�s on theJ'safms

C. S. LEWIS

s on theJ'safms

A Harvest Book

Harcourt Brace & Company

San Diego New York London

Copyright© 1958 by C. S. Lewis

Copyright renewed 1986 by Arthur Owen Barfield

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-1091 o

ISBN o-15-676248-X (Harvest: pbk.)

Printed in the United States of America

To

Austin and Katharine

Farrer

CONTENTS

I.

Introductory

I

II.

"Judgement" in the Psalms

9

III.

The Cursings

20

IV.

Death in the Psalms

34

v.

" The fair beauty of the Lord "

44

VI.

" Sweeter than Honey "

54

VII.

Connivance

66

VIII. Nature

76

IX.

A Word about Praising

go

X.

Second Meanings

99

XI.

Scripture

109

XII.

Second Meanings in the Psalms

120

Appendix !-Selected Psalms

139

Appendix II-Psalms discussed or

mentioned

149

The Book of Common Prayer is Crown Copyright. The extracts

are reproduced by permission

I Introductory

This is

not a work of scholarship. I am no

Hebraist, no higher critic, no ancient historian, no

archaeologist. I write for the unlearned about

things in which I am unlearned myself. If an excuse

IS needed (and perhaps it is) for writing such a book,

my excuse would be something like this. It often

happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties

in their work for one another better than the master

can. When you took the problem to a master, as

we all remember, he was very likely to explain what

you understood already, to add a great deal of

information which you didn't want, and say

nothing at all about the thing that was puzzling

you. I have watched this from both sides of the

net ; for when, as a teacher myself, I have tried to

answer questions brought me by pupils, I have

sometimes, after a minute, seen that expression

settle down on their faces which assured me that

they were suffering exactly the same frustration

which I had suffered from my own teachers. The

fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met

it so long ago that he has forgotten. He sees the

whole subject, by now, in such a different light that

I

REFLECTIONS ON T H E P SALMS

he cannot conceive what is really troubling the

pupil ; he sees a dozen other difficulties which ought

to be troubling him but aren't.

In this book, then, I write as one amateur to

another, talking about difficulties I have met, or

lights I have gained, when reading the Psalms,

with the hope that this might at any rate interest,

and sometimes even help, other inexpert readers.

I am "comparing notes ", not presuming to instruct. It may appear to some that I have used the Psalms merely as pegs on which to hang a series of

miscellaneous essays. I do not know that it would

have done any harm if I had written the book 'that

way, and I shall have no grievance against anyone

who reads it that way. But that is not how it was in

fact written. The thoughts it contains are those to

which I found myself dnven in reading the Psalms ;

sometimes by my enjoyment of them, sometimes by

meeting with what at first I could not enjoy.

The Psalms were written by many poets and at

many different dates. Some, I believe, are allowed

to go back to the reign of David ; I think certain

scholars allow that Psalm 18 (of which a slightly

different version occurs in I Samuel 22) might be by

David himself. But many are later than the

"captivity", which we should call the deportation

to Babylon. In a schola,.rly work, chronology would

be the first thing to settle : in a book of this sort

nothing more need, or can, be said about it.

What must be said, however, is that the Psalms

are poems, and poems intended to be sung: not

doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons. Those who

2

INTR O D U C T O RY

talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes

mean, I think, reading it without attending to the

main thing it is about; like reading Burke with no

interest in politics, or reading the Aeneid with no

interest in Rome. That seems to me to be nonsense. But there is a saner sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be

read except as literature; and the different parts of

it as the different sorts of literature they are. Most

emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems; as

lyrics, with all the licences and all the formalities,

the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical

connections, which are proper to lyric poetry.

They must be read as poems if they are to be understood; no less than French must be read as French or English as English. Otherwise we shall miss

what is in them and think we see what is not.

Their chief formal characteristic, the most obvious

element of pattern, is fortunately one that survives

in translation. Most readers will know that I mean

what the scholars call "parallelism"; that is, the

practice of saying the same thing twice in different

words. A perfect example is "He that dwelleth in

heaven shall laugh them to scorn: the Lord shall

have them in derision" (2, 4), or again, "He shall

make thy righteousness as clear as the light ; and

thy just dealing as the noon-day" (37, 6). If this is

not recognised as pattern, the reader will either

find mares' nests (as some of the older preachers

did) in his effort to get a different meaning out of

each half of the verse or else feel that it is rather silly.

In reality it is a very pure example of what all

3

REFLE C TI O N S O N T H E P SALMS

pattern, and therefore all art, involves. The principle of art has been defined by someone as " the same in the other ''. Thus in a country dance you

take three steps and then three steps again. That is

the same. But the first three are to the right and the

second three to the left. That is the other. In a

building there may be a wing on one side and a

wing on the other, but both of the same shape. In

music the composer may say ABC, and then abc,

and then a.f3y. Rhyme consists in putting together two syllables that have the same sound except for their initial consonants, which are other.

" Parallelism '' is the characteristically Hebrew

form of the same in the other, but it occurs in many

English poets too : for example, in Mar lowes

Cut is the branch that might have grown

full straight

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,

or in the childish!) �imple form used by the Cherry

Tree Carol)

Joseph was an old man and an old man was he.

Of course the Parallelism is often partially concealed on purpose (as the balances between masses in a picture may be something far subtler than complete symmetry) . And of course other and Piore complex patterns may be worked in across it, as in

Psalm I 1 g, or in I 07 with its refrain. I mention

only what is most obvious, the Parallelism itself.

It is (according to one's point of view) either a

wonderful piece ofluck or a wise provision of God's.

4

INTRODUCTORY

that poetry which was to be turned into all

languages should have as its chief formal characteristic one that does not disappear (as mere metre does) in translation.

Ifwe have any taste for poetry we shall enjoy this

feature of the Psalms. Even those Christians who

cannot enjoy it will respect it; for Our Lord, soaked

in the poetic tradition of His country, delighted to

use it. "For with what judgement ye judge, ye

shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete,

it shall be measured to you again" (Matthew 7, 2).

The second half of the verse makes no logical

addition; it echoes, with variation, the first, "Ask,

and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;

knock and it shall be opened unto you" (7, 7) .

The advice is given in the first phrase, then twice

repeated with different images. We may, if we

like, see in this an exclusively practical and didactic

purpose; by giving to truths which are infinitely

worth remembering this rhythmic and incantatory

expression, He made them almost impossible to

forget. I like to suspect more. It seems to me

appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great

Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own

delight and for the delight of men and angels and

(in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and

formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to

express Itself in human speech, that speech should

sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

I think, too, it will do us no harm to remember

5

R E FL ECTIONS ON THE PSALMS

that, in becoming Man, He bowed His neck

beneath the sweet yoke of a heredity and early

environment. Humanly speaking, He would have

learned this style, if from no one .else (but it was

all about Him) from His Mother. "That we should

be saved from our enemies and from the hands of all

that hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our

fathers, and to remember his holy covenant." Here

is the same parallelism. (And incidentally, is this

the only aspect in which we can say of His human

nature "He was His Mother's own son"? There is a

fierceness, even a touch of Deborah, mixed with the

sweetness in the Magnificat to which most painted

Madonnas do little justice; matching the frequent

severity of His own sayings. I am sure the private

life of the holy family was, in many senses, "mild"

and "gentle", but perhaps hardly in the way some

hymn writers have in mind. One may suspect, on

proper occasions, a certain astringency; and all in

what people at jerusalem regarded as a rough northcountry dialect.)

I have not attempted of course to" cover the subject" even on my own amateurish level. I have stressed, and omitted, as my own interests led me. I

say nothing about the long historical Psalms, partly

because they have meant less to me, and partly because they seem to call for little comment. I say the least I can about the history of the Psalms as parts of

various "services''; a wide subject, and not for me.

And I begin with those characteristics of the Psalter

which are at first most repellent. Other men of my

age will know why. Our generation was brought

6

INTRODUCTORY

up to eat everything on the plate ; and it was the

sound principle of nursery gastronomy to polish

off the nasty things first and leave the titbits to the

end.

I have worked in the main from the translation

which Anglicans find in their Prayer Book; that of

Coverdale. Even of the old translators he is by no

means the most accurate; and of course a sound

modern scholar has more Hebrew in his little finger

than poor Coverdale had in his whole body. But in

beauty, in poetry, he, and St. Jerome, the great

Latin translator, are beyond all whom I know. I

have usually checked, and sometimes corrected, his

version from that of Dr. Moffatt.

Finally, as will soon be apparent to any reader,

this is not what is called an " apologetic" work. I

am nowhere trying to convince unbelievers that

Christianity is true. I address those who already believe it, or those who are ready, while reading, to

" suspend their disbelief". A man can't be always

defending the truth; there must be a time to feed

on it.

I have written, too, as a member of the Church of

England, but I have avoided controversial questions

as much as possible. At one point I had to explain

how I differed on a certain matter both from

Roman Catholics and from Fundamentalists: I

hope I shall not fo.r this forefeit the goodwill or the

prayers of either. Nor do I much fearit. In my experience the bitterest opposition comes neither from them nor from any other thoroughgoing

believers, and not often from atheists, but from

7

R EF L E C T I O NS ON T H E PSALMS

semi-believers of all complexions. There are some

enlightened and progressive old gentlemen of this sort

whom no courtesy can propitiate and no modesty

disarm. But then I dare say I am a much more

annoying person than I know. (Shall we, perhaps,

in Purgatory, see our own faces and hear our own

voices as they really were?)

8

I I 0]udgement" in the Psalms

If there

is any thought at which a Christian

trembles it is the thought of God's ''judgement".

The "Day" of Judgement is "that day of wrath,

that dreadful day". We pray for God to deliver us

"in the hour of death and at the day of judgement ".

Christian art and literature for centuries have

depicted its terrors. This note in Christianity certainly goes back to the teaching of Our Lord Himself; especially to the terrible parable of the

Sheep and the Goats. This can leave no conscience

untouched, for in it the "Goats" are condemned

entirely for their sins of omission; as if to make us

fairly sure that the heaviest charge against each of

us turns not upon the things he has done but on

those he never did-perhaps never dreamed of

doing.

It was therefore with great surprise that I first

noticed how the Psalmists talk about the judgements of God. They talk like this; "0 let the nations rejoice and be glad, for thou shalt judge

the folk righteously (67, 4), "Let the field be joyful

all the trees of the wood shall rejoice before the

.

.

.

Lord, for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the

earth" (g6, 12, 13). Judgement is apparently an

occasion of universal rejoicing. People ask for it:

9

R E F L E C T I O NS O N TH E PSALMS

"Judge me, 0 Lord my God, according to thy

righteousness " (35, 24) .

The reason for this soon becomes very plain. The

ancient Jews, like ourselves, think of God's judgement in terms of an earthly court of justice. The difference is. that the Christian pictures the case to be tried as a criminal case with himself in the dock ; the

Jew pictures it as a civil case with himself as the

plaintiff. The one hopes for acquittal, or rather for

pardon; the other hopes for a resounding triumph

with heavy damages. Hence he prays "judge my

quarrel", or "avenge my cause" (35, 23) . And

though, as I said ·a minute ago, Our Lord in the

parable of the Sheep and the Goats painted the

characteristically Christian picture, in another

place He is very characteristically Jewish. Notice

what He means by "an unjust judge". By those

words most of us would mean someone like Judge

Jeffreys or the creatures who sat on the benches of

German tribunals during the Nazi regime: someone

who bullies witnesses and jurymen in order to convict, and then savagely to punish, innocent men.

Once again, we are thinking of a criminal trial.

We hope we shall never appear in the dock before

such a judge. But the Unjust Judge in the parable

is quite a different character. There is no danger of

appearing in his court against your will: the

difficulty is the opposite-to get into it. It is clearly

a civil action. The poor woman (Luke 18, 1-5)

has had her little strip of land-room for a pigsty or

a hen-run-taken away from her by a richer and more

powerful neighbour (nowadays it would be Town-

10

''JUDGEMENT" IN THE PSALMS

Planners or some other "Body ") . And she knows

she has a perfectly watertight case. If once she

could get it into court and have it tried by the laws

of the land, she would be bound to get that strip

back. But no one will listen to her, she can't get it

tried. No wonder she is anxious for "judgement".

Behind this lies an age-old and almost world-wide

experience which we have been spared. In most

places and times it has been very difficult for the

" small man " to get his case heard. The judge (and,

doubtless, one or two of his underlings) has to be

bribed. If you can't afford to "oil his palm " your

case will never reach court. Our judges do not

receive bribes. (We probably take this blessing too

much for granted ; it will not remain with•us automatically) . We need not therefore be surprised if the Psalms, and the Prophets, are full of the longing

for judgement, and regard the announcement that

"judgement" is coming as good news. Hundreds

and thousands of people who have been stripped of

all they possess and who have the right entirely on

their side will at last be heard. Of course they are

not afraid of judgement. They know their case is

unanswerable-if only it could be heard. When

God comes to judge, at last it will.

Dozens of passages make the point clear. In

Psalm g we are told that God will " minister true

judgement" ( 8), and that is because He "forgetteth

not the complaint of the poor " (12) . He "defendeth the cause" (that is, the " case") " of the widows" (68, 5). The good king in Psalm 72, 2,

will "judge " the people rightly ; that is, he will

I I

REFLECTIO NS ON THE PSALMS

"defend the poor". When God "arises to judge··

ment" he will "help all the meek upon earth"

(76, g), all the timid, helpless people who1ie wrongs

have never been righted yet. When God accuses

earthly judges of"wrong judgement", He follows it

up by telling them to see that the poor "have

right" (82, 2, 3).

The "just" judge, then, is primarily he who

rights a wrong in a civil case. He would, no doubt,

also try a criminal case justly, but that is hardly

ever what the Psalmists are thinking of. Christians

cry to God for mercy instead of justice·; they cried to

God for justice instead of injustice. The Divine

Judge is the defender, the rescuer. Scholars tell me

that in the Book of Judges the word we so translate

might almost be rendered "champions"; for

though these "judges" do sometimes perform what

we should call judicial functions many of them are

much more concerned with rescuing the oppressed

Israelites from Philistines and others by force of

arm!. They are more like Jack the Giant Killer than

like a modern judge in a wig. The knights in

romances of chivalry who go about rescuing

distressed damsels and widows from giants and

other tyrants are acting almost as "judges'; in the

old Hebrew sense: so is the modern solicitor (and I

have known such) who does unpaid work for poor

clients to save them from wrong.

I think there are very good reasons for regarding

the Christian picture of God's judgement as far

more profound and far safer for our souls than the

Jewish. But this does not mean that the Jewish

12

''JUDGEMENT'' IN THE PSALMS

conception must simply be thrown away.

I, at

least, believe I can still get a good deal of nourishment out of it.

It supplements the Christian picture in one

important way. For what alarms us in the Christian

picture is the infinite purity of the standard against

which our actions will be judged. But then we

know that none of us will ever come up to that

standard. We are all in the same boat. We must all

pin our hopes on the mercy of God and the work

of Christ, not on our own goodness. Now the

Jewish picture of a civil action sharply reminds us

that perhaps we are faulty not only by the Divine

standard (that is a matter of course) but also by a

very human standard which all reasonable people

admit and which we ourselves usually wish to

enforce upon others. Almost certainly there are unsatisfied claims, human claims, against each one of us. For who can really believe that in all his dealings

with employers and employees, with husband or

wife, with parents and children, in quarrels and in

collaborations, he has always attained (let alone

charity or generosity) mere honesty and fairness?

Of course we forget most of the injuries we have

done. But the injured parties do not forget even if

they forgive. And God does not forget. And even

what we can remember is formidable enough. Few

of us have always, in full measure, given our pupils

or patients or clients (or whatever our particular

"consumers" may be called) what we were being

paid for. We have not always done quite our fair

share of some tiresome work if we found a colleague

13

REFLECTIO NS ON THE PSALMS

or partner who could be beguiled into carrying the

heavy end.

Our quarrels provide a very good example of the

way in which the Christian and Jewish conceptions

differ, while yet both should be kept in mind. As

Christians we must of course repent of all the anger,

malice, and self-will which allowed the discussion

to become, on our side, a quarrel at all. But there

is also the question on a far lower level: "granted

the quarrel (we'll go into that later) did you fight

fair?" Or did we not quite unknowingly falsify the

whole issue? Did we pretend to be angry about one

thing when we knew, or could have known, that our

anger had a different and much less presentable

cause? Did we pretend to be "hurt" in our sensitive

and tender feelings (fine natures like ours are so

vulnerable) when envy, ungratified vanity, or

thwarted self-will was our real trouble? Such

tactics often succeed. The other parties give in.

They give in not because they don't know what is

really wrong with us but because they have long

known it only too well, and that sleeping dog can be

roused, that skeleton brought out of its cupboard,

only at the cost of imperilling their whole relationship with us. It needs surgery which they know we will never face. And so we win; by cheating. But

the unfairness is very deeply felt. Indeed what is

commonly called "sensitiveness" is the most powerful engine of domestic tyranny, sometimes a lifelong tyranny': How we should deal with it in others I am

not sure; but we should be merciless to its first

appearances in ourselves.

14

"JUDGEMENT" IN THE PSALMS

The constant protests in the Psalms against those

who oppress " the poor" might seem at first to have

less application to our own society than to most.

But perhaps this is superficial; perhaps what

changes is not the oppression but only the identity

of " the poor". It often happens that someone in

my acquaintance gets a demand from the Income

Tax people which he queries. As a result it sometimes comes back to him reduced by anything up to fifty per cent. One man whom I knewt a solicitor,

went round to the office and asked what they had

meant by the original demand. The creature behind the counter tittered and said, " Well there's never any harm trying it on." Now when the cheat

is thus attempted against men of the world who

know how to look after themselves, no great harm is

done. Some time has been wasted, and we all in

some measure share the disgrace of belonging to a

community where such practices are tolerated, but

that is all. When, however, that kind of publican

sends a similarly dishonest demand to a poor

widow, already half starving on a highly taxable

"unearned " income (actually earned by years of

self-denial on her husband's part) which inflation

has reduced to almost nothing, a very different

result probably follows. She cannot afford legal

help; she understands nothing; she is terrified, and

pays-cutting down on the meals and the fuel which

were already wholly insufficient. The publican who

has successfully " tried it on " with her is precisely

"the ungodly" who " for his own lust doth persecute

the poor" {Io, 2) . To be sure, he does this, not like

15

REFLECTIONS O N THE PSALMS

the ancient publican, for his own immediate rakeoff; only to advance himself in the service or to please his masters. This makes a difference. How

important that difference is in the eyes of Him who

avenges the fatherless and the widow I do not

know. The publican may consider the question in

the hour of death and will learn the answer at the

day of "judgement". (But-who knows?-! may

be doing the publicans an injustice. Perhaps they

regard their work as a sport and observe game laws;

and as other sportsmen will not shoot a sitting bird,

so they may reserve their illegal demands for those

who can defend themselves and hit back, and would

never dream of "trying it on" with the helpless.

If so, I can only apologise for my error. If what

I have said is unjustified as a rebuke of what they

are, it may still be useful as a warning of what they

may yet become. Falsehood is habit-forming.)

