Religious Ideas. The Psalms are the outpouring of the spirit of devotion to God. It is to God that the Psalmist's thoughts and hopes are directed, to whom he looks for deliverance, or whom he blesses for personal or national mercies. The Psalms are full of expressions of trust in God at all times, and they contain glowing testimonies to the perfection of God, to His love, His power, His faithfulness, His righteousness. They are specially valuable to us as a mirror and mould of devotion. They show us the human heart laid before God in all its moods and emotions;in penitence, in desire for holiness, in doubt and perplexity, in danger, in desolation, or, again, in deliverance and triumph. The reader will always find something in the Psalms in sympathy with his own spiritual state. They are 'as comprehensive as the human soul and varied as human life.. they treat not life after the fashion of an age or people, but life in its rudiments.' A problem frequently touched upon in the Psalms is the difficulty of reconciling the sufferings of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked with God's moral government of the world: cp. Intro, to Job. This problem is handled at length in Psalms 37, 73. In the former psalm the solution reached is the somewhat superficial one that the success of the wicked is but temporary, and that the righteous will soon come to his own. In the latter the writer goes deeper. His faith had been severely tried by his experiences, but when he cast his burden on the Lord, as he worshipped in the sanctuary, he received new light in his darkness, and was enabled to leave the issues of the future with God. The one unfailing truth which comforted the Psalmists was 'The Lord reigneth.' Evil may endure for a time, and the wicked may oppress the just, but 'He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh' at them, and wait His opportunity to deliver His servants. There is nothing more noticeable in the Psalms than this triumphant faith in God's overruling power—a faith which neither personal nor national misfortune was able to destroy.
This is one aspect of the Psalmists' doctrine of God: another aspect of it is found in the divine relation to nature. Everything in nature speaks of God's power and glory. 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.' The Hebrew poets have no pleasure in nature for her own sake; they value her only as she speaks of the invisible presence of God. If they regard the earth, they view it as the footstool of the Lord; if they see the clouds gathering, they speak of them as the curtains for Jehovah's pavilion; if they listen to the thunder rolling, they hear in it 'the voice of the Lord upon the waters'; if they watch the lightning flashing, they think of it as 'the arrows of the most High.' It is, however, the transcendence rather than the immanence of God that is the thought of the Psalmists' minds: while He uses nature to make known His presence and power, He is high above it (cp. Psalms 18:19; Psalms 18:29, 93).
Another point that may be noticed is the attitude of the Psalmists to ritual and sacrifice. There are frequent references in the Psalms to the Temple worship and sacrifices. The Psalmists declare their intention of offering burnt offerings and paying their vows in the presence of all the people (e.g. Psalms 66:13; Psalms 116:14; Psalms 116:17;). The spiritual aspect of tie ritual is, however, the most prominent in the Psalmists' thoughts. They know that offerings are insufficient of themselves, and that they are only valuable in so far as they typify the 'living sacrifice' of self, which every true worshipper must offer. Indeed, if that sacrifice be offered, the material offering is unnecessary (cp. Psalms 40:6; Psalms 50:7). In Psalms 51 the writer at one moment declares that sacrifice and burnt offering are not desired by God; 'the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit' (Psalms 51:16); and immediately afterwards declares that only when the walls of Jerusalem are rebuilt can sacrifice be acceptable to Jehovah (Psalms 51:18). It is probable that the latter vv. are a later liturgical addition; but, even so, the whole psalm was used without any sense of incongruity.
Another feature of the Psalms is their intense patriotism. Patriotism and religion were inseparably associated by the Hebrews. That God was good to Israel was the first article of their creed. The historical Psalms developed this idea, and illustrate it from the national history (e.g. Psalms 104, 105, 106). His blessings were destined to teach them His ways, and make His mighty power known to them (Psalms 106:8). Even His punishment was for their good, to renew them to repentance and bring them to realise the greatness of their privilege (Psalms 106:43, etc.). The purpose of God in choosing Israel was that they might extend His Kingdom. Sometimes, indeed, 'the heathen' or 'the nations' are regarded as God's enemies (Psalms 2:1, etc.); but at other times they are looked upon as the witnesses of the Psalmists' praise (Psalms 57:9), and even as God's people (Psalms 47:9). God's mercy is given to Israel that they make His way known upon the earth, and His saving health among all nations (Psalms 67:1; Psalms 67:7). But, above all, Israel is His peculiar people (Psalms 73:1); their enemies are His enemies; misfortunes to them are hindrances to His cause; their success is His triumph.
