Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/586

 upon which it could rest; it is not until later on that it receives the support of divine promise, and is for the present only a “bold flight” of faith. Now can we, for this very reason, attempt to define in what way the poet conceived of this redemption and this taking to Himself. In this matter he himself has no fully developed knowledge; the substance of his hope is only a dim inkling of what may be. This dimness that is only gradually lighted up, which lies over the last things in the Old Testament, is the result of a divine plan of education, in accordance with which the hope of eternal life was gradually to mature, and to be born as it were out of this wrestling faith itself. This faith is expressed in Psa 49:16; and the music accompanies his confidence in cheerful and rejoicing strains. After this, in Psa 49:17, there is a return from the lyric strain to the gnomic and didactic. It must not, with Mendelssohn, be rendered: let it (my soul) not be afraid; but, since the psalmist begins after the manner of a discourse: fear thou not. The increasing כבוד, i.e., might, abundance, and outward show (all these combined, from כּבד, grave esse), of the prosperous oppressor is not to make the saint afraid: he must after all die, and cannot take hence with him הכּל, the all = anything whatever (cf. לכּל, for anything whatever, Jer 13:7). כּי, Psa 49:17, like ἐάν, puts a supposable case; כּי, Psa 49:18, is confirmatory; and כּי, Psa 49:19, is concessive, in the sense of גּם־כּי, according to Ew. §362, b: even though he blessed his soul during his life, i.e., called it fortunate, and flattered it by cherished voluptuousness (cf. Deu 29:18, התבּרך בּנפשׁו, and the soliloquy of the rich man in Luk 12:19), and though they praise thee, O rich man, because thou dost enjoy thyself (Luk 16:25), wishing themselves equally fortunate, still it (the soul of such an one) will be obliged to come or pass עד־דּור אבותיו. There is no necessity for taking the noun דּור here in the rare signification dwelling (Arabic dâr, synonym of Menzı̂l), and it appears the most natural way to supply נפשׁו as the subject to תּבוא (Hofmann, Kurtz, and others), seeing that one would expect to find אבותיך in the case of תבוא being a form of address. And there is then no need, in order to support the synallage, which is at any rate inelegant, to suppose that the suffix יו-takes its rise from the formula אל־אבתיו (נאסף) בּוא, and is, in