{"commentary":{"id":"keil-delitzsch","name":"Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary","website":"https://worthy.bible/commentaries/keil-delitzsch-commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"bb5cc0f9cfe0a93b3c903bb6972c6bc8c4e9f2bd3be6c2a6d276737cf9c5edce","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":39,"totalNumberOfChapters":909,"totalNumberOfVerses":6516,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"PSA","commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","name":"Psalms","commonName":"Psalms","introduction":"The Book of Psalms\n\nIntroduction to the Psalter\n\nΠάντα ὥσπερ ἐν μεγάλῳ τινὶ καὶ κοινῷ ταμιείῳ τῇ βίβλῳ τῶν ψαλμῶν τεθησαύρισται.\n\nBasil\n\n1. Position of the Psalter among the Hagiographa, and More Especially among the Poetical Books\n\nThe Psalter is everywhere regarded as an essential part of the Kethubim or Hagiographa; but its position among these varies. It seems to follow from Luk 24:44 that it opened the Kethubim in the earliest period of the Christina era.\n\n(Note: Also from 2 Macc. 2:13, where τὰ τοῦ Δαυίδ appears to be the designation of the כתובים according to their beginning; and from Philo, De vita contempl. (opp. II 475 ed. Mangey), where he makes the following distinction νόμους καὶ λόγια θεσπισθέντα διὰ προφητῶν καὶ ὕμνους καὶ τὰ ἄλλα οἷς ἐπιστήμη καὶ εὐσέβεια συναύξονται καὶ τελειοῦνται.)\n\nThe order of the books in the Hebrew MSS of the German class, upon which our printed editions in general use are based, is actually this: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and the five Megilloth. But the Masora and the MSS of the Spanish class begin the Kethubim with the Chronicles which they awkwardly separate from Ezra and Nehemiah, and then range the Psalms, Job, Proverbs and the five Megilloth next.\n\n(Note: In all the Masoretic lists the twenty four books are arranged in the following order: 1) בראשׁית; 2) ואלה שׁמות; 3) ויקרא; 4) וידבר (also במדבר); 5) אלה הדברים; 6) יהושׁע; 7) שׁופטים; 8) שׁמואל; 9) מלכים; 10) ישׁעיה; 11) ירמיה; 12) יחזקאל; 13) תרי עשׂר; 14) דברי הימים; 15) תהלות; 16) איוב; 17) משׁלי; 18) רות; 19) שׁיר השׁירים; 20) קהלת; 21) קינות (איכה); 22) אחשׁורושׁ (מגלה); 23) דניאל; 24) עזרא. The Masoretic abbreviation for the three pre-eminently poetical books is accordingly, not מתא but (in agreement with their Talmudic order) אםת (as also in Chajug'), vid., Elia Levita, Masoreth ha-Masoreth p. 19. 73 (ed. Ven. 1538) ed. Ginsburg, 1867, p. 120, 248.)\n\nAnd according to the Talmud (Baba Bathra 14b) the following is the right order: Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs; the Book of Ruth precedes the Psalter as its prologue, for Ruth is the ancestor of him to whom the sacred lyric owes its richest and most flourishing era. It is undoubtedly the most natural order that the Psalter should open the division of the Kethubim, and for this reason: that, according to the stock which forms the basis of it, it represents the time of David, and then afterwards in like manner the Proverbs and Job represent the Chokma-literature of the age of Solomon. But it is at once evident that it could have no other place but among the Kethubim.\n\nThe codex of the giving of the Law, which is the foundation of the old covenant and of the nationality of Israel, as also of all its subsequent literature, occupies the first place in the canon. Under the collective title of נביאים, a series of historical writings of a prophetic character, which trace the history of Israel from the occupation of Canaan to the first gleam of light in the gloomy retributive condition of the Babylonish Exile (Prophetae priores) is first attached to these five books of the Thra; and then a series of strictly prophetical writings by the prophets themselves which extend to the time of Darius Nothus, and indeed to the time of Nehemiah's second sojourn in Jerusalem under this Persian king (Prophetae posteriores). Regarded chronologically, the first series would better correspond to the second if the historical books of the Persian period (Chronicles with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther) were joined to it; but for a very good reason this has not been done. The Israelitish literature has marked out two sharply defined and distinct methods of writing history, viz., the annalistic and the prophetic. The so-called Elohistic and so-called Jehovistic form of historical writing in the Pentateuch might serve as general types of these. The historical books of the Persian period are, however, of the annalistic, not of the prophetic character (although the Chronicles have taken up and incorporated many remnants of the prophetic form of historical writing, and the Books of the Kings, vice versa, many remnants of the annalistic): they could not therefore stand among the Prophetae priores. But with the Book of Ruth it is different. This short book is so like the end of the Book of the Judges (ch. 17-21), that it might very well stand between Judges and Samuel; and it did originally stand after the Book of the Judges, just as the Lamentations of Jeremiah stood after his prophecies. It is only on liturgical grounds that they have both been placed with the so-called Megilloth (Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, as they are arranged in our ordinary copies according to the calendar of the festivals). All the remaining books could manifestly only be classed under the third division of the canon, which (as could hardly have been otherwise in connection with תורה and נביאים) has been entitled, in the most general way, כתובים ,, - a title which, as the grandson of Ben-Sira renders it in his prologue to Ecclesiasticus, means simply τὰ ἄλλα πάτρια βιβλία, or τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν βιβλίων, and nothing more. For if it were intended to mean writings, written ברוח הקדשׁ, - as the third degree of inspiration which is combined with the greatest spontaneity of spirit, is styled according to the synagogue notion of inspiration-then the words ברוח הקדשׁ would and ought to stand with it.\n\n2. Names of the Psalter\n\nAt the close of the seventy-second Psalm (72:20) we find the subscription: \"Are ended the prayers of David, the Son of Jesse.\" The whole of the preceding Psalms are here comprehended under the name תּפלּות. This strikes one as strange, because with the exception of Psa 17:1-15 (and further on Ps 86; 90; 102; Psa 142:1-7) they are all inscribed otherwise; and because in part, as e.g., Psa 1:1-6 and Psa 2:1-12, they contain no supplicatory address to God and have therefore not the form of prayers. Nevertheless the collective name Tephilloth is suitable to all Psalms. The essence of prayer is a direct and undiverted looking towards God, and the absorption of the mind in the thought of Him. Of this nature of prayer all Psalms partake; even the didactic and laudatory, though containing no supplicatory address-like Hannah's song of praise which is introduced with ותתפלל (Sa1 2:1). The title inscribed on the Psalter is תּהלּים (ספר) for which תּלּים (apocopated תּלּי deta) is also commonly used, as Hippolytus (ed. de Lagarde p. 188) testifies: Ἑεβραῖοι περιέγραψαν τὴν βίβλον Σέφρα θελείμ.\n\n(Note: In Eusebius, vi. 25: Σέφηρ Θιλλήν; Jerome (in the Preface to his translation of the Psalms juxta Hebraicam veritatem) points it still differently: SEPHAR THALLIM quod interpretatur volumen hymnorum. Accordingly at the end of the Psalterium ex Hebraeo, Cod. 19 in the Convent Library of St. Gall we find the subscription: Sephar Tallim Quod interpretatur volumen Ymnorum explicit.)