Title and Traditional Authorship.— The Hebrew title of the book is 0⅛∏D, tëhillïm, or 0⅛ ΙSp, “the book of hymns” or rather “songs of praise.” The singular π∙>πn is properly the infinitive or nomen verbi of ⅛∏, a verb employed in the technical language of the temple service for the execution of a jubilant song of praise to the accompaniment of music and the blare of the priestly trumpets (1 Chron. xvi. 4 sq., xxv. 3; 2 Chron. v. 12 sqf. The name is not therefore equally applicable to all psalms, and in the later Jewish ritual the synonym hallel specially designates two series of psalms, cxiii.-cxviii. and cxlv.-cl., of which the former was sung at the three great feasts, the encaenia, and the new moon, and the latter at the daily morning prayer. That the whole book is named “praises” is clearly due to the fact that it was the manual of the temple service of song, in which praise was the leading feature. But for an individual psalm the usual name is “liDTö (in the Bible only in titles of psalms), which is applicable to any piece designed to be sung to a musical accompaniment. Of this word ^αλ∕Λ<⅛, “psalm,” is a translation, and in the Greek Bible the whole book is called ψaλpol or ^αλτψHov. The title ¾i'aλ∕xoi or βcβλbs ψaλμωv is used in the New Testament (Luke xx. 42, xxiv. 44; Acts i. 20), but in Heb. iv. 7 we find another title, namely “David.” Hippolytus tells us that in his time most Christians said “the Psalms of David,” and believed the whole book to be his; but this title and belief are both of Jewish origin, for in 2 Mac. ii. 13 τα τον Δαυίδ means the Psalter, and the title of the apocryphal “Psalter of Solomon” implies that the previously existing Psalter was ascribed to David. Jewish tradition does not make David the author of all the psalms; but as he was regarded as the founder and legislator of the temple psalmody (1 Chron., ut sup. ; Ezra iii. 10; Neh. xii. 36, 45 sq.; Ecclus. xlvii. 8 sqf, so also he was held to have completed and arranged the whole book, though according to Talmudic tradition he incorporated psalms by ten other authors, Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Hernan, Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. With this it agrees that the titles of the psalms name no one later than Solomon, and even he is not recognized as a psalmodist by the most ancient tradition, that of the LXX., which omits him from the title of Ps. cxxvii, and makes Ps. lxxii. be written not by but of him. The details of the tradition of authorship show considerable variation; according to the Talmudic view Adam is author of the Sabbath psalm, xcii., and Melchizedek of Ps. cx., while Abraham is identified with Ethan the Ezrahite (Ps. lxxxix.). But, according to older Jewish tradition attested by Origen, Ps. xcii. is by Moses, to whom are assigned Pss. xc.-c. inclusive, according to a general rule that all anonymous pieces are by the same hand with the nearest preceding psalm whose author is named; and Ps. cx., which by its title is Davidic, seems to have been given to Melchizedek to avoid the dilemma of Matt, xxii. 41 sq.
Origen’s rule accounts for all the psalms except i. and ii., which were sometimes reckoned as one poem (Acts xiii. 33 in the Western text; Origen ; B. Berakhoth, f. 9b), and appear to have been ascribed to David (Acts iv. 25).
The opinion of Jerome (Praef. in Ps. Hebf and other Christian writers that the collector of the Psalter was Ezra does not seem to rest on Jewish tradition.
Nature and Origin of the Collection.— Whatever may be the value of the titles to individual psalms, there can be no question that the tradition that the Psalter was collected by David is not historical; for no one doubts that some of the psalms date from after the Babylonian exile. The truth that underlies the tradition is that the collection is essentially the hymn-book of the second temple, and it was therefore ascribed to David, because it was assumed, as we see clearly from Chronicles, that the order of worship in the second temple was the same as in the first, and had David as its father: as Moses completed the law of Israel for all time before the people entered Canaan, so David completed the theory and contents of the temple psalmody before the temple itself was built. When we thus understand its origin, the tradition becomes really instructive, and may be translated into a statement which throws light on a number of points connected with the book, namely, that the Psalter was (finally, at least) collected with a liturgical purpose. Thus, though the Psalms represent a great range of individual religious experience, they avoid such situations and expressions as are too unique to be used in acts of public devotion. Many of the psalms are doxologies or the like, expressly written for the temple; others are made up of extracts from older poems in a way perfectly natural in a hymn-book, but otherwise hardly intelligible. Such ancient hymns as Exod. xv. 1 sq., Judges v., 1 Sam. ii. 1 sq., are not included in the collection, though motives borrowed from them are embodied in more modern psalms; the interest of the collector, we see, was not historical but liturgical. Again, the temple, Zion, the solemn feasts, are constantly kept in the foreground. All these points go to show that the collection was not only used but actually formed for use in the temple.
