BOOKS.

THE NEW VERSION OF THE HEBREW PSALMS.* This is one of the most instructive and valuable books which has been published for many years. We have already delayed our notice of it nearly a year from its time of publication, which furnishes in it- self a fair test of the intrinsic value of any book,—the temporary charms of which are apt to disappear, like the foam on effervescing wines, with a very little exposure to the public,—and it has only gained in our estimation in weight and beauty by the delay. To any one who wishes to read the Psalms as he would read modern poetry, not merely by the gathered associations of his own childhood and youth, but by the light of the best attainable knowledge as to their origin and the circumstances affecting it, this edition of the Psalms is quite invaluable. The " Four Friends " who have prepared it have mainly followed the greatest Hebrew scholar of this or per- haps any other time, Ewald, in their chronological arrangement and the view they have taken of the circumstances in which the various groups of Psalms had their origin. In this, we think, they have been wise. It may be, indeed, that Ewald builds too much on very faint indications of time and authorship ; but even when, he does so, his conjectures deserve at least more attention than any other conjectures ; and where all is con- jectural, it is better to let the best conjecture occupy the fore- ground, than to have all foreground blotted out in the mist of vague possibilities. Moreover, the " Four Friends" have never broken wantonly or idly with the cherished associations of the English Prayer-Book version. Their alterations are exceedingly rare and exceedingly necessary where they are made at all. Indeed, we think they might have ventured oftener than they have done to substitute, where it is the more correct, the version of our Bible, • The Psalms Chronologically Arranged. An Amended Version, with Historical Introduction and Explanatory Notes. By Four Friends. London : Macmillan. 1867.

which is almost equally familiar, for the version of our Prayer-Book. For example, when they substitute for the familiar version of the 130th Psalm, which stands in our Prayer-Book " My soul fleeth to the Lord before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch,"—the following, —" My soul waiteth for Jehovah more than watchmen for the morning, I say, than watchmen for the morning," we do not know why they have not kept to the very words of our authorized version, namely, "More than they that watch for the morning, I say, more than they that watch for the morning." The latter is the most truly poetical of the three versions, for it includes all watchers, whether by the sick-bed or on the moun- tain top, as well as the professional class of watchmen, and can scarcely be excluded by the Hebrew words which are striving to illustrate the full intensity of longing with which the soul waits for God. Such longing could scarcely be adequately illustrated by the expectation of mere professional watchmen waiting for the expi- ration of a routine duty. So, too, where our editors alter the Prayer- Book version of the fourth verse of the 139th Psalm, "Thou haat fashioned me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me," into " Thou has compassed me behind and before," why did not they rather substitute the more beautiful, and familiar, and exactly equivalent words of our authorized version, " Thou haat beset me behind and before "? The only fault in this beautiful and critical version, if it be a fault, is that the authors have not sufficiently availed themselves of the associations of the fine version of the Bible, where they have felt compelled to deviate from the version of the Prayer-Book,—from which, however, they have deviated rarely, and only with great reason. To illustrate the kind of motive which has alone induced them seriously to alter the translation, we may take the conclusion of the 19th Psalm, where, after the earlier verses on the glory of the heavens and the power of the sun, which the translators believe to be of the time of David, is appended a sort of spiritual antistrophe, in which the glory of the heavens is described as mirrored in the beauty of the divine law, and the might even of an Arabian sun is presented as equalled or surpassed by the commandment which giveth light to the inward eye. We had long been aware that modern critics had maintained that the latter part of this psalm was of much later origin than the first, and only appended to the first as an afterthought. But we never felt the force of the criticism till we saw what our present editors advanced. They translate the latter part of the verse " Who can tell how oft he offendeth? Oh, cleanse thou me from my secret faults,"—thus, " Oh, cleanse thou me from the sin that I wist not of," and say, by way of comment, " the fears of the Psalmist, that with the ever-growing anxiety to satisfy the minutia; of a written law, his own unconscious sins against these prohibitions would also increase belong to the period of the end of the monarchy,"—if not even to the later period of the 119th Psalm. This interpretation of a verse which, if this be the true translation, certainly partakes of the overscrupulous tone of a developed and written morality, rather than of the spirit of a young and rapidly growing national life, is likely, we think, to arrest the attention of all true critics ; and it is a fair specimen of the light in detail which this version strives to throw on passages which are to the most of us almost too familiar for true under- standing.