\n\nThis name may also seem strange, for the Psalms for the most part are hardly hymns in the proper sense: the majority are elegiac or didactic; and only a solitary one, Ps 145, is directly inscribed תהלה. But even this collective name of the Psalms is admissible, for they all partake of the nature of the hymn, to wit the purpose of the hymn, the glorifying of God. The narrative Psalms praise the magnalia Dei, the plaintive likewise praise Him, since they are directed to Him as the only helper, and close with grateful confidence that He will hear and answer. The verb הלּל includes both the Magnificat and the De profundis.\n\nThe language of the Masora gives the preference to the feminine form of the name, instead of תהלים, and throughout calls the Psalter ספר תהלות (e.g., on Sa2 22:5).\n\n(Note: It is an erroneous opinion of Buxtorf in his Tiberias and also of Jewish Masoretes, that the Masora calls the Psalter הלילא (hallla). It is only the so-called Hallel, Ps 113-119, that bears this name, for in the Masora on Sa2 22:5; Psa 116:3 is called הברו דהלילא (the similar passage in the Hallel) in relation to Psa 18:5.)\n\nIn the Syriac it is styled ketobo demazmûre, in the Koran zabûr (not as Golius and Freytag point it, zubûr), which in the usage of the Arabic language signifies nothing more than \"writing\" (synon. kitâb: vid., on Psa 3:1), but is perhaps a corruption of mizmor from which a plural mezâmir is formed, by a change of vowels, in Jewish-Oriental MSS. In the Old Testament writings a plural of mizamor does not occur. Also in the post-biblical usage mizmorı̂m or mizmoroth is found only in solitary instances as the name for the Psalms. In Hellenistic Greek the corresponding word ψαλμοί (from ψάλλειν = זמּר) is the more common; the Psalm collection is called βίβλος ψαλμῶν (Luk 20:42; Act 1:20) or ψαλτήριον, the name of the instrument (psantêrı̂n in the Book of Daniel)\n\n(Note: Νάβλα - say Eusebius and others of the Greek Fathers - παρ ̓ Ἑβραίοις λέγεται τὸ ψαλτήριον ὃ δὴ μόνον τῶν μουσικῶν ὀργάνων ὀρθότατον καὶ μὴ συνεργούμενον εἰς ἦχον ἐκ τῶν κατωτάτω μερῶν, ἀλλ ̓ ἄνωθεν ἔχων τὸν ὑπηχοῦντα χαλκόν. Augustine describes this instrument still more clearly in Psa 42:1-11 and elsewhere: Psalterium istud organum dicitur quod de superiore parte habet testudinem, illud scilicet tympanum et concavum lignum cui chordae innitentes resonant, cithara vero id ipsum lignum cavum et sonorum ex inferiore parte habet. In the cithern the strings pass over the sound-board, in the harp and lyre the vibrating body runs round the strings which are left free (without a bridge) and is either curved or angular as in the case of the harp, or encompasses the strings as in the lyre. Harps with an upper sounding body (whether of metal or wood, viz., lignum concavum i.e., with a hollow and hence sonorous wood, which protects the strings like a testudo and serves as tympanum) are found both on Egyptian and on Assyrian monuments. By the psalterium described by Augustine, Casiodorus and Isidorus understand the trigonum, which is in the form of an inverted sharp-cornered triangle; but it cannot be this that is intended because the horizontal strings of this instrument are surrounded by a three-sided sounding body, so that it must be a triangular lyre. Moreover there is also a trigon belonging to the Macedonian era which is formed like a harp (vid., Weiss' Kostmkunde, Fig. 347) and this further tends to support our view.)\n\nbeing transferred metaphorically to the songs that are sung with its accompaniment. Psalms are songs for the lyre, and therefore lyric poems in the strictest sense.\n\n3. The History of Psalm Composition\n\nBefore we can seek to obtain a clear idea of the origin of the Psalm-collection we must take a general survey of the course of the development of psalm writing. The lyric is the earliest kind of poetry in general, and the Hebrew poetry, the oldest example of the poetry of antiquity that has come down to us, is therefore essentially lyric. Neither the Epos nor the Drama, but only the Mashal, has branched off from it and attained an independent form. Even prophecy, which is distinguished from psalmody by a higher impulse which the mind of the writer receives from the power of the divine mind, shares with the latter the common designation of נכּא (Ch1 24:1-3), and the psalm-singer, משׁרר, is also as such called חזה (Ch1 25:5; Ch2 29:30; Ch2 35:15, cf. Ch1 15:19 and freq.); for just as the sacred lyric often rises to the height of prophet vision, so the prophetic epic of the future, because it is not entirely freed from the subjectivity of the prophet, frequently passes into the strain of the psalm.\n\nThe time of Moses was the period of Israel's birth as a nation and also of its national lyric. The Israelites brought instruments with them out of Egypt and these were the accompaniments of their first song (Ex 15) - the oldest hymn, which re-echoes through all hymns of the following ages and also through the Psalter (comp. Exo 15:2 with Psa 118:14; Exo 15:3 with Psa 24:8; Exo 15:4, Exo 14:27 with Psa 136:15; Ex 15: with Psa 78:13, Exo 15:11 with Psa 77:14; Psa 86:8; Psa 89:7.; Exo 15:13, Exo 15:17 with Psa 78:54, and other parallels of a similar kind). If we add to these, Ps 90 and Deut 32, we then have the prototypes of all Psalms, the hymnic, elegiac, and prophetico-didactic. All three classes of songs are still wanting in the strophic symmetry which characterises the later art. But even Deborah's song of victory, arranged in hexastichs, - a song of triumph composed eight centuries before Pindar and far outstripping him, - exhibits to us the strophic art approximating to its perfect development. It has been thought strange that the very beginnings of the poesy of Israel are so perfect, but the history of Israel, and also the history of its literature, comes under a different law from that of a constant development from a lower to a higher grade. The redemptive period of Moses, unique in its way, influences as a creative beginning, every future development. There is a constant progression, but of such a kind as only to develope that which had begun in the Mosaic age with all the primal force and fulness of a divine creation. We see, however, how closely the stages of this progress are linked together, from the fact that Hannah the singer of the Old Testament Magnificat, was the mother of him who anointed, as King, the sweet singer of Israel, on whose tongue was the word of the Lord.\n\nIn David the sacred lyric attained its full maturity. Many things combined to make the time of David its golden age. Samuel had laid the foundation of this both by his energetic reforms in general, and by founding the schools of the prophets in particular, in which under his guidance (Sa1 19:19.), in conjunction with the awakening and fostering of the prophetic gift, music and song were taught. Through these coenobia, whence sprang a spiritual awakening hitherto unknown in Israel, David also passed. Here his poetic talent, if not awakened, was however cultivated. He was a musician and poet born. Even as a Bethlehemite shepherd he played upon the harp, and with his natural gift he combined a heart deeply imbued with religious feeling. But the Psalter contains as few traces of David's Psalms before his anointing (vid., on Psa 8:1-9; Psa 144:1-15) as the New Testament does of the writings of the Apostles before the time of Pentecost. It was only from the time when the Spirit of Jahve came upon him at his anointing as king of Israel, and raised him to the dignity of his calling in connection with the covenant of redemption, that he sang Psalms, which have become an integral part of the canon. They are the fruit not only of his high gifts and the inspiration of the Spirit of God (Sa2 23:2), but also of his own experience and of the experience of his people interwoven with his own. David's path from his anointing onwards, lay through affliction to glory. Song