The Book of Psalms counts one hundred and fifty hymns, and this evidently by design, for the Greek Version, which sometimes unites in one what are two psalms in the Hebrew and divides one Hebrew psalm into two, comes out with the same number. It is divided into five books, as is indicated in the Revised English Version, vis. Book I., Pss. 1-41; Book II., Pss. 42-72; Book III., Pss. 73-89; Book IV., Pss. 90-106; Book V., Pss. 107-150, each book ending with a liturgical doxology. The rabbis were probably right in the opinion that this fivefold division was made in imitation of the five books of the Pentateuch, but in some cases, as we shall see, the limits correspond to those of older separate books. The psalter has not inaptly been called the hymn book of the second temple. We learn from Jewish tradition that certain psalms were used in the liturgy of the Herodian temple on certain days or at certain seasons, and to many of them musical or liturgical directions are prefixed and interludes are noted ("Selah"), from which, apart from tradition, such a use would be inferred. It is evident from the familiarity with the Psalms which is shown in the New Testament and in contemporary Jewish writings, both Greek and Hebrew, that, like our hymn books, the Psalter was largely used for private devotion and edification.

The poems contained in the Psalter are from different ages and authors, and of widely diverse religious worth and poetical excellence. Some of them are unsurpassed in the religious literature of the world; others are the tedious production of authors who, like so many hymnists of all climes, were neither born nor made poets. Thanks to the translators, such pieces are a great deal better, so far as expression goes, in the Authorized English Version or in Luther's, than the original.

A modern hymn book is seldom, if ever, a fresh compilation from the sources; it is habitually made up from collections already in use, with the addition, perhaps, of the editor's gleanings from the sources, or of recent poems. The names of the collections thus used may be given, and the names of the authors—often taken along without verification. Editors of hymn books have also generally allowed themselves great liberties with the text of hymns, altering them to suit their own taste or the religious and theological idiosyncrasies of their sect; abridging, transposing, expanding, without scruple; and only in very modern times has a tardily awakened literary conscience constrained them to give notice of such changes. In this way mediÆval Catholic poets are made to sing good Protestant songs, or Calvinists and Methodists to drop their shibboleths and express themselves in a manner acceptable to Unitarians. The familiar hymn,

has been adapted to Buddhist use as,

with similar changes throughout, and if we did not know the Christian hymn, we might take the author for a good Shin-shu Buddhist, though an indifferent poet.

The editors of the Psalter proceeded in the same way, and the older recollections on which they worked can in part be recognized. It is observed that Books II. and III. of the Psalter (Pss. 42-89), or, more exactly, Pss. 42-83, must once have formed a collection by themselves, whose editor was averse to the use of the proper name Jehovah, and accordingly altered the text of the hymns where this name occurred by substituting the appellative God (Elohim), giving rise to such strange expressions as "O God, my God." Thus Ps. 53 is the same with Ps. 14, but wherever Jehovah stands in Ps. 14, "God" takes its place in Ps. 53; Ps. 70 is merely an extract from Ps. 40 (vss. 13-17) with the same change. In the latter, however, copyists, influenced by the parallel passage, have restored "Jehovah" in one (Greek) or two (Hebrew) places, as they have done in other of these psalms. This occurrence of the same hymn in two parts of the Psalter, of which another instance is Ps. 108 (made up of parts of two psalms in the elohistic book, lvii. 7-11, and lx. 5-12), is itself presumptive evidence that these parts once existed separately. At the time when the musical directions were prefixed to the psalms, the last two books (Pss. 90-150) seem not to have been included in the temple hymn book; for these directions, scattered through Pss. 1-89, are lacking from that point on, notwithstanding the fact that a larger proportion of the psalms in Pss. 90-150 were manifestly composed for public worship than in Pss. 1-89.

The titles of Psalms give the names of other collections from which individual psalms were taken. Thus twelve psalms, Pss. 42, 44-49, 84, 85, 87, 88, are hymns or songs of the Korahites, and eleven, Pss. 50, 73-83, of Asaph, who were according to the Chronicler—a good authority on the worship of his time—families, or hereditary guilds, of temple musicians, and seem, in this capacity, to have had special hymn books containing psalms which they sang, and which may also have been composed by members of the guild. The fact that the Korahite and Asaphite psalms are not scattered through the present Psalter, but appear in groups, and only in the elohistic hymn book (Pss. 42-89), confirms this view. When they were incorporated in the collection, the source was indicated by prefixing the name of the guild book to the individual psalms.

Another group of fifteen psalms (Pss. 120-134) bear in their titles, "The Song of the Ascents," a phrase which, by the irregularity of its form, shows that it was transferred mechanically from the title of the collection ("The Songs of the Ascents") to the individual poems. The ancient interpretation makes the "ascents" the fifteen steps, or ascending platforms, on which the levitical orchestra stood at the festival of the water-drawing on the evening after the first day of Tabernacles (hence the Authorized Version, Song of Degrees, i.e. Steps). We need not discuss the question; that these psalms constitute a liturgical unit selected for a specific ceremony is plain.

