THE SHORT COURSE SERIES

Edited by Rev. John Adams, B.D.

A Mirror of the Soul

Short Studies in the Psalter

By Rev. John Vaughan, M.A.

Chapter 7 THE PSALTER AND THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

IT would not be right, even in the briefest and most cursory consideration of the Psalter, to pass over in entire silence those aspects of its teaching which seem to fall short of the fuller revelation of the New Testament. In some respects, as we have already seen, notably in that of communion with God, the sense of true religion is so sublime that it has never been surpassed, save in the life and sayings of our Lord. But the Psalter is a national collection of lyrical poetry, composed by men of widely different character and outlook, and covering a long period of Jewish history. And it would clearly be unreasonable to attempt to seek in so varied and heterogeneous ananthology for any uniform standard of ethics or teaching.

Moreover, it should be remembered that God's revelation of Himself was a gradual one. He spoke to men as they were able to bear it. Slowly, and as it were fold by fold, He withdrew the veil that obscured His countenance. He who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in times past unto the fathers in the prophets, at length spake unto us in His Son. And it would be unreasonable, and contrary to all analogy as to what we know of God's dealings with men, to expect to find in the Old Testament — in the rough days of the Monarchy, at the time of the Exile, or of the Return from Babylon — so clear and lofty a revelation of the divine will and purpose as we meet with in the teaching of Christ and His Apostles.

It will not therefore be a matter of surprise, it need not arise any feelings of misgiving or apprehension, if we are called upon frankly to acknowledge that in some respects the spirit of the Old Testament is not the spirit of the New, that the ethics of certain of the Psalms are not those of the Lord's Sermon on the Mount. We shall recognise the fact as part of God's providence or plan in that revelation of Himself, the record of which is preserved for us in the pages of the Bible. And the recognition of it will lift a weight of difficulty and uneasiness from our minds, and enable us to accept, with a clearer intellectual perception, the progressive nature of that divine revelation which culminated in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

The main difficulty as regards the standard of feeling and morality in the Psalter is un doubtedly the presence of the imprecatory or cursing psalms, which has caused much distress and perplexity among Christian people. We propose to consider somewhat fully this aspect of the Psalter. Among other points of limitation, in comparison with the fuller teaching of the New Testament, may be mentioned the dim hope of immortality, which we have already alluded to in a former study; the problems, which pressed heavily on the soul of the pious Hebrew, of the sufferings of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked; and the assertions of innocence, almost of self-righteousness, which are occasionally met with.

1. THE IMPRECATORY PSALMS.

These curses or imprecations are found chiefly in four psalms, the 7th, 35th, 69th, and io9th; while in Psalm 137 we meet with the truly awful malediction, occurring with strange incongruity at the close of an elegy of singular pathos and beauty, "O daughter of Babylon, happy shall he be that taketh thy children and dasheth them against the stones." " Not even in the wars of Joshua," as Dean Stanley said, "or the song of Deborah, does the vindictive spirit of the ancient dispensation burn more fiercely than in the imprecations of the 69th, 109th, and 137th Psalms."1 Take these words from Psalm 69 —

"Let their eyes be blinded, that they see not;

And ever bow thou down their backs.

Let their habitation be void; And no man to dwell in their tents.

Let them fall from one wickedness to another,

And not come into thy righteousness.

Let them be wiped out of the book of the living,

And not be written among the righteous."

Such curses become the more terrible when a man's relations are included in the malediction. What must be the effect on the mind of intelligent Indian or Japanese, pertinently asks Professor Percy Gardner,2 who, attending the service of an English Church, hears the congregation solemnly singing —

" Let his days be few :

And let another take his office.

Let his children be fatherless :

And his wife a widow.

Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread:

Let them seek it also out of desolate places.

Let there be no man to pity him:

Nor to have compassion upon his fatherless children.

Let his posterity be destroyed:

And in the next generation let his name be clean put out" (cix. 7-12).