however, as a Hindu proverb says, is the offspring of suffering, the חloka springs from the חoka. His life was marked by vicissitudes which at one time prompted him to elegiac strains, at another to praise and thanksgiving; at the same time he was the founder of the kingship of promise, a prophecy of the future Christ, and his life, thus typically moulded, could not express itself otherwise than in typical or even consciously prophetic language. Raised to the throne, he did not forget the harp which had been his companion and solace when he fled before Saul, but rewarded it with all honour. He appointed 4000 Levites, the fourth division of the whole Levitical order, as singers and musicians in connection with the service in the tabernacle on Zion and partly in Gibeon, the place of the Mosaic tabernacle. These he divided into 24 classes under the Precentors, Asaph, Heman, and Ethan = Jeduthun (1 Chron 25 comp. Ch1 15:17.), and multiplied the instruments, particularly the stringed instruments, by his own invention (Ch1 23:5; Neh 12:36)\n\n(Note: I tended, says David in the Greek Psalter, at the close of Ps, my father's sheep, my hands made pipes (ὄργανον = עוגב) and my fingers put together (or: tuned) harps (ψαλτήριον = נבל) cf. Numeri Rabba c. xv. (f. 264a) and the Targum on Amo 6:5.).\n\nIn David's time there were three places of sacrifice: on Zion beside the ark (Sa2 6:17.), in Gibeon beside the Mosaic tabernacle (Ch1 16:39.) and later, on the threshing-floor of Ornan, afterwards the Temple-hill (Ch1 21:28-30). Thus others also were stimulated in many ways to consecrate their offerings to the God of Israel. Beside the 73 Psalms bearing the inscription לדוד, - Psalms the direct Davidic authorship of which is attested, at least in the case of some fifty, by their creative originality, their impassioned and predominantly plaintive strain, their graceful flow and movement, their ancient but clear language, which becomes harsh and obscure only when describing the dissolute conduct of the ungodly-the collection contains the following which are named after contemporary singers appointed by David: 12 לאסף (Ps 50; 78:1-83:18), of which the contents and spirit are chiefly prophetic, and 12 by the Levite family of singers, the בני־קרה (Ps 42-49; 84:1-85:13; 87:1-88:18, including Psa 43:1-5), bearing a predominantly regal and priestly impress. Both the Psalms of the Ezrahite, Ps 88 by Heman and Ps 89 by Ethan, belong to the time of Solomon whose name, with the exception of Ps 72, is borne only by Psa 127:1-5. Under Solomon psalm-poesy began to decline; all the existing productions of the mind of that age bear the mark of thoughtful contemplation rather than of direct conception, for restless eagerness had yielded to enjoyable contentment, national concentration to cosmopolitan expansion. It was the age of the Chokma, which brought the apophthegm to its artistic perfection, and also produced a species of drama. Solomon himself is the perfecter of the Mashal, that form of poetic composition belonging strictly to the Chokma, Certainly according to Kg1 5:12 [Hebr.; Kg1 4:32, Engl.] he was also the author of 1005 songs, but in the canon we only find two Psalms by him and the dramatic Song of Songs. This may perhaps be explained by the fact that he spake of trees from the cedar to the hyssop, that his poems, mostly of a worldly character, pertained rather to the realm of nature than to the kingdom of grace.\n\nOnly twice after this did psalm-poesy rise to any height and then only for a short period: viz., under Jehoshaphat and under Hezekiah. Under both these kings the glorious services of the Temple rose from the desecration and decay into which they had fallen to the full splendour of their ancient glory. Moreover there were two great and marvellous deliverances which aroused the spirit of poesy during the reigns of these kings: under Jehoshaphat, the overthrow of the neighbouring nations when they had banded together for the exstirpation of Judah, predicted by Jahaziel, the Asaphite; under Hezekiah the overthrow of Sennacherib's host foretold by Isaiah. These kings also rendered great service to the cause of social progress. Jehoshaphat by an institution designed to raise the educational status of the people, which reminds one of the Carlovingian missi (Ch2 17:7-9); Hezekiah, whom one may regard as the Pisistratus of Israelitish literature, by the establishment of a commission charged with collecting the relics of the early literature (Pro 25:1); he also revived the ancient sacred music and restored the Psalms of David and Asaph to their liturgical use (Ch2 29:25.). And he was himself a poet, as his מכתב (מכתם?) (Isa 38) shows, though certainly a reproductive rather than a creative poet. Both from the time of Jehoshaphat and from the time of Hezekiah we possess in the Psalter not a few Psalms, chiefly Asaphic and Korahitic, which, although bearing no historical heading, unmistakeably confront us with the peculiar circumstances of those times.\n\n(Note: With regard to the time of Jehoshaphat even Nic. Nonne has acknowledge this in his Diss. de Tzippor et Deror (Bremen 1741, 4to.) which has reference to Psa 84:4.)\n\nWith the exception of these two periods of revival the latter part of the regal period produced scarcely any psalm writers, but is all the more rich in prophets. When the lyric became mute, prophecy raised its trumpet voice in order to revive the religious life of the nation, which previously had expressed itself in psalms. In the writings of the prophets, which represent the λεῖμμα χάριτος in Israel, we do indeed find even psalms, as Jon 2:1-10, Isa 12:1-6; Hab 3:1, but these are more imitations of the ancient congregational hymns than original compositions. It was not until after the Exile that a time of new creations set in.\n\nAs the Reformation gave birth to the German church-hymn, and the Thirty years' war, without which perhaps there might have been no Paul Gerhardt, called it into life afresh, so the Davidic age gave birth to psalm-poesy and the Exile brought back to life again that which had become dead. The divine chastisement did not fail to produce the effect designed. Even though it should not admit of proof, that many of the Psalms have had portions added to them, from which it would be manifest how constantly they were then used as forms of supplication, still it is placed beyond all doubt, that the Psalter contains many psalms belonging to the time of the Exile, as e.g., Ps 102. Still far more new psalms were composed after the Return. When those who returned from exile, among whom were many Asaphites,\n\n(Note: In Barhebraeus on Job and in his Chronikon several traditions are referred to \"Asaph the Hebrew priest, the brother of Ezra the writer of the Scriptures.\")\n\nagain felt themselves to be a nation, and after the restoration of the Temple to be also a church, the harps which in Babylon hung upon the willows, were tuned afresh and a rich new flow of song was the fruit of this re-awakened first love. But this did not continue long. A sanctity founded on good works and the service of the letter took the place of that outward, coarse idolatry from which the people, now returned to their fatherland, had been weaned while undergoing punishment in the land of the stranger. Nevertheless in the era of the Seleucidae the oppressed and injured national feeling revived under the Maccabees in its old life and vigour. Prophecy had then long been dumb, a fact lamented in many passages in the 1st Book of the Maccabees. It cannot be maintained that psalm-poesy flourished again at that time. Hitzig has recently endeavoured to bring forward positive proof, that it is Maccabean psalms, which form the proper groundwork of the Psalter. He regards the Maccabean prince Alexander Jannaeus as the writer of Psa 1:1-6 and Psa 2:1-12, refers Ps 44 to 1 Macc. 5:56-62, and maintains both in his Commentary of 1835-36 and in the later edition of 1863-65 that from Ps 73 onwards there is not a single pre-Maccabean psalm in the collection and that, from that point, the Psalter mirrors the prominent events of the time of the Maccabees in chronological order. Hitzig has been followed by von Lengerke and Olshausen. They both mark the reign of John Hyrcanus (b.c. 135-107) as the time when the latest psalms were composed and when the collection as we now have it was made: whereas Hitzig going somewhat deeper ascribes Ps 1-2; Psa 150:1-6 with others, and the arrangement of the whole, to Hyrcanus' son, Alexander Jannaeus.