committed "to the chief Musician," that he should be prepared to have it publicly sung in the Temple service, with an accompaniment of sacred music. This direction, as well as the "Maschil" (meaning "instruction"), marks that the particular historic fact is treated, not as a matter affecting merely individual feeling, but as illustrating the eternal principle, that the triumph of might, allied with injustice, is short, and recoils on the perpetrator. The occasion is stated to be, "When Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, and said unto him, David is come to the house of Ahimelech." The tautology, "told and said," marks Doeg's officious eagerness to tell, with tale-bearing exaggerations, what he knew well his master Saul would be keen in listening to (1 Sam. xxii. 9-11, 22). "The Edomite" is added to remind us of Edom, the representative of the world's undying enmity to the Church.

But Doeg, plainly, is not the principal one against whom the Psalm is directed. He was but a herdsman, though the ready tool of one mightier, in destroying no less than eightyfive priests and their city of Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 7). "The boaster in mischief" really meant in verse I, was Saul, who virtually boasted of the accomplished destruction of the priests, and threatened a similar fate to all who should aid David. To this David replies, "Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man?" [, hag-gibbor.] Now when we turn to the history, we find David using the very same term, and concerning Saul and Jonathan: "How are the mighty (gibborim) fallen!" (2 Sam. i. 19.) Animal courage and worldly hero-might were characteristics which David's elegy could with truth ascribe to Saul. The higher and truer hero-might belongs to the godly alone: as David takes care to insist on in the eighteenth Psalm (ver. 25): “With an upright man (literally, with an upright HERO, g'var) Thou wilt show Thyself upright." How natural, and at the same time undesigned, the coincidence of language!

David further addresses the ideal wicked mighty one (ver. 3), “Thou lovest . . . lying rather than to speak righteousness. Selah. Thou lovest all devouring words." What

these "lying and all devouring words" were, may be gathered from the history (1 Sam. xxiv. 9), where David said to Saul, "Wherefore hearest thou men's words, saying, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt?" The men who spoke such words against David were courtiers and flatterers of the king, and saw that the shortest road to his favour was to malign David, and misconstrue his every act into matter of treason. The prime instigator of such lying charges was the king himself. They were but the tools: Saul was the real author of the lies. Doeg told the fact, it is true, with malicious aggravation. It was Saul who put upon it the false construction of treason against David and the innocent priests (1 Sam. xxii.). How naturally the history accords with the fifty-second Psalm, and also with Psalm xvii. 3, 4: "I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress. Concerning the works of men, by the word of Thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer." paritz, one who breaks through all restraint.] David's grand safeguard against the hurtful "words and works of men was "the word of God's lips."

The "Selah" is characteristic of David, and the singers of David, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, exclusively, and occurs seventy-three times. The "Hallelujah," on the contrary, is never found in his or their Psalms, but in the Psalms connected with the times of the Babylonian captivity and the return. Habakkuk (iii. 9, 13) doubtless borrows the "Selah," as also the heading "To the chief Musician on my stringed instruments," from David's Psalms. Nothing but close investigation brings out the fact of such individual characteristics of David's style. A forger in later days would not be likely to have observed such delicate proprieties: the observance of them in the Psalms attributed to him is a strong presumption in favour of his authorship.

"Selah" is probably derived from, sh’lah, “rest,” and denotes a pause, during which the singers ceased to sing, and the musical instruments alone were heard. The Septuagint render it (dáaxua), "a break in the Psalm." It is introduced where the sense suggests the propriety of a pause, to give

time for calm reflection on the thought that has immediately preceded. In the ninth Psalm, it follows "Higgaion," which is a call to meditation, as the word implies. It is the peaceful and meditative soul alone, that can hear with the inward ear what the Holy Spirit would have us learn; and the "Selah" of David reminds us, that whilst hearing or reading Holy Scripture, we should commune in quietness with our spirit, and with our God.

