BS 1430 A3

1850 v.)

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by

JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER,

In the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.

C. W. BENEDICT,

Stereotyper

201 William st.

PREFACE.

The present publication owes its origin to Hengstenberg's Commentary on the Psalms. The original design was to make that work, by abridgment and other unessential changes, more acceptable and useful to the English reader than it could be in the form of an exact translation. It was soon found, however, that by far the most important part of such a book would be a literal version of the Hebrew text, and that this was precisely what could not be obtained at second hand, by the awkward and unsatisfying process of translating a translation, but must be derived directly from an independent scrutiny of the original. In attempting this, the deviations from Hengstenberg, continually in form and not unfrequently in substance, rendered it wholly inexpedient and improper to make him responsible for what was really a new translation. The only course remaining therefore was to make this general acknowledgment, that his work is the basis of the one now offered to the public, and that more has been directly drawn from that source than from all others put together. The present writer has so freely availed himself of Hengstenberg's translations, exegetical suggestions, and illustrative citations, in preparing his own version and expla