It will be noticed, however, that I make the

Jewish conception of a civil judgement available

for my Christian profit by picturing myself as the

defendant, not the plaintiff. The writers of the

Psalms do not do this. They look forward to

"judgement" because they think they have been

wronged and hope to see their wrongs righted.

There are, indeed, some passages in which the

Psalmists approach to Christian humility and wisely

lose their self-confidence. Thus in Psalm 50 (one of

the finest) God is the accuser (6-21); and in 143, 2,

we have the words which most Christians often

repeat-" Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justi-I6

"JUDGEMENT" IN THE PSALMS

fled." But these are exceptional. Nearly always the

Psalmist is the indignant plaintiff.

He is quite sure, apparently, that his own hands

are clean. He never did to others the horrid things

that others are doing to him. "If I have done any

such thing "-if I ever behaved like so-and-so, then

let so-and-so "tread my life down upon the earth"

(7,3-5). But of course I haven't. It is not as if my

enemies are paying me out for any ill turn I ever did

them. On the contrary, they have "rewarded me

evil for good". Even after that, I went on exercising the utmost charity towards them. When they were ill I prayed and fasted on their behalf (35,

12-14)·

All this of course has its spiritual danger. It leads

into that typically Jewish prison of self-righteousness which Our Lord so often terribly rebuked. We shall have to consider that presently. For the moment, however, I think it is important to make a distinction: between the conviction that one is in

the right and the conviction that one is "righteous"

is a good man. Since none of us is righteous, the

second conviction is always a delusion. But any of

us may be, probably all of us at one time or another

are, in the right about some particular issue.

What is more, the worse �an may be in the right

against the better man. Their general characters

have nothing to do with it. The question whether

the disputed pencil belongs to Tommy or Charles is

quite distinct from the question which is the nicer

little boy, and the parents who allowed the one to

influence their decision about the other would be

17

R E FLECTIONS ON THE PSAL MS

very unfair. (It would be still worse if they said

Tommy ought to let Charles have the pencil whether

it belonged to him or not, because this would show

he had a nice disposition. That may be true, but it

is an untimely truth. An exhortation to charity

should not come as rider to a refusal of justice. It is

likely to give Tommy a lifelong conviction that

charity is a sanctimonious dodge for condoning

theft and whitewashing favouritism.) We need

therefore by no means assume that the Psalmists are

deceived or lying when they assert that, as against

their particular enemies at some particular moment,

they are completely in the right. Their voices while

they say so may grate harshly on our ear and sug·

gest to us that they are unamiable people. But that

is another matter. And to be wronged does not

commonly make people amiable.

But of course the fatal confusion between being in

the right and being righteous soon falls upon them.

In 7, from which I have already quoted, we see the

transition. In verses 3 to 5 the poet is merely in the

right ; by verse 8 he is saying "give sentence with

me, 0 Lord, according to my righteousness and

according to the innocency that is in me". There is

also in many of the Psalms a still more fatal confusion-that between the desire for justice and the desire for revenge. These important topics will have

to be treated separately. The self-righteous Psalms

can be dealt with only at a much later stage ; the

vindictive Psalms, the cursings, we may tum to at

once. It is these that have made the Psalter largely

a closed book to many modem church-goers.

18

"JUDGEMENT" IN THE PSALMS

Vicars, not unnaturally, are afraid to set before

their congregations poems so full of that passion to

which Our Lord's teaching allows no quarter.

Yet there must be some Christian use to be made of

them; if, at least, we still believe (as I do) that all

Holy Scripture is in some sense-though not all

parts of it in the same sense-the word of God.

(The sense in which I understand this will · be

explained later.)

19

III

The Cursings

In some

of the Psalms the spirit of hatred which

strikes us in the face is like the heat from a furnace

mouth. In others the same spirit ceases to be

frightful only by becoming (to a modern mind)

almost comic in its naivety.

Examples of the first can be found all over the

Psalter, but perhaps the worst is in 109. The poet

prays that an ungodly man may rule over his

enemy and that " Satan" may stand at his right

hand (5) . This probably does not mean what a

Christian reader naturally supposes. The " Satan"

is an accuser, perhaps an informer. When the

enemy is tried, let him be convicted and sentenced,

" and let his prayer be turned into sin" ( 6). This

again means, I think, not his prayers to God, but

his supplications to a human judge, which are to

make things all the hotter for him (double the

sentence because he begged for it to be halved) .

May his days be few, may his job be given to someone else (7). When he is dead may his orphans be beggars (9). May he look in vain for anyone in the

world to pity him (11) . Let God always remember

against hirn the sins of his parents (13) . Even more

devilish in one verse is the, otherwise beautiful, 137

where a blessing is pronounced on anyone who will

20

TH.E C URSIN GS

snatch up a Babylonian baby and beat its brains

out against the pavement (g). And we get the refinement of malice in 6g, 23, "Let their table be made a snare to take themselves withal; and let the

things that should have been for their wealth be

unto them an occasion of falling."

The examples which (in me at any rate) can

hardly fail to produce a smile may occur most disquietingly in Psalms we love; 143, after proceeding for eleven verses in a strain that brings tears to the

eyes, adds in the twelfth, almost like an afterthought "and of thy goodness slay mine enemies".

Even more na!vely, almost childishly, 139, in the

middle of its hymn of praise throws in (19) "Wilt

thou not slay the wicked, 0 God?"-as if it were

surprising that such a simple remedy for human ills

had not occurred to the Almighty. Worst of all in

"The Lord is my shepherd" (23), after the green

pasture, the waters of comfort, the sure confidence

in the valley of the shadow, we suddenly run

across (5) "Thou shalt prepare a table for me

against them. that trouble me" --or, ac; Dr. Moffatt

translates it, "Thou art my host, spreading a feast

for me while my enemies have to look on." The poet's

enjoyment of his present prosperity would not be

complete unless those horrid Joneses (who used to

look down their noses at him) were watching it all

and hating it. This may not be so diabolical as the

passages I have quoted above; but the pettiness and

vulga:rity of it, especially in such surroundings, are

hard to endure.

One way of dealing with these terrible or (dare

2 1

REFLECTIONS O N THE PSALMS

we say?) contemptible Psalms is simply to leave

them alone. But unfortunately the bad parts will

not "come away clean"; they may, as we have

noticed, be intertwined with the most exquisite

things. And if we still believe that all Holy Scripture is " written for our learning" or that the ageold use of the Psalms in Christian worship was not entirely contrary to the will of God, and if we remember that Our Lord's .nind and language were clearly steeped in the Psalter, we shall prefer, if

possible, to make some use of them. What use can

be made?

Part of the answer to this question cannot be given

until we come to consider the subject of allegory.

For the moment I can only describe, on the chance

that it may help others, the use which I have, undesignedly and gradually, come to make of them myself.

At the outset I felt sure, and I feel sure still, that

we must not either try to explain them away or to

yield for one moment to the idea that, because it

comes in the Bible, all this vindictive hatred must

somehow be good and pious. We must face both

facts squarely. The hatred is there-festering,

gloating, undisguised-and also we should be wicked

if we in any way condoned or approved it, or

(worse still) used it to justify similar passions in

ourselves. Only after these two admissions have

been made can we safely proceed.

The first thing that helped me-this is a common

experience-came from an angle that did not seem

to be religious at all. I found that these maledictions

22

THE CURSINGS

were in one way extremely interesting. For here

one saw a feeling we all know only too well, Resentment, expressing itself with perfect freedom, without disguise, without self-consciousness, without shame-as few but children would express it today.

I did not of course think that this was because the

ancient Hebrews had no conventions or restraints.

Ancient and oriental cultures are in many ways

more conventional, more ceremonious, and more

courteous than our own. But their restraints came

in different places. Hatred did not need to be disguised for the sake of social decorum or for fear anyone would accuse you of a neurosis. We therefore see it in its "wild" or natural condition.

One might have expected that this would immediately, and usefully, have turned my attention to the same thing in my own heart. And that, of course, is

one very good use we can make of the maledictory

Psalms. To be sure, the hates which we fight against

in ourselves do not dream of quite such appalling

revenges. We live-at least, in some countries we

still live-in a Inilder age. These poets lived in a

world of savage punishments, of massacre and

violence, of blood sacrifice in all countries and

human sacrifice in many. And of course, too, we

are far more subtle than they in disguising our ill

will from others and from ourselves. "Well," we

say, "he'll live to be sorry for it," as if we were

merely, even regretfully, predicting; not noticing,

certainly not admitting, that what we predict

gives us a certain satisfaction. Still more in the

Psalmists' tendency to chew over and over the cud

23

REFLECTIONS ON THE PSALMS

of some injury, to dwell in a kind of self-torture on

every circumstance that aggravates it, most of us can

recognise something we have met in ourselves. We

are, after all, blood-brothers to these ferocious,

self-pitying, barbaric men.

That, as I say, is a good use to make of the cursings. In· fact, however, something else occurred to me first. It seemed to me that, seeing in them

hatred undisguised, I saw also the natural result of

injuring a humau being. The word natural is here

important. This result can be obliterated by grace,

suppressed by prudence or social convention, and

(which is dangerous) wholly disguised by selfdeception. But just as the natural result of throwing a lighted match into a pile of shavings is to produce

a fire-though damp or the intervention of some

more sensible person may prevent it-so the natural

result of cheating a man, or "keeping him down"

or neglecting him, is to arouse resentment; that is,

to impose upon him the temptation of becoming

what the Psalmists were when they wrote the

vindictive passages. He may succeed in resisting

the temptation; or he may not, If he fails, if he dies

spiritually because of his hatred for me, how do I,

who provoked that hatred, stand? For in addition

to the original injury I have done him a far worse

one. I have introduced into his inner life, at best a

new temptation, at worst a new besetting sin. If

that sin utterly corrupts him, I have in a sense debauched or seduced him. I was the tempter.

There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were

easy. We all know the old joke, "You've given up

24

T H E CURSINGS

smoking once; I've given it up a dozen times." In

the same way I could say of a certain man, "Have

I forgiven him for what he did that day? I've forgiven him more times than I can count." For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over

and over again. We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old

resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done

about it at all. We need to forgive our brother

seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for

one offence. Thus the man I am thinking of has

introduced a new and difficult temptation into a

soul which had the devil's plenty of them already.

And what he has done to me, doubtless I have done

to others; I, who am exceptionally blessed in having

been allowed a way of life in which, having little

power, I have had little opportunity of oppressing

and embittering others. Let all of us who have

never been school prefects, N.C.O.s, schoolmasters,

matrons of hospitals, prison warders, or even

magistrates, give hearty thanks for it.

It is monstrously simple-minded to read the

cursings in the Psalms with no feeling except one of

horror at the untharity of the poets. They are indeed devilish. But we must also think of those who made them so. Their hatreds are the reaction to

something. Such hatreds are the kind of thing that

cruelty and injustice, by a sort of natural law, produce. This, among other things, is what wrongdoing means. Take from a man his freedom or his goods and you may have taken his Innocence,

25

R E FL E CTION S O N THE PSALMS

almost his humanity, as well. Not all the victims go

and hang themselves like Mr. Pilgrim; they may

live and hate.

Then another thought occurred which led me in

an unexpected, and at first unwelcome, direction.

The reaction of the Psalmists to injury, though profoundly natural, is profoundly wrong. One may try to excuse it on the ground that they were not

Christians and knew no better. But there are two

reasons why this defence, though it will go some way,

will not go very far.

The first is that within Judaism itself the corrective to this natural reaction already existed.

"Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart ...

thou shalt not avenge or bear any grudge against

the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy

neighbour as thyself," says Leviticus (19, 17, 18).

In Exodus we read, "If thou seest the ass of him that

hateth thee lying under his burden ... thou shalt

surely help with him," and "if thou meet thine

enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely

bring it back to him" (23, 4, 5). " Rejoice not when

thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad

when he stumbleth" (Proverbs 24, 17). And I shall

never forget my surprise when I first discovered that

St. Paul's "If thine enemy hunger, give him

bread ", etc., is a direct quotation from the same

book (Proverbs 25, 21). But this is one of the rewards

of reading the Old Testament regularly. You keep

on discovering more and more what a tissue of

quotations from it the New Testament is; how constantly Our Lord repeated, reinforced, continued, 26

THE CURSINGS

refined, and sublimated, the Judaic ethics, how

very seldom He introduced a novelty. This of

course was perfectly well-known-was indeed axiomatic-to millions of unlearned Christians as long as Bible-reading was habitual. Nowadays it seems

to be so forgotten that people think they have somehow discredited Our Lord if they can show that some pre-Christian document (or what they take to

be pre-Christian) such as the Dead Sea Scrolls has

" anticipated " Him. As if we supposed Him to be a

cheapjack like Nietzsche inventing a new ethics!

Every good teacher, within judaism as without, has

anticipated Him. The whole religious history of the

pre-Christian world, on its better side, anticipates

Him. It could not be otherwise. The Light which

has lightened every man from the beginning may

shine more clearly but cannot change. The Origin

cannot suddenly start being, in the popular sense of

the word, "original " .

The second reason is more disquieting. I f w e are

to excuse the poets of the Psalms on the ground that

they were not Christians, we ought to be able to

point to the same sort of thing, and worse, in Pagan

authors. Perhaps if I knew more Pagan literature I

should be able to do this. But in what I do know (a

little Greek, a little Latin, and of Old Norse very

little indeed) I am not at all sure that I can. I can

find in them lasciviousness, much brutal insensibility, cold cruelties taken for granted, but not this fury or luxury of hatred. I mean, of course,

wher.e writers are speaking in their own person;

speeches put into the mouths of angry characters in

27

REFLECTI ONS ON THE PSALMS

a play are a different matter. One's first impression

is that the Jews were much more vindictive and

vitriolic than the Pagans.

If we are not Christians we shall dismiss this with

the old gibe " How odd of God to choose the Jews ".

That is impossible for us who believe that God

chose that race for the vehicle of His own Incarnation, and who are indebted to Israel beyond all possible repayment.

Where we find a difficulty we may always expect

that a discovery awaits us. Where there is cover we

hope for game. This particular difficulty is well

worth exploring.

It seems that there is a general rule in the moral

universe which may be formulated " The higher,

the more in danger". The " average sensual man "

who is sometimes unfaithful to his wife, sometimes

tipsy, always a little selfish, now and then (within

the law) a trifle sharp in his deals, is certainly, by

ordinary standards, a " lower " type than the man

whose soul is filled with some great Cause, to which

he will subordinate his appetites, his fortune, and

even his safety. But it is out of the second man

that something really fiendish can be made ; an

Inquisitor, a Member of the Committee of Public

Safety. It is great men, potential saints, not little

men, who become merciless fanatics. Those who

are readiest to die for a cause may easily become

those who are readiest to kill for it. One sees the

same principle at work in a field (comparatively)

so unimportant as literary criticism ; the most

brutal work, the most rankling hatred of all other

28

T H E C U R S IN G S

critics and o f nearly all authors, may come from the

most honest and disinterested critic, the man who

cares most passiOnately and selflessly about literature. The higher the stakes, the greater the temptation to lose your temper over the game. We must not over-value the relative harmlessness of the little,

sensual, frivolous people. They are not above, but

below, some temptations.

If I am never tempted, and cannot even imagine

myselfbeing tempted, to gamble, this does not mean

that I am better than those who are. The timidity

and pessimism which exempt me from that temptation themselves tempt me to draw back from those risks and adventures which every man ought to take.

In the same way we cannot be certain that the comparative absence of vindictiveness in the Pagans, though certainly a good thing in itself, is a good

symptom. This was borne in upon me during a

night journey taken early in the Second War in a

compartment full of young soldiers. Their conversation made it clear that they totally disbelieved all that they had read in the papers about the

wholesale cruelties of the Nazi regime. They took it

for granted, without argument, that this was all lies,

all propaganda put out by our own government to

" pep up" our troops. And the shattering thing was,

that, believing this, they expressed not the slightest

anger. That our rulers should falsely attribute

the worst of crimes to some of their fellow-men in

order to induce others of their fellow-men to shed

their blood seemed to them a matter of course.

They weren't even particularly interested. They

29

R E FL ECTIO N S O N TH E P S A L M S

saw nothing wrong in it. Now it seemed to me that

the most violent of the Psalmists-or, for that

matter any child wailing out " But it's not fair"was in a more hopeful condition than these young men. If they had perceived, and felt as a man should

feel, the diabolical wickedness which they believed

our rulers to be committing, and then forgiven them,

they would have been saints. But not to perceive it

at all-not even to be tempted to resentment-to

accept it as the most ordinary thing in the worldargues a terrifying insensibility. Clearly these young men had (on that subject anyway) no conception

of good and evil whatsoever.

Thus the absence of anger, especially that sort of

anger which we call indignation, can, in my opinion,

be a most alarming symptom. And the presence of

indignation may be a good one. Even when that

indignation passes into bitter personal vindictiveness, it may still be a good symptom, though bad in itself. It is a sin ; but it at least shows that those who

commit it have not sunk below the level at which

the temptation to that sin exists--just as the sins

(often quite appalling) of the great patriot or great

reformer point to something in him above mere

self. If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the

Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because

they took right and wrong more seriously. For if we

look at their railings we find they are usually angry

not simply because these things have been done to

them but because these things are manifestly

wrong, are hateful to God as well as to the victim.

The thought of the " righteous Lord "-who surely

30

T H E C U RSINGS

must hate such doings as much as they do, who

surely therefore must (but how terribly He delays !)

"judge " or avenge, is always there, if only in the

background. Sometimes it comes into the foreground ; as in s8, 9, IO, " The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance

so that

•

•

•

a

man shall say . . . Doubtless there is a God that

judgeth the earth." This is something different

from mere anger without indignation-the almost

animal rage at finding that a man's enemy has done

to him exactly what he would have done to his

enemy if he had been strong enough or quick

enough.

Different, certainly higher, a better symptom ; yet

also leading to a more terrible sin. For it encourages

a man to think that his own worst passions are holy.

It encourages him to add, explicitly or implicitly,

" Thus saith the Lord " to the expression of his own

emotions or even his own opinions ; as Carlyle and

Kipling and some politicians, and even, in their

own way, some modern critics, so horribly do. (It

is this, by the way, rather than mere idle " profane

swearing " that we ought to mean by " taking God's

name in vain ". The man who says " Damn that

chair ! " does not really wish that it should first be

endowed with an immortal soul and then sent to

eternal perdition. ) For here also it is true " the

higher, . the more in danger ". The Jews sinned in

this matter worse than the Pagans not because they

were further from God but because they were

nearer to Him. For the Supernatural, entering a

human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of

31

REFLECTI O N S O N T H E P S A LMS

good and evil. From that point the road branches :

one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to

spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal.

And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and

vices of the unawakened soul. If the Divine call does

not make us better, it will make us very much worse.

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of

all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God. There seems no way out of this. It gives a new application

to Our Lord's words about " counting the cost ''.