\n\nOn the other hand both the existence and possibility of Maccabean psalms is disputed not only by Hengstenberg, Hvernick, and Keil but also by Gesenius, Hassler, Ewald, Thenius, Bttcher, and Dillmann. For our own part we admit the possibility. It has been said that the ardent enthusiasm of the Maccabean period was more human than divine, more nationally patriotic than theocratically national in its character, but the Book of Daniel exhibits to us, in a prophetic representation of that period, a holy people of the Most High contending with the god-opposing power in the world, and claims for this contest the highest significance in relation to the history of redemption. The history of the canon, also, does not exclude the possibility of there being Maccabean psalms. For although the chronicler by Ch1 16:36 brings us to the safe conclusion that in his day the Psalter (comp. τὰ τοῦ Δαυίδ, 2 Macc. 2:13)\n\n(Note: In the early phraseology of the Eastern and Western churches the Psalter is simply called David, e.g., in Chrysostom: ἐκμαθόντες ὅλον τὸν Δαβίδ, and at the close of the Aethiopic Psalter: \"David is ended.\")\n\nwas already a whole divided into five books (vid., on Psa 96:1-13; 105:1-106:48): it might nevertheless, after having been completely arranged still remain open for later insertions (just as the ספר הישׁר cited in the Jos 1:1 and 2 Sam 1, was an anthology which had grown together in the course of time). When Judas Maccabaeus, by gathering together the national literature, followed in the footsteps of Nehemiah (2 Macc. 2:14: ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ Ἰούδας τὰ δεισκορπισμένα διὰ τὸν πόλεμον τὸν γεγονότα ἡμῖν ἐπισυνήγαγε πάντα, καὶ ἔστι παρ ̓ ἡμῖν), we might perhaps suppose that the Psalter was at that time enriched by some additions. And when Jewish tradition assigns to the so-called Great Synagogue (כנסת הגדולה) a share in the compilation of the canon, this is not unfavourable to the supposition of Maccabean psalms, since this συναγωγή μεγάλη was still in existence under the domination of the Seleucidae (1 Macc. 14:28).\n\nIt is utterly at variance with historical fact to maintain that the Maccabean period was altogether incapable of producing psalms worthy of incorporation in the canon. Although the Maccabean period had no prophets, it is nevertheless to be supposed that many possessed the gift of poesy, and that the Spirit of faith, which is essentially one and the same with the Spirit of prophecy, might sanctify this gift and cause it to bear fruit. An actual proof of this is furnished by the so-called Psalter of Solomon (Ψαλτήριον Σαλομῶντος in distinction from the canonical Psalter of David)\n\n(Note: First made known by De la Cerda in his Adversaria sacra (1626) and afterwards incorporated by Fabricius in his Codex Pseudepigraphus V. T. pp. 914ff. (1713).)\n\nconsisting of 18 psalms, which certainly come far behind the originality and artistic beauty of the canonical Psalms; but they show at the same time, that the feelings of believers, even throughout the whole time of the Maccabees, found utterance in expressive spiritual songs. Maccabean psalms are therefore not an absolute impossibility - no doubt they were many; and that some of them were incorporated in the Psalter, cannot be denied priori. But still the history of the canon does not favour this supposition. And the circumstance of the lxx version of the Psalms (according to which citations are made even in the first Book of the Maccabees) inscribing several Psalms Ἀγγαίου καὶ Ζαχαρίου, while however it does not assign the date of the later period to any, is against it. And if Maccabean psalms be supposed to exist in the Psalter they can at any rate only be few, because they must have been inserted in a collection which was already arranged. And since the Maccabean movement, though beginning with lofty aspirations, gravitated, in its onward course, towards things carnal, we can no longer expect to find psalms relating to it, or at least none belonging to the period after Judas Maccabaeus; and from all that we know of the character and disposition of Alexander Jannaeus it is morally impossible that this despot should be the author of the first and second Psalms and should have closed the collection.\n\n4. Origin of the Collection\n\nThe Psalter, as we now have it, consists of five books.\n\n(Note: The Karaite Jerocham (about 950 a.d.) says מגלות (rolls) instead of ספרים.)\n\nΤοῦτό σε μὴ παρέλθοι, ὦ φιλόλογε - says Hippolytus, whose words are afterwards quoted by Epiphanius - ὅτι καὶ τὸ ψαλτήριον εἰς πέντε διεῖλον βιβλία οἱ Ἑβραῖοι, ὥστε εἶναι καὶ αὐτὸ ἄλλον πεντάτευχον. This accords with the Midrash on Psa 1:1 : Moses gave the Israelites the five books of the Thτra and corresponding to these (כנגדם) David gave them the book of Psalms which consists of five books (ספר תהלים שׁישׁ בו חמשׁה ספרים). The division of the Psalter into five parts makes it the copy and echo of the Thפra, which it also resembles in this particular: that as in the Thפra Elohistic and Jehovistic sections alternate, so here a group of Elohistic Psalms (42-84) is surrounded on both sides by groups of Jehovistic (1-41, 85-150). The five books are as follow:-1-41, 42-72, 83-89, 90-106, 107-150.\n\n(Note: The Karaite Jefeth ben Eli calls them אשׁרי ספר, כאיל ס etc.)\n\nEach of the first four books closes with a doxology, which one might erroneously regard as a part of the preceding Psalm (Ps 41:14; Psa 72:18., 89:53; Psa 106:48), and the place of the fifth doxology is occupied by Ps as a full toned finale to the whole (like the relation of Ps 139 to the so-called Songs of degrees). These doxologies very much resemble the language of the liturgical Beracha of the second Temple. The אמן ואמן coupled with ו (cf. on the contrary Num 5:22 and also Neh 8:6) is exclusively peculiar to them in Old Testament writings. Even in the time of the writer of the Chronicles the Psalter was a whole divided into five parts, which were indicated by these landmarks. We infer this from Ch1 16:36. The chronicler in the free manner which characterises Thucydides of Livy in reporting a speech, there reproduces David's festal hymn that resounded in Israel after the bringing home of the ark; and he does it in such a way that after he has once fallen into the track of Ps 106, he also puts into the mouth of David the beracha which follows that Ps. From this we see that the Psalter was already divided into books at that period; the closing doxologies had already become thoroughly grafted upon the body of the Psalms after which they stand. The chronicler however wrote under the pontificate of Johanan, the son of Eliashib, the predecessor of Jaddua, towards the end of the Persian supremacy, but a considerable time before the commencement of the Grecian.