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Rh transferred metaphorically to the songs that are sung with its accompaniment. Psalms are songs for the lyre, and therefore lyric poems in the strictest sense.

Before we can seek to obtain a clear idea of the origin of the Psalm-collection we must take a general survey of the course of the development of psalm writing. The lyric is the earliest kind of poetry in general, and the Hebrew poetry, the oldest example of the poetry of antiquity that has come down to us, is therefore essentially lyric. Neither the Epos nor the Drama, but only the Mashal, has branched off from it and attained an independent form. Even prophecy, which is distinguished from psalmody by a higher impulse which the mind of the writer receives from the power of the divine mind, shares with the latter the common designation of (1 Chron. xxv. 1 — 3), and the psalm-singer,, is also as such called  (1 Chron. xxv. 5; 2 Chron. xxix. 30, xxxv. 15, cf. 1 Chron. xv. 19 and freq.); for just as the sacred lyric often rises to the height of prophetic vision, so the prophetic epic of the future, because it is not entirely freed from the sub-