For we can still see, in the worst of their maledictions, how these old poets were, in a sense, near to God. Though hideously distorted by the human

instrument, something of the Divine voice can be

hecrrd in these passages. Not, of course, that God

looks upon their enemies as they do : He " desireth

not the death of a sinner". But doubtless He has

for the sin of those enemies just the implacable

hostility which the poets express. Implacable?

Yes, not to the sinner but to the sin. It will not be

tolerated nor condoned, no treaty will be made with

it. That tooth must come out, that right hand must

be amputated, if the man is to be saved. In that way

the relentlessness of the Psalmists is far nearer to one

side of the truth than many modern attitudes which

can be mistaken, by those who hold them, for

Christian charity. It is, for example, obviously

nearer than the total moral indifferenre of the

young soldiers. It is nearer than the pseudoscientific tolerance which reduces all wickedness to neurosis (though of course some apparent wicked-32

T HE CURS I NGS

ness is) . It even contains a streak of sanity absent

from the old woman presiding at a juvenile court

who-I heard it myself--told some young hooligans,

convicted of a well-planned robbery for gain (they

had already sold the swag and some had previous

convictions against them) that they must, they really

must, give up such "stupid pranks ,,. Against all

this the ferocious parts of the Psalms serve as a

reminder that there is in the world such a thing as

wickedness and that it (if not its perpetrators) is

hateful to God. In that way, however dangerous

the human distortion may be, His word sounds

through these passages too.

But can we, besides learning from these terrible

Psalms also use them in our devotional life ? I believe we can ; but that topic must be reserved for a later chapter.

33

I V Death in the Psalms

According to

my policy of taking first what is

most unattractive, I should now proceed to the selfrighteousness in many of the Psalms. But we cannot deal with that properly until some other matters have been noticed. I turn first to a very different

subject.

Our ancestors seem to have read the Psalms and

the rest of the Old Testament under the impression

that the authors wrote with a pretty full understanding of Christian Theology ; the main difference being that the Incarnation, which for us is something recorded, was for them something predicted.

In particular, they seldom doubted that the old

authors were, like ourselves, concerned with a life

beyond death, that they feared damnation and

hoped for eternal joy.

In our own Prayer Book version, and probably in

many others, some passages make this impression

almost irresistibly. Thus in 17, 14, we read of

wicked men " which have their portion in this life ".

The Christian reader inevitably reads into this (and

Coverdale, the translator, obviously did so too)

Our Lord's contrast between the Rich Man who

had his good things here and Lazarus who had them

hereafter ; the same contrast which is implied in

34

D E A T H IN T H E P S A L M S

Luke 6, 24 " Woe unto you that are rich, for ye

-

have received your consolation." But modern

translators can find nothing like this in the actual

Hebrew. In reality this passage is merely one of the

cursings we were considering in the previous chapter.

In I 7, 13 the poet prays God to " cast down '' (in

Dr. Moffatt, " crush ") the ungodly ; in verse 14, a

refinement occurs to him. Yes, crush them, but

first let them " have their portion in this life ". Kill

them, but first give them a bad time while alive.

Again, in 49, we have " No man may deliver his

brother .

. for it cost more to redeem their souls ;

.

so that he must let that alone forever" (7, 8). Who

would not think that this referred to the redeeming

work of Christ? No man can " save " the soul of

another. The price of salvation is one that only the

Son of God could pay ; as the hymn says, there

was no other "good enough to pay the price ".

The very phrasing of our version strengthens the

effect the verb " redeem " which (outside the

-

pawnbroking business) is now used only in a

theological sense, and the past tense of " cost".

Not it " costs ", but it did cost, more, once and for all

on Calvary. But apparently the Hebrew poet

meant something quite different and much more

ordinary He means merely that death is inevitable.

.

As Dr. Moffatt translates it : "None can buy himself

off. Not one can purchase for a price from God

(soul's ransom is too dear) life that shall never

end."

At this point I can imagine a lifelong lover of the

Psalms exclaiming : " Oh bother the great scholars

35

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

and modem translators ! I'm not going to let them

spoil the whole Bible for me. At least let me ask two

questions. (i) Is it not stretching the arm of coincidence rather far to ask me to believe that, not once but twice, in the same book, mere accident (wrong

translations, bad manuscripts, or what not) should

have so successfully imitated the language of

Christianity? (ii) Do you mean that the old meanings which we have always attached to these verses simply have to be scrapped ? " Both questions will

come up for consideration in a later chapter. For ·the

moment I will only say that, to the second, my personal answer is a confident No. I return to what I believe to be the facts.

It seems quite clear that in most parts of the Old

Testament there is little or no belief in a future life ;

certainly no belief that is of any religious importance. The word translated " soul " in our version of the Psalms means simply " life " ; the word translated " hell " means simply " the land of the dead ", the state of all the dead, good and bad alike, Sheol.

It is difficult to know how an ancient Jew thought

of ::,lzeol. He did not like thinking about it. His

religion did not encourage him to think about it. No

good could come of thinking about it. Evil might.

It was a condition from which very wicked people

like the Witch of Endor were believed to be able to

conjure up a ghost. But the ghost told you nothing

about Sheol ; it was called up solely to tell you things

about our own world. Or again, if you allowed

yourself an unhealthly interest in Sheol you might

be lured into one of the neighbouring forms of

36

D E A T H I N T H E P SALMS

Paganism and " eat the offuings of the dead "

( 1 06, 28) .

Behind all this one can discern a conception not

specifically Jewish but common to many ancient

religions. The Greek Hades is the most familiar

example to modern people. Hades is neither

Heaven nor Hell ; it is almost nothing. I am speaking of the popular beliefs ; of course philosophers like Plato have a vivid and positive doctrine of immortality. And of course poets may write fantasies about the world of the dead . These have often no

more to do with the real Pagan religion than the

fantasies we may write about other planets have to

do with real astronomy. In real Pagan belief, Hades

was hardly worth talking about ; a world of shadows,

of decay. Homer (probably far closer to actual

beliefs than the later and more sophisticated poets)

represents the ghosts as witless. They gibber meaninglessly until some living man gives them sacrificial blood to drink. How the Greeks felt about it in his time is startlingly shown at the beginning of the

Iliad where he says of men killed in battle that

" their souls " went to Hades but " the men themselves " were devoured by dogs and carrion birds.

It is the body, even the dead body which is the man

himself; the ghost is only a sort of reflection or

echo. (The grim impulse sometimes has crossed my

mind to wonder whether all this was, is, in fact true ;

that the merely natural fate of humanity, the fate of

unredeemed humanity, is just this-to disintegrate

in soul as in body, to be a witless psychic sediment.

If so, Homer's idea that only a drink of sacrificial

37

REFLECT I O N S ON THE P S A LMS

blood can restore a ghost to rationality would be

one of the most striking among many Pagan anticipations of the truth.)

Such a conception, vague and marginal even in

Paganism, becomes more so in Judaism. Sheol is

even dimmer, further in the background, than

Hades. It is a thousand miles away from the centre

of Jewish religion ; especially in the Psalms. They

speak of Sheol (or " hell " or " the pit ") very much

as a man speaks of " death " or " the grave " who has

no belief in any sort of future state whatever-a

man to whom the dead are simply dead, nothing,

and there's no more to be said.

In many passages this is quite clear, even in our

translation, to every attentive reader. The clearest

of all is the cry in 89, 46 : " 0 remember how short

my time is : why hast thou made all men for

nought ? " We all come to nothing in the end.

Therefore " every man living is altogether vanity "

(39, 6) . Wise and foolish have the same fate (49,

w) . Once dead, a man worships God no more ;

" Shall the dust give thanks unto thee ? " (30, IO) ;

" for in death no man remembereth thee" (6, 5) .

Death is " the land '' where, not only wordly things,

but all things, " are forgotten " (88, I2). When a

man dies " all his thoughts perish" ( 1 46, 3) . Every

man will " follow the generation of his fathers, and

shall never see light " (49, zg) : he goes into a darkness which will never end.

Elsewhere of course it sounds as if the poet were

praying for the " salvation of his soul " in the

Christian sense. Almost certainly he is not. In 30,3,

38

D E ATH IN THE P S A L M S

" Thou hast brought my soul out of hell " means

" you have saved me from death". " The snares of

death compassed me round about, and the pains

of hell gat hold upon me " ( n 6, 3) means " Death

was setting snares for me, I felt the anguish of a

dying man "-as we should say, " I was at death's

door."

As we all know from our New Testaments

Judaism had greatly changed in this respect by Our

Lord's time. The Sadducees held to the old view.

The Pharisees, and apparently many more, believed in the life of the world to come. When, and by what stages, and (under God) from what sources,

this new belief crept in, is not part of our present

subject. I am more concerned to try to understand

the absence of such a belief, in the mid�t of intense

religious feeling, over the earlier period. To some it

may seem astonishing that God, having revealed so

much of Himself to that people, should not have

taught them this.

It does not now astonish me. For one thing there

were nations close to the Jews whose religion was

overwhelmingly concerned with the after life. In

reading about ancient Egypt one gets the impression

of a culture in which the main business of life was

the attempt to secure the well-being of the dead.

It looks as if God did not want the chosen people

to follow that example. We may ask why. Is it

possible for men to be too much concerned with

their eternal destiny? In one sense, paradoxical

though it sounds, I should reply, Yes.

For the truth seems to me to be that happiness or

39

R E F L E C T I O N S O N TH E P S A L M S

misery beyond death, simply in themselves, are not

even religious subjects at all. A man who believes in

them will of course be prudent to seek the one and

avoid the other. But that seems to have no more to

do with religion than looking after one's health or

saving money for one's old age. The only difference

here is that the stakes are so very much higher.

And this means that, granted a real and steady conviction, the hopes and anxieties aroused are overwhelming. But they are not on that account the more religious. They are hopes for oneself, anxieties

for oneself. God is not in the centre. He is still

important only for the sake of something else. Indeed such a belief can exist without a belief in God at all. Buddhists are much concerned with what

will happen to them after death, but are not, in

any true sense, Theists.

It is surely, therefore, very possible that when God

began to reveal Himself to men, to show them that

He and nothing else is their true goal and the satisfaction af their needs, and that He has a claim upon them simply by being what He is, quite apart

from anything He can bestow or deny, it may have

been absolutely necessary that this revelation should

not begin with any hint of future Beatitude or

Perdition. These are not the right point to begin at.

An effective belief in them, coming too soon, may

even render almost impossible the development of

(so to call it) the appetite for God ; personal hopes

and fears, too obviously exciting, have got in first.

Later, when, after centuries of spiritual training,

men have learned to desire and adore God, to pant

40

D E A T H I N T H E P S A L M S

after Him " as pants the hart ", it is another matter.

For then those who love God will desire not only

to enjoy Him but " to enjoy Him forever ", and will

fear to lose Him. And it is by that door that a truly

religious hope of Heaven and fear of Hell can enter ;

as corollaries to a faith already centred upon God,

not as things of any independent or intrinsic

weight. It is even arguable that the moment

" Heaven " ceases to mean union with God and

" Hell " to mean separation from Him, the belief in

either is a mischievous superstition ; for then we

have, on the one hand, a merely " compensatory "

belief (a " sequel " to life's sad story, in which

everything will " come all right ") and, on the

other, a nightmare which drives men into asylums

or makes them persecutors.

Fortunately, by God's good providence, a strong

and steady belief of that self-seeking and subreligious kind is extremely difficult to maintain, and is perhaps possible only to those who are slightly

neurotic. Most of us find that our belief in the future

life is strong only when God is in the centre of our

thoughts ; that if we try to use the hope of " Heaven "

as a compensation (even for the most innocent and

natural misery, that of bereavement) it crumbles

away. It can, on those termo;;, be maintained only by

arduous efforts of controlled imagination ; and we

know in our hearts that the imagination is our own.

As for Hell, I have often been struck, in reading the

" hell-fire sermons " of our older divines, at the

desperate efforts they make to render these horrors

vivid to their hearers, at their astonishment that

41

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

men, · with such horrors hanging over them, can

live as carelessly as they do. But perhaps it is not

really astonishing. Perhaps the divines are appeal.:.

ing, on the level of self-centred prudence and selfcentred terror, to a belief which, on that level, cannot really exist as a permanent influence on

conduct-though of course it may be worked up

for a few excited minutes or even hours.

All this is only one man's opinion. And it may be

unduly influenced by my own experience. For I

(I have said it in another book, but the repetition

is unavoid�ble) was allowed for a whole year to believe in God and try-in some stumbling fashionto obey Him before any belief in the future life was given me. And that year always seems to me to

have been of very great value. It is therefore

perhaps natural that I should suspect a similar

value in the centuries during which the Jews were

in the same position. Other views no doubt can be

taken.

Of course among ancient Jews, as among us,

there were many levels. They were not all of them,

not perhaps any of them at all times, disinterested,

any more than we. What then filled the place

which was later taken by the hope of Heaven (too

often, I am afraid, desired chiefly as an escape

from Hell) was of course the hope of peace and

plenty on earth. This was in itself no less (but

really no more) sub-religious than prudential cares

about the next world. It was not quite so personal

and self-centred as our own wishes for earthly

prosperity. The individual, as such, seems to have

42

D EATH IN THE PSALMS

been less aware of himself, much less separated

from others, in those ancient times. He did not so

sharply distinguish his own prosperity from that of

the nation and especially of his own descendants.

Blessings on one's remote posterity were blessings

on oneself. Indeed it is not always easy to know

whether the speaker in a Psalm is the individual

poet or Israel itself. I suspect that sometimes the

poet had never raised the question.

But we should be quite mistaken if we supposed

that these worldly hopes were the only thing in

Judaism. They are not the characteristic thing

about it, the thing that sets it apart from ancient

religion in general. And notice here the strange

roads by which God leads His people. Century

after century, by blows which seem to us merciless,

by defeat, deportation, and massacre, it was ham·

mered into the Jews that earthly prosperity is not

in fact the certain, or even the probable, reward of

seeing God. Every hope was disappointed. The

lesson taught in the Book of Job was grimly illus·

trated in practice. Such experience would surely

have destroyed a religion which had no other centre

than the hope of peace and plenty with "every

man under his own vine and his own fig tree".

And of course many did " fall off". But the astonishing thing is that the religion is not destroyed.

In. its best representatives it grows purer, stronger,

and more profound. It is being, by this terrible

discipline, directed more and more to its real

centre. That will be the subject of the next chapter.

43

ItT

v

he Fair Beauty of the Lord"

"Now let

us stint all this and speak of mirth."

So far-1 couldn't help it-this book has been what

the old woman in Scott described as " a cauld clatter

o' morality ". At last we can turn to better things.

If we think " mirth " an unsuitable word for them,

that may show how badly we need something which

the Psalms can give us perhaps better than any other

book in the world.

David, we know, danced before the Ark. He

danced with such abandon that one of his wives

(presumably a more modern, though not a better,

type than he) thought he wa,s making a fool of

himself. David didn't care whether he was making

a fool of himself or not. He was rejoicing in the

Lord. This helps to remind us at the outset that

Judaism, though it is the worship of the one true and

eternal God, is an ancient religion. That means that

its externals, and many of its attitudes, were much

more like those of Paganism than they were like all

that stuffiness-all that regimen of tiptoe tread and

lowered voice-which the word " religion " suggests

to so many people now. In one way, of course,

this puts a barrier between it and us. We should not

have enjoyed the ancient rituals. Every temple in

44

" T H E F A I R B E A U T Y O F T H E L O R D "

the world, the elegant Parthenon at Athens and the

holy Temple at Jerusalem, was a sacred slaughterhouse. (Even the Jews seem to shrink from a return to this. They have not rebuilt the Temple nor

revived the sacrifices.) But even that has two sides.

Iftemples smelled of bood, they also smelled of roast

meat ; they struck a festive and homely note, as well

as a sacred.

When I read the Bible as a boy I got the idea that

the Temple of Jerusalem was related to the local

synagogues very much as a great cathedral is related

to the parish churches in a Christian country. In

reality there is no such parallel. What happened in

the synagogues was quite unlike what happened in

the Temple. The synagogues were meeting-houses

where the Law was read and where an address might

be given-often by some distinguished visitor (as in

Luke 4, 20 or Acts 1 3, 15) . The Temple was the

place of sacrifice, the place where the essential

worship of Jahweh was enacted. Every parish

church is the descendant of both. By its sermons

and lessons it shows its ancestry in the synagogue.

But because the Eucharist is celebrated and all

other sacraments administered in it, it is like the

Temple ; it is a place where the adoration of the

Deity can be fully enacted. Judaism without the

Temple was mutilated, deprived of its central

operation ; any church, bam, sick-room, or field,

can be the Christian's temple.

The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is

to express that same delight in God which made

David dance. I am not saying that this is so pure or

45

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

so profound a thing as the love of God reached by

the greatest Christian saints and mystics. But I am

not comparing it with that, I am comparing it with

the merely dutiful " church-going " and laborious

"saying our prayers " to which most of us are, thank

God not always, but often, reduced. Against that

it stands out as something astonishingly robust, virile,

and spontaneous ; something we may regard with an

innocent envy and may hope to be infected by as

we read.

For the reason I have given this delight is very

much cen tred on the Temple. The simpler poets

do not in fact distinguish between the love of

God in what we might (rather dangerously) call

" a .;piritual sense ., and their enjoyment of the

festivals in the Temple. We must not misunderstand this. The Jews were not, like the Greeks, an analytical and logical people ; indeed, except the

Greeks, no ancient peoples were. The sort of

distinction which we can easily make between

those who are really worshipping God in church

and those who enjoy " a beautiful service " for

musical, antiquarian, or merely sentimental reasons,

would have been impossible to them. We get

nearest to their state of mind if we think of a pious

modern farm-labourer at church on Christmas

Day or at the harvest thanksgiving. I mean, of

course, one who really believes, who is a regular

communicant ; not one who goes only on these

occasions and is thus (not in the worst but in the best

sense of that word) a Pagan, practising Pagan piety,

making his bow to the Unknown-and at other

46

" THE F A I R B E A U T Y O F THE L O R D "

times Forgotten-on the great annual festivals.

The man I picture is a real Christian. But you

would do him wrong by asking him to separate out,

at such moments, some exclusively religious element

in his mind from all the rest-from his hearty social

pleasure in a corporate act, his enjoyment of the

hymns (and the crowd) , his memory of other such

services since childhood, his well-earned anticipation of rest after harvest or Christmas dinner after church. They are all one in his mind. This would

have been even truer of any ancient man, and

especially of an ancient Jew. He was a peasant,

very close to the soil. He had never heard of music,

or festivity, or agriculture as things separate from

religion, nor of religion as something separate from

them. Life was one. This of course laid him open to

spiritual dangers which more sophisticated people

can avoid ; it also gave him privileges which they

lack.

Thus when the Psalmists speak of " seeing " the

Lord, or long to " see " Him, most of them mean

something that happened to them in the Temple.