\n\nNext to this application of the beracha of the Fourth book by the chronicler, Psa 72:20 is a significant mark for determining the history of the origin of the Psalter. The words: \"are ended the prayers of David the son of Jesse,\" are without doubt the subscription to the oldest psalm-collection, which preceded the present psalm-pentateuch. The collector certainly has removed this subscription from its original place close after Psa 72:17, by the interpolation of the beracha Psa 72:18, but left it, as the same time, untouched. The collectors and those who worked up the older documents within the range of the Biblical literature appear to have been extremely conscientious in this respect and they thereby make it easier for us to gain an insight into the origin of their work, - as, e.g., the composer of the Books of Samuel gives intact the list of officers from a later document Sa2 8:16-18 (which closed with that, so far as we at present have it in its incorporated state), as well as the list from an older document (Sa2 20:23-26); or, as not merely the author of the Book of Kings in the middle of the Exile, but also the chronicler towards the end of the Persian period, have transferred unaltered, to their pages, the statement that the staves of the ark are to be found in the rings of the ark \"to this day,\" which has its origin in some annalistic document (Kg1 8:8; Ch2 5:9). But unfortunately that subscription, which has been so faithfully preserved, furnishes us less help than we could wish. We only gather from it that the present collection was preceded by a primary collection of very much more limited compass which formed its basis and that this closed with the Salomonic Ps 72; for the collector would surely not have placed the subscription, referring only to the prayers of David, after this Psalm if he had not found it there already. And from this point it becomes natural to suppose that Solomon himself, prompted perhaps by the liturgical requirements of the new Temple, compiled this primary collection, and by the addition of Ps 72 may have caused it to be understood that he was the originator of the collection.\n\nBut to the question whether the primary collection also contained only Davidic songs properly so called or whether the subscribed designation תהלות דוד is only intended a potiori, the answer is entirely wanting. If we adopt the latter supposition, one is at a loss to u","order":19,"numberOfChapters":146,"sha256":"e4faeedf9f4a36317a2f2a1f443740f9dc8b384666dc222941d9b34a3f96b6d6","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/PSA/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"PSA","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":150,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/PSA/150.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"PSA","chapter":150},"totalNumberOfVerses":650},"chapter":{"number":17,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":1,"content":["צדק is the accusative of the object: the righteousness, intended by the suppliant, is his own (Psa 17:15). He knows that he is not merely righteous in his relation to man, but also in his relation to God. In all such assertions of pious self-consciousness, that which is intended is a righteousness of life which has its ground in the righteousness of faith. True, Hupfeld is of opinion, that under the Old Testament nothing was known either of righteousness which is by faith or of a righteousness belonging to another and imputed. But if this were true, then Paul was in gross error and Christianity is built upon the sand. But the truth, that faith is the ultimate ground of righteousness, is expressed in Gen 15:6, and at other turning-points in the course of the history of redemption; and the truth, that the righteousness which avails before God is a gift of grace is, for instance, a thought distinctly marked out in the expression of Jeremiah צדקנוּ ה, \"the Lord our righteousness.\" The Old Testament conception, it is true, looks more to the phenomena than to the root of the matter (ist mehr phnomenell als wurzelhaft), is (so to speak) more Jacobic than Pauline; but the righteousness of life of the Old Testament and that of the New have one and the same basis, viz., in the grace of God, the Redeemer, towards sinful man, who in himself is altogether wanting in righteousness before God (Psa 143:2). Thus there is no self-righteousness, in David's praying that the righteousness, which in him is persecuted and cries for help, may be heard. For, on the one hand, in his personal relation to Saul, he knows himself to be free from any ungrateful thoughts of usurpation, and on the other, in his personal relation to God free from מרמה, i.e., self-delusion and hypocrisy. The shrill cry for help, רנּה, which he raises, is such as may be heard and answered, because they are not lips of deceit with which he prays. The actual fact is manifest לפני יהוה, therefore may his right go forth מלּפניו, - just what does happen, by its being publicly proclaimed and openly maintained - from Him, for His eyes, the eyes of Him who knoweth the hearts (Psa 11:4), behold מישׁרים (as in Psa 58:2; Psa 75:3 = בּמישׁרים, Psa 9:9, and many other passages), in uprightness, i.e., in accordance with the facts of the case and without partiality. מישׁרים might also be an accusative of the object (cf. Ch1 29:17), but the usage of the language much more strongly favours the adverbial rendering, which is made still more natural by the confirmatory relation in which Psa 17:2 stands to Psa 17:2. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["David refers to the divine testing and illumination of the inward parts, which he has experienced in himself, in support of his sincerity. The preterites in Psa 17:3 express the divine acts that preceded the result בּל־תּמצא, viz., the testing He has instituted, which is referred to in צרפתּני and also בּחנתּ as a trying of gold by fire, and in פּקד as an investigation (Job 7:18). The result of the close scrutiny to which God has subjected him in the night, when the bottom of a man's heart is at once made manifest, whether it be in his thoughts when awake or in the dream and fancies of the sleeper, was and is this, that He does not find, viz., anything whatever to punish in him, anything that is separated as dross from the gold. To the mind of the New Testament believer with his deep, and as it were microscopically penetrating, insight into the depth of sin, such a confession concerning himself would be more difficult than to the mind of an Old Testament saint. For a separation and disunion of flesh and spirit, which was unknown in the same degree to the Old Testament, has been accomplished in the New Testament consciousness by the facts and operations of redemption revealed in the New Testament; although at the same time it must be remembered that in such confessions the Old Testament consciousness does not claim to be clear from sins, but only from a conscious love of sin, and from a self-love that is hostile to God.