The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 3: Psalms XC.-CL.

Crown 8vo, cloth, price $1.50 each vol.

First Series, 1887-8.

Colossians.
By A. Maclaren, D.D.
St. Mark.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
Genesis.
By Prof. Marcus Dods, D.D.
1 Samuel.
By Prof. W. G. Blaikie, D.D.
2 Samuel.
By the same Author.
Hebrews.
By Principal T. C. Edwards, D.D.

Second Series, 1888-9.

Galatians.
By Prof. G. G. Findlay, B.A.
The Pastoral Epistles.
By Rev. A. Plummer, D.D.
Isaiah i.-xxxix.
By Prof. G. A. Smith, D.D. Vol. I.
The Book of Revelation.
By Prof. W. Milligan, D.D.
1 Corinthians.
By Prof. Marcus Dods, D.D.
The Epistles of St. John.
By Rt. Rev. W. Alexander, D.D.

Third Series, 1889-90.

Judges and Ruth.
By R. A. Watson, M.A., D.D.
Jeremiah.
By Rev. C. J. Ball, M.A.
Isaiah xl.-lxvi.
By Prof. G. A. Smith, D.D. Vol. II.
St. Matthew.
By Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D.D.
Exodus.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
St. Luke.
By Rev. H. Burton, M.A.

Fourth Series, 1890-1.

Ecclesiastes.
By Rev. Samuel Cox, D.D.
St. James and St. Jude.
By Rev. A. Plummer, D.D.
Proverbs.
By Rev. R. F. Horton, D.D.
Leviticus.
By Rev. S. H. Kellogg, D.D.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. Dods, D.D. Vol. I.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. Stokes, D.D. Vol. I.

Fifth Series, 1891-2.

The Psalms.
By A. Maclaren, D.D. Vol. I.
1 and 2 Thessalonians.
By James Denney, D.D.
The Book of Job.
By R. A. Watson, M.A., D.D.
Ephesians.
By Prof. G. G. Findlay, B.A.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. Dods, D.D. Vol. II.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. Stokes, D.D. Vol. II.

Sixth Series, 1892-3.

1 Kings.
By Ven. Archdeacon Farrar.
Philippians.
By Principal Rainy, D.D.
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
By Prof. W. F. Adeney, M.A.
Joshua.
By Prof. W. G. Blaikie, D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. Maclaren, D.D. Vol. II.
The Epistles of St. Peter.
By Prof. Rawson Lumby, D.D.

Seventh Series, 1893-4.

2 Kings.
By Ven. Archdeacon Farrar.
Romans.
By H. C. G. Moule, M.A.
The Books of Chronicles.
By Prof. W. H. Bennett, M.A.
2 Corinthians.
By James Denney, D.D.
Numbers.
By R. A. Watson, M.A., D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. Maclaren, D.D. Vol. III.

Eighth Series, 1895-6.

Daniel.
By the Ven. Archdeacon F. W. Farrar.
The Book of Jeremiah.
By Prof. W. H. Bennett, M.A.
Deuteronomy.
By Prof. Andrew Harper, B.D.
The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
By Prof. W. F. Adeney, M.A.
Ezekiel.
By Prof. John Skinner, M.A.
The Minor Prophets.
By Prof. G. A. Smith, D.D. Two Vols.

The sad and stately music of this great psalm befits the dirge of a world. How artificial and poor, beside its restrained emotion and majestic simplicity, do even the most deeply felt strains of other poets on the same themes sound! It preaches man’s mortality in immortal words. In its awestruck yet trustful gaze on God’s eternal being, in its lofty sadness, in its archaic directness, in its grand images so clearly cut and so briefly expressed, in its emphatic recognition of sin as the occasion of death, and in its clinging to the eternal God who can fill fleeting days with ringing gladness, the psalm utters once for all the deepest thoughts of devout men. Like the God whom it hymns, it has been “for generation after generation” an asylum.

The question of its authorship has a literary interest, but little more. The arguments against the Mosaic authorship, apart from those derived from the as yet unsettled questions in regard to the Pentateuch, are weak. The favourite one, adduced by Cheyne after Hupfeld and others, is that the duration of human life was greater, according to the history, in Moses’ time than seventy years; but the prolonged lives of certain conspicuous persons in that period do not warrant a conclusion as to the average length of life; and the generation that fell in the wilderness can clearly not have lived beyond the psalmist’s limit. The characteristic Mosaic tone in regarding death as the wages of sin, the massive simplicity and the entire absence of dependence on other parts of the Psalter, which separate this psalm from almost all the others of the Fourth Book, are strongly favourable to the correctness of the superscription. Further, the section vv. 7-12 is distinctly historical, and is best understood as referring not to mankind in general, but to Israel; and no period is so likely to have suggested such a strain of thought as that when the penalty of sin was laid upon the people, and they were condemned to find graves in the wilderness. But however the question of authorship may be settled, the psalm is “not of an age, but for all time.”

It falls into three parts, of which the two former contain six verses each, while the last has but five. In the first section (vv. 1-6), the transitoriness of men is set over against the eternity of God; in the second, (vv. 7-12) that transitoriness is traced to its reason, namely sin; and in the third, prayer that God would visit His servants is built upon both His eternity and their fleeting days. The short ver. 1 blends both the thoughts which are expanded in the following verses, while in it the singer breathes awed contemplation of the eternal God as the dwelling-place or asylum of generations that follow each other, swift and unremembered, as the waves that break on some lonely shore. God is invoked as “Lord,” the sovereign ruler, the name which connotes His elevation and authority. But, though lofty, He is not inaccessible. As some ancestral home shelters generation after generation of a family, and in its solid strength stands unmoved, while one after another of its somewhile tenants is borne forth to his grave, and the descendants sit in the halls where centuries before their ancestors sat, God is the home of all who find any real home amidst the fluctuating nothings of this shadowy world. The contrast of His eternity and our transiency is not bitter, though it may hush us into wisdom, if we begin with the trust that He is the abiding abode of short-lived man. For this use of dwelling-place compare Deut. xxxiii. 27.

What God has been to successive generations results from what He is in Himself before all generations. So ver. 2 soars to the contemplation of His absolute eternity, stretching boundless on either side of “this bank and shoal of time” — “From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God”; and in that name is proclaimed His self-derived strength, which, being eternal, is neither derived from nor diminished by time, that first gives to, and then withdraws from, all creatures their feeble power. The remarkable expressions for the coming forth of the material world from the abyss of Deity regard creation as a birth. The Hebrew text reads in ver. 2b as above, “Thou gavest birth to”; but a very small change in a single vowel gives the possibly preferable reading which preserves the parallelism of a passive verb in both clauses, “Or the earth and the world were brought forth.”

The poet turns now to the other member of his antithesis. Over against God’s eternal Being is set the succession of man’s generations, which has been already referred to in ver. 1. This thought of successiveness is lost unless ver. 3b is understood as the creative fiat which replaces by a new generation those who have been turned back to dust. Death and life, decay and ever-springing growth, are in continual alternation. The leaves, which are men, drop; the buds swell and open. The ever-knitted web is being ever run down and woven together again. It is a dreary sight, unless one can say with our psalm, “Thou turnest.... Thou sayest, Return.” Then one understands that it is not aimless or futile. If a living Person is behind the transiencies of human life, these are still pathetic and awe-kindling, but not bewildering. In ver. 3a there is clear allusion to Gen. iii. 19. The word rendered “dust” may be an adjective taken as neuter = that which is crushed, i.e. dust; or, as others suppose, a substantive = crushing; but is probably best understood in the former sense. The psalm significantly uses the word for man which connotes frailty, and in b the expression “sons of man” which suggests birth.

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