In this obscure history of Hebrew psalmody King Hezekiah may be confidently regarded as one of the greatest and most systematic collectors. To his age, as it seems to me, may be ascribed most of the notes of authorship, and the quaint musical titles, which latter are so ancient that their meaning is unintelligible to the Greek translators. It must be remembered, however, that the Psalms were not collected and preserved as literary curiosities, but for current use in the worship of a later day. They were subject therefore to continual revision and adaptation to new occasions; to a great extent also, as always in poetry, the new occasion would mold its wording and imagery in the more archaic terms of the earlier day, and so the old and the new would blend in one timeless utterance. This would be the case with the so-called Davidic Psalms, for instance; which, rising out of a time of war and uncertainty from enemies, succeeded by a time of settledness and peace, would with little change suit the similar conditions of Hezekiah's reign and the years of deliverance following.

With the collection of older Psalms would go also the composition of new ones. That such songs were written and not incorporated in the psalter we see from "the writing" of Hezekiah after his recovery from sickness (Isa. xxxviii, 10-20) and the prayer of Habakkuk (Hab. iii), which latter was provided like the collected Psalms with musical directions. The prophecies of Isaiah, also, contain a number of songs which in the manner of the Psalms serve as devotional sanctions of the prophetic vision (see Isa. xii, xxvi, xxxv). Within the psalter the rebound of spirit at the nation's release from Assyria and the impression of awe produced upon other nations by its miraculous character (cf. 2 Chron. xxxii, 23) seem to be reflected in the Psalms at the beginning of Book II of the collection (Psa. xlii-xlix) attributed to the "sons of Korah." Psalms cxxiv and cxxvi sound like reminiscences of that release.

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers:
The snare is broken, and we are escaped (cxxiv, 7).

When Jehovah turned again the captivity of Zion,1
We were like unto them that dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
And our tongue with singing:

Then said they among the nations,

Jehovah hath done great things for them.
Jehovah hath done great things for us,
Whereof we are glad (cxxvi, 1-3).

These belong to a remarkable group of Psalms, fifteen in number (cxx-cxxxiv), called Songs of Degrees (A.V.) or Songs of Ascents (R.V.), lit., Songs of the Steps; which are thought by one scholar to have been collected and so named in commemoration of the fifteen years added to King Hezekiah's life after his miraculous recovery from deadly illness; see the story, 2 Kings xx, 1-11; Isa. xxxviii; 2 Chron. xxxii, 24. The explanation is of course conjectural like all historical criticism; but at all events all of these Psalms seem to reflect in a striking manner various phases of the inner experience of the king and his realm. during his last fifteen years.

NOTE. Within these years fell the deliverance from Assyria, as also some preceding perplexities (cf. Psa. cxx), the birth of the crown prince Manasseh (cf. 2 Kings xxi, 1), and perhaps the king's marriage (cf. Psa. cxxviii), which assured the continuance of the Davidic dynasty (cf. Psa. cxxvii, 3, 4). Nor should we overlook, in reading Psa. cxxxiii, the era of brotherly feeling sought in the early part of Hezekiah's reign by his Passover celebration (see 2 Chron. xxx, 25-27).

1 For this line I prefer the simpler translation of the Authorized Version. 2 J. W. Thirtle, "Old Testament Problems," chaps. i-v. It is only fair to say that this explanation of the Songs of Ascents is put by Professor G. B. Gray (Hastings' Bib. Dict., art. "Psalms ") among "other ingenious but improbable suggestions" which he rejects in favor of a more traditional explanation. The present school of Psalm criticism (for example, Cheyne and Briggs) is strangely color blind to any history earlier than Artaxerxes Ochus.

Under the patronage of King Hezekiah also, as it appears, the fund of Wisdom, or mashal, literature was

The Compiling of Proverbs

increased by a supplementary section of the Book of Proverbs (Prov. xxv-xxix) headed, "These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out." This heading in itself is significant for the light it throws on the date and make-up of the Book of Proverbs, and on the development of this strain of literature.