But it is not by the light in mere detail which this edition of the Psalms gives us, that it can be adequately judged. It gives the Psalms a perfectly fresh setting, adds a new power of vision to the grandest poetry of nature ever composed, a new depth of lyrical pathos to the poetry of national joy, sorrow, and hope, and a new intensity of spiritual light to the divine subject of every ejaculation of praise and every invocation of want. We can scarcely give an adequate conception of the first point,—the marvellous touches which this version often adds to the finest poetry of nature contained in the Psalms, without extracting the whole of the new version of the 29th psalm, and the note thereon.

(The Psalmist calleth on the angels round the throne to bow down and worship Jehovah, when He shall reveal Himself in thunder and lightning to the world.)

I.

"Give unto Jehovah, ye sons of God, give unto Jehovah glory and strength !

Give unto Jehovah the honour due unto His name,

worship Jehovah in holy apparel!

n.

"Bark! Jehovah is above the waters, The God of Glory thundered, Jehovah above the waterfloods3 Hark! Jehovah is in power,

Hark! Jehovah is in majesty.

" Hark ! Jehovah—He breaketh the cedar trees, how Jehovah breaketh in pieces the cedars of Lebanon, and maketh them to skip like calves,

Lebanon also and Sirion like young buffaloes; Hark ! Jehovah how He flasheth forth names of fire !

"Hark! Jehovah shaketh the wilderness, Jehovah shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh ; Hark ! Jehovah maketh the hinds to calve, and atrippeth the forests of their leaves ; while in His temple everything ahouteth Glory !'

HI.

"Jehovah ruled above the mighty flood; so ruleth Jehovah as a King for ever !

Jehovah will give strength unto His people, Jehovah shall give His people tho blessing of peace'

"Ver. 3. Hark ! Jehovah=the voice of Jehovah, or Jehovah revealed in thunder. " Ver. 8. Cp. Isaiah vi. 3, And the Seraphim cried one with another, and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is Jehovah, God of Hosts ; His glory the fullness of the earth.'

NOTE.

"The closest examination of this psalm only reveals more strikingly the perfection of its structure. It has the regular form of the pzean or triumphal cde, and is divided Into three members: "1. The Prelude, in which the Psalmist calls on the angels round the throne to do homage to Jehovah, when He shall reveal Himself in thunder and lightning to the world.

"2. The body of the Psalm, in three equal strophes. each of five lines, marking the successive stages of the storm; 1st, its distant gathering; the low faint mutter- ing of the thunder in the far-off unapproachable realms of sky; 2nd, its sudden advance, seizing the mountains and crushing the cedars ; then, in the 3rd, it passes on and spreads over the plain and dies away ; thus making the whole universe to tremble from sky to earth, from Lebanon in the north to the wilderness of Kadesh in the south. These contain the revelations of Jehovah to man, issued like royal mandates in peals of thunder.

"Nay, more, each of these strophes is itself divided into five lines, and each line begins with a fresh burst of the storm.

"In strophe 1 we have in the first line the distant muttering of the thunder; the peal become louder and clearer in lines 2 and 3; and in lines 4 and I rings with ever-increasing and more continuous roll, the voice of Jehovah, through the world. "In strophe 2 the storm falls with its crashing power on the cedars ; then with bounding speed upon the mountains themselves, making them to skip like buffaloes ; ending with the flashing of the forked lightning. "In strophe 3 we have the same structure ; the sound of Jehovah making the wilderness to tremble, sweeping in jubilant might from Lebanon to Kadesh ; bowing the very beasts in the throes of labour, while the hurricane strips the forest of its leaves, till it is hushed and lost in the diapason, which through all the world telleth of His glory.

"3. The conclusion, that men may learn the protecting love of Jehovah ; who though He sitteth a King above the mighty flood, shall give strength unto His people and the blessing of peace."

This is one of the versions in which the translators have permitted themselves the maximum of deviation from the version of the Prayer- Book, but we confess, as it seems to us, with the happiest result. In the psalm as we read it on the fifth evening of the month, the thunderstorm which it is meant to image is quite lost to our view. It reads like an abstract statement of the " attributes " of God in relation to His power over the physical universe. "It is the Lord that commandeth the waters, it is the glorious God that maketh the thunder. It is the Lord that ruleth the sea," &c. Only com- pare that almost dogmatic statement of God's power over the elements with the third verse of the version we have given, where the Psalmist is exulting in the immediate sign of God's power which the gathering tempest and the downfall of the water-spout bears in upon his mind. As an illustration of a like vividness given to a hymn of a very different and lower order,—a hymn celebrating a royal marriage,—let our readers compare the life- like version of the 45th Psalm, the one beginning in our Prayer- Book version, " My heart is inditing of a good matter," with the translation in our Prayer-Book. The alterations are not great or grating, but they are just such as transform the vague ambiguities of changing tenses and vague panegyric into the emphasis of direct vision, and that delight of the eye which lives in the present.