A considerable number of psalms have loosely prefixed to them the words Hallelu Jah (Praise ye Jah), which in the Hebrew text are frequently found at the end, having been erroneously carried back from the beginning of a following psalm. When this displacement (which is later than the Greek translation) is corrected, the Hallelujah psalms are 105-107, 111-118, 135, 136, 146-150. Here also a liturgical collection is naturally inferred. Jewish tradition informs us about the use of the "Hallel" (Pss. 113-118) and the "Great Hallel" (Ps. 136) at the festivals, and the name Hallel is also sometimes given to Pss. 146-148. Both the Hallels and the Songs of Degrees, it will be observed, are in the last of the three parts of the Psalter (Pss. 90-150).

Of greater interest is the large collection of psalms which bear individually the name of David. This name is found in the titles of all the psalms in Book I. (Pss. 1-41), except Pss. 1 and 2, 10 (properly a part of 9, as in the Greek Bible), and 33 (in the Greek Bible Davidic); further, in Book II., two groups, Pss. 51-65, 68-70, and thereafter, scattering, Pss. 86, 101, 103, 108-110, 122, 124, 131, 133, 138-145—73 psalms in all, or almost half the Psalter. Manuscripts of the Greek Bible add a varying number of others, and other versions do the same.

In the light of the phenomena we have already observed, we may confidently infer that there was once a collection of religious lyrics bearing some such title as "Hymns of David." So long as this book had a separate existence, the name would naturally not be repeated at the head of the individual poems in it; such repetition became necessary, however, when psalms from this book were taken up into a larger hymn book containing not only psalms from the Korahite and Asaphite collections but many anonymous hymns; just as the name of Charles Wesley would be attached to one of his hymns only when it was taken out of his own volume and included in a composite hymn book. By good fortune we have the colophon of this Davidic Psalter in Ps. lxxii. 20, in the words of a scribe: "The Prayers (an older name for Psalms) of David son of Jesse are finished," that is, the roll containing them is copied to the end—a very common Oriental form of colophon. Curiously enough, the hymn to which this note is annexed is said in its title to be by Solomon, to whom Ps. 127 (one of the Songs of Degrees) is similarly attributed. In both cases the ground of the ascription is plain: the editor thought that Ps. cxxvii. 1 referred to the building of the temple, while the prayer for wisdom with which Ps. 72 begins suggested to him Solomon's dream, 1 Kings 3.

From this Davidic hymn book came what is now the first book of the Psalter entire, except Ps. 1 and probably 2; further the groups in Book II. (51-65, 68-70, with 72), which probably stood immediately after Ps. 41. For it will be noted that the second (elohistic) part of the present Psalter (Pss. 42-89) is made up of Korahite, Asaphite, and Davidic psalms, and that in their present position the Davidic psalms, say Pss. 51-72, are thrust into the otherwise solid group of Asaphite hymns Pss. 50 ... 73-83. Further, the transposition of the Davidic psalms to the beginning of the book would bring the hymns of the guilds together. The elohistic recension does not extend consistently beyond Ps. 83; and Pss. 84-89 (Korahite) may therefore be regarded as a supplementary extract from the guild book.

The titles of several of the Davidic psalms specify the occasion and circumstances in which the poem was composed; these historical notes are especially numerous in the group Pss. 51-72 (see Pss. 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63), but occur also in the First Book (Pss. 3, 7, 18, 34), and in Ps. 142 (cf. Ps. 57). The incidents referred to are, with one exception, all narrated in the Books of Samuel. There is no reason to imagine that the editor had any tradition about the origin of these particular poems, much less authentic information on the subject. Precisely as in the ascription of Pss. 72 and 127 to Solomon, he combined what he took to be allusions to a historical situation in the poems with the history as he read it. Psalm 51, for example, is a confession of deep sinfulness, and seems to specify blood-guilt (vs. 14). When had David reason to express himself in this manner? Clearly after his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. It is a very familiar procedure. Modern commentators have made many similar guesses, but nobody attaches any authority to them.

Whether the scattered Davidic psalms in the last part of the Psalter (Pss. 90-150) are a gleaning from the Davidic hymn book of poems which had not been included by previous editors or come from some other source is uncertain; the latter is the more probable hypothesis.

The Psalter, in the form in which we have it, is one of the latest books in the Old Testament, for it contains poems in which the religious persecution of Antiochus IV. and the MaccabÆan struggle are clearly reflected, and very likely events still further down in the second century B.C. This was shown by an acute critic at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., and in the Reformation century John Calvin rightly referred Pss. 44 and 74 to the MaccabÆan times, and admitted the same possibility for Ps. 79. All these are from the Korahite and Asaphite collections included in the elohistic hymn book, which itself is not the youngest of the sources of our Psalter.