And such sentences do not stand alone.

" Let death come hastily upon them;

And let them go down quick into hell,"

cries the author of Psalm 55. Or listen to this exultant jubilation —

"The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance;

He shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the ungodly; "3

or this from Psalm 140 —

"Let hot burning coals fall upon them:

Let them be cast into the fire, and into the pit,

that they never rise up again" (ver. 10).

The difficulty of these and similar utterances have been felt in the past, and many have been the attempts to explain them away. Two only seem to call for serious critical examination. There is the view associated with the name of Bishop Home, that the verbs rendered in our A.V. of the Bible as optatives might, with equal propriety, be rendered as futures. This method of translation, says Bishop Perowne,4 would escape from the difficulty by giving us predictions for imprecations. Thus, instead of reading, u Let his days be few; let his children be fatherless," etc., these expositors would read, " His days shall be few : his children shall be fatherless." But this is an expedient, adds the Bishop, which does violence to the rules of language. The verbs are optatives, not futures; and they are rightly rendered so in the English version.

The other method of attempting to solve the difficulty is to regard the curses as those, not of the Psalmist, but of the Psalmist's enemies. This mode of interpretation has found many advocates. Speaking of Psalm 109, Dr. Charles Taylor said, " As thousands of serious Christians have been much distressed in reading this psalm, which is generally supposed to contain the curses of David upon his enemies, it will not be improper to inform them and future readers that, when duly considered, it will appear clearly to contain the curses of David's enemies upon David. For the curses are not about many, but about one person only : and besides, both in the beginning and at the end of the psalm, David complains of the dreadful things spoken about him by others." But even if this view were exegetically tenable in the case of this particular psalm, which Dr. Kirkpatrick5 considers doubtful, expressions of a similar kind are found elsewhere in the Psalter which cannot be so treated.

The imprecations, then, of the Book of Psalms remain, and, like the minatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, must be frankly accepted in their natural and obvious sense. It is no doubt true6 that, as a member of a covenant-keeping community, the Psalmist identified himself with the friends of God, and counted those who opposed him as God's enemies also (see Psalm 139. verses 21, 22). But the fact remains, that the Psalmist meant what he said when, with reference to his enemies, he cried —

"Let them be wiped out of the book of the living;

And not be written among the righteous."

Nothing but disservice to the cause of true religion can possibly come from attempting to defend, with Calvin and other expositors, such utterances as these. It only leads, as history abundantly shows, to the justification of such deeds as those committed by the Crusaders under Godfrey de Bouillon at the siege of Jerusalem, or as the slaughter of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day. "By what law can you justify this atrocity which you would commit," asks Henry Morton, the humble minister in Old Mortality, of the brutal Balfour of Burley. "If thou art ignorant of it," replied Burley, "thy companion is well aware of the law which gave the men of Jericho to the sword of Joshua the son of Nun." "Yes," answered the divine, "but we live under a better dispensation, which instructeth us to return good for evil, and to pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us."

The great novelist was right. The imprecatory psalms, like the wars of Joshua, belong to the Old Dispensation and not to the New. They reflect the spirit of Elijah, not the spirit of Christ.

Nowhere is this more clearly and emphatically enunciated than by the Master Himself in the Sermon on the Mount, when He said, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."7

These utterances, then, says Dr. Kirkpatrick, in summing up his admirable discussion on the subject, " belong to the spirit of the O.T. and not of the N.T., and by it they must be judged. They belong to the age in which the martyr's dying prayer was not, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge ' (Acts 7. ver. 60), but, * Jehovah look upon it, and require it ' (2 Chron. 24. ver. 22)." "It is impossible," he adds, "that such language should be repeated in its old and literal sense by any follower of Him who has bidden us to love our enemies, and pray for them that persecute us."8 Since, then, the curses of the imprecatory psalms are not only alien to the spirit of the New Testament, but are distinctly forbidden in the Sermon on the Mount, it is surely not too much to hope that before long the public use of them will be discontinued in Christian assemblies.