But our version gives not only a new power of vision to the poetry of physical nature, and the less interesting and much less important poetry concerned with royal pageants, but it adds a new pathos to the finest and most pathetic lyrics which ever pro- ceeded from the human heart. Take, for instance, the light which it throws on the familiar psalm, " Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, 0 God !"— the psalm in which so exquisite a voice is given to the de- jection with which the writer thinks upon his old visits to Jerusalem, now that he can worship there no more. The translators believe that this psalm was written by an exile on his journey into Eastern banishment, perhaps by the departing King himself, who, as he passed the heights of Hermon and the hill Mizar, on his way to exile, cried out, "My God, my soul is heavywithin me; therefore I remember thee from the land of Jordan, of Hermon, and the hill of Mizar," a translation which gives quite a new pathos to the psalm. In the Prayer-Book, indeed, the version " My God, my soul is vexed within me ; therefore will I remember thee concerning the land of Jordan and the little hill of Hermon," has no intelligible meaning at all. The new version notes the spots from which the exile, as he retreated, cast back a glance of passionate farewell ; the old one is only a promise to remember God's connection with some obscure historical transaction to which we have lost the key. Thus the new version inserts a new and perfect link of sentiment in one of the most plaintive of reli- gious odes, in place of what was not a link at all, but a rude break in the current of mingled melancholy and trust. So, again, to take the 102nd Psalm, written amidst the ruins of Jerusalem. Our Prayer- Book version, after insisting on the melancholy pleasure which God's servants take even in the ruined stones of the low-laid capital, goes on quite abruptly, " The heathen shall fear thy name, 0 Lord ; and all the Kings of the earth thy majesty ; when the Lord shall build up Sion, and when his glory shall appear ; when he turneth him unto the prayer of the poor destitute, and despiseth not their desire. This shall be written for them that come after ; and the people which shall be born shall praise the Lord." Our translators give a quite new and very much finer turn to the passage, making the Psalmist pray that his posterity may be able to use the language of praise to Jehovah for rebuilding Sion : — "For 'Jehovah bath built up Sion,

and hath made His glory to appear ; bath turned to Him the prayer of the poor destitute, and despised not their desire.'

Let this be written by those that come after !

and let the people that shall be born praise Jehovah."

No one can fail to see how much more beautiful and appropriate this language is in the mouth of one sitting among the ruins of his beloved city, and seeing the glory of the future only through the religious trust of the present.

To illustrate how slight a change in the version will give a new depth of lyrical feeling to the tone of a psalm, and again, how much that depth is itself deepened by a very simple explanation of the circumstances which attended its composition, take the version of the 121st psalm, the first verse of which as it is translated in our Prayer-Book runs, "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help." Our authors, after explaining that the group of psalms to which this belongs were pilgrim psalms written in Babylon or on the way back, explain the drift and give the first strophe of this psalm as follows :—

" The exile sighs for the hills of his home : he sees no sign of help, yet with the name of the Creator, the Keeper of Israel, for his talisman, he wins his way through doubt to trust, from inward conflict to peace.

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills ; Oh, whence cometh my help ?

my help cometh from Jehovah, Who bath made heaven and earth.

Will he suffer thy foot to be moved ?

and He that keepeth thee, shall He sleep?

behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep!"

The first two lines seem to us entirely transformed and clothed with a new lyrical force by the form of appealing question given to the second. The first line becomes the pilgrim's expression of passionate longing for his home, instead of the language of supplica- tion,—the second of appeal to God, instead of almost meaning- less assertion that his help comes from the very hills to which he is imploring to be restored. The first line thus becomes a cry of longing, the second an appeal to his own heart to tell him the true source of trust. The interrogative form given to the clauses of the third verse with the trustful answer of the fourth seem to us again to convey a far more exquisite poetical feeling than our Prayer-Book version, beautiful as it is, has succeeded in rendering for us.

We have given but imperfect illustrations of the new beauty and light which the translators pour upon the most perfect devotional poetry of any day or nation, and which they pour on it in almost every page, by the scholarship and perfect taste with which they have executed their work. We can only say that their version deserves to live long and to pass through many editions, — for while it religiously respects the rich associations gathered round the text which they have adopted as their groundwork, it clears up its innumerable obscu- rities, corrects its not infrequent blunders, and supplies that knowledge of the context which is almost as requisite to the true enjoyment of poetry, as is the crowd of new and living associations by the aid of which each successive generation interprets it, and applies it to the wants of its own heart.