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'None can redeem himself.' 'Redeem' in its literal and etymological sense: 'buy off,' ' deliver.' .

"The redemption of his soul.' It is always to be remembered that 'soul' is never used in the Psalter in its modern sense, as the spiritual and abiding personality. It means merely the 'self,' or the 'life.'

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.For. The Hebrew reads: "For he will see that wise men die'-a doubly inapposite thought. He,' the rich fool,' or evil one, does not make this observation. He forgets the end of his pomp. And if he will see' is emended, and we read 'For the prudent and wise men die,' the difficulty remains that the death of the wise (or righteous) is just what the Psalmist ignores or denies. It might be argued that the 'wise' in this passage are they who are wise in their own sight,' whose wisdom is folly. But this is very doubtful. I therefore fully believe that the text is corrupt.

'And leave their wealth to others.' Note a certain animus against the rich, once or twice also observable elsewhere. The poor and the afflicted, the humble and the needy, are synonymous, and any of them are equivalent to the righteous. The poor and righteous sufferers are opposed both to the rich indifferentists and apostates within Israel and to Israel's ruling oppressors without. Worldly prosperity is now fully realized to be no sign of divine favour.

'Man in his pomp' is man in his folly; compare the second form of the refrain. Such men abide not; but the righteous and the needy, what of them? The inference is near. Unlike lives will meet with unlike destinies.

"The upright shall have dominion.' An obscure passage. Is the morning' the Messianic age? And what sort of dominion is intended? The words, according to Wellhausen, 'represent an interpolation which is extremely inappropriate here. they show most characteristically the longing of the Jews for Messianic rule.'

But

'God will redeem my soul.' 'It would be,' said Professor Cheyne, the weakest of explanations to say that the Psalmist rejoices thus in the prospect of mere deliverance from the danger of death. A few years later, and the danger will return in a heightened degree.' No! the Psalmist has practically attained the highest; death is overcome by the assured salvation of God. 'The poet has that religious intuition which forms the kernel of the hope of immortality.' It should be stated, however, that Professor Cheyne has now abandoned this interpretation, and believes, with several other scholars, that the speaker is the

HOW DOTH GOD KNOW?'

595

community. Israel will endure for ever. For several reasons I cannot concur. One reason I have already given in a note on Psalm xvi (p. 503). The Psalmists rarely, if ever, put into the mouth of Israel what they cannot, as Israelites, appropriate at least partially for themselves. The Psalmist enunciates no formulated doctrine of immortality, but he is moving forwards toward a conception of life and death in which Sheol, for those who love God and love righteousness, can have no place.

§ 7. The seventy-third Psalm.-My next 'didactic' Psalm (lxxiii) deals once more with the same problem, which is at once so old and so new. The difficulty of the thought is unfortunately accompanied, as is so frequently and naturally the case, by uncertainties of text. The solution in which the Psalmist rests is among the highest to which we can attain. After the last two Psalms we are, as Professor Cheyne says, 'no strangers to the problem which disturbs him, but nowhere, even in Job, do we find a more striking treatment of it.'

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But as for me, my feet had almost fallen,
My steps had well nigh slipped.

For I was envious at the boasters,

When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no torments;

Sound and stalwart is their body. They have no troubles as other men,

Neither are they plagued like other mortals.
Therefore pride is about their neck,

Violence covereth them as a garment.
From their fatness their iniquity cometh forth,
The imaginations of their heart overflow.
They mock and speak wickedly,

They talk loftily of oppression.

They set their mouth in the heavens,

And their tongue walketh through the earth.

Yet they are satisfied with bread;

And they drink water in abundance.

And they say, 'How doth God know?

And is there knowledge in the Most High?'

Behold, such are the ungodly;

Always secure, they increase in riches.

'Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain,
And washed my hands in innocency.
And all the day long have I been stricken,
And chastened every morning.'

If I were to have spoken thus,

I should have been faithless to the generation of thy children. (?)

But when I pondered to understand this,

It was a sore travail in mine eyes.

For my heart was embittered,

And I was pained within me. For I was brutish and knew not; I was as a beast toward thee.

Until I went into the sanctuary of God;

And considered their latter end.

Surely thou settest them in slippery places:

Thou castest them down into destruction.

How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment!
They are utterly consumed with terrors.

As a dream when one awaketh;

So, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou wilt despise their semblance. (?)