2. THE SENSE OF SIN.

Another aspect of the Psalter in which the teaching seems to be defective as com pared with that of the New Testament, is the sense of sin. We meet with assertions of innocency and uprightness which, as Bishop Perowne says, almost startle us by their confidence. Thus in Psalm 7. ver. 8 the Psalmist appeals to God —

"Judge me, O God, according to my righteousness,

And according to the innocency that is in me."

Or, in Psalm 17. ver. 3, conscious of his own integrity, He cries —

"Thou hast tried me, and findest no evil thought in me,

I am purposed that my mouth shall not offend."

Again, in Psalm 18, which is generally admitted to be a genuine utterance of the poet-king, he boldly says —

"The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness;

According to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me."

But in Psalm 26 we meet with this feeling of conscious uprightness in a still more unequivocal form. The Psalmist calls upon the Lord, with passionate entreaty, to do him justice. He pleads the integrity of his life. He offers himself to the scrutiny of the great Searcher of hearts. " Judge me," he cries —

"Examine me, O Lord, and prove me;

Try my reins, and my heart.

. . . . .

I will wash my hands in innocency;

And so will I go to Thine altar.

. . . . .

As for me, I will walk in my perfectness:

O redeem me, and be gracious unto me."

It is possible that too much has been made of these assertions of innocency. They have no likeness whatever to the self-righteousness and self-satisfaction of the Pharisee. The Psalmist, it may well be, has been accused of some particular crime, and he is conscious of his entire innocence. His conscience is clear in the sight of God. He is no hypocrite; and there is nothing pious or meritorious in making general confessions of depravity. Rather, with childlike trust and simple faith, he throws himself upon Jehovah, who " knoweth the heart and trieth the reins."

All the same, it must be freely admitted that " the exceeding sinfulness of sin " was not revealed to the saints of the old dispensation.9 It it only in the light of the Cross of Calvary that sin appears " in all its blackness and malignity." And yet, here and there in the Psalter, we do meet with expressions of sinfulness so deep and profound that the Christian Church has deliberately chosen certain Psalms for use in seasons of penitence and humiliation. From the time of Origen, seven Psalms have been known as Penitential Psalms. In two of them especially— the 32nd and the 51st — the deepest contrition is expressed. In the latter the source of sin is recognised. David, says Robertson of Brighton,10 "lays on himself the blame of a tainted nature, instead of that of a single fault — * Conceived in sin.' From his first moments up till then, he saw sin — sin — sin : nothing but sin." The blessedness of pardon is also realised. "The joy of penitence," writes Archbishop Alexander, " fills the 32nd Psalm. It is the idea which was clothed in flesh and blood by Him who created the Parable of the Prodigal. The 'songs of deliverance,' of which it speaks mingle with the deep swell of the Angels' joy, and the refrain that rushes from the Father's lips."11

It is, however, the tendency of modern criticism to minimise the personal element in the Psalter. " In the Psalmists, as such," says Dr. Cheyne,12 the individual consciousness was all but lost in the corporate. The Psalter is a monument of Church-consciousness." He would be content, with Dr. Robertson Smith, to see even in Psalm 51, simply " a prayer for the restoration and sanctification of Israel in the mouth of a prophet of the Exile." The view cannot be regarded as impossible, however contrary to traditional exegesis, and however it may appear to fail to account for the personal language of the Psalm. That a deep sense of individual sin is not "of frequent occurrence in the Psalter may be at once admitted;13 but it seems to be clearly present in some instances, and it is difficult to understand the religious position of the Psalmist, especially his pro found sense of communion with God,14 without giving it due acknowledgment. It falls, indeed, far short of the depth of sin as revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus and in the tragedy of Calvary; but the Psalmist is conscious that wrong-doing acts as a barrier between himself and God, and in a state of contrition he cries —

"I acknowledge my sin unto thee,

And mine unrighteousness have I not hid.