The Book of Proverbs, as this heading implies, is a compiled collection, made up of detached utterances of practical wisdom and sagacity, doubtless gathered from many sources and centers, and making no claim to original composition except such as is implied in the general attribution to Solomon. We have seen in an earlier chapter1 in what sense the term "of Solomon" is to be taken; the mashals of this type are Solomonic in much the same sense as the Psalms are Davidic. In continuing to compile Solomonic proverbs two and a half centuries after Solomon, the men of Hezekiah were confessedly adding to a collection which had been accumulating since near the time when Solomon "spake three thousand proverbs" (1 Kings iv, 32). The original heading of this earlier section, "The Proverbs of Solomon," appears at chapter x, I; other headings, implying other authors, are at xxii, 17, and xxiv, 23. Differences of style in the mashals of the original section (x, 1–xxii, 16) indicate a variety, perhaps a development, due to age and source. The Hezekian compilation, however, is more homogeneous, and in general more literary: similes and metaphors are far more numerous than elsewhere in the book, and there is a greater tendency to the riddling touch, more being left to the reader's thinking powers. This of course indicates, among the people at large, an advanced stage of literary appreciation.

1 See above, Chapter II, pp. 85 ff. and 93.

The Wisdom literature, of which the Book of Proverbs is the most typical and representative product, is relatively speaking the secular portion of the Biblical literature. It has indeed a sincerely religious and orthodox tissue: it makes its Wisdom uncompromisingly synonymous with righteousness and in its view wickedness is sheer folly; but it Ideals with matters of the home and the field and the market and the gate, and its precepts are concerned not with abstract speculation but with practical conduct. To this end it relies not like the prophets on divine revelation but on human insight and sagacity; and this indeed is its real distinction. From earliest time the Hebrew lawgiver, worshiper, and prophet sought the mind of God; the Hebrew sage, in distinction from these, has learned to trust the mind of man, and to value its intuitions as authentic truth. His wisdom is felt as a native endowment, and not dependent on inspiration.

There are indications that in the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah the Solomonic mashal was the most popular form of literature, especially with the leading classes who prided themselves on their superior learning and culture. It had been brought, as the Hezekian proverbs show, to its highest pitch of grace and point and subtlety; its underlying thesis was still unquestioned. The human intuition (Heb. thushiyyah) seemed sufficient to all things; and the divine word as a realized source of truth was ignored. It was with this state of sentiment that Isaiah, who was urging the claim of faith and prophetic vision, came in sharpest collision. We read this in the notable twenty-eighth chapter of Isaiah. They had scorned his austere insistence as so much childish twaddle (vss. 9, 10), and after turning the tables on them in a wonderful climax of prophecy (vss. 11-22) he proceeded to compose a passage in their own popular idiom (vss. 23-29) to show that Jehovah also is "wonderful in counsel, and excellent in intuition" (vs. 29). This, it seems

to me, is illuminative for the literary vogue of the period. Isaiah does not condemn the Wisdom utterance of his day; it is indeed, so far as it goes, a noble product; but he would not make it exclusive, and to its human sagacity, which is short-sighted and fallible, he would add the divine faith and vision which does not err.

To the collecting of psalms, the literature of piety and praise, and to the compiling of proverbs, the literature of didactic Wisdom, is rightly to be added in this awakened period a new and epoch-making strain, the literature of popularized law. This, however, is reserved to the next section, to be noted in connection with its effects.1

II. ON THE EVE OF NATIONAL TRANSPLANTATION We have called the remarkable escape of the Judean state from Assyrian captivity a postponement of doom; 2 this because in the natural course of things the nation's eventual absorption into the melting-pot of world-empire was only a question of time. But time was just now the essential element; for the evolution of the truest Jewish character it was like the period from infancy to lusty youth, the period of the nursery and the school. In the light of the century now intervening the providential motive of this postponement is clear. It was in Jehovah's purpose, as gradually disclosed by the prophets, that the nation should meet its ordeal of overthrow, when it came, not as a calamity but as a forward step and an opportunity, not as a race unmanned and disintegrated but organically matured and intact. To this end there was needed this century of fundamental education and upbuilding; there was needed also a seasoning of trial and patience. The healthful impulse to faith and loyalty awakened in the "remnant" in 701 must be so deepened and confirmed as to become the 1 See The Book Found in the Temple, pp. 220 ff. 2 See above, pp. 157 ff.