iii. Date and Authorship. — Care must be taken not to confuse date of compilation and date of composition, and sometimes a distinction must be made between the date of composition of the original psalm and the date to be assigned to it in its present form. Many of these lyrics were handed down orally, and, in particular, some of those that were connected with public worship may have been long current in a narrower circle before they found a place in a smaller or larger collection of psalms. Further, the phenomena of the Psalter, as we have it, prove conclusively that modifications were freely made in existing com- positions, whether to make them suitable for public worship or to adapt them to the new cir- cumstances of a new time.
It is not the object of this article to describe the history of lyric poetry amongst the Hebrews. Hut no intelligent judgment can be formed as to the probable date of these particular sacred songs, without a brief survey of what is known from other sources concerning the history of this form of literary composition in Israel.
The history of the iieojile begins with an outburst of song. The deliverance from Egyi)t at the Red Sea was an event which made a deep impression on the ritual, the literature, and the national life of Israel. It was signalized, according to Ex 15, by a Bong ' which Moses and the children of Israel san" ' —a pa'an not unworthy of the great occasion. It is found as part of the ' second Elohist's ' narrative, doubtless handed down from earlier days, and is fitted into its place by v.". That the wliole song in its present form is antique seems hardly likely. Ewahl, Dillmann, Delitzsch, and Driver agree that vv.'-' },'ive the ruling strain of the ancient hj'mn, while the laiigiuige of vv." and '"' seems to point to later days, when the early deliverance was triumphantly recalled. The 'Song of Moses' in Dt 32 may with some confidence be a.ssigned to the Bth cent. B.C. It is not Mosaic in its point of
view ; V."- are enough to show that the settlement in Canaan is an event of the far past. Driver would fix the date about the time of Jeremiah, and some features point in this direction. But it is near enough for the present purjiose, if it be assigned generally to the period of the monarchy. The remarkable poem given at length in Jg 5, known as the Song of Deborah, is generally recog- nized as one of the oldest fragments of Heb. literature. Kuenen describes it as contemporaneous with the events it celebrates, and most critics aclinowledge the absence of anachronisms and the strong impression of reality which this ode leaves ujjon them. The date of Hannah's song in 1 S 2 cannot easily be determined. Judged by modern ideas, it seems little suited for the occasion on which it is said to have been uttered, except so far as it sets forth the Divine exaltation of the lowly, or may be considered to possess a prophetic character. Tliat it was composed after the establishment of the monarchy seems clear from v.'". The lament over Saul and Jonathan ascribed to David in 2 S 1 may be taken as genuinely Davidic. It contains nothing inconsistent with the occasion, none of those indications of a later point of view some- times found lurking in a single clause or allusion, whilst the date of the compilation of the book, so far as can be gathered, would point to an early origin for the elegy. Other indirect evidence as to the handing down of such songs from early times may be drawn from the mention of the ' book of Jasliar' and the 'teaching of the song to the children of Judah' in v.'". The 'last words' of David, found in 2 S 23, do not stand on quite the same footing, since these later chapters form an appendix to the book which may be much later in date.
Other lyrics which havecome down to us embedded in proplietic literature — with which psalmody is closely connected — are the thanksgiving of Is 12, the dirge of Hezekiah in Is 38, the prayer of Habakkuk in Hab 3, and that of Jonah in Jon 2. It is impossible to enter into detailed questions of criticism, yet the objective evidence ati'orded by the dates of these poems, if they could be fixed, would be important, for these would serve as land- marks to judge of compositions when removed from their setting. Is 12 probably belongs to the
Eeriod of Hezekiah. The dirge in ch. 38 may well e of the same date. It was apparently added by the compiler of Is 36-39 to the historical narratives drawn from 2 Kings. Cheyne compares the lan- guage of the dirge \\ith that of Job, and holds it to be exilic, inserted on the principle that psalms in any sense illustrative of historical incidents might be quoted as if actually connected with them. The prayer of Habakkuk is considered by many critics to be a late addition, but there is no valid reason why it should not belong to the Gth cent. B.C. The general character of Jon 2 seems to mark it out as a cento of phrases drawn from earlier psalms. It has none of the freshness and force to bo expected in a composition of the time of Jonah the prophet.