THE NEW VERSION OF THE PSALMS.*

THE publication of a new translation of the Book of Psalms

in a series which contains, together with what might be thought more appropriate companions, The Fables of Mr.

lohn Gay and English Comic Dramatists, seems to have sug- gested the somewhat apologetic form of the introduction which Mr. Cheyne puts at the beginning of this pretty volume. He says :—

" The object of the present edition is to enable lovers of literature to read the Paalter intelligibly and with pleasure. The dictionary of the Bible and the various commentaries on the Psalms will supply the student with learned material in abundance. But the ambition of the publishers and the translator is to make the Psalms enjoyable."

The translator offers the English reader what professes to be a more exact representation of the Hebrew original than the older versions give, that he may so enable him better to enjoy the true meaning of that original ; and be then argues at some length that " the Psalms are not so entirely exceptional as some of us have believed," but stand in a real and intelligible relation to the lyrics of other nations and literatures. To speak first of the latter point, we think that Mr. Cheyne's meaning is sound, though, as is his wont, he expresses himself with cautious ob- scurity. Having spent his life in the study of the Hebrew books, he knows that in all matters of philology, grammar, and so on, they must necessarily be treated like other books. His familiarity with the great German and Dutch Commentators compels him to recognise other wider and deeper relations between the Hebrew and the other literatures of the world.

And then his personal Christian faith assures him that, not intellectual culture, but "private devotion," and "reli- gious life," are essential to the real and true under- standing of the Psalms. But here Mr. Cheyne finds practical difficulties. He would not have his readers and the readers of the Psalms change Christian faith for German or Dutch rationalism ; yet he will not present them with a reconciliation of his own to save them from the trouble of thinking and deciding for themselves. And the result is what we are obliged to call a cautious obscurity in his treatment of the matter. What, for instance, can be the meaning of such contradictory passages as these :-

" The contrast between the David of the historical books, and the David even of the eighteenth Psalm, is certainly strong, but as Carlyle has reminded us, What are faults —what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it—the remorse—temptation, —the often-bafiled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten ?' " And just afterwards :— " ' The Psalms,' says the great preacher Adolphe Monod, 'are all filled with expressions of an unheard-of sorrow. David there speaks incessantly of his troubles, of his maladies, of his innumerable enemies. As we read them, we can hardly understand what he meant.' Most brae. It passes human understanding."

We should have said that Mr. Carlyle gives a sufficient reply to M. Monod. But still more odd than Mr. Cheyne's observa- tions on the words of the latter is a sentence which occurs between the two paragraphs which we have quoted :—" It is, at any rate, a great relief to realise that only a very small number of psalms can reasonably be ascribed to David."

We doubt the fact ; but if it is so, how can it be a great relief ? We have read this passage again and again, in the endeavour to find out what it means; but we cannot even make a probable guess. An equally obscure passage, as to the rela- tions of the sacred poetry of Babylonia and Assyria with that of Israel which is supposed to be shown by the Hebrew proper names, concludes with some striking hymns from the former sources, which — though they contain no proper names—do greatly resemble the last. For instance :-

" I am cast down,

And none reaches forth his hand to me.

I weep in silence, And no man takes my band.

I utter my prayer, And none hears me.

I am enfeebled, overwhelmed, And no man delivers me.

0, my God ! my sins are seven times seven,

Absolve my sins !

Co, my Goddess ! my sins are seven times seven, Absolve my sins !

Absolve my faults !

Guide thou him who submits himself to thee !

May thy heart, as the heart of a mother who has brought forth, be appeased !

• The Book of Psalms. Translated by the Rev. T. K. Cbeyne, M.A. London : Sagan Paul, Trench, and Co. 1884. (Parchment Library.)

As the heart of a mother who has brought forth, and of a father who has begotten, May it be appeased !"

Of the new translation of the Psalms which Mr. Cheyne has given us, we may say that it has some merits, but that we could wish it had several which are wanting. Notwithstanding the "great relief" which we are offered as to rejecting the Davidic authorship of most of the Psalms, we are thankful that we have the whole of them given us here in the order in which they have come down from antiquity, and not in any fanciful arrangement such as the learned Germans give us. But we miss the old headings, which are at least as old as the Septuagint, and which have, therefore, a real historical value, even though some of them may be questioned, or even though the accuracy of some should be disproved by modern criticism. In attributing one Psalm to David and another to one or other of his choir-masters whose names have come down to us in the historical books ; in giving the names of tunes once well known, noting the bass or the treble clef appropriate to the particular song, or marking the pauses when the musical instruments were to take the place of the voices ;—in indicating these things, we are made to feel that these are actual songs and hymns, which express the various concrete emotions and thoughts of actual men and women in the midst of life, and not mere literary abstractions.