Another striking feature of David's Psalms is his use of the names of God, Elohim and Jehovah, as compared with the usage of the Psalms of a later date in this respect. The Elohim Psalms, such as the fifty-second, are peculiar to the first three, out of the whole five books composing the Psalter, viz., to those of David, Asaph, and the sons of Korah. So strange had "Elohim" become in later times, that only the Jehovah Psalms of David were inserted in the later books, excepting Psalm cviii., by David, in which Elohim occurs six times, and Psalm cxliv., also by David, in which it occurs but once. What but truth and authenticity could have produced such a subtle nicety in the Psalms attributed to David and his singers, as distinguished from those of the last two books? In the fourth book, Elohim never occurs once. In the fifth, only in the two Psalms composed by David. Moreover, it is a coincidence between David's Psalms and the independent histories (the books of Samuel and of Chronicles), that David in the latter uses Elohim as a favourite term. (Compare 2 Sam. vii., 1 Chron. xxviii. 20, xxix. 1.) The coincidence is such as a forger would never think of. So delicate a propriety observed in both, attests the authenticity and genuineness of the Davidic Psalms and the sacred histories alike. We may thank the rationalistic school and Dr. Colenso for calling attention to the Divine names. What they intended for the dismemberment and discrediting of the Sacred Scriptures, has been abundantly overruled to their confirmation.

Hengstenberg suggests that the reason for David's predilection for the name Elohim was this: The heathen regarded

Jehovah, or Jahve, as the designation for the local God of Israel; not as the God of the universe, possessing the whole fulness and might of the Godhead absolutely. So David felt it unnecessary to express Jehovah as the Divine designation; for there was no question among the nations that He was Israel's God. What was contested was, whether He was also Elohim. In the face of the mighty world-powers, David boldly asserts the nullity of their gods, and the sole and exclusive Godhead of Jehovah; as, for instance, in Psalm xviii. 31, "Who is Elohim save Jehovah?" Moreover, that "Elohim" in David's Elohistic Psalms presupposes Jehovah as understood, appears from the close of the second book (Ps. lxxii. 18), "Blessed be Jehovah-Elohim." In later times, when the falsely called Elohim of surrounding nations began to be honoured in Israel, the term gave place to Jehovah for expressing the one true God.

The last coincidence to be noticed between the history and the Psalm appears from a comparison of the seventh verse of the latter with Saul's words in 1 Sam. xxii. 7—9: "Hear now, ye Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds; that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none that showeth me that my son hath made a league with the son of Jesse . . . and stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day? Then answered Doeg the Edomite, which was set over the servants of Saul, and said, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech," etc. Here Saul implies that he had what David had not, abundance of riches, fields and vineyards, wherewith to reward the tools of his wickedness. Samuel (1 Sam. viii. II, 12, 15) had foretold that this very course should be " the manner of the king," when the Israelites were so keen about having one: "He will appoint him captains over thousands, and he will take your fields and your vineyards, and give them to his servants." How exactly, and yet with how entire an absence of design, the harmony being latent, and not on the surface, does all this accord with, "Lo, this is the man

that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness."

Singularly prophetical of Saul's own doom is the fifth verse, which, in unstudied coincidence with 1 Sam. xxii. 18-20, hints at the doom inflicted by him on the house of Ahimelech. Herein is the "Maschil," or instructive lesson, to be learnt. God pays men in kind. "With the merciful He will show Himself merciful, but with the froward He will show Himself froward." Saul had, by the hands of Doeg, slain the whole family and kin of Ahimelech, save one, Abiathar. And Saul himself, and "his bloody house," with all his sons, save Mephibosheth, perished by a violent death (1 Sam. xxxi. 6; 2 Sam. xxi. I—14). So exactly did the word come to pass, "God shall likewise destroy thee for ever, He shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling-place,* and root thee out of the land of the living." Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth.

* The Hebrew for "dwelling-place," ohel, means literally the tabernacle, or sanctuary. This is appropriate to the fact that Ahimelech was cut off by Saul during his ministry at the tabernacle, whence the king summoned him. So "tabernacle" is applied to Saul's dwelling, whence he should be cut off.