\nWith זמּותי David begins his confession of how Jahve found him to be, instead of finding anything punishable in him. This word is either an infinitive like חנּות (Psa 77:10) with the regular ultima accentuation, formed after the manner of the הל verbs, - in accordance with which Hitzig renders it: my thinking does not overstep my mouth, - or even 1 pers. praet., which is properly Milel, but does also occur as Milra, e.g., Deu 32:41; Isa 44:16 (vid., on Job 19:17), - according to which Bttcher translates: should I think anything evil, it dare not pass beyond my mouth, - or (since זמם may denote the determination that precedes the act, e.g., Jer 4:28; Lam 2:17): I have determined my mouth shall not transgress. This last rendering is opposed by the fact, that עבר by itself in the ethical signification \"to transgress\" (cf. post-biblical עברה παράβασις) is not the usage of the biblical Hebrew, and that when יעבר־פּי stand close together, פי is presumptively the object. We therefore give the preference to Bttcher's explanation, which renders זמותי as a hypothetical perfect and is favoured by Pro 30:32 (which is to be translated: and if thou thinkest evil, (lay) thy hand on thy mouth!). Nevertheless בל יעבר־פי is not the expression of a fact, but of a purpose, as the combination of בל with the future requires it to be taken. The psalmist is able to testify of himself that he so keeps evil thoughts in subjection within him, even when they may arise, that they do not pass beyond his mouth, much less that he should put them into action. But perhaps the psalmist wrote פּיך originally, \"my reflecting does not go beyond Thy commandment\" (according to Num 22:18; Sa1 15:24; Pro 8:29), - a meaning better suited, as a result of the search, to the nightly investigation. The ל of לפעלּות fo ל need not be the ל of reference (as to); it is that of the state or condition, as in Psa 32:6; Psa 69:22. אדם, as perhaps also in Job 31:33; Hos 6:7 (if אדם is not there the name of the first man), means, men as they are by nature and habit. בּדבר שׂפתיך does not admit of being connected with לפעלּות: at the doings of the world contrary to Thy revealed will (Hofmann and others); for פּעל בּ cannot mean: to act contrary to any one, but only: to work upon any one, Job 35:6. These words must therefore be regarded as a closer definition, placed first, of the שׁמרתּי which follows: in connection with the doings of men, by virtue of the divine commandment, he has taken care of the paths of the oppressor, viz., not to go in them; Sa1 25:21 is an instance in support of this rendering, where שׁמרתי, as in Job 2:6, means: I have kept (Nabal's possession), not seizing upon it myself. Jerome correctly translates vias latronis; for פּריץ signifies one who breaks in, i.e., one who does damage intentionally and by violence. The confession concerning himself is still continued in Psa 17:5, for the inf. absol. תּמך, if taken as imperative would express a prayer for constancy, that is alien to the circumstances described. The perfect after בּל is also against such a rendering. It must therefore be taken as inf. historicus, and explained according to Job 23:11, cf. Psa 41:13. The noun following the inf. absol., which is usually the object, is the subject in this instance, as, e.g., in Job 40:2; Pro 17:12; Ecc 4:2, and frequently. It is אשׁוּרי, and not אשּׁוּרי, אשׁור (a step) never having the שׁ dageshed, except in Psa 17:11 and Job 31:7. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["It is only now, after his inward parts and his walk have been laid open to Jahve, that he resumes his petition, which is so well justified and so soundly based, and enters into detail. The אני\n(Note: The word is pointed אני, in correct texts, as אני always is when it has Munach and Dech follows, e.g., also Psa 116:16. This Gaja demands an emphatic intonation of the secondary word in its relation to the principal word (which here is קראתיך).)\nfound beside קראתיך (the perfect referring to that which has just now been put into execution) is meant to imply: such an one as he has described himself to be according to the testimony of his conscience, may call upon God, for God hears such and will therefore also hear him. הט אזנך exactly corresponds to the Latin au-di (aus-cul-ta). The Hiph. הפלה (הפליא, Psa 31:22, cf. Psa 4:4) signifies here to work in an extraordinary and marvellous manner. The danger of him who thus prays is great, but the mercies of God, who is ready and able to help, are still greater. Oh that He may, then, exhibit all its fulness on his behalf. The form of the address resembles the Greek, which is so fond of participles. If it is translated as Luther translates it: \"Show Thy marvellous lovingkindness, Thou Saviour of those who trust in Thee, Against those who so set themselves against Thy right hand,\" then חוסים is used just as absolutely as in Pro 14:32, and the right hand of God is conceived of as that which arranges and makes firm. But \"to rebel against God's right (not statuta, but desteram)\" is a strange expression. There are still two other constructions from which to choose, viz., \"Thou Deliverer of those seeking protection from adversaries, with Thy right hand\" (Hitz.), or: \"Thou Helper of those seeking protection from adversaries, at Thy right hand\" (Aben-Ezra, Tremell.). This last rendering is to be preferred to the two others. Since, on the one hand, one says מחסה מן, refuge from..., and on the other, חסה בּ to hide one's self in any one, or in any place, this determining of the verbal notion by the preposition (on this, see above on Psa 2:12) must be possible in both directions. ממּתקוממים is equivalent to ממתקוממיהם Job 27:7; and חוסים בימינך, those seeking protection at the strong hand of Jahve. The force of the ב is just the same as in connection with הסתּתּר, Sa1 23:19. In Damascus and throughout Syria - Wetzstein observes on this passage - the weak make use of these words when they surrender themselves to the strong: Arab. anâ b-qabḍt ydk, \"I am in the grasp of thy hand (in thy closed hand) i.e., I give myself up entirely to thee.\"\n(Note: Cognate in meaning to חסה ב are Arab. 'sttr b and tadarrâ b, e.g., Arab. tḏrrâ b-'l-ḥâ'ṭ mn 'l-rı̂ḥ he shelters (hides) himself by the wall from the wind, or Arab. bâl‛ḍât mn 'l-brd, by a fire against the cold, and Arab. ‛âḏ, which is often applied in like manner to God's protection. Thus, e.g., (according to Bochri's Sunna) a woman, whom Muhammed wanted to seize, cried out: Arab. a‛ûḏu b-'llh mnk, I place myself under God's protection against thee, and he replied: Arab. ‛uḏti bi-ma‛âḏin, thou hast taken refuge in an (inaccessible) asylum (cf. Job, i. 310 n. and ii. 22 n. 2).) \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["The covenant relationship towards Himself in which Jahve has placed David, and the relationship of love in which David stands to Jahve, fully justified the oppressed one in his extreme request. The apple of the eye, which is surrounded by the iris, is called אישׁון, the man (Arabic insân), or in the diminutive and endearing sense of the termination on: the little man of the eye, because a picture in miniature of one's self is seen, as in a glass, when looking into another person's eye. בּת־עין either because it is as if born out of the eye and the eye has, as it were, concentrated itself in it, or rather because the little image which is mirrored in it is, as it were, the little daughter of the eye (here and Lam 2:18). To the Latin pupilla (pupula), Greek κόρη, corresponds most closely בּבת עין, Zac 2:12, which does not signify the gate, aperture, sight, but, as בּת shows, the little boy, or more strictly, the little girl of the eye. It is singular that אישׁון here has the feminine בּת־עין as the expression in apposition to it. The construction might be genitival: \"as the little man of the apple of the eye,\" inasmuch as the saint knows himself to be so near to God, that, as it were, his image in miniature is mirrored in the great eye of God. But (1) the more ozdinary name for the pupil of the eye is not בּת עין, but אישׁון; and (2) with that construction the proper point of the comparison, that the apple of the eye is an object of the most careful self-preservation, is missed. There is, consequently, a combination of two names of the pupil or apple of the eye, the usual one and one more select, without reference to the gender of the former, in order to give greater definition and emphasis to the figure. The primary passage for this bold figure, which is the utterance of loving entreaty, is Deu 32:10, where the dazzling anthropomorphism is effaced by the lxx and other ancient versions; \n(Note: Vid., Geiger, Urschrift und Ueberstezungen der Bibel, S. 324.)