Numerous other psalms are, with greater or less probability, assigned to the same age; thus, Ps. 149, where the saints, with the high praises of God in their mouths and a two-edged sword in their hands, execute judgment on the heathen, is singularly apt to the MaccabÆan victories. Psalm 110 ("Davidic") most naturally is understood as one of the AsmonÆan princes, since in them alone priesthood and royalty were united.

There are, however, other and more conclusive criteria than references to historical events or persons. The religious situation in the Jewish community reflected in very many of the psalms is that of the Persian and Greek period, not that of the days of the kingdom. The strife of parties or of classes, on one side the righteous, the pious, the poor, for whom the psalmists speak, on the other, the wicked, the ungodly, the rich and the great; here those whose delight is in the law of God (religion), there those who contemn it and pursue evil ways regardless of its precepts and prohibitions, is a new condition, not in the behaviour of the wicked, but in the self-consciousness of the pious, who feel themselves a distinct class and are evidently crystallizing into a party or a sect.

The religious conceptions and the conception of religion are drawn chiefly from Jeremiah and the Deuteronomists, and from Isaiah 40 ff., but on the subjective side of religion, piety, the best of the psalms represent a more advanced stage than the prophets of the seventh and sixth centuries. The hopes of the future of God's people and of the world run with the prophets of the Persian period and the contemporary anonymous and editorial additions to the older prophetic books. That the long rehearsals of the ancient history like Pss. 78, 105, 106, or eulogies of the law such as Ps. 119, or litanies of the fashion of Ps. 136, belong to a stage in the history of the liturgy such as rouses the enthusiasm of the Chronicler is also apparent. The evidence of language tends the same way. Fine hymns were written even at a late time; but on a large part of the psalms the decadence has set its mark.

Such is the impression the Psalter makes as a whole, and it indicates that not only is the existing collection late, but that most of the hymns in it were comparatively modern when they were brought together. This is what would be expected in a hymn book, which for devotional even more than for liturgical use, needs to express and nurture the type of piety prevalent in its own time and circle. Protestant hymn books fifty years ago, outside the Anglican communion, had hardly any hymns in them more than a couple of hundred years old, except versified translations of the psalms, modernized and Christianized in the operation.

It would be going much beyond the evidence to say there were no psalms in the Psalter that were composed in the days of the kingdom; there may be a considerable number. But the proof that any particular psalm came from that period is difficult and seldom very convincing. This is true even of the psalms which speak of the king; for, aside from the impossibility of deciding in some instances whether a reigning king is meant or the king of the good time coming (Messiah), a foreign king may sometimes be in mind (Ps. 45 is so interpreted by many), or an AsmonÆan king.

Lamentations.—The fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. is the subject of five poems of considerable length which together make the Book of Lamentations. The mistaken opinion that the prophet Jeremiah was the author caused this book to be put immediately after Jeremiah in the Christian Bible, with an introduction explicitly attributing the poems, or the first of them, to the prophet. In the Hebrew Bible the book stands among the miscellaneous Scriptures. The first four poems are in the Hebrew elegiac metre, the verse used for dirges, the characteristic of which is that each line is divided by a cÆsura into unequal parts, oftenest in the ratio of three to two, as in Amos v. 1.

In Lamentations 1-4 this is combined with an alphabetic acrostic. In cc. 1 and 2 the poem consists of twenty-two tiercets, the first line of each beginning with a letter of the alphabet in order; c. 4, of as many couplets; while in c. 3 each line of the tiercet begins with the proper letter. Chapter 5 is neither alphabetic nor in elegiac metre. The alphabetic artifice is not uncommon with Hebrew poets, the most elaborate example being Ps. 119, where in stanzas of seven verses each line of the stanza begins with A, B, G, D, and so on.

The five Lamentations differ considerably in character and poetic merit. Chapters 2 and 4 are distinctly superior to the rest, and describe the agony of Jerusalem in vivid and moving images; peculiarly direct and poignant is c. 5; while c. 3 has more the character of a psalm.

The poems are not all by the same author. Those which seem to stand nearest to the catastrophe (cc. 2 and 4 at least) were probably written no very long time after it; the others perhaps in the following generation. There is nothing in them that would lead us to think of Jeremiah as the author. Perhaps the statement of the Chronicler that Jeremiah made a dirge for King Josiah which was written among the Lamentations, and recited in later times by the professional singers of dirges, may imply that he ascribed one of the poems to the prophet. At any rate, it became "tradition," and has chiefly contributed to get Jeremiah the injurious reputation of the weeping prophet.