Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/477

 37 ש Mark the perfect man, and observe the upright ;

That the man of peace hath a posterity.

38 But the transgressors are destroyed together, The posterity of the wicked is cut off.

39 ת And the salvation of the righteous is from Jahve,

Who is their hiding-place in the time of trouble.

40 And Jahve helpeth them and rescueth them,

He rescueth them from the wicked and saveth them, Because they trust in Him. The bond of connection between Psa 36:1-12 and 37 is their similarity of contents, which here and there extends even to accords of expression. The fundamental thought running through the whole Psalm is at once expressed in the opening verses: Do not let the prosperity of the ungodly be a source of vexation to thee, but wait on the Lord; for the prosperity of the ungodly will suddenly come to an end, and the issue determines between the righteous and the unrighteous. Hence Tertullian calls this Psalm providentiae speculum; Isodore, potio contra murmur; and Luther, vestis piorum, cui adscriptum: Hic Sanctorum patientia est (Rev 14:12). This fundamental thought the poet does not expand in strophes of ordinary compass, but in shorter utterances of the proverbial form following the order of the letters of the alphabet, and not without some repetitions and recurrences to a previous thought, in order to impress it still more convincingly and deeply upon the mind. The Psalm belongs therefore to the series Ps 9 and Psa 10:1, Psa 25:1, Psa 34:1, - all alphabetical Psalms of David, of whose language, cheering, high-flown, thoughtful, and at the same time so easy and unartificial, and withal elegant, this Psalm is fully worthy. The structure of the proverbial utterances is almost entirely tetrastichic; though ד, כ, and ק are tristichs, and ח (which is twice represented, though perhaps unintentionally), נ, and ת are pentastichs. The ע is apparently wanting; but, on closer inspection, the originally separated strophes ס and ע are only run into one another by the division of the verses. The ע strophe begins with לעולם, Psa 37:28, and forms a tetrastich, just like the ס. The fact that the preposition ל stands before the letter next in order need not confuse one. The ת, Psa 37:39, also begins with ותשׁועת. The homogeneous beginnings, זמם רשׁע, לוה רשׁע, צופה רשׁע, [[Bible_(King_James)/Psalms|Psa 37: