Song of Loves, Ps 45 ninn; Tp, LXX v'oi) inrip tou ayaTnp-ou. — The allegorical interpretation which is suggested by the Gr. is of very early origin, and is based upon the use of language found in Hosea and elsewhere in OT, and recognized by St. Paul in Eph 5^-. The Targ. renders ' Thy beauty, O King Jlessiah.' The feminine plural termination must not be understood literally as of king's daughters (Hengstenberg), nor of a marriage-feast, nor in an erotic sense, for the word is a noble one ; but according to the Heb. idiom it corresponds to a neuter abstract, and the phrase would mean 'A song of that whicli is lovely.' It is to be under- stood, like Canticles, of a pure and holy earthly love which may be understood to symbolize and prepare the way for a higher allection still.
To Teach, Ps IjO tzb^, cf. Dt 31", where Moses is commanded to teach a song to the Israelites, and 2 S !"• '*, where it is said that David ' bade them teach the children of Judah the song of the bow' (the word 'bow' is omitted in B of LXX) — a martial son", to be sung at the practice of arms ? These parallels would seem to show that the title li-lammed means that this psalm, like many others, was to be taught to Israel.
V. Poetical Construction. — Heb. poetry, it is well known, is not constituted by rhyme. Neither, like Anglo-Saxon and other verse, is it marked by regularly recurring assonance, though occasionally this feature is present. Neither, again, is metre an essential feature of Heb. psalmody. It has been questioned among scholars — though only a small minority are prepared to answer in the affirmative — whether metre, iiiijily- ing lines consisting of a fixed number of syllables, is recognizable at all in OT poetry, as, confessedly, both rhyme and metre are characteristic of Jewish poems of the Middle Ages. Hut though metre is not discernible in Psalms, it does not follow that rhythm is excluded. The rhythm of thought in the well - known parallclisnnis memhrorum is, of course, an essential feature, and rhj-thm of lan- guage matching the thought is readily perceptible, though no rules can be laid down for its determina- tion. There is a rlivthm in all the finest prose, not the less impressive for being irregular. In Psalms the rhythm of language more nearly approaches regularity than the rhythm of carefully constructed rose, but it defies analysis and systematization. "he prevailing form is the couplet of two corre- sponding lines, though the triiilet and quatrain are used from time to time. On this suljjcct Driver says: 'The poetical instincts of the Hebrews appear to have been satisfied by the adoption of lines of (ipproxlnuddy the sjinie length, which were combined, as a rule, into groups of two, three, or four lines, constituting verses, the verses mark- ing u.sually more distinct pauses in the progress of thought than the separate lines' {LOl'" p. 302). (For the details of this subject see Driver's chapter just (|uoted and art. Poktry). It may, however, be briefly said here that the chief attempts to trace
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out a more regular metrical system in Psalms than the above remarks allow, are tho.se of J. hey (Metr. Funncn dcr Heb. Puesie, ISGG, and Grunclziitje det lihijt/tmits in der Heb. Poesie, 1875), Gustav IJickell (Cnrmina VT metrice, 1882, and articles in ZDMG, 181)1-1894), and, more recently, H. GriinmeC Abriss der biblisch-hebriiischen Me'trik'iu ZDMG, 1896, pp. 529-584, and 1897, pp. 6S3-712). Ley seeks to establish a metre which depends upon accents, and relies upon alliteration, assonance, and rhj-me as subordinate features. BickeLl seeks to prove that tlie measure of the verse is marked by regular alternation of accented and unaccented syllables ; but he accomplishes this only by an exces.sive modification, not to say mutilation, of the text, and by a violent use of unnatural elisions. Grimme's system is described in art. Poetry, p. G''. C. A. Briggs holds Ley's views in a modified form. He says, ' The accent may be useil as a principle of measurement to a very large extent in Heb. poetry, but it is not an absolute law; for whilst many poems and strophes are uniform in this respect, the poet breaks away from it and increases or diminishes the number of accents, as well as words, to corre.'^iiond with the movements of his tliought and iiioti(m ' (Bihl. Study, p. 263).* This does not greally differ from the mode of statement adopted by iJelitzsch, which is accepted in this article. ' Heb. poetry is not metrical, i.e. it is not regulated by the laws of quantity and by the number of syllables ; strong accents, which give jirominence to the logically most important syllables, produce a very great variety of rhythms in the series of syllables that form the sticiwi ; the ictus of the verse is regulated by tlie logical movement ; and the rhythm is the purely accentuating rhythm of the oldest kinds of national yoelry' {Psalnis,\o\. i. p. 31,note, Eng. tr.).
Tliere is one stage of poetical construction inter- mediate between the unit — couplet, triplet, or quatrain — and the completed lyric. It is the strophe or stanza, whichever name be considered most appropriate for a section of the poem, mark- ing a clearly defined movement in the thouglit, and consisting of a measured number of lines. Moulton, in his Literary Study of the Bible, uses the term 'sonnet' to describe this feature of Heb. poetry, but the accepted connotation of the word makes it generally unsuitable, and it would be qiiite out of place in the psalms. Sometimes the close of the strophe is marked by a refrain, or a nearly exact repetition of verse or phrase at more or less regular intervals. Some of the most clearly marked examples of this are, ' Why art thou cast down, O my soul?' in 42=- "43"; 'The Lord of hosts is with us ' in 46'- '' ; ' Turn us again, O Lord of hosts' in 80^- '■ '" ; '0 that men would praise the Lord for his goodness' in io7». lo-ai- 3i_ In tlie loGth psalm the refrain, ' his mercy endureth for ever ' occurs as the latter half of every verse. Less readily recognized examples may bo found in 39'- " ' Surely every man is vanity ' ; 56'- '" ' In God will I praise his word ' ; 57°' " ' Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens'; 62'- ' 'My soul, wait thou only upon God ' ; 99°- • ' Exalt tlie Lord our God, for he is holy.' In some of these cases, how- ever, the repetition of a phrase is rather the in- dication of a style which meets us markedly in the Songs of Ascents, than the occurrence of a refrain such as marks the close of a 8tro]ihe. Frequently it is clear that a psalm naturally divides itself into sections, where no refrain or poetical device marks the several pauses. The first three psalms would sutficicntly illustrate this, particularly the second, in which the arrange- ment of vv.'-3- •'•"■'•"•"'"" commends itself at once. Driver holds that in many cases these sections