The fatal way of putting this would be to say " they

only mean they have seen the festival ". It would

be better to say " If we had been there we should

have seen only the festival ". Thus in 68 "It

is well seen, 0 God, how thou goest1•

in the

•

•

sanctuary . . . the singers go before, the minstrels

follow after ; in the midst are the damsels playing

with the timbrels " (24, 25), it is almost as if the poet

said " Look, here He comes ". If I had been there I

1 This was perhaps sung while the Ark itself was carried round.

47

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

should have seen the musicians and the girls with

the tambourines ; in addition, as another thing, I

might or might not have (as we say) " felt " the

presence of God. The ancient worshipper would

have been aware of no such dualism. Similarly, if

a modern man wished to " dwell .in the house of the

Lord all the days ofhis life, to behold the fair beauty

of the Lord " (27, 4) he would mean, I suppose, that

he hoped to receive, not of course without the mediation of the sacraments and the help of other

" services ", but as something distinguishable from

them and not to be presumed upon as their inevitable result, frequent moments of spiritual vision and the " sensible " love of God. But I suspect that

the poet of that Psalm drew no distinction between

" beholding the fair beauty of the Lord " and the

acts of worship themselves.

When the mind becomes more capable of abstraction and analysis this old unity breaks up. And no sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the

vision of God than there is a danger of the rite

becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God Himself. Once it can be thought of separately, it will ; and·it may then take on a rebellious, cancerous life

of its own. There is a stage in a child's life at which

it cannot separate the religious from the merely

festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been

told of a very small and very devout boy who was

heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a

poem of his own composition which began " Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen ". This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety.

48

" T H E F AIR B E A U TY OF THE L O RD "

But of course the time will soon come when such a

child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously

enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish

the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of

Easter ; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental.

And once he has distinguished he must put one or

the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can

still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs ;

if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more

than any other sweetmeat. They have taken on an

independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.

Either at some period in Judaism, or else in the

experience of some Jews, a roughly parallel situation

occurred. The unity falls apart ; the sacrificial rites

become distinguishable from the meeting with God.

This does not unfortunately mean that they will

cease or become less important. They may, in

various evil modes, become even more important

than before. They may be valued as a sort of

commercial transaction with a greedy God who

somehow really wants or needs large quantities of

carcasses and whose favours cannot be secured on

any other terms. Worse still, they may be regarded

as the only thing He wants, so that their punctual

performance will satisfy Him without obedience to

His demands for mercy, "judgement", and truth.

To the priests themselves the whole system will seem

important simply because it is both their art and

their livelihood ; all their pedantry, all their pride,

all their economic position, is bound up with it.

They will elaborate their art more and more. And

of course the corrective to these views of sacrifice

49

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

can be found within Judaism itself. The prophets

continually fulminate against it. Even the Psalter,

though largely a Temple collection, can do so ; as in

Psalm 50 where God tells His people that all this

Temple worship, considered in itself, is not the real

point at all, and particularly ridicules the genuinely

Pagan notion that He really needs to be fed with

roast meat. " If I were hungry, do you think I would

apply to you ? " (12) . I have sometimes fancied

He might similarly ask a certain type of modem

clergyman, " If I wanted music-if I were conducting research into the more recondite details of the history of the Western Rite-do you really think

)IOU are the source I would rely on ? "

This possible degradation of sacrifice and the

rebukes of it are, however, so well known that there

is no need to stress them here. I want to stress what

I think that we (or at least I) need more ; the joy and

delight in God which meet us in the Psalms, however loosely or closely, in this or that instance, they may be connected with the Temple. This is the

living centre of Judaism. These poets knew far less

reason than we for loving God. They did not know

that He offered them eternal joy ; still less that He

would die to win it for them. Yet they express a

longing for Him, for His mere presence, which comes

only to the best Christians or to Christians in their

best moments. They long to live all their days in

the Temple so that they may constantly see " the

fair beauty of the Lord " (27, 4). Their longing to

go up to Jerusalem and " appear before the presence

of God " is like a physical thirst (42). From Jerusa-

50

"T H E FAIR BEAUTY OF THE L O RD "

lem His presence flashes out "in perfect beauty"

(so, 2). Lacking that encounter with Him, their

souls are parched like a waterless countryside

(63, 2) . They crave to be " satisfied with the pleasures " of His house (65, 4) . Only there can they be at ease, like a bird in the nest (84, 3) . One day of

those "pleasures " is better than a lifetime spent

elsewhere ( 10).

I have rather-though the expression may seem

harsh to some-called this the " appetite for God "

than " the love of God ". The " love of God " too

easily suggests the word "spiritual " in all those

negative or restrictive senses which it has unhappily

acquired. These old poets do not seem to think that

they are meritorious or pious for having such feelings ; nor, on the other hand, that they are privileged in being given the grace to have them. They are at

once less priggish about it than the worst of us and

less humble--<>ne might almost say, less surprisedthan the best of us. It has all the cheerful spontaneity of a natural, even a physical, desire. It is gay and

jocund. They are glad and rejoice (g, 2) . Their

fingers itch for the harp (43, 4), for the lute and the

harp-wake up, lute and harp !-(57, 9) ; let's have

a song, bring the tambourine, bring the " merry

harp with the lute ", we're going to sing merrily

and make a cheerful noise (8 1 , r, 2) . Noise, you

may well say. Mere music is not enough. Let

everyone, even the benighted gentiles,1 clap their

hands (47, r) . Let us have clashing cymbals, not

I Not " all ye people " as in our version, but " all ye nations"

(G/¢m).

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

only well tuned, but loud, and dances too (r so, s) .

Let even the remote islands (all islands were remote,

for the Jews were no sailors) share the exultation

(97, 1) .

I am not saying that this gusto-if you like, this

rowdineSs-can or should be revived. Some of it

cannot be revived because it is not dead but with us

still. It would be idle to pretend that we Anglicans

are a striking example. The Romans, the Orthodox,

and the Salvation Army all, I think, have retained

more of it than we. We have a terrible concern

about good taste. Yet even we can still exult. The

second reason goes far deeper. All Christians know

something the Jews did not know about what it

" cost to redeem their souls ". Our life as Christians

beginc; by being baptised into a death ; our most

joyous festivals begin with, and centre upon, the

broken body and the shed blood. There is thus a

tragic depth in our worship which Judaism lacked.

Our joy has to be the sort of joy which can coexist

with that ; there is for us a spiritual counterpoint

where they had simple melody. But this does not in

the least cancel the delighted debt which I, for one,

feel that I owe to the most jocund Psalms. There,

despite the presence of elements we should now find

it hard to regard as religious at all, and the absence

of elements which some might think essential to

religion, I find an experience fully God-centred,

asking of God no gift more urgently than His

presence, the gift of Himself, joyous to the

highest degree, and unmistakably real. What

I see (so to speak) in the faces of these old

52

" T H E F A I R B E A U T Y O F T H E L O R D "

poets tells me more about the God whom they

and we adore.

But this characteristically Hebraic delight or

gusto finds also another channel. We must follow it

in the next chapter.

53

VI

"Sweeter than Honey''

In Racine's

tragedy of Athalie the chorus of

Jewish girls sing an ode about the original giving of

the Law on Mount Sinai, which has the remarkable

refrain 8 charmante loi (Act I, scene iv) . Of course it

will not do-it will border on the comic-to translate this " oh charming Law ". Charming in English has come to be a tepid and even patronising word ;

we use it of a pretty cottage, of a book that is something less than great or a woman who is something less than beautiful. How we should translate

charmante I don't know ; " enchanting? "-" delightful ? "-" beautiful ? " None of them quite fits.

What is, however, certain is that Racine (a mighty

poet and steeped in the Bible) is here coming

nearer than any modern writer I know to a feeling

very characteristic of certain Psalms. And it is a

feeling which I at first found utterly bewildering.

" More to be desired are they than gold, yea than

much fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the

honeycomb " (tg, ro) . One can well understand

this being said of God's mercies, God's visitations,

His attributes. But what the poet is actually talking

about is God's law, His commands ; His " rulings "

as Dr. Moffatt well translates in verse 9 (for "judgements " here plainly means decisions about con-54

" S W E E T E R THAN H O N E Y "

duct) . What is being compared to gold and honey

is those " statutes " (in the Latin version " decrees ")

which, we are told, " rejoice the heart " ( 8) . For

the whole poem is about the Law, not about

"judgement " in the sense to which Chapter I was

devoted.

This was to me at first very mysterious. " Thou

shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery "

! can understand that a man can, and must,

respect these " statutes ", and try to obey them, and

assent to them in his heart. But it is very hard to

find how they could be, so to speak, delicious, how

they exhilarate. If this is difficult at any time, it is

doubly so when obedience to either is opposed

to some strong, and perhaps in itselfinnocent, desire.

A man held back by his unfortunate previous

marriage to some lunatic or criminal who never dies

from some woman whom he faithfully loves, or a

hungry man left alone, without money, in a shop

filled with the smell and sight of new bread,

roasting coffee, or fresh strawberries--can these

find the prohibition of adultery or of theft at all like

honey ? They may obey, they may still respect the

" statute ". But surely it could be more aptly compared to the dentist's forceps or the front line than to anything enjoyable and sweet.

A fine Christian and a great scholar to whom I

once put this question said he thought that the

poets were referring to the satisfaction men felt in

knowing they had obeyed the Law ; in other words,

to the " pleasures of a good conscience ''. They

would, on his view, be meaning something very

55

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

like what Wordsworth meant when he said we

know nothing more beautiful than the " smile " on

Duty's face-her smile when her orders have been

carried out. It is rash for me to differ from such a

man, and his view certainly makes excellent sense.

The difficulty is that the Psalmists never seem to me

to say anything very like this.

In I , 2 we are told that the good man's " delight is

in the law of the Lord, and in his law will he exercise himself day and night". To " exercise himself"

in it apparently does not mean ·to obey it (though of

course the good man will do that too) but to study it,

as Dr. Moffatt says to " pore over it ". Of course

" the Law " does not here mean simply the ten commandments, it means the whole complex legislation (religious, moral, civil, criminal and even constitutional) contained in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The man who " pores upon it " is

obeying Joshua's command (Joshua I, 8) , " the

book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth ;

but thou shalt meditate therein day and night."

This means, among other things, that the Law was

a study or, as we should say, a "subject" ; a thing

on which there would be commentaries, lectures,

and examinations. There were. Thus part (religiously, the least important part) of what an ancient Jew meant when he said he " delighted in the Law"

was very like what one of us would mean if he said

that somebody " loved " history, or physics, or

archaeology. This might imply a wholly innocentthough, of course, merely natural-delight in one's favourite subject ; or, on the other hand, the plea-56

' ' S W E E TE R THAN H O N E Y ' '

sures of conceit, pride in one's own learning and

consequent contempt for the outsiders who don't

share it, or even a venal admiration for the studies

which secure one's own stipend and social position.

The danger of this second development is of

course increased tenfold when the study in question

is from the outset stamped as sacred. For then the

danger of spiritual pride is added to that ofmere

ordinary pedantry and conceit. One is sometimes

(not often) glad not to be a great theologian ; one

might so easily mistake it for being a good Christian.

The temptations to which a great philologist or a

great chemist is exposed are trivial in comparison.

When the subject is sacred, proud and clever men

may come to think that the outsiders who don't

know it are not merely inferior to them in skill but

lower in God's eyes ; as the priests said (John 7, 49),

"All that rabble who are not experts i n the Torah

are accursed." And as this pride increases, the

" subject" or study which confers such privilege

will grow more and more complicated, the list of

things forbidden will increase, till to get through a

single day without supposed sin becomeo; like an

elaborate step-dance, and this horrible network

breeds self-righteousness in some and haunting

anxiety in others. Meanwhile the " weightier

matters of the Law ", righteousness itself, shrinks

into insignificance under this vast overgrowth, so

that the legalists strain at a gnat and swallow a

camel.

Thus the Law, like the sacrifice, can take on a

cancerous life of its own and. work against the thing

. 57

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

for whose sake it existed. As Charles Williams

wrote, " When the means are autonomous they are

deadly." This morbid condition of the Law contributed to-I do not suggest it is the sole or main cause of--St. Paul's joyous sense of Christ as the

Deliverer from Law. It is against this same morbid

condition that Our Lord uttered some of His

sternest words ; it is the sin, and simultaneously the

punishment, of the Scribes and Pharisees. But that

is not the side of the matter I want to stress here, nor

does it by this time need stressing. I would rather

let the Psalms show me again the good thing of

which this bad thing is the corruption.

As everyone knows, the Psalm specially devoted

to the Law is u g, the longest in the whole collection. And everyone has probably noticed that from the literary or technical point of view, it is the most .

formal and elaborate of them all. The technique

consists in taking a series of words which are all, for

purposes of this poem, more or less synonyms

(word, statutes, commandments, testimonies, etc.) , and

ringing . the changes on them through each of its

eight-verse sections--which themselves correspond

to the letters of the alphabet. (This may have given

an ancient ear something of the same sort of pleasure

we get from the Italian metre called the Sestina, where

instead of rhymes we have the same end words

repeated in varying orders in each stanza.) In other

words, this poem is not, and does not pretend to be,

a sudden outpouring of the heart like, say, Psalm 1 8,

It is a pattern, a thing done like embroidery, stitch

by stitch, through long, quiet hours, for love of the

58

" S W E E T E R TH A N H ONE Y ' '

subject and for the delight in leisurely, disciplined

craftsmanship.

Now this, in itself, seems to me very important

because it lets us into the mind and mood of the

poet. We can guess at once that he felt about the

Law somewhat as he felt about his poetry ; both

involved exact and loving conformity to an intricate

pattern. This at once suggests an attitude from

which the Pharisaic conception could later grow but

which in itself, though not necessarily religious, is

quite innocent. It will look like priggery or

pedantry (or else like a neurotic fussiness) to those

who cannot sympathise with it, but it need not be

any of these things. It may be the delight in-Order,

the pleasure in getting a thing "just so"-as in

dancing a minuet. Of course the poet is well aware

that something incomparably more serious than a

minuet is here in question. He is also aware that he

is very unlikely, himself, to achieve this perfection

of discipline : " 0 that my ways were made so

straight that I might keep thy statutes ! " (5) . At

present they aren't, and he can't. But his effort to

do so does not spring from servile fear. The Order

of the Divine mind, embodied in the Divine Law, is

beautiful. What should a man do but try to reproduce it, so far as possible, in his daily life ? His

" delight " is in those statutes (16) ; to study them is

like finding treasure (14) ; they affect him like

music, are his "songs " (54) ; they taste like honey

(103) ; they are better than silver and gold (72) .

As one's eyes are more and more opened, one sees

more and more in them, and it excites wonder (18).

59

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

This is not priggery nor even scrupulosity ; it is

the language of a man ravished by a moral beauty.

If we cannot at all share his experience, we shall be

the losers. Yet I cannot help fancying that a Chinese

Christian-one whose own traditional culture had

been the " schoolmaster to bring him to Christ "would appreciate this Psalm more than most of us ; for it is an old idea in that culture that life should

above all things be ordered and that its order

should reproduce a Divine order.

But there is something else to our purpose in this

grave poem. On three occasions the poet asserts

that the Law is " true " or " the truth " (86, 138, 142) .

We find the same in I 1 1 , 7, " all his commandments are true ". (The word, I understand, could also be translated " faithful ", or " sound " ; what is,

in the Hebrew sense, " true " is what " holds water ",

what doesn't " give way " or collapse.) A modern

logician would say that the Law is a command and

that to call a command " true " makes no sense ;

" The door is shut " may be true or false but " Shut

the door " can't. But I think we all see pretty well

what the Psalmists mean. They mean that in the

Law you find the " real " or " correct " or stable,

well-grounded, directions for living. The law answers

the question " Wherewithal shall a young man

cleanse his way ? " ( 1 I g, 9) . It is like a lamp, a

guide (105) . There are many rival directions for

living, as the Pagan cultures all round us show.

When the poets call the directions or " rulings " of

J ahweh " true " they are expressing the assurance

that these, and not those others, are the " real " or

6o

" S WEET E R THAN H O N E Y "

" valid " or unassailable ones ; that they are based

on the very nature of things and the very nature of

God.

By this assurance they put themselves, implicitly,

on the right side of a controversy which arose far

later among Christians. There were in the

eighteenth century terrible theologians who held

that " God did not command certain things because they are right, but certain things are right because God Commanded them ". To make the

position perfectly clear, one of them even said that

though God has, as it happens, commanded us to

love Him and one another, He might equally well

have commanded us to hate Him and one another,

and hatred would then have been right. It was

apparently a mere toss-up which He decided on.

Such a view of course makes God a mere arbitrary

tyrant. It would be better and less irreligious to

believe in no God and to have no ethics than to

have such an ethics and such a theology as this.

The Jews of course never discuss this in abstract and

philosophical terms. But at once, and completely,

they assume the right view, knowing better than

they know. They know that the Lord (not merely

obedience to the Lord) is " righteous " and commands " righteousness " because He loves it ( I I , 8) .

He enjoins what is good because it is good, because

He is good. Hence His laws have emeth " truth",

intrinsic validity, rock-bottom reality, being rooted

in His own nature, and are therefore as solid as that

Nature which He has created. But the Psalmists

themselves can say it best ; " thy righteousness

6 I

R E F L E C T I O N S ON T H E P S A L M S

standeth like the strong mountains, thy judgements

are like the great deep " (36, 6) .1 Their delight in

the Law is a delight in having touched firmness ;

like the pedestrian's delight in feeling the hard road

beneath his feet after a false short cut has long

entangled him in muddy fields.

For there were other roads, which lacked " truth ".

The Jews had as their immediate neighbours, close

to them in race as well as in position, Pagans of the

worst kind, Pagans whose religion was marked by

none of that beauty or (sometimes) wisdom which

we can find among the Greeks. That background

made the " beauty" or "sweetness " of the Law

more visible ; not least because these neighbouring

Paganisms were a constant temptation to the Jew

and may in some of their externals have been not

unlike his own religion. The temptation was to

tum to those terrible rites in times of terror-when,

for example, the Assyrians were pressing on. We

who not so long ago waited daily for invasion by

enemies, like the Assyrians, skilled and constant in

systematic cruelty, know how they may have felt.

They were tempted, since the Lord seemed deaf, to

try those appalling deities who demanded so much

more and might therefore perhaps give more in

return. But when a Jew in some happier hour, or

a better Jew even in that hour, looked at those worships-when he thought of sacred prostitution, sacred sodomy, and the babies thrown into the fire

for Moloch-his own " Law " as he turned back to it

must have shone with an extraordinary radiance.

1 See Appendix I, page 141•

" S W E E T E R T H A N H O N E Y "

Sweeter than honey ; or if that metaphor does not

suit us who have not such a sweet tooth as all

ancient peoples (partly because we have plenty of

sugar), let us say like mountain water, like fresh air

after a dungeon, like sanity after a nightmare. But,

once again, the best image is in a Psalm, the 1 gth.1

I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter

and one of the greatest lyrics in the world. Most

readers will remember its structure ; six verses

about Nature, five about the Law, and four of

personal prayer. The actual words supply no

logical connection between the first and second

movements. In this way its technique resembles

that of the most modern poetry. A modern poet

would pass with similar abruptness from one theme

to another and leave you to find out the connecting

link for yourself. But then he would possibly be

doing this quite deliberately ; he might have,

though he chose to conceal, a perfectly clear and

conscious link in his own mind which he could

express to you in logical prose if he wanted to. I

doubt if the ancient poet was like that. I think he

felt, effortlessly and without reflecting on it, so close

a connection, indeed (for his imagination) such an

identity, between his first theme and his second that

he passed from the one to the other without realising that he had made any transition. First he thinks of the sky ; how, day after day, the pageantry we

see there shows .us the splendour of its Creator.

