitential Psalms. Of these, four have already passed before us (vi, xxxviii, cii and cxliii), while two others (xxxii and cxxx) have still to come. The seventh is our present Psalm. But though there are points of connexion between it and the remaining six, there are also points of difference. Its separate place can still be justified. For the four penitential Psalms which we have already heard, as well as Psalm cxxx, are petitions for help from surrounding trouble, while Psalm xxxii is prevailingly didactic. But in Psalm li the affliction seems wholly inward; the deliverance which the petitioner seeks from God is a deliverance from sin and its bondage, a deliverance which may indeed have its outward issues, but which in the first instance is sought for its own sake. Outward circumstance has little to do with the Psalmist's prayer. And that is why the Psalm is so broad and human, coming home to us alike in prosperity and in sorrow. We only need to be human to appreciate it. Woe to us indeed if that passionate cry does not appeal to us, if we cannot make it our own. § 2. Who is the speaker?-But I pass now to a closer consideration of the Psalm as a whole. Can we use it as the voice of our own hearts, as our own best prayer, without reading into it something more than its writer intended? Did he mean by it just what we mean by it? Or have we to apply, enlarge or modify his words and meaning for our own spiritual edification? It is a delicate and difficult question. It is delicate because we have to preserve a happy mean. In their aversion from reading modern ideas into the original, or in their rigid application of a particular theory, some commentators, as it seems to me, rob the Psalm of much of its depth and significance. They will not let it mean as much as to my mind it was meant to mean. They will not let it be as spiritual as to my mind it was meant to be. And it is a difficult question because it is, after all, an impossible task to realize and reproduce with accuracy the complicated religious feelings of a man who lived more than two thousand years ago. Things to us clearly separate and separable may in his mind have been always united together, and feelings, which to us seem only causable in one way, may to him have been caused in quite another. The main point to settle is as so often before, Who is the speaker? Is he an individual, who refers only to his own sins and to his own sinful nature, or is he in some sense or other the representative of his people or community? At the first blush, if ever a Psalm were the outpouring of an WHO IS THE SPEAKER ? 491 individual soul, referring only to the individual's own feelings and sorrows, it would seem to be this one. And secondly, if the collective or national interpretation impairs the spiritual value of any Psalm, it would seem to impair the value of this one. 'Create in me a clean heart': to us such a prayer is intensely personal; it is offered up alone to the Alone': surely then the original writer did the same. Surely he was only thinking of himself! And if he was not thinking only of himself, how utterly different (we are tempted to add, how exceedingly inferior) his meaning must have been to our own! When the Psalm was incorporated into a collection of Davidic hymns, it was not difficult to discover the particular incident in David's career to which it ought to be ascribed. It must have been written after the great sin of David's life-the murder of Uriah. Hence the editor affixed the heading, 'A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had taken Bathsheba.' But that the author lived many centuries after David is as certain as that several passages of the Psalm are inapplicable to the supposed situation, and could not have been written by the Judaean king. The heading need not further concern us, except in so far as to ask, Was the editor right in his individualizing interpretation? Nevertheless it can, And the answer must be: No, he was not. I think, be shown that even though the individualizing interpretation be wrong, the Psalm still retains its religious and spiritual value. We have seen that the Psalter as it grew and expanded became the hymn-book of the Second Temple, and that the Psalmists, so far as we can discover, did not write as isolated individuals, but as Israelites, as members of the community whose joys and sorrows, whose wishes and aspirations, were theirs. It is these communal joys, sorrows and aspirations to which they gave expression in the Psalms. But they did not write them for the community without feeling their contents themselves. Because they felt, they wrote. They did not merely write for others to feel. Yet in many and many a Psalm where the pronouns are 'I' and 'me,' we have observed that though, or rather just because, the writers' words are the true outcome of their own experience, they speak as representatives of Israel, in whose true relationship to God the individual author found the type and pattern of his own. For the individual's religious life was not lived apart from Israel as a whole. He was not only a man, but also an Israelite, and his relationship to God. was not the general relation of man to Deity, but that of an Israelite to Jehovah, who, though God of the whole universe, had special relations with Israel. The individual Israelite could not and did not wish to free himself from the communal bond. Hence his prayers, his confessions of sin, his communion with God, shift unconsciously from the one point of view to the other. Now he speaks as an individual, now in the name of his nation, now as a member of that people within a people (the community of believers) who alone represented Israel before God, and alone understood the true meaning of its history, its sorrows and its mission. It is this peculiar combination which makes the question, 'Who is the "I" of the Psalter?' so difficult to answer. The individual receives from his people half, and more than half, of his religious life. In some respects this fusion of individualism and nationalism makes the Psalms less broadly human than many a modern hymn. On the other hand, it gives to them their warmth and glow, and stamps them with a strange intensity of their own. What is true of so many other Psalms is a priori probably true of the fifty-first. In other words, it is probable that the 'I' represents a certain fusion between the individual and the community, and that the subject-matter has as much a communal as an individual reference. This probability might be regarded as a certainty if the last two verses of the Psalm as we now have it were composed by the author of the remainder. But in spite of all that has recently been urged to that effect, I am still unconvinced: I still think that we may justifiably sever this most spiritual of Psalms from its, to us, less edifying appendix. Yet even without the appendix there are various phrases in the body of the Psalm which almost imperatively demand a semi-national interpretation. The best plan may be to let this great penitential hymn now speak for itself, and then to discuss the question, 'Who is the speaker?' in the course of a brief commentary on the more salient or difficult In this place I omit the last two verses. verses. §3. Translation of the Psalm.-Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And done what is evil in thy sight, That thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, And be clear when thou judgest. 'THE SACRIFICES OF GOD' Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: Therefore in the secret place make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, And blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; And take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; And uphold me with a willing spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; And sinners shall be converted unto thee. 493 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: And my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips; And my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. § 4. Explanation of various passages.-' Blot out my transgressions. Professor Wellhausen, who adopts the national interpretation in a somewhat crude and extreme form, comments thus: The absolution consists in the removal of the punishment,' and on the Psalm generally he says that the heading was suggested by the line: Deliver me from bloodguiltiness,' but that 'it prevents a proper understanding of the Psalm. It is not David who offers these petitions, but the Servant of Jehovah, i. e. Israel. The iniquity is secret, not public; committed against God, not man. The Servant believes that he is cast off by God. He prays for the restoration of his good conscience towards God, in order that he may execute his prophetic mission, the conversion of the heathen. The whole Psalm is based on Isa. 40 ff.' (i. e. the Second |