The question now arises, Was the collection a single act or is the Psalter made up of several older collections? And here we have first to observe that in the Hebrew text the Psalter is divided into five books, each of which closes with a doxology. The scheme of the whole is as follows :— Book I., Pss. L-xli.: all these are ascribed to David except i., ii., X. (which is really part of ix. ), xxxiii. (ascribed to David in LXX.); doxology, xli. 13. Book II., Pss. xlii.-lxxii.: of these xlii.-xlix. are ascribed to the Korahites (xliii. being part of xlii.), 1. to Asaph, li,-lxxi. to David (except lxvi., lxvii., Ixxi. anonymous; in LXX. the last two bear David’s name), lxxii, to Solomon; doxology, lxxii. 18, 19 followed by the subscription “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” Book HL, Pss. lxxiιi,-lxxxix.: here lxxiii,- Ixxxiii. bear the name of Asaph, lxxxiv., lxxxv., Ixxxvii., Ixxxviii. that of the Korahites, lxxxvi. of David, Ixxxviii. of Hernan, lxxxix. of Ethan; doxology, Ixxxix. 52. Book IV., Pss. xc.-cvi.: all are anonymous except xc. (Moses), ci., ciii. (David),—LXX. gives also civ. to David; here the doxology is peculiar, “Blessed be Jehovah God of Israel from everlasting and to everlasting. And let all the people say Amen, Hallelujah.” Book V., Pss. cvii.-cl.: of these cviii.-cx., cxxii., cxxiv., cxxxi., cxxxiii., cxxxviii. - cxlv. are ascribed to David, and cxxvii. to Solomon, and cxx.-cxxxiv. are pilgrimage psalms; LXX. varies considerably from the Hebrew as to the psalms to be ascribed to David; the book closes with a group of doxological psalms.
The division into five books was known to Hippolytus, but a closer examination of the doxologies shows that it does not represent the original scheme of the Psalter; for, while the doxologies to the first three books are no part of the psalms to which they are attached, but really mark the end of a book in a pious fashion not uncommon in Eastern literature, that to book iv. with its rubric addressed to the people plainly belongs to the psalm, or rather to its liturgical execution, and does not therefore really mark the close of a collection once separate. In point of fact books iv. and v. have so many common characters that there is every reason to regard them as a single great group. Again, the main part of books ii. and iii. (Pss. xlii.-lxxxiii.) is distinguished from the rest of the Psalter by habitually avoiding the name Jehovah (the Lord) and using Elohim (God) instead, even in cases like Ps. 1. 7, where “I am Jehovah thy God” of Exod. XX. 2 is quoted but changed very awkwardly to “I am God thy God.” This is not due to the authors of the individual psalms, but to an editor; for Ps. liii. is only another recension of Ps. xiv., and Ps. lxx. repeats part of Ps. xl., and here Jehovah is six times changed to Elohim, while the opposite change happens but once. The Elohim psalms, then, have undergone a common editorial treatment distinguishing them from the rest of the Psalter. And they make up the mass of books ii. and iii., the remaining psalms, lxxxiv.-lxxxix,, appearing to be a sort of appendix. But when we look at the Elohim psalms more nearly we see that they contain two distinct elements, Davidic psalms and psalms ascribed to the Levitical choirs (sons of Korah, Asaph). The Davidic collection as we have it splits the Levitical psalms into two groups and actually divides the Asaphic Ps. 1. from the main Asaphic collection, lxxiii.- lxxxiii. This order can hardly be original, especially as the Davidic Elohim psalms have a separate subscription (Ps. lxxii. 20). But if we remove them we get a continuous body of Levitical Elohim psalms, or rather two collections, the first Korahitic and the second Asaphic, to which there have been added by way of appendix by a non-Elohistic editor a supplementary group of Korahite psalms and one psalm (certainly late) ascribed to David. The formation of books iv. and v. is certainly later than the Elohistic redaction of books ii. and iii., for Ps. cviii. is made up of two Elohim psalms (Ivii. 7-11, lx. 5-12) in the Elohistic form, though the last two books of the Psalter are generally Jehovistic. We can thus distinguish the following steps in the redaction :—(a) the formation of a Davidic collection (book i.) with a closing doxology; (δ) a second Davidic collection (li.-lxii.) with doxology and subscription; (c) a twofold Levitical collection (xlii.-xlix.; 1., lxxiii.-lxxxiii.); (rf) an Elohistic redaction and combination of (ft) and (c); (e) the addition of a non-Elohistic supplement to (d) with a doxology; (∕) a collection later than (d), consisting of books iv., v. And finally the anonymous psalms i., ii., which as anonymous were hardly an original part of book i., may have been prefixed after the whole Psalter was completed. We see too that it is only in the latest collection (books iv., v.) that anonymity is the rule, and titles, especially titles with names, occur only sporadically. Elsewhere the titles run in series and correspond to the limits of older collections.
