A dark shadow is undeniably cast on this attrac- tive picture by those outbursts of sometimes pas- sionate longing for revenge that are found in the so-called ‘imprecatory psalms’ (411! 58" 1097, and esp. 1378" ; ef. also La 14% 3%#: 421+), The expedient of declaring that the objects of hatred and revenge- ful longing in these passages are not eee but the cause they represent, their hostility to God and His kingdom, is utterly untenable in view, for example, of Ps 1378%. We have simply to acknowledge that there is not to be detected here the slightest breath of the spirit which inspires the words of Mt 5#*. And, however readily we may concede that such utterances are partly in- telligible as the cry of distress of a people long enslaved and maltreated, and that on that account they are in a measure excusable, they still continue to be at the same time instructive witnesses to the fact that in the OT, side by side with the word of God, the disposition and the voice of the natural man may still be remarked.
7. The doctrine of retribution.—The problem ever raised afresh by experience, namely, how the actions and the fortunes of men are related to one another, had already, as we saw above (p. 689), engaged the attention of the later Prophets, and had led first to the conclusion that no one has to pay the penalty of another’s guilt, but only his own. But in pro- portion as the place of the old popular religion, which had regard almost exclusively to the nation as a whole, had its place taken by an interest in the religious individual, the question always be- came a more burning one,—in view of the complete absence of any hope of a compensatory process in the world beyond,—how the sufferings of the godly and the prosperity of the wicked were to be recon- ciled with faith m a Divine, and thus absolutely righteous, rule of the world. At first the Psalmists, too, abide by the simple postulate, which appears to be imperatively required by the conception of God, and which the very first psalm states in the sharp antithesis, ‘Happiness to the righteous, woe to the wicked!’ The description of the happiness of the godly (231 9215 1121 19818.) is presented in such beautiful pictures and with such definiteness that there appears to be no room left to raise the problem above referred to. But it was impossible
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permanently to shut one’s eyes to the glaring facts supplied by experience of real life. And so we find three psalms (the 37th, the 49th, and the 73rd; also the opening part of the 39th),* in which the prob- lem of the prosperity of the ungodly is subjected to an examination which shows only too clearly how heavily this question pressed upon men's minds, and what a struggle was required to reach anything like a satisfying result. But this result is the same in all the three psalms named. The sufferings of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked are both alike pronounced to be always only temporary, and hence to be merely a deceitful appearance. Soon and suddenly release comes to the one, shameful ruin to the other; and all the more are men to be warned not to fret on account of the prosperity of the wicked, instead of waiting calmly for God’s judgment to fall.
Is this attempt at a theodicy to be called a, satis- fying one? We can only say that, while there is something extremely touching and edifying in the testimony of the author of Ps 37 that up to his old age he had never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread, unfortunately every one is not in a position to testify to the same experience. On OT soil the solution of the problem was possible only in such a way as we find exhibited in the Book as J me On this we shall have to speak below (p. 730° f.).
8. Messianic expectations.—If it is the case, as is very frequently asserted, that the whole interest of the later post-exilic religion of Israel turns on the two great hinges of the Law and the Messianic hope, this assertion can be justified even in regard to the last point only to a very limited extent from the Psalms. Now that a sober exegesis has swept away a great number of supposed Messianic (or at least typically Messianic) psalms, there remain only three (if we leave out of account the brief promise of a victorious descendant of David, 132) in which the expectation of a personal Messiah can- not well be disputed—the 2nd, the 72nd, and the 110th. Ps2might have been called forth by the victory of a Maccaban prince, which moved the writer to recognize in him the long promised Messiah. Any other interpretation (such, for in- stance, as to assume that we have here the hyper- bole of flattery) would in any case be ye eet by v.5, which contemplates that the king addressed is to exercise absolutely unlimited sway over the world. The only question is whether a definite historical occurrence was needed to lead to the utterance of such a prophecy. The simplest view will always continue to be that the poet is trans- ported in spirit to the birth-pangs of the Messianic era, and from this standpoint describes the course of things.—Similarly, in Ps 72 it follows from v.® that we have to do with a purely future prophecy, a glance into the period when Jahweh has set up a king under whose powerful and just sway peace and abundant blessing are the lot of the people,— above all, of those hitherto oppressed, all poor and needy ones (vv.*!-), From v.? it would appear as if eternal rule were contemplated for this king personally ; but, since in v.77 it 1s his name that has eternal continuance and eternal renown promised to it, we must think here, as elsewhere (cf. above, pp. 696°, 713°), of the permanence of the dynasty. It is not said that this ideal king is descended from David, but it may be presupposed all the same. —In Ps 110 we are compelled by v.* to hold that the person is a military commander (v.°) who has received not only priestly but also kingly dignity (cf. v.2 ‘thy mighty sceptre’), and so can be com- pared with the priest-king Melchizedek of Gn 14". ‘All this is intelligible only if the subject addressed