In this lies the explanation of two features of this book which call for comment—the self-righteousness of the Psalmists, and their vindictive resentment against their enemies. Let us remember at the outset the distinction between the OT. and NT. standards in this matter. We must not expect to find in the OT. the humility arising from the deep sense of sin, or the meek, forgiving spirit, inculcated by the Lord Jesus Christ. To judge the Psalmists by these standards is unfair, and the attempt to explain away the plain meaning of their words, in order to palliate a moral fault, is unsound exegesis. None the less it is possible, within limits, to defend the position taken up in what are called the imprecatory Psalms (e.g. 58, 68, 69, 109) without doing violence to sound ethical standards. The Psalmist claimed to be 'holy' and 'perfect,' without implying all that we mean by those lofty words. He meant that he was striving to be upright, a man of integrity, mindful of the claims of God upon him according to the law, and to the best of his ability endeavouring to be faithful to duty. He was placed, however, in the midst of men animated by entirely different motives; some of them openly and violently opposed to the God of Israel and His worship, others nominally acknowledging Him, but in reality idolaters, or disloyal to Jehovah. The contrast between the faithful and the unfaithful was sharp and strong; the former were always in a minority, they usually suffered cruel persecution, and were often in extremest peril. Under these circumstances it is easy to understand that the Psalmist felt entitled to identify himself with the cause of righteousness. He pleads for his own personal triumph, and the utter overthrow of his enemies, with a passionate earnestness, which is only warrantable in the light of the words, 'Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee? I hate them with perfect hatred, I count them mine enemies.' Not to hate the enemies of Jehovah is to be a traitor to His holy covenant.
The distinction familiar to us between hating the sin and being angry with the sinner, and the possibility of loving the offender with a desire to save him, were not present to the mind of the Psalmist. Evil and evil-doer were for him identical, and in this respect he stands upon a lower ethical plane than the Christian. Further, the forms of imprecation common in the Psalms belong to an earlier, a sterner, and more violent age than ours. Such horrible curses as are invoked in Psalms 109:6 aref rightly, shocking in our ears. But this moral inferiority of the earlier dispensation once granted, no true Christian can afford in a Pharisaical spirit to look down upon these faithful men to whom the light of the gospel had not been granted. Rather should we ask ourselves what is to be learned from denunciations in which Christians are forbidden to indulge. Personal resentment is always unlawful to the man who takes the Sermon on the Mount as his guide; but there is a stern hatred of evil manifest in the Psalms which is only too rare in later and more indulgent days. The Puritan strain in our national character is to some extent a reflexion of the spirit of whole-hearted and indignant righteousness which breathes in the denunciatory Psalms; and, despite the hardness and narrowness too often associated with it, that spirit has proved of the utmost value in its uncompromising protest against prevalent evils in social and national life.
Another fact must be borne in mind, if we would fully understand the reasons for the strong denunciatory element found in the Psalms. To the Jew no clear revelation had been granted of a future life his horizon was, for the most part, limited by the present. The true Israelite did, in a sense, look to the future. He hoped for a numerous posterity as a mark of God's favour, he anticipated a better state of things for his nation and the world in the coming of the Messiah, and he certainly did not regard death as virtual annihilation. But he had no clear hope of immortality, no vision of a heaven as a state of future blessedness; neither the law nor the prophets warranted any such outlook beyond the grave. It followed that the cause of truth and right must be vindicated here and now, or it oould not, properly speaking, be vindicated at all. This at least was the attitude for the most part taken up by the orthodox Jew, and there was much to be said in its favour. It is easy for religious men of today, living in a land of freedom and amidst all the blessings of peace, and taught to expect a Day of Judgment in the future, when all earth's wrongs shall be completely redressed, to possess their souls in patience, and wait for the coming of the Day of God and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. But the problems of life pressed much more grievously upon the saint of old time, crushed by brute force, oppressed under a cruel and relentless Oriental despotism, with no earthly hope of redress, and no clear prospect of a better life to come. No wonder if such men prayed with a certain fierce indignation of soul, 'Up, Lord, and let not man have the upper hand; let the heathen be judged in thy sight, that the nations may know themselves to be but men.' But, it will be asked, had the Jew then no hope of immortality for himself, and is not the 16th Psalm a prophecy of the resurrection of Christ, as it is more than once declared to be in the NT.? The subject thus opened up cannot be adequately dealt with in a few sentences, and scholars have differed in their judgment upon it. The view taken by the present writer may be thus briefly expressed. No explicit revelation of a future life was given to the Jew, and no definite expectation of a future state of rewards and punishments entered into his ordinary view of life. But the truly devout Israelite possessed so clear and strong a sense of religion, so firm a hold by faith upon the living God, that he was enabled sometimes to transcend the conditions of his ordinary religious creed and reach a state of joyful personal confidence of a very lofty kind. These moments of insight and foresight were, however, comparatively few; the glimpses thus gained were transient, they belonged to the individual only, and could not furnish a basis for definite dogmatic teaching. Thus Job believed that his Redeemer would at the last appear and vindicate his cause upon the earth, though he had no light upon the time and manner of such manifestation, and the confidence expressed in Job 19:25 is the expression of an exalted mood which subsequent Chapter s prove not to have been permanent.