Then he thinks of the sun, the bridal joyousness of

its rising, the unimaginable speed of its daily

l See Appendix I. page 1 39.

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

voyage from east to west. Finally, of its heat ;

not of course the mild heats of our climate but the

cloudless, blinding, tyrannous rays hammering the

hills, searching every cranny. The key phrase on

which the whole poem depends is " there is nothing

hid from the heat thereof". It pierces everywhere

with its strong, clean ardour. Then at once, in

verse 7 he is talking of something else, which hardly

seems to him something else because it is so like the

all-piercing, all-detecting sunshine. The Law is

" undefiled ", the Law gives light, it is clean and

everlasting, it is " sweet ". No one can improve on

this and nothing can more fully admit us to the old

Jewish feeling about the Law ; luminous, severe,

disinfectant, exultant. One hardly needs to add

that this poet is wholly free from self-righteousness

and the last section is concerned with his " secret

faults ". As he has felt the sun, perhaps in the

desert, searching him out in every nook of shade

where he attempted to hide from it, so he feels the

Law searching out all the hiding-places of his soul.

In so far as this idea of the Law's beauty, sweetness, or preciousness, arose from the contrast of the surrounding Paganisms, we may soon find occasion

to recover it. Christians increasingly live on a

spiritual island ; new and rival ways of life surround

it in all directions and their tides come further up

the beach every time. None of these new ways is yet

so filthy or cruel as some Semitic Paganism. But

many of them ignore all individual rights and are

already cruel enough. Some give morality a wholly

new meaning which we cannot accept, some deny

64

" S WE E T E R T H A N H O N E Y "

its possibility. Perhaps we shall all learn, sharply

enough, to value the clean air and "sweet reasonableness " of the Christian ethics which in a more Christian age we might have taken for granted.

But of course, if we do, we shall then be exposed to

the danger of priggery. We might come to " thank

God that we are not as other men ". This introduces the greatest difficulty which the Psalms have raised in my mind.

VII Connivance

Every attentive

reader of the Psalms will

have noticed that they speak to us severely not

merely about doing evil ourselves but about something else. In 26, 4, the good man is not only free from " vanity" (falsehood) but has not even " dwelled

with ", been on intimate terms with, those who are

" vain ' . He has " hated " them (5) . So in 3 1 , 7,

he has " hated " idolaters. In 50, 18, God blames a

man not for being a thief but for " consenting to "

a thief (in Dr. Moffatt, "you are a friend to any

thief you see ") . In 141, 4-6, where our translation

appears to be rather wrong, the general sense nevertheless comes through and expresses the same attitude. Almost comically the Psalmist of I 39 asks

" Don't I hate those who hate thee, Lord ?

Why,

.

.

•

I hate them as ifthey were my enemies ! " (21, 22) .

Now obviously all this-taking upon oneself to

hate those whom one thinks God's enemies, avoiding the society of those one thinks wicked, judging our neighbours, thinking oneself " too good " for

some of them (not in the snobbish way, which is a

trivial sin in comparison, but in the deepest meaning

of the words " too good ")-is an extremely dangerous, almost a fatal, game. It leads straight to

" Pharisaism" in the sense which Our Lord's own

66

C O N N I V A N C E

teaching has given to that word. It leads not only

to thP, wickedness but to the absurdity of those who

in later times came to be called the "unco guid ".

This I assume from the outset, and I think that

even in the Psalms this evil is already at work. But

we must not be Pharisaical even to the Pharisees.

It is foolish to read such passages without realising

that a quite genuine problem is involved. And I am

not at all confident about the solution.

We hear it said again and again that the editor of

some newspaper is a rascal, that some politician

is a liar, that some official person is a tyrannical

Jack-in-office and even dishonest, that someone has

treated his wife abominably, . that some telebrity

(film-star, author, or what not) leads a most vile

and mischievous life. And the general rule in

modern society is that no one refuses to meet any

of these people and to behave towards them in the

friendliest and most cordial manner. People will

even go out of their way to meet them. They will

not even stop buying the rascally newspaper, thus

paying the owner for the lies, the detestable intrusions upon private life and private tragedy, the blasphemies and the pornography, which they profess to condemn.

I have said there is a problem here, but there are

really two. One is social and almost political. It

may be asked whether that state of society in which

rascality undergoes no social penalty is a healthy

one ; whether we should not be a happier country if

certain important people were pariahs as the hangman once was--blackballed at every club, dropped 67

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

by every acquaintance, and liable to the print of

riding-crop or fingers across the face if they were

ever bold enough to speak to a respectable woman.

It leads into the larger question whether the great

evil of our civil life is not the fact that there seems

now no medium between hopeless submission and

full-dress revolution. Rioting has died out, moderate

rioting. It can be argued that if the windows of

various ministries and newspapers were more often

broken, if certain people were more often put under

pumps and (mildly-mud, not stones) pelted in

the streets, we should get on a great deal better. It is

not wholly desirable that any man should be

allowed at once the pleasures of a tyrant or a wolf'shead and also those of an honest freeman among his equals. To this question I do not know the answer.

The dangers of a change in the direction I have outlined are very great ; so are the evils of our present tameness.

I am concerned here only with the problem that

appears in our individual and private lives. How

ought we to behave in the presence of very bad

people ? I will limit this by changing " very bad

people " to " very bad people who are powerful,

prosperous and impenitent ". If they are outcasts,

poor and miserable, whose wickedness obviously

has not " paid ", then every Christian knows the

answer. Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman

at the well, Christ with the woman taken in

adultery, Christ dining with publicans, is our

example. I mean, of course, that His humility, His

love, His total indifference to the social discredit

68

C O N N I V A N C E

and misrepresentation H e might incur are examples

for us ; not, Heaven knows, that any of us who was

not specially qualified to do so by priesthood, age,

old acquaintance, or the earnest request of the

sinners themselves, could without insolence and

presumption assume the least trace of His authority

to rebuke and pardon. (One has to be very careful

lest the desire to patronise and the itch to be a

busybody should disguise itself as a vocation to

help the " fallen ", or tend to obscure our knowledge

that we are fallen-perhaps in God's eyes far more

so-ourselves.) But of course there were probably

others who equally consorted with " publicans and

sinners " and whose motives were very unli.ke those

of Our Lord.

The publicans were the lowest members of what

may be called the Vichy or Collaborationist movement in Palestine ; men who fleeced their fellowcountrymen to get money for the occupying power in return for a fat percentage of the swag. As such

they were like the hangman, outside all decent

social intercourse. But some of them did pretty well

financially, and no doubt most of them enjoyed, up

to a point, the protection and contemptuous favours

of the Roman government. One may guess that

some consorted with them for very bad reasons-to

get " pickings ", to be on good terms with such

dangerous neighbours. Besides Our Lord there

would have been among their guests toadies and

those who wanted to be " on the band-wagon " ;

people in fact like a young man I once knew.

He had been a strict socialist at Oxford. Everything

6g

R E F L E CT I O N S ON T H E P S A LMS

ought to be run by the State ; private enterprise

and independent professions were for him the great

evil. He then went away and became a schoolmaster. Mter about ten years of that he came to see me. He said his political views had been wholly

reversed. You never heard a fuller recantation.

He now saw that State interference was fatal. What

had converted him was his experience as a schoolmaster of the Ministry of Education-a set of ignorant meddlers armed with insufferable powers to pester, hamper and interrupt the work of real,

practical teachers who knew the subjects they taught,

who knew boys, parents, and all the real conditions

of their work. It makes no difference to the point of

the story whether you agree with his view of the

Ministry ; the important thing is that he held that

view. For the real point of the story, and ofhis visit,

when it came, nearly took my breath away. Thinking thus, he had come to see whether I had any influence which might help him to get a job in the

Ministry of Education.

Here is the perfect band-wagoner. Immediately

on the decision " This is a revolting tyranny ",

follows the question " How can I as quickly as

possible cease to be one of the victims and become

one of the tyrants ? " Ifl had been able to introduce

the young man to someone in the Ministry, I think

we may be sure that his manners to that hated

" meddler " would have been genial and friendly

in the extreme. Thus someone who had heard his

previous invective against the meddling and then

witnessed his actual behaviour to the meddler,

70

C O NNIVANCE

might possibly (for charity " believeth all things ")

have concluded that this young man was full of the

purest Christianity and loved one he thought a

sinner while hating what he thought his sin.

Of course this is an instance of band-wagoning so

crude and unabashed as to be farcical. Not many of

us perhaps commit the like. But there are subtler,

more social or intellectual forms of band-wagoning

which might deceive us. Many people have a very

strong desire to meet celebrated or "important "

people, including those whom they disapprove,

from curiosity or vanity. It gives them something

to talk or even (anyone may produce a book of

reminiscences) to write about. It is felt to confer

distinction if the great, though odious, man recognises you in the street. And where such motives are in play it is better still to know him quite well, to be

intimate with him. It would be delightful if he

shouted out " Hallo Bill " while you were walking

down the Strand with an impressionable country

cousin. I don't know that the desire is itself a very

serious defect. But I am inclined to think a Christian

would be wise to avoid, where he decently can, any

meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious,

cruel, dishonest, spiteful and so forth.

Not because we are " too good " for them. In a

sense because we are not good enough. We are not

good enough to cope with all the temptations, nor

clever enough to cope with all the problems, which

an evening spent in such society produces. The

temptation is to condone, to connive at ; by our

words, looks and laughter, to " consent ". The

7 1

R E F L E C T I O NS ON T H E PSALM S

temptation was never greater than now when we are

all (and very rightly) so afraid of priggery or

" smugness ". And of course, even if we do not seek

them out, we shall constantly be in such company

whether we wish it or not. This is the real and

unavoidable difficulty.

We shall hear vile stories told as funny ; not merely

licentious stories but (to me far more serious and

less noticed) stories which the teller could not be

telling unless he was betraying someone's confidence.

We shall hear infamous detraction of the absent,

often disguised as pity or humour. Things we hold

sacred will be mocked. Cruelty will be slyly advocated by the assumption that its only opposite is

" sentimentality ". The very presuppositions of any

possible good life-all disinterested motives, all

heroism, all genuine forgiveness-will be, not

explicitly denied (for then the matter could be

discussed) , but assumed to be phantasmal, idiotic,

believed in only by children.

What is one to do ? For on the one hand, quite

certainly, there is a degree of unprotesting participation in such talk which is very bad. We are strengthening the hands of the enemy. We are

encouraging him to believe that " those Christians ",

once you get them off their guard and round a

dinner table, really think and feel exactly as he does.

By implication we are denying our Master ; behaving as if we " knew not the Man ". On the other hand is one to show that, like Queen Victoria, one

is " not amused " ? Is one to be contentious, interrupting the flow of conversation at every moment 72

CO N NIVA N C E

with " I don't agree, I don't agree 'j ? O r rise and

go away? But by these courses we may also confirm

some of their worst suspicions of " those Christians ".

We are just the sort of ill-mannered prigs they always

said.

Silence is a good refuge. People will not notice it

nearly so easily as we tend to suppose. And (better

still) few of us enjoy it as we might be in danger of

enjoying more forcible methods. Disagreement can,

I think, sometimes be expressed without the appearance of priggery, if it is done argumentatively not dictatorially ; support will often come from some

most unlikely member of the party, or from more

than one, till we discover that those who were

silently dissentient were actually a majority. A

discussion of real interest may follow. Of course the

right side may be defeated in it. That matters very

much less than I used to think. Tl;te very man who

has argued you down will sometimes be found,

years later, to have been influenced by what you

said.

There comes of course a degree of evil against

which a protest will have to be made, however little

chance it has of success. There are cheery agreements in cynicism or brutality which one must contract out of unambiguously. If it can't be done

without seeming priggish, then priggish we must

seem.

For what really matters is not seeming but being

a prig. If we sufficiently dislike making the protest,

if we are strongly tempted not to, we are unlikely

to be priggish in reality. Those who positively

73

R E F L ECTIO N S O N T H E P S A L M S

enjoy, as they call it, " testifying " are in a different

and more dangerous position. As for the mere

seeming-well, though it is very bad to be a prig,

there are. social atmospheres so foul that in them it is

almost an alarming symptom if a man has never

been called one. Just in the same way, though

pedantry is a folly and snobbery a vice, yet there are

circles in which only a man indifferent to all

accuracy will escape being called a pedant, and

others where manners are so coarse, flashy and

shameless that a man (whatever his social position)

of any natural good taste will be called a snob.

What makes this contact with wkked people so

difficult is that to handle the situation successfully

requires not merely good intentions, even with

humility and courage thrown in ; it may call for

social and even intellectual talents which God has

not given us. It is therefore not self-righteousness

but mere prudence to avoid it when we can. The

Psalmists were not quite wrong when they described

the good man as avoiding " the seat of the scornful "

and fearing to consort with the ungodly lest he

should " eat of" (shall we say, laugh at, admire,

approve, jmtify?) " such things as please them ".

As usual in their attitude, with all its dangers, there

is a core of very good sense. �' Lead us not into

temptation " often means, among other things,

" Deny me those gratifying invitations, those highly

interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire."

Closely connected with these warnings against

74

C O N N I V A N C E

what I have called " connivance " are the protests

of the Psalter1 against other sins of the tongue. I

think that when I began to read it these surprised me

a little ; I had half expected that in a simpler and

more violent age when more evil was done with the

knife, the big stick, and the firebrand, less would be

done by talk. But in reality the Psalmists mention

hardly any kind of evil more often than this one,

which the most civilised societies share. ' ' Their

throat is an open sepulchre, they flatter " (5, Io),

'' under his tongue is ungodliness and vanity ", or

" perjury" as Dr. Moffatt translates it ( x o, 7) ,

"deceitful lips " ( 1 2, 3) , " lying lips " (3 1 , 20),

" words full of deceit " (36, 3) , the " whispering " of

evil men (41 , 7) , cruel lies that " cut like a razor "

(52, 3) , talk that sounds " smooth as oW' and will

wound like a sword (55, 22) , pitiless jeering ( 1 02, 8) .

It is all over the Psalter. One almost hears the

incessant whispering, tattling, lying, scolding, · flattery, and circulation of rumours. No historical readjustments are here required, we are in the world

we know. We even detect in that muttering and

wheedling chorus voices which are familiar. One

of them may be too familiar for recognition.

1 Some of these probably involve archaic, and even magical,

ideas of a power intrinsic in words themselves, so that all blessings

and cursings would be efficacious.

75

V I I I

Nature

Two factors

determine the Psalmists' ap- .

proach to Nature. The first they share with the

vast majority of ancient writers ; the second was in

their time, if not absolutely unique, extremely rare.

i. They belong to a nation chiefly of peasants.

For us the very name Jew is associated with finance,

shopkeeping, money-lending and the like. This

however, dates from the Middle Ages when the

Jews were not allowed to own land and were driven

into occupations remote from th.e soil. Whatever

characteristics the modern Jew has acquired from

·

millenia of such occupations, they cannot have been

those of his ancient ancestors. Those were peasants

or farmers. When even a king covets a piece of his

neighbour's property, the piece is a vineyard ; he is

more like a wicked squire than a wicked king.

Everyone was close to the land ; everyone vividly

aware of our dependence on soils and weather. So,

till a late age, was every Greek and Roman. Thus

part of what we should now, perhaps, call " appreciation of Nature " could not then exist-all that part which is really delight in " the country " as a contrast to the town. Where towns are few and very small and where nearly everyone is on the land, one

is not aware of any special thing called " the coun-

76

N A T U R E

try ". Hence a certain sort of " nature poetry " never

existed in the ancient world till really vast cities

like Alexandria arose ; and, after the fall of ancient

civilisation, it never existed again until the eighteenth century. At other periods what w(! call " the country " is simply the world, what water is to a

fish. Nevertheless appreciation of Nature can exist ;

a delight which is both utilitarian and poetic.

Homer can enjoy a landscape, but what he means

by a beautiful landscape is one that is useful-good

deep soil, plenty of fresh water, pasture that will

make the cows really fat, and some nice timber.

Being one of a seafaring race he adds, as a Jew would

not, a good harbour. The Psalmists, who are writing lyrics not romances, naturally give us little landscape. What they do give us, far more sensuously and delightedly than anything I have seen in Greek, is the very feel of weather-weather seen

with a real countryman's eyes, enjoyed almost as a

vegetable might be supposed to enjoy it. " Thou

art good to the earth . . . thou waterest her furrows

thou makest it soft with the drops of rain . . . the

•

.

.

little hills shall rejoice on every side . . . the valleys

shall stand so thick with corn that they shall laugh

and sing " (65, 9-14) . In 1 04, 16 (better in Dr.

Moffatt than in the Prayer Book) , " the great trees

drink their fill ".

ii. The Jews, as we all know, believed in one

God, maker of heaven and earth. Nature and God

were distinct ; the One had made the other ; the One

ruled and the other obeyed. This, I say, we all

know. But for various reasons its real significance

77

R EFLE C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

c an easily escape a modem reader if his studies

happen not to have led him in certain directions.

In the first place it is for us a platitude. We take it

for granted. Indeed I suspect that many people

assume that some clear doctrine of creation Widerlies all religions : that in Paganism the gods, or one of the gods, usually created the world ; even that

religions normally begin by answering the question,

" Who made the world? " In reality, creation, in

any unambiguous sense, seems to be a surprisingly

rare doctrine ; and when stories about it occur in

Paganism they are often religiously unimportant,

not in the least central to the religions in which we

find them. They are on the fringe where religion

tails off into what was perhaps felt, even at the time,

to be more like fairy-tale. In one Egyptian story

a god called Atum came up out of the water and,

being apparently a hermaphrodite, begot and bore

the two next gods ; after that, things could get on.

lri another, the whole senate of the gods came up

out of Nun, the Deep. According to a Babylonian

myth, before heaven and earth were made a being

called Aspu begot, and a being called Tiamat bore,

Lahmu and Lahamu, who in their tum produced

Anshar and Kishar. We are expressly told that this

pair were greater than their parents, so that it is

more like a myth of evolution than of creation. In

the Norse myth we begin with ice and fire, and indeed with a north and south, amidst all which, somehow, a giant comes to life, who bears (from his

arm-pit) a son and daughter. Greek mythology

starts with heaven and earth already in existence.

78

NATURE

I do not mention these myths to indulge in a

cheap laugh at their crudity. All our language

about such things, that of the theologian as well as

that of the child, is crude. The real point is that the

myths, even in their own terms, do not reach the

idea of Creation in our sense at all. Things " come

up out of" something or "are formed in" something.