Date of the Collection.— A process of collection which involves so many stages must plainly have taken a considerable time, and the question arises whether we can fix a limit for its beginning and end or even assign a date for any one stage of the process. An inferior limit for the final collection is given by the Septuagint translation. But this translation itself was not written all at once, and its history is obscure; we only know from the prologue to Ecclesiasticus that the Hagiographa, and doubtless therefore the Psalter, were read in Greek in Egypt about 130 b.c. or somewhat later. And the Greek Psalter, though it contains one apocryphal psalm at the close, is essentially the same as the Hebrew; there is nothing to suggest that the Greek was first translated from a less complete Psalter and afterwards extended to agree with the extant Hebrew. It is therefore reasonable to hold that the Hebrew Psalter was completed and recognized as an authoritative collection long enough before 130 b.c. to allow of its passing to the Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria. Beyond this the external evidence for the completion of the collection does not carry us. It appears indeed from 1 Chron. xvi., 2 Chron. vi. 41, 42, that various psalms belonging to books iv. and v. were current in the time of the Chronicler,—that is, towards the close of the Persian or more probably in the earlier part of the Greek period. But it is not certain that the psalms he quotes (xcvi., cv., cvi., cxxxii.) already existed in their place in our Psalter, or that Ps. cvi. even existed in its present form. Turning now to internal evidence, we find the surest starting-point in the Levitical psalms of the Elohistic collection. These, as we have seen, form two groups, referred to the sons of Korah and to Asaph. At the beginning of the Greek period or somewhat later Asaph was taken to be a contemporary of David and chief of the singers of his time (Neh. xii. 46), or one of the three chief singers belonging to the three great Levitical houses (1 Chron. xxv. 1 sq.). But the older history knows nothing of an individual Asaph; at the time of the return from Babylon the guild of singers as a whole was called Bnë Asaph (Ezra ii. 41), and so apparently it was in the time of Nehemiah (Neh. xi. 22, Heb.). The singers or Asaphites are at this time still distinguished from the Levites; the oldest attempt to incorporate them with that tribe appears in Exod. vi. 24, where Abiasaph—that is, the eponym of the guild of Asaphites—is made one of the three sons of Korah. But when singers and Levites were fused the Asaphites ceased to be the only singers, and ultimately, as we see in Chronicles, they were distinguished from the Korahites and reckoned to Gershom (1 Chron. vi.), while the head of the Korahites is Hernan, as in the title of Ps. lxxxviii. It is only in the appendix to the Elohistic psalm-book that we find Heman and Ethan side by side with Asaph, as in the Chronicles, but the body of the collection distinguishes between two guilds of singers, Korahites and Asaphites, and is therefore as a collection younger than Nehemiah, but presumably older than Chronicles with its three guilds.