Passing to the body of the translation, we find that Mr. Cheyne has made a great advance, since the publication of his version of Isaiah, in his appreciation of the method on which Mr. Matthew Arnold habitually insists, though even he does not sufficiently carry it out, —that the best possible representation in English of the Hebrew books is the old version, with only the fewest possible changes, and those almost entirely confined to the words where our greater knowledge of the Hebrew language makes it possible, and therefore right, to correct some actual error. A careful examination of Mr. Arnold's version of the later chapters of Isaiah compels us to say that he has made many unnecessary emendations, and some actually for the worse.

But still more is this the case with Mr. Cheyne's version of the Psalms. We do not complain of his preference in many places for the Prayer-book version, which is, no doubt, at times more musical than that of the Authorised Bible ; but let us take, for instance, the first verse of the first Psalm, in the Prayer-book, and in Mr. Cheyne's volume, and who can say that there is one word which has not been changed unnecessarily, and for the worse ? In the former we have:—

" Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the

ungodly, Nor stood in the way of sinners : And bath not at in the seat of the scornful."

In the latter:— "Happy the man that has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stood in the way of sinners, Nor sat in the company of scoffers."

We suppose that Mr. Cheyne renders ashrey by " happy " in order that he may keep " blessed " as the rendering for baruch ; but " happy " is not so fit a representation of ashrey as " blessed." The word implies not good luck, but straight or right guidance, or what Mr. Thomas Erskine called " rightness." And we think of Mr. Carlyle's words, that men should leave off seeking happiness, and look for blessedness instead. Then how the rhythm is injured by the want of the "is," which the Eng- lish style, though not the Hebrew, requires ; and also by the use of the colloquial " has " for the stately "hath," which latter un- fortunate excision of the old ending of the verbs we find through- out the book. Then the more literal "and hath not," of the old version, is also the more musical in sound, while it recog- nises the Masoretic punctuation which marks the rhythmical dis- tinction of the two members of the verse. And lastly, why not the more literal " seat," or why change " scornful " to " scoffers," which has no better meaning, and not so good a sound at the end of the line ? Or what can be said in defence of the change in the 1st verse of the 90th Psalm, from " Thou bast been our dwelling-place" in the Bible, or " our refuge " in the Prayer-book, to " Thou hast been unto us an asylum " ? And again, for that magnificently rolling refrain in the old version of the 136th Psalm, " For his mercy endureth for ever," we actually have the substitute, " For his kindness is everlasting." If, as Mr. Cheyne tells us, Coverdale's version was intended for " the unlettered people, and not for the lovers of poetry," for whom, we would ask, is this version intended?

We might carry this sort of criticism from the first to the last page. We have great doubt, if not more than

doubt, whether in a version of the Psalms not intended primarily for students it is well to have kept the name "Jehovah," instead of the English,—or rather the religious, not merely English, " Lord." In translations from the Greek and Latin we know how many cases there are in which the use of the popular, though not quite accurate version of a proper name, gives a concreteness and a life to the word ; and still more is this so with the name which connects itself with our deepest religions emotions. And even still less defensible, notwithstand- ing Mr. Cheyne's plea for them, are the words "mon" and " Hades." Why, in the 90th Psalm, may we not still read " From everlasting to everlasting," instead of " From mon to mon, thou art God "P Or why, in the 139th Psalm, must we have " If I make Hades my bed, thou art there," instead of " If I make my bed in Hell, behold thou art there "? Surely no one whose mind is not shut up in such hopeless vulgarity as characterised the. late Dr. Jelf's view of such matters, can be perplexed by the words of the older version, or helped by this new one.

We do not pretend to have compared the whole of Mr. Cheyne's translation with the older versions, or with the Hebrew ; but of several obscurely or wrongly rendered passages in those versions, almost the only one upon which we can say that a clear improvement has been here made, is the 8th verse of the 49th Psalm, which Mr. Cheyne gives :—

" Yea, too costly is the redemption of man's soul, And one must let that alone for over."

We may add that in verse six of Psalm 102, we find " owl of the ruins," which is better than " owl of the desert." But then in the next verse we have, what we are inclined to call the bathos of "a solitary bird on the roof," instead of " a sparrow alone on the house-top."

We understand and can sympathise with the difficulties which Mr. Cheyne, like every other translator, must find in the attempt to approach as nearly as may be to that un- attainable goal— the representation of the poetry of one language in the words of another ; and we know the temptation which besets him who tries to improve the old version of any part of the English Bible, and thinks it possible by some change of word to restore a shade of meaning which has been lost in the word previously chosen. But the temptation is one which in almost every case should be resisted, not yielded to. The reviser will almost always find that if he has recovered one shade of meaning he has lost another, and, above all, that he has lost that sacred flavour of antiquity which nothing can replace, and which cannot be given to new work. It is true that the old English versions do not give "the lightning-like effect of the Hebrew," but neither does this modern translation ; while there is this difference between the two, that the former is the finest classical English, and the latter, where it departs from this model, is too often the careful but prosaic construing of the literally-accurate schoolboy. We have expressed ourselves severely, though, we hope, not unjustly. We feel that we can- not but do well to be angry, when we think what an opportunity has been lost, what this version might have been, and what it is. We think, too, of the forthcoming Revision of the Old Testa- ment Version. Absit omen !