If the stories could, for the moment, be supposed

true, they would still be stories about very early

events in a process of development, a world-history,

which was already going on. When the curtain

rises in these myths there are always some "properties " already on the stage and some sort of drama is proceeding. You may say they answer the question

" How did the play begin? " But that is an ambiguous question. Asked by the man who arrived ten minutes late it would be properly answered, say,

with the words, " Oh, first three witches came in,

and then there was a scene between an old king and

a wounded soldier." That is the sort of question the

myths are in fact answering. But the very different

question : " How does a play originate? Does it

write itself? Do the actors make it up as they go

along? Or is there someone-not on the stage, not

like the people on the stage-someone we don't see

-who invented it all and caused it to be? "-this is

rarely asked or answered.

We do of course find in Plato a clear Theology of

Creation in the Judaic and Christian sense ; the

whole universe-the very conditions of time and

space under which it exists-are produced by the

will of a perfect, timeless, unconditioned God who

79

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

is above and outside all that He makes. But this is

an amazing leap (though not made without the

help of Him who is the Father oflights) by an overwhelming theological genius ; it is not ordinary Pagan religion.

Now we all understand of course the importance

of this peculiarity in Judaic thought from a strictly

and obviously religious point of view. But its total

consequences, the ways in which it changes a man's

whole mind and imagination, might escape us.

To say that God created Nature, while it brings

God and Nature into relation, also separates them.

What makes and what is made must be two, not one.

Thus the doctrine of Creation in one sense empties

Nature of divinity. How very hard this was to do

and, still more, to keep on doing, we do not now

easily realise. A passage from Job (not without its

own wild poetry in it) may help us : " if I beheld the

sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness ; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth kissed my hand ; this also would be an

iniquity " (3 1 , 26-28) . There is here no question of

turning, in a time of desperate need, to devilish gods.

The speaker is obviously referring to an utterly

spontaneous impulse, a thing you might find yourself acting upon almost unawares. To pay some reverence to the sun or moon is apparently so

natural ; so apparently innocent. Perhaps in certain

times and places it was really innocent. I would

gladly believe that the gesture of homage offered to

the moon was sometimes accepted by her Maker ; in

those times of ignorance which God "winked at "

Bo

NA T U R E

(Acts 17, 30) . The author of job, however, was not

in that ignorance. If he had kissed his hand to the

Moon it would have been iniqUity. The impulse

was a temptation ; one which no Europea..'"l has felt

for the last thousand years.

But in another sense the same doctrine which

empties Nature of her divinity also makes her an

an index, a symbol, a manifestation, of the Divine.

I must recall two passages quoted in an earlier

chapter. One is that from Psalm I g where the

searching and cleansing sun becomes an image of

the searching and cleansing Law. The other is

from 36 : " Thy mercy, 0 Lord, reacheth unto

the heavens, and thy faithfulness unto the clouds.

Thy righteousness standeth like the strong mountains, thy judgements are like the great deep " (5, 6) .

I t is surely just because the natural objects are no

longer taken to be themselves Divine that they can

now be magnificent symbols of Divinity. There is

little point in comparing a Sun-god with the Sun or

Neptune with the great deep ; there is much in comparing the Law with the Sun or saying that God's iudgements are an abyss and a mystery like the sea.

But of course the doctrine of Creation leaves

Nature full of manifestations which show the presence of God, and created energies which serve Him.

The light is His garment, the thing we partially see

Him through (104, 2) , the thunder can be His voice

(29, 3-5) . He dwells in the dark thundercloud

( 1 8, II) , the eruption of a volcano comes in answer

to His touch ( I 04, 32) . The world is full of his

emissaries and executors. He makes winds His

8 1

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

messengers and flames His servants (104, 4) , rides

upon cherubim (18, 10), commands the army of

angels.

All this is of course in one way very close to

Paganism. Thor and Zeus also spoke in the thunder ;

Hermes or Iris was the messenger of the gods. But

the difference, though subtle, is momentous, between hearing in the thunder the voice of God or the voice of a god. As we have seen, even in the

creation-myths, gods have beginnings. Most of

them have fathers and mothers ; often we know

their birth-places. There is no question of selfexistence or the timeless. Being is imposed upon them, as upon us, by preceding causes. They are,

like us, creatures or products ; though they are

luckier than we in being stronger, more beautiful,

and exempt from death. They are, like us, actors

in the cosmic drama, not its authors. Plato fully

understood this. His God creates the gods and

preserves them from death by His own power ; they

have no inherent immortality. In other words, the

difference between believing in God and in many

gods is not one of arithmetic. As someone has said

" gods " is not really the plural of God ; God has no

plural. Thus, when your hear in the thunder the

voice of a god, you are stopping short, for the voice

of a god is not really a voice from beyond the world,

from the uncreated. By taking the god's voice away

--or envisaging the god as an angel, a servant of that

Other-you go further. The thunder becomes not

less divine but more. By emptying Nature of divinity-or, let us say, of divinities-you may fill her 82

N A T U R E

with Deity, for she is now the bearer of messages.

There is a sense in which Nature-worship silences

her-as if a child or a savage were so impressed with

the postman's uniform that he omitted to take in the

letters.

Another result of believing in Creation is to see

Nature not as a mere datum but as an achievement.

Some of the Psalmists are delighted with its mere

solidity and permanence. God has given to His

works His own character of emeth ; they are watertight, faithful, reliable, not at all vague or phantasmal. "All His works are faithful-He spake and it was done, He commanded and it stood fast "

(33, 4; 9) . By His might (Dr. Moffatt's version)

" the mountains are made firm and strongly fixed "

(65, 6) . God has laid the foundations of the earth

with perfect thoroughness ( 1 04, 5) . He has made

everything firm and permanent and imposed boundaries which limit each thing's operation ( 1 48, 6).

Notice how in Psalm 1 36 the poet passes from God's

creation of Nature to the delivering of Israel out of

Egypt : both are equally great deeds, great victories.

But the most surprising result of all is still to be

mentioned. I said that the Jews, like nearly all the

ancients, were agricultural and approached Nature

with a gardener's and a farmer's interest, concerned

with rain, with grass " for the service of man", wine

to cheer man up and olive-oil to make his face shine

-to make it look, as Homer says somewhere, like a

peeled onion ( 1 04, I 4, I 5) . But we find them led on

beyond this. Their gusto, or even gratitude, embraces things that are no use to man. In the great 8g

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E PSALMS

Psalm especially devoted to Nature, from which I

have just quoted ( 1 04) ,1 we have not only the useful

cattle, the cheering vine, and the nourishing corn.

We have springs where the wild asses quench their

thirst (u) , fir trees for the storks (17), hill country

for the wild goats and " conies " (perhaps marmots,

18) , finally even the lions (21) ; and even with a

glance far out to sea, where no Jew willingly went,

the great whales playing, enjoying themselves (26) .

Of course this appreciation of, almost this sympathy with, creatures useless or hurtful or wholly irrelevant to man, is not our modern " kindness to

animals ". That is a virtue most easily practised by

those who have never, tired and hungry, had to

work with animals for a bare living, and who inhabit a country where all dangerous wild beasts have been exterminated.2 The Jewish feeling, however,

is vivid, fresh, and impartial. In Norse stories a

pestilent creature such as a dragon tends to be conceived as the enemy not only of men but of gbds.

In classical stories, more disquietingly, it tends to be

sent by a god for the destruction of men whom he

has a grudge against. The Psalmist's clear objective view-noting the lions and whales side by side with men and men's cattle-is unusual. And I

think it is certainly reached through the idea of God

1 See Appendix I, page 1 45·

1 Heaven forbid, however, that I should be thought to slight it.

I only mean that for those of us who meet beasts solely as pets it is

not a costly virtue. We may properly be kicked if we lack it, but

must not pat ourselves on the back for having it. When a hardworked shepherd or carter remains kind to animals his back may well be patted ; not ours.

N A T U R E

as Creator and sustainer of all. In 1 04, 21, the point

about the liom. is that they, like us, " do seek their

meat from God ". All these creatures, like us, " wait

upon " God at feeding-time (27) . It is the same in

147, 9 ; though the raven was an unclean bird to

Jews, God " feedeth the young ravens that call upon

him ". The thought which gives these creatures a

place in the Psalmist's gusto for Nature is surely

obvious. They are our fellow-dependents ; we all,

lions, storks, ravens, whales-live, as our fathers

said, " at God's charges ", and the mention of all

equally redounds to His praise.

One curious bit of evidence strengthens my belief

that there is such a connection between this sort of

nature poetry and the doctrine of creation ; and it is

also so interesting in itself that I think it worth a

digression. I have said that Paganism in general

fails to get out of nature something that the Jews

got. There is one apparent instance to the contrary ;

one ancient Gentile poem which provides a fairly

close parallel to Psalm 1 04. But then, when we come

to examine it, we find that this poem is not Pagan

in the sense of Polytheistic at all. It is addressed to a

Monotheistic God and salutes Him as the Creator

of the whole earth. It is therefore no exception to

my generalisation. _Where ancient Gentile literature

(in some measure) anticipates the nature poetry of

the Jews; it has also (in some measure) anticipated

their theology. And that, in my view, is what we

might have expected.

The poem in question is an Egyptian Hymn to the

Sun dating from the fourteenth century B.c. Its

as

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

author is that Pharaoh whose real name was

Amenhetep IV, but who called himself Akhenaten.

Many of my readers will know his story already.

He was a spiritual revolutionary. He broke away

from the Polytheism of his fathers and nearly tore

Egypt into shreds in his efforts to establish by force

the worship of a single God. In the eyes of the

established priesthood, whose property he transferred to the service of this new religion, he musthave seemed a monster ; a sort of Henry VIII plundering the abbeys. His Monotheism appears

to have been of an extremely pure and conceptual

kind. He did not, as a man of that age might have

been expected to do, even identify God with the

Sun. The visible disc was only His manifestation.

It is an astonishing leap, more astonishing in some

ways than Plato's, and, like Plato's, in sharp contrast

to ordinary Paganism. And as far as we can see, it

was a total failure. Akhenaten's religion died with

him. Nothing, apparently, came of it.

Unless of course, as is just possible, Judaism itself

partly came of it. It is conceivable that ideas derived

from Akhenaten's system formed part of that Egyptian " Wisdom " in which Moses was bred. There is nothing to disquiet us in such a possibility. Whatever was true in Akhenaten's creed came to him, in some mode or other, as all truth comes to all men,

from God. There is no reason why traditions destending from Akhenaten should not have been among the instruments which God used in making

Himself known to Moses. But we have no evidence

that this is what actually happened. Nor do we

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NAT U R E

know how fit Akhenatenism would really have been

to serve as an instrument for this purpose. Its

inside, its spirituality, the quality of life from which

it sprang and which it encouraged, escape us. The

man himself still has the power, after thirty-four

centuries, to evoke the most violent, and contradictory, reactions. To one modem scholar he is the

" first individual " whom history records ; to another,

he is a crank, a faddist, half iusane, possibly cretinous. We may well hope that he was accepted and blessed by God ; but that his religion, at any rate on

the historical level, was not so blessed and so

accepted, is pretty clear. Perhaps the seed was good

seed but fell on stony ground. Or perhaps it was not

after all exactly the right sort of seed. To us modems, no doubt, such a simple, enlightened, reasonable Monotheism looks very much more like the good seed than those earliest documents of judaism

in which Jahveh seems little more than a tribal

deity. We might be wrong. Perhaps if Man is

finally to know the bodiless, timeless, transcendent

Ground of the whole universe not as a mere philosophical abstraction but as the Lord who, despite this transcendence, is "not far from any one of us ",

as an utterly concrete Being (far more concrete than

we) whom Man can fear, love, address, and " taste ",

he must begin far more humbly and far nearer home,

with the local altar, the traditional feast, and the

treasured memories of God's judgements, promises,

and mercies. It is possible that a certain sort of

enlightenment can come too soon and too easily.

At that early stage it may not be fruitful to typify

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R E FL E CTI O NS ON THE PSA LMS

God by anything so remote, so neutral, so international and (as it were) interdenominational, so featureless, as the solar disc. Since in the end we are

to come to baptism and the Eucharist, to the stable

at Bethlehem, the hill of Calvary, and the emptied

rock-tomb, perhaps it is better to begin with circumcision, the Passover, the Ark, and the Temple For " the highest does not stand without the lowest".

Does not stand, does not stay ; rises, rather, and

expands, and finally loses itself in endless space.

For the entrance is low : we must stoop till we are no

taller than children in order to get in.

It would therefore be rash to assume that Akhenaten's Monotheism was, in those ways which are religiously most important, an exact anticipation of

the Judaic ; so that if only the priests and people of

Egypt had accepted it, God could have dispensed

with Israel altogether and revealed Himself to us

henceforward through a long line of Egyptian

prophets. What concerns us at the moment, however, is simply to note that Akhenaten's religion, being certainly in some respects like that of the Jews,

sets him free to write nature-poetry in some degree

like theirs. The degree could be exaggerated. The

Hymn to the Sun remains different from the Psalms.

It is magnificently like Psalm 1 39 (13-16) when it

praises God for making the embryo grow in the

mother's body, so that He is " our nurse even in the

womb " : or for teaching the chick to break the eggshell and come forth " chirping as loud as he can ".

In the verse " Thous didst create the earth, according to thy desire " Akhenaten even anticipates the 88

N A T U R E

New Testament-" thou hast created all things, and

for thy pleasure they are, and were created "

(Revelation 4, 11) . But he does not quite see the lions

as our fellow-pensioners . He brings them in, to be

sure, but notice how : " when thou settest, the world

is in darkness like the dead. Out come the lions :

all serpents sting." Thus coupled with death and

poisonous snakes, they are clearly envisaged in their

capacity of enemies. It almost sounds as if the night

itself were an enemy, out of God's reach. There is

just a trace of dualism. But if there is difference,

the likeness also is real. And it is the likeness which

is relevant to the theme of this chapter. In Akhenaten as in the Psalms, a certain kind of poetry seems to go with a certain kind of theology. But the full

and abiding development of both is Jewish.

(Meanwhile, what gentle heart can leave the

topic without a prayer that this lonely ancient king,

crank and doctrinaire though perhaps he was, has

long seen and now enjoys the truth which so far

transcends his own glimpse of it?)

Bg

IX

A Word A bout Praising

It is possible

(and _it is to be hoped) that this

chapter will be unnecessary for most people. Those

who were never thick-headed enough to get into the

difficulty it deals with may even find it funny I

.

have not the least objection to their laughing ; a

little comic relief in a discussion does no harm,

however serious the topic may be. (In my own

experience the funniest things have occurred in the

gravest and most sincere conversations.)

When I first began to draw near to belief in God

and even for some time after it had been given to

me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so

clamorously made by all religious people that we

should " praise " God ; still more in the suggestion

that God Himself demanded it. We all despise the

man who demands continued assurance of his own

virtue, intelligence or delightfulness ; we despise

still more the crowd of people round every dictator,

every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that

demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and

horrible, both of God and of His worshippers,

threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were

especially troublesome in this way-" Praise the

Lord," " 0 praise the Lord with me," " Praise

Him." (And why, incidentally, did praising God

go

A W O R D AB O U T P R A I S I N G

so often consist i n telling other people to praise

Him? Even in telling whales, snowstorms, etc., to

go on doing what they would certainly do whether

we told them or not ?) Worse still was the statement

put into God's own mouth, " whoso offereth me

thanks and praise, he honoureth me " (so, 23) . It

was hideously like saying, " What I most want is

to be told that I am good and great." Worst of all

was the suggestion of the very silliest Pagan bargaining, that of the savage who makes offerings to his idol when the fishing is good and beats it when

he has caught nothing

More than once the

.

Psalmists seemed to be saying, " You like praise.

Do this for me, and you shall have some." Thus in

54 the poet begins " save me " (1) , and in verse 6

adds an inducement, " An offering of a free heart

will I give thee, and praise thy Name." Again and

again the speaker ·asks to be saved from death on

the ground that if God lets His suppliants die

He will get no more praise from them, for the

ghosts in Sheol cannot praise (30, 10 ; 88, 10 ; I I g,

175) . And mere quantity ofpraise seemed to count ;

" seven times a day do I praise thee " (ug, r64) .

It was extremely distressing. It made one think

what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to

God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him, I

thought I could understand ; not this perpetual

eulogy. Nor were matters mended by a modern

author who talked of God's " right" to be praised.

I still think " right" is a bad way of expressing it,

but I believe I now see what that author meant. It

is perhaps easiest to begin with inanimate objects

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R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

which can have no rights. What do we mean when

we say that a picture is " admirable " ? We certainly

don't mean that it is admired (that's as may be)

for bad work is admired by thousands and good

work may be ignored. Nor that it " deserves "

admiration in the sense in which a candidate

" deserves " a high mark from the examinersi.e. that a human being will have suffered injustice if it is not awarded. The sense in which the picture

" deserves " or " demands " admiration is rather

this ; that admiration is the correct, adequate or

appropriate, response to it, that, if paid, admiration

will not be " thrown away ", and that if we do not

admire we shall be stupid, insensible, and great

losers, we shall have missed something. In that way

many objects both in Nature and in Art may be said

to deserve, or merit, or demand, admiration. It

was from this end, which will seem to some

Irreverent, that I found it l?est to approach the idea

that God " demands " praise . . He is that Object to

admire which (or, ifyou like, to appreciate which) is

simply to be awake, to have entered the real world ;

not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest

experience, and in the end to have lost all. The incomplete and crippled lives of those who are tone deaf, have never been in love, never known true

friendship, never cared for a good book, never

enjoyed the feel of the morning air on their cheeks,

never (I am one of these) enjoyed football, are

faint images of it.

But of course this is not all. God does not only

" demand " praise as the supremely beautiful and

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A W O R D A B O U T P R A I S I N G

all-satisfying Object. He does apparently command

it as lawgiver. The Jews were told to sacrifice. We

are under an obligation to go to church. But this

was a difficulty only because I did not then understand any of what I have tried to say above in Chapter V. I did not see that it is in the process of

being worshipped that God communicates His

presence to men. It is not of course the only way.

But for many people at many times the " fair beauty

of the Lord " is revealed chiefly or only while they

worship Him together. Even in Judaism the

essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave

bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing

God gave Himself to men ; in the central act of our

own worship of course this is far clearer-there it is

manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we

who receive. The miserable idea that God should

in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like

a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain

author presenting his new books to people who

never met or heard of him, is implicitly answered

by the words " If I be hungry I will not tell thee "

(50, 12) . Even if such an absurd Deity could be

conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest

of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't

want my dog to bark approval of my books. Now

that I come to think of it, there are some humans

whose enthusiastically favourable criticism would

not much gratify me.

But the most obvious fact about praise-whether

of God or anything stra

-

ngely escaped me. I

thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or

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R E FLE C TI O N S O N T H E P SAL M S

the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all

enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise

unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of

boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.

The world rings with praise-lovers praising their

mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers

·

praising the countryside, players praising their

favourite game-praise of weather, wines, dishes,

actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or

scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and

at the same time most balanced and capacious,

minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and

malcontents praised least. The good critics found

something to praise in many imperfect works ; the

bad ones continually narrowed the list of books we

might be allowed to read. The healthy and unaffected man, even if luxuriously brought up and widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a

very modest meal : the dyspeptic and the snob

found fault with all. Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. Nor does it cease to

be so when, through lack of skill, the forms of its

expression are very uncouth or even ridiculous.