\ncf. also Sir. 17:22. Then follows another figure, taken from the eagle, which hides its young under its wings, likewise from Deut 32, viz., Psa 17:11, for the figure of the hen (Mat 23:37) is alien to the Old Testament. In that passage, Moses, in his great song, speaks of the wings of God; but the double figure of the shadow of God's wings (here and in Psa 36:8; Psa 57:2; Psa 63:8) is coined by David. \"God's wings\" are the spreadings out, i.e., the manifestations of His love, taking the creature under the protection of its intimate fellowship, and the \"shadow\" of these wings is the refreshing rest and security which the fellowship of this love affords to those, who hide themselves beneath it, from the heat of outward or inward conflict.\nFrom Psa 17:9 we learn more definitely the position in which the psalmist is placed. שׁדד signifies to use violence, to destroy the life, continuance, or possession of any one. According to the accentuation בּנפשׁ is to be connected with איבי, not with יקּפוּ, and to be understood according to Eze 25:6 : \"enemies with the soul\" are those whose enmity is not merely superficial, but most deep-seated (cf. ἐκ ψυχῆς, Eph 6:6; Col 3:23). The soul (viz., the hating and eagerly longing soul, Psa 27:12; Psa 41:3) is just the same as if בנפשׁ is combined with the verb, viz., the soul of the enemies; and איבי נפשׁי would therefore not be more correct, as Hitzig thinks, than בנפשׁ איבי, but would have a different meaning. They are eager to destroy him (perf. conatus), and form a circle round about him, as ravenous ones, in order to swallow him up. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["Psa 17:10 tell what sort of people these persecutors are. Their heart is called fat, adeps, not as though חלב could in itself be equivalent to לב, more especially as both words are radically distinct (חלב from the root לב, λιπ; לב from the root לב, לף to envelope: that which is enveloped, the kernel, the inside), but (without any need for von Ortenberg's conjecture חלב לבּמו סגרוּ \"they close their heart with fat\") because it is, as it were, entirely fat (Psa 119:70, cf. Psa 73:7), and because it is inaccessible to any feeling of compassion, and in general incapable of the nobler emotions. To shut up the fat = the heart (cf. κλείειν τὰ σπλάγχνα Jo1 3:17), is equivalent to: to fortify one's self wilfully in indifference to sympathy, tender feeling, and all noble feelings (cf. השׁמין לב = to harden, Isa 6:10). The construction of פּימו (which agrees in sound with פּימה, Job 15:27) is just the same as that of קולי, Psa 3:5. On the other hand, אשּׁוּרנוּ (after the form עמּוּד and written plene) is neither such an accusative of the means or instrument, nor the second accusative, beside the accusative of the object, of that by which the object is surrounded, that is usually found with verbs of surrounding (e.g., Ps 5:13; Psa 32:7); for \"they have surrounded me (us) with our step\" is unintelligible. But אשׁורנו can be the accusative of the member, as in Psa 3:8, cf. Psa 22:17, Gen 3:15, for \"it is true the step is not a member\" (Hitz.), but since \"step\" and \"foot\" are interchangeable notions, Psa 73:2, the σχῆμα καθ ̓ ὅλον καὶ μέρος is applicable to the former, and as, e.g., Homer says, Iliad vii. 355: σὲ μάλιστα πόνος φρένας ἀμφιβέβηκεν, the Hebrew poet can also say: they have encompassed us (and in fact) our steps, each of our steps (so that we cannot go forwards or backwards with our feet). The Ker סבבוּנוּ gets rid of the change in number which we have with the Chethb סבבוני; the latter, however, is admissible according to parallels like Psa 62:5, and corresponds to David's position, who is hunted by Saul and at the present time driven into a strait at the head of a small company of faithful followers. Their eyes - he goes on to say in Psa 17:11 - have they set to fell, viz., us, who are encompassed, to the earth, i.e., so that we shall be cast to the ground. נטה is transitive, as in Psa 18:10; Psa 62:4, in the transitively applied sense of Psa 73:2 (cf. Psa 37:31): to incline to fall (whereas in Psa 44:19, Job 31:7, it means to turn away from); and בּארץ (without any need fore the conjecture בּארח) expresses the final issue, instead of לארץ, Psa 7:6. By the expression דּמינו one is prominently singled out from the host of the enemy, viz., its chief, the words being: his likeness is as a lion, according to the peculiarity of the poetical style, of changing verbal into substantival clauses, instead of דּמה כּאריה. Since in Old Testament Hebrew, as also in Syriac and Arabic, כ is only a preposition, not a connective conjunction, it cannot be rendered: as a lion longs to prey, but: as a lion that is greedy or hungry (cf. Arab. ksf, used of sinking away, decline, obscuring or eclipsing, growing pale, and Arab. chsf, more especially of enfeebling, hunger, distinct from חשׂף = Arab. ks̆f, to peel off, make bare) to ravin. In the parallel member of the verse the participle alternates with the attributive clause. כּפיר is (according to Meier) the young lion as being covered with thicker hair. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["The phrase קדּם פּני, antevertere faciem alicujus, means both to appear before any one with reverence, Psa 95:2 (post-biblical: to pay one's respects to any one) and to meet any one as an enemy, rush on him. The foe springs like a lion upon David, may Jahve - so he prays - as his defence cross the path of the lion and intercept him, and cast him down so that he, being rendered harmless, shall lie there with bowed knees (כּרע, of the lion, Gen 49:9; Num 24:9). He is to rescue his soul from the ungodly חרבּך. This חרבך, and also the ידך which follows, can be regarded as a permutative of the subject (Bצttcher, Hupfeld, and Hitzig), an explanation which is commended by Psa 44:3 and other passages. But it is much more probable that more exact definitions of this kind are treated as accusatives, vid., on Psa 3:5. At any rate \"sword\" and \"hand\" are meant as the instruments by which the פּלּט, rescuing, is effected. The force of פּלּטה extends into Psa 17:14, and mimatiym (with a Chateph under the letter that is freed from reduplication, like ממכון, Psa 33:14) corresponds to מרשׁע, as ידך to חרבּך. The word ממתים (plural of מת, men, Deu 2:34, whence מתם, each and every one), which of itself gives no complete sense, is repeated and made complete after the interruption cause by the insertion of ידך ה, - a remarkable manner of obstructing and then resuming the thought, which Hofmann (Schriftbeweis ii. 2. 495) seeks to get over by a change in the division of the verse and in the interpunction. חלד, either from חלד Syriac to creep, glide, slip away (whence חלדּה a weasel, a mole) or from חלד Talmudic to cover, hide, signifies: this temporal life which glides by unnoticed (distinct from the Arabic chald, chuld, an abiding stay, endless duration); and consequently חדל, limited existence, from חדל to have an end, alternates with חלד as a play upon the letters, comp. Psa 49:2 with Isa 38:11. The combination מחלד מתים resembles Psa 10:18; Psa 16:4. What is meant, is: men who have no other home but the world, which passeth away with the lust thereof, men ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, or υίοὶ τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου. The meaning of the further description חלקם בּחיּים (cf. Ecc 9:9) becomes clear from the converse in Psa 16:5. Jahve is the חלק of the godly man; and the sphere within which the worldling claims his חלק is החיּים, this temporal, visible, and material life. This is everything to him; whereas the godly man says: טּוב חסדּך מחיּים, Psa 63:4. The contrast is not so much between this life and the life to come, as between the world (life) and God. Here we see