Psalms 91 - Introduction

XCI.

There are no data for ascertaining either the author or the date of this psalm. The variety of the figures employed seems to indicate a general view of life and its possible perils. It may have been a time when both war and pestilence were raging, but we cannot recover it. Whoever first breathed these words of trust, thousands have found them a source of strength and faith in the hour of trial and danger. Stier mentions that some years ago an eminent physician in St. Petersburg recommended this psalm as the best preservative against the cholera. It will also occur to every one that the psalm is the Hebrew, or, perhaps, rather the religious, expression of Horace’s ode,
“Integer vitæ seelerisque purus.”

The parallelism is fine and sustained.