7. The ho[ies of the psalmists, like those of the prophets, were directed, not to a future life of the mdividual in heaven, but to the future of the community on earth. The subject of Messianic psalms can be adequately treated only in con- nexion with Messianic prophecy, of wliich they form a part. See under the articles Mkssiaii and PkoI'HKUV. The princijiles which should deter- mine views of ])rophecy in general are here con- cerned, and they are better studied on the more extended field and in the more explicit utterances of the prophetical books. The psalms which have usually been termed (in a somewhat conventional sense) ' Messianic ' are '2. 8. 10. 4.i. 72. 89, and 110. The list may vary slightly, but when it is ex- amined it is inevitable that the questions should arise. Why include precisely these and no others 1 And what is meant by the term Messianic? For if mention of a personal king ruling on earth ia essential, all these psalms cannot claim the title ;
160
PSALMS, BOOK OF
PSALMS, BOOK OF
and if a larger sense of the tenu be intended, others have as good a right to be found in the list.
The older exegesis, which made the language of the Psalter generally, and of some psalms in particular, to be the language of Christ Himself, has for some time been discredited. Delitzsoh, who may be taken to represent modern ' orthodox ' scholarsliip, linds onlj' one psalm, the lluth, directly Messianic in the sense that it contains propliecy immediately pointing to tlie person of a coming Anointed One, who was fully to set up God's kingdom on earth. All other references, as in the 2nd, 45tli, and 72nd psalms, he under- stands prunarlly of Isr. monarchs, so that the words contain jirophecy only in an indirect or typical sense. The tendency of criticism is to deny even this smaller measure of Messianic refer- ence. 'All these psalms,' says Chej'ne, referring chiefly to 2. 72, and 110, and in a lesser degree to some others, ' are only Messianic in a sense which is p.sychologieally justiliable. They are, as I have shown, neither typically nor in the ordinary sense prophetically Messianic' The 2nd and lluth psalms may claim the designation in the sense that ' the idealization of historical persons which they present presupposes the belief in an ideal Messianic monarchy, now or at some later time to be granted to Israel' (Oricfin of Ps. pp. 339, 340). That is, type and prophecy are alike excluded from the Psalter. The psalmists disregarded history, preferring to ' idealize'; their David is not the true David, their Moses is not the true Moses ; and they had no right to find in the monarchs of their own time a type and pledge of future glory, and no power directly to prophesy concerning it. If this be so, the term ' jNIessianic' is liardly worth retaining, and its employment is likely to mi.slead.
Perhaps we may see in these views another instance of extreme reaction against a mistaken exegesis. The time when Ps 45* could be quoted as proof direct of the divinity of Christ has gone by. The hopes and prayers of Ps 72 are under- stood as hopes and prayers in which no direct vision of a Kin<j or Jlessiah was before the mind of the singer. It is even doubted by some of tlie most tr\ilv Christian interpreters whether ' the oracle of J" unto my lord' in Ps 110' can mean that the speaker was the theocratic king, and his ' lord ' a greater King yet to come. The ' Son ' in Ps 2'-', if indeed that word occur at all in the obscure phrase nmps'i (see art. Kiss), is no longer understood as the Son of God incarnate, and the ' Son ' who is unquestionably mentioned in v.' is not sup])osed to be Jesus of Nazareth. But it by no meansfollowsthat no psalnisareeitherprophetically or typically Messianic. The exegesis which finds in Ps4.Tan epithalamiuML for some monarch unknown, is bound to confess that here is no ordinary wed- ding-song, and that the writer of it had thouglits which soared not only far above the occasion, but far above those of most of his contemporaries. The beneficent prince of Ps 72 is not a Jchosha- pliat or a Jeroboam with a halo round his head, unwarrantably placed there by a court-poet in a drcun. In wliatever way the details of Ps 110 be <inder.stood, the priest-Icing of no Aaronic type, wlio was to gather around him an army of j-oiitlis, clad not in mail but in holy festal apjiarel, multi- tudinous and brilliant as tlie dewdrops born from the womb of the morning, is not a phantom of imagination, suggested by the idealization of Simon the Maccabee. But is it possible at the same time to preserve the limits oi sober exegesis and to believe in the prophetic message of the Psalms? The evangelists and apostles held a view of the P.salter, which tliey so often quoted, that cannot be defended if neither by way of prophecy
nor of type is Christ contemidated in the Psalma at all.
A method of sohing the difficulty is sometimes described as the theory of ' the double sense,' a plirase wliich seems to imply that the obvious meaning of the words as read refers to con- temporary persons and events, whilst some deep- lying, mystical signihcance lies behind this, in which reference is made to Christ and the New Covenant. Now words can have but one meaning, though they may have not only a twofold but a manifold application. And it is not by a mystical sleight-of-hand, unintelligible to the plain reader, that a Mes.sianic signilieance is to be found in the psalms. The tirst duty of the interpreter is to iind the simple meaning of the words as they stand, as they were intended b}' the psalmist, and would be understood by his contemporaries. But the reason why this is not the end, as it is the begin- ning of exegesis of the psalms, is that the dispen- sation under which the}- were written did not stand alone, it was part of an organism, and the writers knew it. The Old Covenant proclaimed its own insufficiency, and pointed continually onwards. Consequently, when inspired writers handled certain themes, they did so in a way that would have been unintelligible but for this under- lying consciousness. And often, when they were not themselves consciously glancing forwards, sub- sequent events shed a richer light upon their words, and enabled those who came after to make a much more complete and significant ajijilic.ation of the words whicli they had spoken. When the glance of the psalmist fell directly upon the future culmination of the kingdom of God upon earth, his words are prophetically Messianic ; when he was chiefly concerned with the present, but as part of an organism not yet completed, his words may be styled indirectly or typicallj' Messianic. If the statement of Schultz be admitted, ' There is positively not one NT idea that cannot be shown to be a healthy and natural product of some OT germ, nor any truly OT idea which did not in- stinctively press towards its NT fulfilment' (Old Test. Theol. vol. i. p. 52, Eng. tr.) — a position which not many will care to dispute — the principles just laid down do but declare that in a growing plant the relation of the parts to the whole is best dis- cerned in the maturity, not in the infancy of the growth. Tlie seed is the prophecy of the plant, stem and buds and flowers, to those who know its nature. And the tva TXripudy of NT means that tlie earlier stage existed in order that the later might reach its ripe and full-orbed deveIo])ment.