But I am continually with thee:

Thou holdest me by my right hand.

Thou wilt guide me according to thy purpose,
And afterward receive me with glory. (?)

Whom have I in heaven but thee?

And there is naught upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth:

Yet God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever.

For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish:

Thou destroyest all them that go astray from thee.

But as for me to be near unto God is my good;
I have put my refuge in the Lord God,

That I may declare all thy works.

For he is a possession

'Surely God is good.' He begins with the end. To the pure in heart God is good, in spite of sorrows. which no outward fortune can take away.

'I AM CONTINUALLY WITH THEE'

597

The description of the wicked in their pride and contempt of God reminds us of Job.

'Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain.' If such is the world's government, what is the use of piety? Moreover, in addition to contemplating the prosperity of the wicked, the Psalmist had to suffer trouble and calamity. He was stricken all day.' The four lines in inverted commas are what the author was tempted to say, what the prosperity of the wicked and his own misfortunes suggested to him: the doubt born of experience.

'I should have been faithless.' 'He means, a traitor to the principle on which the community of the godly relies, namely, that God makes a distinction between the righteous and the wicked, and that the community of the godly is not left unaided by him' (Wellhausen).

'The sanctuary of God.' The Hebrew has an odd plural. It either means the Temple, where we know that the Psalmists were wont to go for spiritual enlightenment and communion, or the holy purposes of God, the plans of providence. So Wellhausen, who translates: Until I penetrated the mysteries of God.' 'Considered their latter end.' The first part of the solution is thus on the old, bitter lines. The wicked's prosperity is but for a season. Calamitous death comes suddenly.

'So, Lord, when thou awakest.' for judgement.

That is, when God 'awakes'

'But I am continually with thee.' Here comes the second and truer part of the solution. The joy of nearness to God is the guarantee and reward of piety. Those who feel it can be indifferent to outward fortune and its seemingly unjust disproportion. Only the pure in heart can know and have the highest; only they can be with' God. And this communion is abiding.

'Thou wilt guide me.' God has a purpose in the lives of his friends. Their path is not haphazard.

'And afterward receive me.' These words could only refer to a life of blessedness after death, but it is very doubtful whether the Hebrew can mean this, or whether indeed the Hebrew which we have is Hebrew at all. Apart from this line we may truly say that in this Psalm, as in Psalm xlix, the death of the righteous is ignored and forgotten, the life with God triumphing over it, but yet immortality in our sense is rather implied than asserted.

Professor Cheyne, as in his explanation of Psalm xlix, again presses the Messianic and communal interpretation. He emends the text and reads: According to thy counsel thou wilt guide me, and make known to me the path of glory.' This 'path of glory' is the Messianic age, when the divine glory will be revealed.

upon the earth. I do not think this explanation accounts for that note of personal experience which seems so clearly implied in this wonderful passage.

'Whom have I in heaven but thee?' Perhaps the most rapturous expression of spiritual religion in the Hebrew Bible.

My flesh and my heart faileth.' This may mean, My physical strength is failing; nevertheless, God will always be my portion. Again, the Psalmist seems to hover on the brink of faith's greatest dogma. The verse may also, and perhaps ought to be rendered

'Though my flesh and my heart should have wasted away,
God would be my rock and my portion for ever.'

Come what may, he trusts in God; come what may, God is his 'portion'-his joy and his assurance-for ever. 'God's in his heaven; all's right with the world.' 'For ever:' up to death, in death, and beyond death, if life beyond death there be. May we not thus interpret the Psalmist's words?

§ 8. The fiftieth Psalm.-In the following Psalm (1) the writer sets his teaching in a kind of prophetic framework. This is not unreasonable, for his doctrine is in accordance with the fundamental lessons of the prophets. Two classes of Israelites are before his mind; first, the formalists; secondly, the actual sinners. In its great utterance about sacrifices the Psalm must be closely compared with Psalms li and xl.

God, even God the Lord, hath spoken,

And called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,

God hath shined forth.

Fire devoureth before him,

And it is very tempestuous round about him.

He calleth to the heavens above,

And to the earth, that he may judge his people.

'Gather my loving ones together unto me;

Those that made a covenant with me by sacrifice.'
And the heavens declare his righteousness:
For God is about to judge.

'Hear, O my people, and I will speak;

O Israel, and I will testify against thee:
The Lord thy God am I.

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