Heaven knows, many poems of praise addressed to

an earthly beloved are as bad as our bad hymns,

and an anthology of love poems for public and perpetual use would probably be as sore a trial to literary taste as Hymns Ancient and Modern. I had not

noticed either that just as men spontaneously

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A W O R D A B O U T P RAIS I N G

praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously

urge us to join them in praising it : " Isn't she

lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that

magnificent? " The Psalmists in telling everyone to

praise God are doing what all men do when they

speak of what they care about. My whole, more

general, difficulty about the praise of God depended

on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the

supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what

indeed we can't help doing, about everything else

we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment ; it is its appointed consummation. It

is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling

one another how beautiful they are ; the delight is

incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to

have discovered a new author and not to be able to

tell anyone how good he is ; to come suddenly,

at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley

of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep

silent because the people with you care for it no

more than for a tin can in the ditch ; to hear a good

joke and find no one to share it with (the perfect

hearer died a year ago) . This is so even when our

expressions are inadequate, as of course they usually

are. But how if one could really and fully praise

even such things to perfection-utterly " get out "

in poetry or music or paint the upsurge of appreciation which almost bursts you ? Then indeed the object would be fully appreciated and our delight

would have attained perfect development. The

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R E F L E C T I ON S ON T H E P S A L M S

worthier the object, the more intense this delight

would be. If it were possible for a created soul fully

(I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a

finite being) to " appreciate ", that is to love and

delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in

supreme beautitude. It is along these lines that I

find it easiest to understand the Christian doctrine

that " Heaven " is a state in which angels now, and

men hereafter, are perpetually employed in praising

God. This does not mean, as it can so dismally

suggest, that it is like "being in Church ". For our

" services " both in their conduct and in our power

to participate, are merely attempts at worship ;

never fully successful, often 99·9 per cent failures,

sometimes total failures. We are not riders but

pupils in the riding school ; for most of us the falls

and bruises, the aching muscles and the severity

of the exercise, far outweigh those few moments in

which we were, to our own astonishment, actually

galloping without terror and without disaster. To

see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with Goddrunk with, drowned in, dissolved hy, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves

as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss,

flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and

perfect expression, our joy no more separable from

the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than

the brightness a mirror receives is separable from

the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism

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A W O R D A B O U T P R A I S I N G

says that man's chief end is " to glorify God and

enjoy Him forever " . But we shall then know that

these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify.

In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting

us to enjoy Him.

Meanwhile of course we are merely, as Donne

says, tuning our instruments. The- tuning up of the

orchestra can be itself delightful, but only to those

who can in some measure, however little, anticipate

the symphony. The Jewish sacrifices, and even our

own most sacred rites, as they actually occur in

human experience, are, like the tuning, promise,

not performance. Hence, like the tuning, they may

have in them much duty and little delight ; or none.

But the duty exists for the delight. When we carry

out our " religious duties " we are like people

digging channels in a waterless land, in order.

that when at last the water comes, it may find them

ready. I mean, for the most part. There are happy

moments, even now, when a trickle creeps along the

dry beds ; and happy souls to whom this happens

often.

As for the element of bargaining in the Psalms

(Do this and I will praise you) , that silly dash of

Paganism certainly existed. The flame does not

ascend pure from the altar. But the impurities are

not its essence. And we are not all in a position to

despise even the crudest Psalmists on this score. Of

course we would not blunder in our words like

them. But there is, for ill as well as for good, a

wordless prayer. I have often, on my knees, been

shocked to find what sort of thoughts I have, for a

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R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

moment, been addressing to God ; what infantile

placations I was really offering, what claims I have

really made, even what absurd adjustments or compromises I was, half-consciously, proposing. There is a Pagan, savage heart in me somewhere. For

unfortunately the folly and idiot-cunning of Paganism seem to have far more power of surviving than its innocent or even beautiful elements. It is easy,

once you have power, to silence the pipes, still the

dances, disfigure the statues, and forget the stories ;

but not easy to kill the savage, the greedy, frightened

creature now cringing, now blustering, in one's

soul-the creature to whom God may well say,

" thou though test I am even such a one as thyself"

(so, 21) .

But all this, as I have said, will be illuminating to

only a few of my readers. To the others, such a

comedy of errors, so circuitous a journey to reach the

obvious, will furnish occasion for charitable

laughter.

g8

x Second Meanings

I must now

turn to something far more difficult.

Hitherto we have been trying to read the Psalms as

we suppose--or I suppose-their poets meant them

to be read. But this of course is not the way in

which they have chiefly been used by Christians.

They have been believed to contain a second

or hidden meaning, an " allegorical " sense, concerned with the central truths of Christianity, with the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, the

Ascension, and with the Redemption of man. All

the Old Testament has been treated in the same

way The full significance of what the writers are

.

saying is, on this view, apparent only in the light of

events which happened after they were dead.

Such a doctrine, not without reason, arouses deep

distrust in a modern mind. Because, as we know,

almost anything can be read into any book if you

are determined enough. This will be especially

impressed on anyone who has written fantastic

fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and

hostile, reading into his stories all manner of

allegorical meanings which he never intended.

(Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own

books have been so ingenious and interesting that

I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

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Apparently i t is impossible for the wit ofman to devise

a narrative in which the wit of some other man cannot, and with some plausibility, find a hidden sense.

The field for self-deception, once we accept such

methods of interpretation, is therefore obviously

very wide. Yet in spite of this I think it impossiblefor a reason I will give later-to abandon the method wholly when we are dealing, as Christians,

with the Bible. We have, therefore, a steep hill

before us. I will not attempt the cliffs. I must

take a roundabout route which will look at first as

if it could never lead us to the top at all.

I begin far away from Scripture and even from

Christianity, with instances of something said or

written which takes on a new significance in the

light of later events.

One of the Roman historians tells us about a fire

in a provincial town which was thought to have

originated in the public baths. What gave some

colour to the suspicion of deliberate incendiarism

was the fact that, earlier that day, a gentleman had

complained that the water in the hot bath was only

lukewarm and had received from an attendant the

reply, it will soon be hot enough. Now of course if there

really had been a plot, and the slave was in it, and

fool enough to risk discovery by this veiled threat,

then the story would not concern us. But let us suppose the fire was an accident (i.e. was intended by nobody) . In that case the slave would have said

something truer, or more importantly true, than he

himself supposed. Clearly, there need be nothing

here but chance coincidence. The slave's reply is

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S E C O N D M E A N I N G S

fully explained by- the customer's complaint ; it is

just what any bath attendant would say. The

deeper significance which his words turned out to

have during the ·next few hours was, as we should

say, accidental.

Now let us take a somewhat tougher ins tance.

(The non-classical reader needs to know that to a

Roman the " age " or " reign " of Saturn meant the

lost age of innocence and peace. That is, it roughly

corresponded to the Garden of Eden before the

Fall ; though it was never, except among the

Stoics, of anything like comparable importance.)

Virgil, writing not very long before the birth of

Christ, begins a poem thus : " The great procession

of the ages begins anew. Now the Virgin returns,

the reign of Saturn returns, and the new child is

sent down from high heaven." It goes on to

describe the paradisal age which this nativity will

usher in. And of course throughout the Middle

Ages it was taken that some dim prophetic knowledge of the birth of Christ had reached Virgil, probably through the Sibylline Books. He ranked as

a Pagan prophet.

Modern scholars would, I

suppose, laugh at the idea. They might differ as to

what noble or imperial couple were being thus

extravagantly complimented by a court poet on

the birth of a son ; but the resemblance to the birth

of Christ would be regarded, once more, as an

accident. To say the least of it, however, this is a

much more striking accident than the slave's words

to the man in the baths. If this is luck, it is extraordinary luck. If one were a fanatical opponent of I O I

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

Christianity one would be tempted to say, in

an unguarded moment, that it was diabolically

lucky.

I now turn to two examples which I think to be on

a different level. In them, as in those we have been

considering, someone says what is truer and more

important than he knows ; but it does not seem to

me that he could have done so by chance. I

hasten to add that the alternative to chance which

I have in mind is not '� prophecy " in the sense of

clear prevision, miraculously bestowed. Nor of

course have I the slightest intention of using the

examples I shall cite as evidences for the truth of

Christianity. Evidences are not here our subject.

We are merely considering how we should regard

those second meanings which things said or written

sometimes take on in the light of fuller knowledge

than their author possessed. And I am suggesting

that different instances demand that we should

regard them in different ways. Sometimes we may

regard this overtone as the result of simple coincidence, however striking. But there are other cases in which the later truth (which the speaker did not

know)" is intimately related to the truth he did

know ; so that, in hitting out something like it, he

was in touch with that very same reality in which

the fuller truth is rooted. Reading his words in the

light of that fuller truth and hearing it in them as an

overtone or second meaning, we are not foisting on

them something alien to his mind, an arbitrary

addition. We are prolonging his meaning in a

direction congenial to it. The basic reality behind

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S E C O N D M E A N I N G S

his words and behind the full truth is one and the

same.

The status I claim for such things, then, is neither

that of coincidence on the one hand nor that of

supernatural prevision on the other. I will try to

illustrate it by three imaginable cases. i. A holy

person, explicitly claiming to prophesy by the

Spirit, tells us that there is in the universe such and

such a creature. Later we learn (which God forbid)

to travel in space and distribute upon new worlds

the vomit of our own corruption ; and, sure enough,

on the remote planet of some remote star, we find

that very creature. This would be prophecy in the

strictest sense. This would be evidence for the

prophet's miraculous gift and strong presumptive

evidence for the truth of anything else he had said.

ii. A wholly WlScientific writer of fantasies invents a

creature for purely artistic reasons. Later on, we

find a creature recognisably like it. This would be

just the writer's luck. A man. who knows nothing

about racing may once in his life back a winner.

iii. A great biologist, illustrating the relation between animal organisms and their environment, invents for this purpose a hypothetical animal

adapted to a hypothetical environment. Later, we

find a creature very like it (of course in an environment very like the one he had supposed) . This resemblance is not in the least accidential. Insight

and knowledge, not luck, led to his invention. The

real nature of life explains both why there is such a

creature in the universe and also why there was

such a creature in his lectures. If, while we re-read

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R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

the lectures, we think of the reality, we are not

bringing arbitrary fancies of our own to bear on the

text. This second meaning is congenial to it.

The examples I have in mind correspond to this

third case ; except of course that something more

sensitive and personal than scientific knowledge is

involved-what the writer or speaker was, not only

what he knew.

Plato in his Republic is arguing that righteousness

is often praised for the rewards it brings-honour;

popularity, and the like-

· but that to see it in its

true nature we must separate it from all these,

strip it naked. He asks us therefore to imagine a

perfectly righteous man treated by all around him

as a monster of wickedness. We must picture him,

still perfect, while he is bound, scourged, and finally

impaled (the Persian equivalent of crucifixion) . At

this passage a Christian reader starts and rubs his

eyes. What is happening ? Yet another of these

lucky coincidences ? But presently he sees that there

is something here which cannot be called luck at all.

Virgil, in the poem I have quoted, may have been,

and the slave in the baths almost certainly was,

" talking about something else ", some matter

other than that of which their words were most

importantly true. Plato is talking, and knows

he is talking, about the fate of goodness in a wicked

and misunderstanding world. But that is not something simply other than the Passion of Christ. It is the very same thing of which that Passion is the

supreme illustration. If Plato was in some measure

moved to write of it by the recent death-we may

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S E C O N D M E A N I N G S

almost say the martyrdom-of his master Socrates

then that again is not something simply other than

the Passion of Christ. The imperfect, yet very

·

venerable, goodness of Socrates led to the easy death

of the hemlock, and the perfect goodness of Christ

led to the death of the cross, not by chance but for

the same reason ; because goodness is what it is, and

because the fallen world is what it is. If Plato,

starting from one example and from his insight into

the nature of goodness and the nature of the world,

was led on to see the possibility of a perfect example,

and thus to depict something extremely like the

Passion of Christ, this happened not because he was

lucky but because he was wise. If a man who knew

only England and had observed that, the higher a

mountain was, the longer it retained the snow in

early spring, were led on to suppose a mountain so

high that it retained the snow all the year round, the

similarity between his imagined mountain and the

real Alps would not be merely a lucky accident. He

might not know that there were any such mountains

in reality ; just as Plato probably did not know that

the ideally perfect instance of crucified goodness

which he had depicted would ever become actual

and historical. But if that man ever saw the Alps he

would not say " What a curious coincidence ". He

would be more likely to say '' There ! What did I

tell you ? "

And what are we to say of those gods in various

Pagan mythologies who are killed and rise again

and who thereby renew or transform the life of their

worshippers or of nature ? The odd thing is that

1 05

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

nere those anthropologists who are most hostile to

our faith would agree with many Christians in

saying " The resemblance is not accidental ". Of

course the two parties would say this for different

reasons. The anthropologists would mean : " All

these superstitions have a common source in the

mind and experience, especially the agricultural

experience, of early man. Your myth of Christ

is like the myth of Balder because it has the same

origin. The likeness is a family likeness." The

Christians would fall into two schools of thought.

· The early Fathers (or some of them) , who believed

that Paganism was nothing but the direct work of

the Devil, would say : " The Devil has from the

beginning tried to mislead humanity with lies. As

all accomplished liars do, he makes his lies as like

the truth as he can ; provided they lead man astray

on the main issue; the more closely they imitate

truth the more effective they will be. That is why

we call him God's Ape ; he is always imitating God.

The resemblance of Adonis to Christ is therefore

not at all accidental ; it is the resemblance we expect

to find between a counterfeit and the real thing,

between a parody and the original, between imitation pearls and pearls." Other Christians who think, as I do, that in mythology divine and diabolical and human elements (the desire for a good story) , all play a part, would say : " It is not accidental. In the sequence of night and day, in the annual death and rebirth of the crops, in the myths

which these processes gave rise to, in the strong,

if half-articulate, feeling (embodied in many Pagan

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S E C O N D M E A N I N G S

' Mysteries ') that man himself must undergo some

sort of death if he would truly live, there is already a

likeness permitted by God to that truth on which all

depends. The resemblance between these myths

and the Christian truth is no more accidental than

the resemblance between the sun and the sun's

reflection in a pond, or that between a historical

fact and the somewhat garbled version of it which

lives in popular report, or between the trees and hills

of the real world and the trees and hills in our

dreams." Thus all three views alike would regard

the " Pagan Christs " and the true Christ as things

really related and would find the resemblance

significant.

In other words, when we examine things said

which take on, in the light of later knowJedge, a

meaning they could not have had for those who said

them, they turn out to be of different sorts. To be

sure, of whatever sort they may be, we can often

profitably read them with that second meaning in

mind. If I think (as I cannot help thinking) about

the birth of Christ while I read that poem of Virgil's, or even if I make it a regular part of my Christmas reading, this may be quite a sensible and

edifying thing to do. But the resemblance which

makes such a reading possible may after all be a

mere coincidence (though I am not sure that it is) .

I may be reading into Virgil what is wholly irrelevant to all he was, and did, and intended ; irrelevant as the sinister meaning which the bathman's word

in the Roman story acquired from later events may

have been to anything that slave was or meant.

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R E F L ECTIONS ON TH E PSA L MS

But when I meditate on the Passion while reading

Plato's picture of the Righteous One, or on the

Resurrection while reading about Adonis or Balder,

the case is altered. There is a real connection between what Plato and the myth-makers most deeply were and meant and what I believe to be the truth.

I know that connection and they do not. But it is

really there. It is not an arbitrary fancy of my own

thrust upon the old words. One can, without any

absurdity, imagine Plato or the myth-makers if they

learned the truth, saying, " I see . . . so that was

what I was really talking about. Of course. That is

what my words really meant, and I never knew it."

The bath attendant if innocent, on hearing the

second meaning given to his words, would no doubt

have said, " So help me, I never meant no such

thing. Never come into my head. I hadn't a clue."

What Virgil would have said, if he had learned the

truth, I have no idea. (Or may we more charitably

speak, not of what Plato and Virgil and the mythmakers " would have said " but of what they said ?

For we can pray with good hope that they now know

and have long since welcomed the truth ; " many

shall come from the east and the west and sit down

in the kingdom.")

Thus, long before we come to the Psalms or the

Bible, there are good reasons for not throwing away

all second meanings as rubbish. Keble said of the

Pagan poets, " Thoughts beyond their thoughts to

those high bards were given." But let us now turn

to Scripture itself.

1 08

X I Scripture

If even pagan

utterances can carry a second

meaning, not quite accidentally but because, in the

sense I have suggested, they have a sort of right to it,

we shall expect the Scriptures to do this more

momentously and more often. We have two grounds

for doing so if we are Christians.

i. For us these writings are " holy ", or " inspired ", or, as St. Paul says, " the Oracles of God ".

But this has been understood in more than one way,

and I must try to explain how I understand it, at

least so far as the Old Testament is concerned. I

have been suspected of being what is called a

Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard

any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground

that it includes the miraculous. Some people find

the miraculous so hard . to believe that they cannot

imagine any reason for my acceptance of it other

than a prior belief that every sentence of the Old

Testament has historical or scientific truth. But

this I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did

when he said that Moses described Creation " after

the manner of a popular poet " (as we should say,

mythically) or than Calvin did when he doubted

whether the story ofjob were history or fiction. The

real reason why I can accept as historical a story in

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R E F L E C T I O N S ON T H E PSALMS

which a miracle occurs is that I have never found

any philosophical grounds for the universal negative

proposition that miracles do not happen. I have to

decide on quite other grounds (if I decide at all)

whether a given narrative is historical or not. The

Book of Job appears to me unhistorical because it

begins about a man quite unconnected with all

history or even legend, with no genealogy, living in a

country of which the Bible elsewhere has hardly

anything to say ; because, in fact, the author quite

obviously writes as a story-teller not as a chronicler.

I have therefore no difficulty in accepting, say, the

view of those scholars who tell us that the account

of Creation in Genesis is derived from earlier Semitic

stories which were Pagan and mythical. We must

of course be quite clear what " derived from "

means. Stories d o not reproduce their species like

mice. They are told by men. Each re-teller either

tepeats exactly what his prtdecessor had told him or

else changes it. He may change it unknowingly or

deliberately. If he changes it deliberately, his

invention, his sense of form, his ethics, his ideas of

what is fit, or edifying, or merely interesting, all

come in. If unknowingly, then his unconscious

(which is so largely responsible for our forgettings)

has been at work. Thus at every step in what is

called-a little misleadingly-the " evolution " of a

story, a man, all he is and all his attitudes, are

involved. And no good work is done anywhere

without aid from the Father of Lights. When a

series ofs.uch re-tellings turns a creation story which

at first had almost no religious or metaphysical

I I O

SCRIPTURE

significance into a story which achieves the idea of

true Creation and of a transcendent Creator (as

Genesis does) , then nothing will make me believe

that some of the re-tellers, or some one of them, has

not been guided by God.

