THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
The International Critical Commentary : Psalms. Vol. I., L-1. By Charles Augustus Briggs, D.D., and Emilie Grace Briggs, B.D. (T. and T. Clark. 10s. 6d.)—Our notice of- this volume must be of the most general kind, and descriptive rather than critical. Dr. Briggs's introduction is a monument of industry and learning. He deals successively with the history of the text, with the various collections out of which the Psalter, as we have it now, was constructed, with the metrical system by which the poems were regulated—he declares emphatically, we see, against the "quantity" theory; which would assimilate the canons of Hebrew versification to Greek and Latin prosody—with the very difficult questions of authorship and date, and with the ethical and spiritual character of the book. The conclusions as to date and authorship may be thus summarised. Thirty Psalms are supposed to be pre-Exilic ; ten to belong to the Exile itself; between fifty and sixty—the exact number cannot be stated without various pro- visoes—to the Persian time ; the rest to the Greek and Maccabaean periods. Psalms vii., xiii., xviii., xxiii., xxiv., lx., cx., are assigned to the Early Monarchy. Of those dealt with in the commentary, we see that xiii. and xxiv. are, in a way, assigned to David. The former is supposed to belong to the time when he was persecuted by Saul. Dr. Briggs, however, thinks that verse 5 was added by an editor who desired to make the Psalms more appropriate to public worship, and that verse 6 was also added by two successive redactors. The truly Davidic Psalm, therefore, is reduced to 1-4. Of xxiv. Dr. Briggs writes :—" The entrance is into the city, not into the temple, as we would expect in later times after the temple was built There is nothing in tho Psalm which requires a later date. It is difficult to see bow a Psalm could better fit a historical situation." But this refers to verses 7-10. The first six verses are regarded as a separate composition belonging to the Greek period. It is man who enters into the presence of God, whereas in 7-10 it is Yahweh Himself who is entering into the city. This is a more anthropomorphic, and so earlier, idea. All this is interest- ing ; but we can only repeat what we have said more than once before, that no literature will come quite whole out of a test so rigorous. On the subject of the imprecatory
Psalms Dr. Briggs expresses himself with candour and good sense. He does not attempt to explain them away. "If impreca- tions are inconsistent with canonicity, the whole O.T. is excluded and not the Psalter especially." He urges with truth that we must not ignore that side of religious feeling which is expressed in the words "the wrath of the Lamb." "In substance the imprecations of the Psalms are normal and valid; in their external form and modes of expression they belong to an age of religion which has been displaced by Christianity."
Previous page
