2. When Nathan the Prophet came unto him after he had

gone in to Bathsheba.

The student of the Psalms in the holy tongue itself can hardly avoid having, in regard to these Psalm

racter in the

Original.

Their Cha- titles, thoughts other than those suggested to the mere English reader. In the eyes of such a student they lose that 'deciduous' character with which the mode of printing in the Authorised Version can hardly fail to invest them. In that version, they look like something external to the Psalm itself; they are not unmistakeably included in the versenumbering of the Psalm; they seem almost to challenge the verdict that they are the addition, the comment, the gloss of a subsequent editor to explain what he conceived to be the drift of the author's meaning. In the Hebrew Psalter, however, they look like nothing of the kind. There they read exactly like any other verse of the Scripture. The system of Hebrew accentuation, which indicates not only the connection of word with word and clause with clause, but also the traditional mode in which each is to be read aloud-this system is applied to the several words of the Psalm-titles precisely as it is to every other word of the Old Testament. If a Psalm is

recited in Hebrew, for example, in Israelitish worship, then, as a matter of course, its heading is recited too. In short, by their character in the Hebrew Psalter the titles claim to be integral parts of the several Psalms which they introduce, and vindicate their right to be treated by the same laws of criticism as those which are applied to other verses of the Psalter. If we are at liberty to amputate the title because it does not appear to square with the contents of its Psalm, then we are also at liberty to erase any other verse of the Psalm, because it does not comfortably adjust itself to the verses which may precede or follow it.

This fact that the titles are integral parts of the Psalms will be appreciated by the English reader, if he will notice one other fact, viz., that we have Psalmtitles in other parts of the Bible as well as in the Psalter itself. In the middle of a chapter in Isaiah we have for example this verse: "The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness"*-a formula which in structure and character is identical with the titles in the Psalter, and which is, in point of fact, nothing but a Psalm-title, precisely as the succeeding verses of

* Isa. xxxviii. 9.

Hezekiah's thanksgiving are nothing but a Psalm. Once more, the first verse of a chapter in the Second Book of Samuel,* is approximately what appears in the Psalter as the title of the eighteenth Psalm; the Psalm itself being substantially repeated in the chapter in Samuel.

Our acceptance then-to take the Hezekiah passage -of the title in Isaiah does not, surely, depend upon its obvious appropriateness to the verses that follow it? We should not, surely, be at liberty to cut this verse out of the heart of Isaiah's chapter, if we failed to discover such appropriateness? Yet if we are at liberty to reject the titles in the Psalter, because we fail to discover their suitableness to the contents of their several Psalms; then, we should also be at liberty to reject the verse containing such a title in the middle of Isaiah's chapter, if we failed to discover its suitableness; and then we should be at liberty to reject the verse next to it, or the next to that, upon the same grounds; then, in point of fact, we should be at liberty to reject any verse of the Scriptures if we failed to discover its fitness; and the right of this or that clause to a place in the Bible

* 2 Sam. xxii. 1.

would depend not upon external testimony, but upon our own faculties-a position which is obviously absurd.

The adverse evidence.

The assumption, then, that the Psalm-titles are to be disregarded, involves consequences far too serious for us to acquiesce in it, unless we are driven to do so by evidence which is quite irresistible. A glance, however, at the books in which they are lightly treated, will show that the chief evidence against them is by no means of this kind, but that it commonly consists of nothing more than an apparent inappropriateness. The erasure of a Psalmtitle is in fact nothing else but what is known to editors as a "conjectural emendation," and deserves no higher confidence than such emendations commonly receive. If a critic of a Psalm comes fairly forward, and says that the external evidence is against its title; that in fact such title is a late gloss; then we shall be bound to weigh his advocacy seriously. When, however, he says nothing more conclusive than that the title of a Psalm is inconsistent with the contents of the Psalm; that it involves, for instance, an anachronism; that it is a patent absurdity to attribute to David a Psalm containing expressions which

can only be explained of the Babylonish Captivity ; then we must invite him to look at the matter once again, and to consider whether a different hypothesis as to the intent and history of the Psalm might not dissipate the supposed anachronism. As an example, I take one of these Gradual Psalms. Ps. cxxii. is one that has been subjected to this kind of treatment. It is headed "A song of degrees of David." But it is said the Psalm contains phrases which can only refer to the Captivity. Therefore the title which ascribes it to David cannot be true, but is probably the addition of some later editor, who failed to see the true sense of the Psalm and the consequent impropriety of his title.

But supposing the external evidence in favour of the title to be insurmountable, it is surely possible to frame a hypothesis, which may at any rate help to mitigate the undoubted difficulty. If, for example, the Psalm were really a Psalm of David, and then by Ezra or some other were incorporated, possibly with some modifications, into the series of Pilgrim Songs for the return from Babylon, the internal difficulties against the title would, on such a supposition, almost entirely disappear.