into the inmost nature of the Old Testament faith. To the Old Testament believer, all the blessedness and glory of the future life, which the New Testament unfolds, is shut up in Jahve. Jahve is his highest good, and possessing Him he is raised above heaven and earth, above life and death. To yield implicitly to Him, without any explicit knowledge of a blessed future life, to be satisfied with Him, to rest in Him, to hide in Him in the face of death, is the characteristic of the Old Testament faith. חלקם בחיים expresses both the state of mind and the lot of the men of the world. Material things which are their highest good, fall also in abundance to their share. The words \"whose belly Thou fillest with Thy treasure\" (Chethb: וּצפינך the usual participial form, but as a participle an Aramaising form) do not sound as though the poet meant to say that God leads them to repentance by the riches of His goodness, but on the contrary that God, by satisfying their desires which are confined to the outward and sensuous only, absolutely deprives them of all claim to possessions that extend beyond the world and this present temporal life. Thus, then, צפוּן in this passage is used exactly as צפוּנים is used in Job 20:26 (from צפן to hold anything close to one, to hold back, to keep by one). Moreover, there is not the slightest alloy of murmur or envy in the words. The godly man who lacks these good things out of the treasury of God, has higher delights; he can exclaim, Psa 31:20 : \"how great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up (צפנתּ) for those who fear Thee!\" Among the good things with which God fills the belly and house of the ungodly (Job 22:17.) are also children in abundance; these are elsewhere a blessing upon piety (Psa 127:3., Psa 128:3.), but to those who do not acknowledge the Giver they are a snare to self-glorifying, Job 21:11 (cf. Wisdom Job 4:1). בּנים is not the subject, but an accusative, and has been so understood by all the old translators from the original text, just as in the phrase שׁבע ימים to be satisfied with, or weary of, life. On עוללים vid., on Psa 8:3. יתר (from יתר to stretch out in length, then to be overhanging, towering above, projecting, superfluous, redundant) signifies here, as in Job 22:20, riches and the abundance of things possessed. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["With אני he contrasts his incomparably greater prosperity with that of his enemies. He, the despised and persecuted of men, will behold God's face בּצדק, in righteousness, which will then find its reward (Mat 5:8, Heb 12:14), and will, when this hope is realised by him, thoroughly refresh himself with the form of God. It is not sufficient to explain the vision of the divine countenance here as meaning the experience of the gracious influences which proceed from the divine countenance again unveiled and turned towards him. The parallel of the next clause requires an actual vision, as in Num 12:8, according to which Jahve appeared to Moses in the true form of His being, without the intervention of any self-manifestation of an accommodative and visionary kind; but at the same time, as in Exo 33:20, where the vision of the divine countenance is denied to Moses, according to which, consequently, the self-manifestation of Jahve in His intercourse with Moses is not to be thought of without some veiling of Himself which might render the vision tolerable to him. Here, however, where David gives expression to a hope which is the final goal and the very climax of all his hopes, one has no right in any way to limit the vision of God, who in love permits him to behold Him (vid., on Psa 11:7), and to limit the being satisfied with His תּמוּנה (lxx τὴν δόξαν σου, vid., Psychol. S. 49; transl. p. 61). If this is correct, then בּהקיץ cannot mean \"when I wake up from this night's sleep\" as Ewald, Hupfeld and others explain it; for supposing the Psalm were composed just before falling asleep what would be the meaning of the postponement of so transcendent a hope to the end of his natural sleep? Nor can the meaning be to \"awake to a new life of blessedness and peace through the sunlight of divine favour which again arises after the night of darkness and distress in which the poet is now to be found\" (Kurtz); for to awake from a night of affliction is an unsuitable idea and for this very reason cannot be supported. The only remaining explanation, therefore, is the waking up from the sleep of death (cf. Bttcher, De inferis 365-367). The fact that all who are now in their graves shall one day hear the voice of Him that wakes the dead, as it is taught in the age after the Exile (Dan 12:2), was surely not known to David, for it was not yet revealed to him. But why may not this truth of revelation, towards which prophecy advances with such giant strides (Isa 26:19. Eze 37:1-14), be already heard even in the Psalms of David as a bold demand of faith and as a hope that has struggled forth to freedom out of the comfortless conception of Shel possessed in that age, just as it is heard a few decades later in the master-work of a contemporary of Solomon, the Book of Job? The morning in Psa 49:15 is also not any morning whatever following upon the night, but that final morning which brings deliverance to the upright and inaugurates their dominion. A sure knowledge of the fact of the resurrection such as, according to Hofmann (Schriftbeweis ii. 2, 490), has existed in the Old Testament from the beginning, is not expressed in such passages. For laments like Psa 6:6; Psa 30:10; Psa 88:11-13, show that no such certain knowledge as then in existence; and when the Old Testament literature which we now possess allows us elsewhere an insight into the history of the perception of redemption, it does not warrant us in concluding anything more than that the perception of the future resurrection of the dead did not pass from the prophetic word into the believing mind of Israel until about the time of the Exile, and that up to that period faith made bold to hope for a redemption from death, but only by means of an inference drawn from that which was conceived and existed within itself, without having an express word of promise in its favour.\n(Note: To this Hofmann, loc. cit. S. 496, replies as follows: \"We do not find that faith indulges in such boldness elsewhere, or that the believing ones cherish hopes which are based on such insecure grounds.\" But the word of God is surely no insecure ground, and to draw bold conclusions from that which is intimated only from afar, was indeed, even in many other respects (for instance, respecting the incarnation, and respecting the abrogation of the ceremonial law), the province of the Old Testament faith.)\nThus it is here also. David certainly gives full expression to the hope of a vision of God, which, as righteous before God, will be vouchsafed to him; and vouchsafed to him, even though he should fall asleep in death in the present extremity (Psa 13:4), as one again awakened from the sleep of death, and, therefore (although this idea does not directly coincide with the former), as one raised from the dead. But this hope is not a believing appropriation of a \"certain knowledge,\" but a view that, by reason of the already existing revelation of God, lights up out of his consciousness of fellowship with Him. \n"]}]},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/PSA/17.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"PSA","chapter":17},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/PSA/18.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"PSA","chapter":18},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/PSA/16.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"PSA","chapter":16},"numberOfVerses":7}