The contents of the Korahite and Asaphic psalms give no reason to doubt that they really were collected by or for these two guilds. Both groups are remarkable by the fact that they hardly contain any recognition of present sin on the part of the community of J ewish faith—though they do confess the sin of Israel in the past—but are exercised with the observation that prosperity does not follow righteousness either in the case of the individual (xlix., lxxiii.) or in that of the nation, which suffers notwithstanding its loyalty to God, or even on account thereof (xliv., lxxix.). Now the rise of the problems of individual faith is the mark of the age that followed Jeremiah, while the confident assertion of national righteousness under misfortune is a characteristic mark of pious Judaism after Ezra, in the period of the law but not earlier. Malachi, Ezra, and Nehemiah, like Haggai and Zechariah, are still very far from holding that the sin of Israel lies all in the past. Again, a considerable number of these psalms (xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., lxxx.) point to an historical situation which can be very definitely realized. They are post-exile in their whole tone and belong to a time when prophecy had ceased and the synagogue worship was fully established (lxxiv. 8, 9). But the Jews are no longer the obedient slaves of Persia; there has been a national rising and armies have gone forth to battle. Yet God has not gone forth with them: the heathen have been victorious, blood has flowed like water round Jerusalem, the temple has been defiled, and these disasters assume the character of a religious persecution. These details would fit the time of religious persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, to which indeed Ps. lxxiv. is referred (as a prophecy) in 1 Mac. vii. 16. But against this reference there is the objection that these psalms are written in a time of the deepest dejection and yet are psalms of the temple choirs. Now when the temple was reopened for worship after its profanation by Antiochus the Jews were victorious and a much more joyous tone was appropriate. Besides, if the psalms are of the Maccabee period, they can have been no original part of the Elohistic psalm-book, which certainly was not collected so late. But there is one and only one time in the Persian period to which they can be referred, viz., that of the great civil wars under Artaxerxes III. Ochus (middle of 4th century b.c.). See Persia, vol. xviii. p. 580, and Phoenicia, ib. p. 809. The Jews were involved in these and were severely chastised, and we know from Josephus that the temple was defiled by the Persians and humiliating conditions attached to the worship there. It would appear that to the Jews the struggle took a theocratic aspect, and it is not impossible that the hopeful beginnings of a national movement, which proved in the issue so disastrous, are reflected in some of the other pieces of the collection. All this carries the collection of the Elohistic psalm-book down to quite the last years of the Persian period at the earliest, and with this it agrees—to name but one other point—that the view of Israel’s past history taken in Ps. lxxviii., where the final rejection of the house of Joseph is co-ordinated with the fall of Shiloh and the rise of Zion and the Davidic kingdom, indicates a standpoint very near to that of Chronicles. The fusion of the separate Korahite and Asaphic psalm-books in a single collection along with the second group of Davidic psalms may very probably be connected with the remodelling of the singers in three choirs which Chronicles presupposes.
Now books iv. and v. are, as we have seen, later than the Elohistic redaction of books ii. and iii., so that the collection of the last part of the Psalter must, if our argument up to this point is sound, be thrown into the Greek period, and probably not the earliest part thereof. And this conclusion is borne out by a variety of indications. First of all, the language of some of these psalms clearly points to a very late date indeed. The Jews had even in the time of Nehemiah (Neh. xiii. 24) been in danger of forgetting their own tongue and adopting a jargon compounded with neighbouring idioms; but the restorers of the law fought against this tendency with vigour and with so much success that very tolerable Hebrew was written for at least a century longer. But in such a psalm as cxxxix. the language is a real jargon, a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, which, in a hymn accepted for use in the temple, shows the Hebrew speech to have reached the last stage of decay. Again, though no part of the Psalter shows clearer marks of a liturgical purpose, we find that in books iv. and v. the musical titles have entirely disappeared. The technical terms, that is, of the temple music which are still recognized by the Chronicler have gone out of use, presumably because they were already become unintelligible, as they were when the Septuagint version was made. This implies a revolution in the national music which we can hardly explain in any other way than by the influence of that Hellenic culture which, from the time of the Macedonian conquest, began to work such changes on the whole civilization and art of the East. Once more the general tone of large parts of this collection is much more cheerful than that of the Elohistic psalm-book. It begins with a psalm (xc.) ascribed in the title to Moses, and seemingly designed to express feelings appropriate to a situation analogous to that of the Israelites when, after the weary march through the wilderness, they stood on the borders of the promised land. It looks back on a time of great trouble and forward to a brighter future. In some of the following psalms there are still references to deeds of oppression and violence, but more generally Israel appears as happy under the law with such a happiness as it did enjoy under the Ptolemies during the 3d century b.c. The problems of divine justice are no longer burning questions; the righteousness of God is seen in the peaceful felicity of the pious (xci., xcii., &c.). Israel, indeed, is still scattered and not triumphant over the heathen, but even in the dispersion the Jews are under a mild rule (cvi. 46), and the commercial activity of the nation has begun to develop beyond the seas (cvii. 26 sq.). The whole situation and vein of piety here are strikingly...