I said, I will confess my sins unto the Lord;

And so thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin."

3. THE PROBLEMS OF PAIN AND PROSPERITY.

A very brief treatment of this aspect of the Psalter must suffice. Among the moral problems which disturbed the mind of the pious Hebrew under the old dispensation, was the double one of the suffering of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked. We meet with it in many of the psalms; it is the special problem of the Book of Job. With the vision of human life bounded by " threescore years and ten "; or at its best with the hope of immortality but fitfully and dimly recognised, the thoughtful Jew could not but be perplexed with the patent facts of existence. He saw the wicked flourishing like a green bay-tree; while, it may be, he himself was hard at death's door. " I am weary of my groaning," he cries, " every night wash I my bed, and water my couch with my tears."15

It must be remembered that among the Hebrew saints sickness and suffering and premature death were regarded as tokens of divine displeasure, and it is in the light of this belief that many Old Testament passages must be read. This is the position of the three friends in the magnificent poem we call the Book of Job. This, too, is the feeling of Hezekiah16 in his famous lamentation, when he turned his face towards the wall. So, according to tradition, with David when, in Psalm 6, he prays —

"O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger,

Neither chasten me in thy displeasure."

Or, in Psalm 38, when in almost identical language he cries —

"O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath:

Neither chasten me in thy displeasure."

The conception of pain as a discipline of love had hardly entered into their calculations. The Lord's teaching17 in the Sermon on the Mount as to the blessedness of " those that mourn," of those that "are persecuted for righteousness' sake," had not been fully revealed unto them. The teaching of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,18 that " whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth," was only dimly realised. The Old Testament believer could hardly be expected to say with David Livingstone that " pain is only a means of enforcing love," or with the Christian poet of America —

"Let us be patient! These severe afflictions

     Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

     Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapours;

     Amid these earthly damps,

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers

     May be heaven's distant lamps."19

The problem of the prosperity of the wicked is specially prominent in Psalms 37 and 73. No clear light, it must be remembered, had as yet been thrown upon the New Testament doctrine of future rewards and punishments. The Psalmist is concerned with this life only, and he clings to the thought that, in spite of apparent immunity, the prosperity of the ungodly will be short lived. "Fret not thyself," he cries —

"because of the ungodly;

Neither be thou envious against the evil doers.

For they shall soon be mown down like the grass,

And be withered even as -the green herb."20

In Psalm 73 the thought of " the ungodly in such prosperity " weighs heavily on the mind of the poet —

"They are in no peril of death;

But are lusty and strong.

They come in no misfortune like other folk;

Neither are they plagued like other men."

The problem was too hard for solution, until he went into the sanctuary of God, when, he tells us, he understood the end of these men. "Oh!" he cries—

"How suddenly do they consume;

Perish, and come to a fearful end! "

The doctrine of inevitable retribution is the solution of the perplexing theme.

" Though the mills of God grind slowly,

Yet they grind exceeding small;

Though with patience He stands waiting,

With exactness grinds He all."21

The wicked have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Their sin will surely find them out. Like the splendour of the meadows they will fade away.

Yet, it will be noticed, the author of the 73rd Psalm reaches a higher stage. In spite of the incongruity of life, there is a reward for the righteous. He finds his happiness in God. In words of exquisite beauty, which, as Bishop Perowne truly says, lift us up above the world into a higher and holier atmosphere, he cries —

"Nevertheless, I am always by thee:

Thou hast holden me by my right hand.

Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel,

And afterward receive me with glory.

Whom have I in heaven but thee?

And there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee.

My flesh and my heart faileth:

But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."

It is almost an anticipation of St. Paul's words, when, in his Roman prison, amid the triumph of his enemies, he wrote to his friends at Philippi — " I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me."22