Similarly it will be found that some passages in the Psalms, such as Psalms 6:5; Psalms 30:9; Psalms 88:10 are full of gloomy foreboding concerning the future state. They describe it as a condition of helplessness and forgetfulness, which hardly deserves the name of life at all. There are other passages, however, of which Psalms 16:9; Psalms 17:15; Psalms 49:15; Psalms 73:24 are examples, in which the Psalmist's assurance of the care and favour of God is such that he appears to triumph not only over the dangers and vicissitudes of the present life, but over the fear of death itself. It is quite true that these hopes are not very clearly expressed, and that some commentators have questioned whether they contain an assured belief in immortality. But St. Peter's quotation from the 16th Psalm on the day of Pentecost shows that the words suggested a hope of immortality which was fully realised in the Resurrection of Christ. We may well find in the 16th and 73rd Psalms another illustration of the argument which the Lord Jesus Christ drew from the phrase 'The God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.' He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; and the Psalmists, who had God for their portion in this life, entertained a trust and confidence in God which at intervals blossomed into incipient hope that He who was not ashamed to be called their God would preserve them in life, in death and for ever.
The Messianic hope has been spoken of, and certain Psalms—2, 8, 16, 22, 45, 72, 110, and others—have been specifically styled Messianic Psalms. But here a distinction must be made. The word Messianic may be used either in the narrower sense of prophecies which contain a distinct reference to a personal Deliverer called the Messiah, or in a wider sense of predictions of great and glorious blessings to be enjoyed by the nation in a brighter and better age to come. Often without any reference to a personal Messiah, prophets and psalmists are found confidently anticipating a Day of God, when He shall appear in righteous judgment and shall manifest His glory among men. A little group of Psalms, of which 96-98 form the nucleus, may be described as Messianic, because they anticipate a theophany, a manifestation of God in the earth. They contemplate a period when in some sense God shall 'come and not keep silence,' when 'He cometh to judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.' The mode in which this is to be carried out is left indefinite, but the hope is invincible and inextinguishable. In the 2nd and 72nd Paalms a righteous earthly ruler of the house and dynasty of David is celebrated; in Psalms 110 the advent of a Priest-King is heralded, and the author of the Psalm looks to the Anointed One who is to rule in Zion, not as his son, but as his Lord. It would be a mistake, however, to restrict the conception of the Messianic hope to passages in which a personal Messiah is foretold. The 22nd Psalm, for example, is in its earlier portion clearly descriptive of the sufferings of the persecuted but faithful servant of God, and its language is frequently quoted in NT. in reference to Christ. But it contains no reference to the personal triumph of the sufferer, whilst the latter part of the Psalm points unquestionably to a great victory over unrighteousness, which is to be gained after and by means of his patient fidelity. The promise is here repeated which elsewhere is given in noble and more explicit words, 'He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.' The subject of the relation of the Psalms to Christ, and the fulfilment in the New Testament of hints and prophecies contained in the Old, is too large to be entered on here. It may suffice, however, to say that one simple key will open many otherwise difficult locks. Christ claimed in Luke 24:44 that many things were written 'in the psalms' concerning Him. St. Peter, in Acts 2, shows how this saying is to be understood. Words, which were true only in a secondary and imperfect sense of David as the writer of the 16th Psalm, received their complete and perfect illustration in the resurrection from the dead of David's greater Son. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The writers of the Psalms, like their brethren who are specifically called prophets, were inspired to write words true, indeed, of themselves and their contemporaries, but perfectly fulfilled only in Him of whom Moses in the Law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man and Son of God, the hope of the Psalmists and the Saviour of the world.
The Prayer-Book version of the Psalms was taken in 1549 from the English version of the Bible called the 'great Bible,' which was issued in 1540, and set up to be read in churches. In 1661, when the Prayer Book was revised, other portions of Scripture in the Prayer Book were changed for the AV of 1611. But the Psalter was not altered. People were accustomed to its wording, and it was thought to be more suitable for singing.