Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/608

 PSALMS

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PSALMS

parallelism in lines and half-lines, synonymous, anti- thetical, synthetic, identical, introverted. Zenner, S. J., in his "Chorgesange im Buche der Psalmen" (Frei- burg im Br., 1S96), has verj^ cleverly arranged manj' of the psalms as choral odes, chanted by two or three choirs. Hermann Wiesmann, S. J., in"Die Psalmen naeh dem L'rtext" (Munster, 1906), has applied the met- rical principles of Zenner, and revised and pubhshed the latter's translations and studies of the Psalms. This work takes too great liberty with the Sacred Text, and has lately (1911) been put on the Index.

VIII. Poetic Be.4Uty. — The extravagant words of Lamartinein "Voyage en Orient" are classic: "Lisez de I'Horace ou du Pindare apres un Psaume! Pour moi, je ne le peux plus". One wonders whether Lamartine ever read a psalm in the original. To criticise the Psalms as literature is very difficult. Their text h;is reached us with many losses in the mat- ter of poetic form. The authors varied much in style. Their literary beauty should not be judged by com- parison with the poetry of Horace and Pindar. It is with the hymns of ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria that we should compare the songs of Israel. Those ancient hymns are crude and rude by the side of the Psalms. Even the imprecatory Pss. x^'iii, xxx\', lii, hx, Ixix, cix, cxxxvii {xvii, xxxiv, li, Iviii, Ixviii, cviii, exxxvi), those national anthems so full of love of Jahweh and of Israel and almost startling in their hatred of the foes of Jahweh and of Israel, if read from the viewpoint of the writers, are subhme, vivid, glowing, enthusiastic, though exaggerated, poetic outbursts, instances of a "higher seriousness and a higher truthfulness", such as Ari.stotle never would have found in a song of Babylonia or of Su- meria. Whether their tones are those of praise or blame, of sorrow or of joy, of humiliation or of exalta- tion, of deep meditation or of didactic dogmatism, ever and everj-where the writers of the Psalms are dignified and grand, true to the ideals of Jahweh's chosen folk, spiritual and devotional. The range of thought is immense. It takes in Jahweh, His temple, cult, priests, creation; man, friend and foe; beasts, birds; all nature, animate and inanimate. The range of emotions is complete; every emotion of man that is pure and noble has been set to words in the Psalms. As an instance of poetic beauty, we subjoin the famous Ps. xxiii (xxii), translated from the Hebrew. The poet first speaks in his own person, then in the guise of the sheep. The repetition of the first couplet as an envoi is suggested by Zenner and many commenta- tors, to complete the envelope-form of the poem, or the introverted parallelism of the strophic structure: The Poet : 1. Jahweh is my Shepherd ; I have no want.

The Sheep: 2. In pastures of tender grass he set- teth me; Unto still waters he leadeth me;

3. He turneth me back again ;

He guideth me along right paths for his own name's sake.

4. Yea, though I walk through the vale

of the shadow of death, I fear no harm ; For thou art with me; Thy bludgeon and thy staff, they

stay me.

5. Thou set t est food before me, In the presence of my foes;

Thou has anointed my head with oil; My trough runneth over. The Poet: 6. Ah, goodness and mercy have fol- lowed me All the days of ray life; I will go bai-k to t he house of Jahweh Even for the length of my days. Jahweh is my Shepherd ; I have no want!

IX. Theological Value. — The theological ideas of the Psalms are comprehensive; the existence and attributes of God, the soul's yearning for immortality, the economy of grace and the virtues, death, judg- ment, heaven, hell, hope of resurrection and of glory, fear of punishment — all the main dogmatic truths of Israel's faith appear again and again in her Psalter. These truths are set down not in dogmatic form, but now in the simple and childlike lyric yearning of the ingenuous soul, again in the loftiest and most vehe- ment outbursts of which man's nature is capable. The Psalms are at once most human and most super- human; they sink to the lowest depths of the human heart and soar to the topmost heights of Divine con- templation. So very human are the imprecatory psalms as to make some to wonder how they can have been inspired of God. Surely Jahweh cannot have inspired the singer who prayed:

"As for them that plan my soul to destroy, Down to the depths of the earth shall they go;

To the grasp of the sword shall the}' be delivered; A prey to the jackals shall they become".

[Ps.lxiii (Ixii), 10-11.] Such an objection is based upon a misunderstanding. The perfection of the counsels of Christ is one thing, the aim of the good Le\'ite is quite another thing. The ideals of the Sermon on the Blount are of higher spirituality than are the ideals of the imprecatory psalm. Yet the ideals of the imprecatorj' psalm are not bad — nay, are good, are Divine in their origin and authority. The imprecatory psalms are national an- thems; they express a nation's wrath, not an individ- ual's. Humility and meekness and forgiveness of foe are virtues in an individual; not necessarily so of a nation; by no means so of the Chosen Nation of Jah- weh, the people who knew by revelation that Jahweh willed they should be a great nation and should put out their enemies from the land which He gave them. Their great national love for their own people postu- lated a great national love for Jahweh. The love for Jahweh postulated a hatred of the foes of Jahweh, and, in the theocratic economy of the Jewish folk, the foes of Jahweh were the foes of Israel. If we bear this national purpose in mind, and forget not that all poetry, and especially Semitic poetry, is highly col- oured and exaggerated, we shall not be shocked at the lack of mercy in the writers of the imprecatory psalms.

The chief theological ideas of the Psalms are those that have regard to the Incarnation. Are there Mes- sianic psalms? Unaided by the authentic interpret- ing power of the Church and neglectful of the con- sensus of the Fathers, Protestants have quite generally come to look upon the Psalms as non-Messianic either in literal or in typical meaning; the older Messianic interpretation is discarded as worn-out and thread- bare. Delitzsch admits only Ps. ex (cix) to be Mes- sianic in its literal meaning. Cheyne denies both literal and typical Messianic meaning to the Psalms ("Origin of'Ps.", 339). Da\-ison (Hast., loc. cit.) says, "it may well be that the Psalter contains hardly a single instance of direct Messianic prophecy". Catholics have ever held that some of the Psalms are Messianic in meaning, either literal or typical. (Cf. articles Incarn.\tion; Jesus Christ; Messias.) "The New Testament clearly refers certain psalms to the Messias. The Fathers are unanimous in interpreting many psalms as prophecies of the coming, kingdom, priesthood, passion, death, and resurrection of the Messias. The coming of the Messias is predicted in Pss. xviii, 1, Ixviii, xcvi-xcviii (xvii, xlix, lx\di, xcv- xcvii). St. Paul (Eph., iv, 8) interprets of Christ's ascent into heaven the words of Ps. Ixviii, IS, descrip- tive of Jahweh's ascent after conquering the world. The kingdom of the Messias is predicted in Pss. ii, x^^ii, xx, xxi, xlv, l.xi, Ixxii, Ixxxix, ex, cxxxii (ii, xvii, xix, XX, xliv, Ix, Ixxi, Ixxxviii, cix, cx.xxi); the priest- hood in Ps. ex. The passion and death of the Messias