Thus something originally merely natural-the

kind of myth that is found among most nations-will

have been raised by God above itself, qualified by

Him and compelled by Him to serve purposes which

of itself it would not have served. Generalising this, I

take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the

same sort of material as any other literature-chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate) , poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what

not ; but all taken into the service of God's word.

Not all, I suppose, in the same way. There are

prophets who write with the clearest awareness that

Divine compulsion is upon them. There are chroniclers whose intention may have been merely to record. There are poets like those in the Song of

Songs who probably never dreamed of any but a

secular and natural purpose in what they composed.

There is (and it is no less important) the work first of

the Jewish and then of the Christian Church in preserving and canonisingjust these books. There is the work of redactors and editors in modifying them.

On all of these I suppose a Divine pressure ; of

which not by any means all need have been conscious.

The human qualities of the raw materials show

through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in

the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed.

I I I

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

The total result is not " the Word of God " in the

sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable

science or history. It carries the Word of God ;

and we (under grace, with attention to tradition

and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with

the use of such intelligence and learning as we may

have) receive that word from it not by using it as an

encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

To a human mind this working-up (in a sense

imperfectly) , this sublimation (incomplete) of human material, seems, no doubt, an untidy and leaky vehicle. We might have expected, we may think we

should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving

us ultimate truth in systematic form-something we

could have tabulated and memorised and relied on

like the multiplication table. One can respect, and

at moments envy, both the Fundamentalist's view

of the Bible and the Roman Catholic's view of the

Church. But there is one argument which we

should beware of using for either position : God must

have done what is best, this is best, therefore God has

done this. For we are mortals and do not know what

is best for us, and it is dangerous to prescribe what

God must have done-especially when we cannot,

for the life of us, see that He has after all done it.

We may observe that the teaching of Our Lord

Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not

given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have only reported sayings,

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S C R I P T U R E

most o f them uttered in answer to questions,

shaped in some degree by their context. And when

we have collected them all we cannot reduce them to

a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He

uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony ;

even (I mean no irreverence) the " wisecrack ".

He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if

rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one

another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped

by the intellect alone, cannot be " got up " as if it

were a " subject ". If we try to do that with it, we

shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He

hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight

question. He will not be, in the way we want,

" pinned down ". The attempt is (again, I mean no

irreverence) · like trying to bottle a sunbeam.

Descending lower, we find a somewhat similar

difficulty with St. Paul. I cannot be the only reader

who has wondered why God, having given him so

many gifts, withheld from him (what would to us

seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian)

that of lucidity and orderly exposition.

Thus on three levels, in appropriate degrees, we

meet the same refusal of what we might have

thought best for us-in the Word Himself, in the

Apostle of the Gentiles, in Scripture as a whole.

Since this is what God has done, this, we must

conclude, was best. It may be that what we should

have liked would have been fatal to m if granted.

It may be indispensable that Our Lord's teaching,

by that elusiveness (to our systematising intellect) ,

should demand a response from the whole man,

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R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

should make it so clear that there is no question of

learning a subject but of steeping ourselves in a

Personality, acquiring a new outlook and temper,

breathing a new atmosphere, suffering Him, in His

own way, to rebuild in us the defaced image of

Himself. So in St. Paul. Perhaps the sort of works

I should wish him to have written would have been

useless. The crabbedness, the appearance of inconsequence and even of sophistry, the turbulent mixture of petty detail, personal complaint, practical advice, and lyrical rapture, finally let through what

matters more than ideas-a whole Christian life in

operation-better say, Christ Himself operating in

a man's life. And in the same way, the value of the

Old Testament may be dependent on what seems its

imperfection. It may repel one use in order that we

may be forced to use it in another way-to find the

Word in it, not without repeated and leisurely

reading nor without discriminations made by our

conscience and our critical faculties, to re-live, while

we read, the whole Jewish experience of God's

gradual and graded self-revelation, to feel the very

contentions between the Word and the human

material through which it works. For here again, it

is our total response that has to be elicited .

Certainly it seems to me that from having had to

reach what is really the Voice of God in the cursing

Psalms through all the horrible distortions of the

human medium, I have gained something I might

not have gained from a flawless, ethical exposition.

The shadows have indicated (at least to my heart)

something more about the light. Nor would I (now)

I I 4

SCRIPTURE

willingly spare from my Bible something in itself so

anti-religious as the nihilism of Ecclesiastes. We get

there a clear, cold picture of man's life without God.

That statement is itself part of God's word. We

need to have heard it. Even to have assimilated

Ecclesiastes and no other book in the Bible would be

to have advanced further towards truth than some

men do.

But of course these conjectures as to why God does

what He does are probably of no more value than

my dog's ideas of what I am up to when I sit and

read. But though we can only guess the reasons,

we can at least observe the _consistency, of His ways.

We x:ead in Genesis {2, 7) that God formed man of the

dust and breathed life into him. For all the first

writer knew of it, this passage might merely illustrate the survival, even in a truly creational story, of the Pagan inability to conceive true Creation, the

savage, pictorial tendency to imagine God making

things " out of" something as the potter or the carpenter does. Nevertheless, whether by lucky accident or (as I think) by God's guidance, it embodies a profound principle. For on any view man is in one

sense clearly made " out of" something else. He is

an animal ; but an animal called to be, or raised to

be, or (if you like) doomed to be, something more

than an animal. On the ordinary biological view

(what difficulties I have about evolution are not

religious) one of the primates is changed so that he

becomes man ; but he remains still a primate and an

animal. He is taken up into a new life without

relinquishing the old. In the same way, all organic

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R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

life takes up and uses processes merely chemical.

But we can trace the principle higher as well as

lower. For we are taught that the Incarnation

itself proceeded " not by the conversion of the godhead into flesh, but by taking of (the) manhood into God " ; in it human life becomes the vehicle of

Divine life. If the Scriptures proceed not by conversion of God's word into a literature but by taking up of a literature to be the vehicle of God's word,

this is not anomalous.

Of course, on almost all levels, that method seems

to us precarious or, as I have said, leaky. None of

these up-gradings is, as we should have wished,

self-evident. Because the lower nature, in being

taken up and loaded with a new burden and

advanced to a new privilege, remains, and is not

annihilated, it will always be possible to ignore the

up-grading and see nothing but the lower. Thus

men can read the life of Our Lord (because it is a

human life) as nothing but a human life. :Many,

perhaps_ most, modern philosophies read human

life merely as- an animal life of unusual complexity.

The Cartesians read animal life as mechanism.

Just in the same way Scripture can be read as merely

human literature. No new discovery, no new method,

will ever give a final victory to either interpretation.

For what is required, on all these levels alike, is not

merely knowledge but a certain insight ; getting the

focus right. Those who can see in each of these

instances only the lower will always be plausible.

One who contended that a poem was nothing but

black marks on white paper would be unanswer-

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S C R I P T U R E

able if he addressed an audience who couldn't

read. Look at it through microscopes, analyse the

printer's ink and the paper, study it (in that way)

as long as you like ; you will never find something

over and above all the products of analysis whereof

you can say H This is the poem ". Those who

can read, however, will continue to say the poem

exists.

If the Old Testament is a literature thus " taken

up ", made the vehicle of what is more than human,

we can of course set no limit to the weight or

multiplicity of meanings which may have been

laid upon it. If any writer may say more than he

knows and mean more than he meant, then these

writers will be especially likely to do so. And not by

accident.

ii. The second reason for accepting the Old

Testament in this way can be put more simply and

is of course far more compulsive. We are committed to it in principle by Our Lord Himsel£ On that famous journey to Emmaus He found fault with

the two disciples for not believing what the prophets

had said. They ought to have known from their

Bibles that the Anointed One, when He came,

would enter his glory through suffering. He then

explained, from " Moses " (i.e. the Pentateuch)

down, all the places in the Old Testament " concerning Himself" (Luke 24, 25-27) . He clearly identified Himself with a figure often mentioned in the

Scriptures ; appropriated to Himself many passages

where a modern scholar might see no such reference.

In the predictions ofHis Own Passion which He had

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R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

previously made to the disciples. He was obviously

doing the same tl1i?g. He accepted-indeed He

claimed to be-the second meaning of Scripture.

We do not know-or anyway I do not knowwhat all these passages were. We can be pretty sure about one of them. The Ethiopian eunuch who

met Philip (Acts 8, 27-38) was reading Isaiah 53· He

did not know whether in that passage the prophet

was talking about himself or about someone else.

Philip, in answering his question, " preached unto

him Jesus ". The answer, in fact, was " Isaiah

is speaking of Jesus ". We need have no doubt

that Philip's authority for this interpretation was

Our Lord. (Our ancestors would have thought that

Isaiah consciously foresaw the sufferings of Christ

as people see the future in the sort of dreams

recorded by Mr. Dunne. Modern scholars would

say, that on the conscious level, h,e was referring

to Israel itself, the whole nation personified. I

do not see that it matters which view we take.)

We can, again, be pretty sure, from the words on

the cross (Mark I S, 34) , that Our Lord identified

Himself with the sufferer in Psalm 22. Or when He

asked (Mark I 2, .35, 36) how Christ could be both

David's son and David's lord, He clearly identified

Christ, and therefore Himself, with the " my

Lord " of Psalm I Io-was i:o. fact hinting at the

mystery of the Incarnation by pointing out a

difficulty which only it could solve. In Matthew

4, 6 the words of Psalm 9 1 II, 12, " He shall give

his angels charge over thee

that thou hurt

.

.

•

not thy foot against a stone," are applied to Him,

I I8

S C R I P T U R E

and we may be sure the application was His own

since only He could be the source of the temptationstory. In Mark 1 2, 10 He implicitly appropriates to Himself the words of Psalm 1 1 8 22 about the

stone which the builders rejected. " Thou shalt

not leave my soul in hell, neither shalt thou

suffer thy Holy One to see corruption " ( 1 6, u)

is treated as a prophecy of His Resurrection in

Acts 2, 27, and was doubtless so taken by Himself,

since we find it so taken in the earliest Christian

tradition-that is, by people likely to be closer

both to the spirit and to the letter of His words

than any scholarship (I do not say, " any sanctity ")

will bring a modern. Yet it is, perhaps, idle to

speak here of spirit and letter. There is almost no

" letter " in the words ofjesus. Taken by a literalist,

He will always prove the most elusive of teachers.

Systems cannot keep up with that darting illumination. No net less wide than a man's whole heart, nor less fine of mesh than love, will hold the sacred

Fish.

I I Q

X I I

Second Meanings i n the Psalms

In a certain

sense Our Lord's interpretation of

the Psalms was common ground between Himself

and His opponents. The question we mentioned a

moment ago, how David can call Christ " my

Lord " (Mark I 2, 35-37) , would lose �ts point unless

it were addressed to those who took it for granted

that the " my Lord " referred to in Psalm I I o was

the Messiah, the regal and anointed deliverer who

would subject the world to Israel. This method was

accepted by all. The " scriptures " all had a

"spiritual " or second sense. Even a gentile " Godfearer "1 like the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8, 27-38) knew that · the sacred books of Israel could not be

understood without a guide, trained in the Judaic

tradition, who could open the hidden meanings.

Probably all instructed Jews in the first century

saw references to the Messiah in most of those

passages where Our Lord saw them ; what was controversial was His identification of the Messianic King with another Old Testament figure and of

both with Himself.

Two figures meet us in the Psalms, that of the

sufferer and that of the conquering and liberating

1 The " god-fearers " (sebomenoi or metuentes). were a recognised

class of Gentiles who worshipped Jahveh without submitting to

circumcision and the other ceremonial obligations of the Law.

a. Psalm 1 1 8 (2, jewish laity ; 3 Jewish priests ; 4 God-fearers ) and

Acts 1 0, 2.

I 20

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

king. I n I 3, 28, 5 5 or I 02, we have the Sufferer ;

in 2 or 72, the King. The Sufferer was, I think, by

this time generally identified with (and may sometimes have originally been intended as) the whole nation, Israel itself-they would have said "himself ". The King was the successor of David, the coming Messiah. Our Lord identified Himself

with both these characters.

In principle, then, the allegorical way of reading

the Psalms can claim the highest possible authority.

But of course this does not mean that all the countless applications of it are fruitful, legitimate, or even rational. What we see when we think we are looking into the depths of Scripture may sometimes be only the reflection of our own silly faces. Many

allegorical interpretations which were once popular

seem to me, as perhaps to most moderns, to be

strained, arbitrary and ridiculous. I think we may

be sure that some of them really are ; we ought to be

much less sure that we know which. What seems

strained-a mere triumph of perverse ingeimity-to

one age, seems plain and obvious to another, so that

our ancestors would often wonder how we could

possibly miss what we wonder how they could have

been silly-clever enough to find. And between

different ages there is no impartial judge on earth,

for no one stands outside the historical process; and

of course no one is so completely enslaved to it as

those who take our own age to be, not one more

period, but a final and permanent platform from

which we can see all other ages objectively.

Interpretations which were already established

1 2 1

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

in the New Testament of course have a special

claim on our attention. We find in our Prayer

Books that Psalm u ol is one of those appointed for

Christmas Day. We may at first be surprised by

this. There is nothing in it about peace and goodwill, nothing remotely suggestive of the stable at

'Bethlehem. It seems to have been originally either

a coronation ode for a new king, promising conquest and empire, or a poem addressed to some king on the eve of a war, promising victory. It is full of

threats. The " rod " of the Icing's power is to go

forth from Jerusalem, foreign kings are to be

wounded, battle fields to be covered with carnage,

skulls cracked. The note is not " Peace and goodwill " but " Beware. He's coming ". Two things attach it to Christ with an authority far beyond that

of the Prayer Book. The first of course (already

mentioned) is that He Himself did so ; He is the

" lord " whom " David " calls " my Lord ". The

second is the reference to Melchizedek (4) . The

identification of this very mysterious person as a

symbol or prophecy of Christ is made in Hebrews 7.

The exact form of the comment there made on

Genesis 14 is of course alien to our minds, but I

think the essentials can all be retained in our own

idiom. We should certainly not argue from the

failure of Genesis to give Melchizedek any genealogy

or even parents that he has neither beginning nor

end (if it comes to that, Job has no genealogy

either) ; but we should be vividly aware that his

unrelated, unaccounted for, appearance sets him

1 See Appendix I, page 148.

1 22

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S IN T H E P S A L M S

strangely apart from the texture of the surrounding

narrative. He comes from nowhere, blesses in the

name of the " most high God, possessor of heaven

and earth ", and utterly disappears. This gives him

the effect of belonging, if not to the Other World,

at any rate to another world ; other than the story of

Abraham in general. He assumes without question

as the writer of Hebrews saw, a superiority over

Abraham which Abraham accepts. He is an

august: a " numinous " figure. What the teller, or

last re-teller, of Genesis would have said if we asked

him why he brought this episode in or where he had

got it from, I do not know. I think, as I have

explained, that a pressure from God lay upon these

tellings and re-tellings. And one effect which the

episode of Melchizedek was to have is quite clear.

It puts in, with unforgettable impressiveness, the

idea of a priesthood, not Pagan but a priesthood to

the one God, far earlier than the Jewish priesthood

which descends from Aaron, independent of the call

to Abraham, somehow superior to Abraham's

vocation. And this older, pre-Judaic, priesthood is

united with royalty ; Melchizedek is a priest-king.

In some communities priest-kings were normal,

but not in Israel. It is thus simply a fact that

Melchizedek resembles (in his peculiar way he is the

only Old Testament character who resembles)

Christ Himself: For He, like Melchizedek claims to

be Priest, though not of the priestly tribe, and also

King. Melchizedek really does point to Him ; and

so of course does the hero of Psalm I 1 0 who is a

king but also has the same sort of priesthood.

1 23

R E F L E C T I O N S O N THE PSA L M S

For a Jewish convert to Christianity this was

extremely important and removed a difficulty. He

might be brought to see how Christ was the successor of David ; it would be impossible to say that He was, in a similar sense, the successor of Aaron.

The idea of His priesthood therefore involved the

recognition of a priesthood independent of and

superior to Aaron's. Melchizedek was there to give

this "Conception the sanction of the Scriptures. For

us gentile Christians it is rather the other way

round. We are more likely to start from the priestly,

sacrificial, and intercessory character of Christ

and under-stress that of king and conqueror. Psalm

1 I o, with three other Christmas Psalms, corrects

this. In 45 we have again the almost threatening

tone : " Gird thee with thy sword upon thy thigh,

0 thou most mighty . . . thy right hand shall

teach thee terrible things

thy arrows are very

.

.

.

sharp '' (4-6) . In 8g we have the promises to David

(who would certainly mean all, or any, of David's

successors, just as "Jacob " can mean all his descendants) . Foes are to fall before him (24) .

" David " will call God " Father ", and God says

" I will make, him my first-born " (27, 28), that is " I

will make him an eldest son", make him my heir,

give him the whole world. In I 32 we have " David "

again ; " As for his enemies, I shall clothe them with

shame, but upon himself shall his crown flourish"

(rg) . All this emphasises an aspect of the Nativity

to which our later sentiment about Christmas

(excellent in itself) does less than justice. For those

who first read these Psalms as poems about th!:

1 24

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

birth o f Christ, that birth primarily meant something very militant ; the hero, the "judge " or champion or giant-killer, who was to fight and beat

death, hell and the devils, had at last arrived, and

the evidence suggests that Our Lord also thought of

Himself in those terms. (Milton's poem on the

Nativity well recaptures this side of Christmas.)

The assignment of Psalm 681 to Whitsunday has

some obvious reasons, even at a first reading.

Verse 8, " The earth shook and the heavens dropped

at the presence of God, even as Sinai also was

moved," was, no doubt, for the original writer a

.. eference to the miracles mentioned in Exodus, and

thus foreshadows that very different descent of God

which came with the tongues of fire. Verse II is a

beautiful instance of the way in which the old texts,

almost inevitably charge themselves with the new

weight of meaning. The Prayer Book version gives

it as " The Lord gave the word, great was the

company of the preachers ". The " word " would be

the order for battle and its " preachers " (in rather a

grim sense) the triumphant Jewish warriors. But

that translation appears to be wrong. The verse

really means that there were many to spread

" word " (i.e. the news) of the victory. This will

suit Pentecost quite as well. But I think the real

New Testament authority for assigning this Psalm

to Whitsunday appears in verse I8 (in the Prayer

Book, " Thou art gone up on high, thou hast led

captivity captive, and received gifts for men ") .

According to the scholars the Hebrew text here

1 See Appendix I, page 1 43·

it E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

means that God, with the armies of Israei as his

agents, had taken huge masses of prisoners and

received " gifts " (booty .or tribute) from men. St.

Paul, however (EphesiaTIS 4, 8) quotes a different

reading : " When He ascended up on high He led

captivity captive and gave gifts to men." This must

be the passage which first associated the Psalm with

the coming of the Holy Ghost, for St. Paul is there

speaking of the gifts of the Spirit (4-7) and stressing

the fact that they come after the Ascension. Mter

ascending, as a result of ascending, Christ gives

these gifts to men, or recejves these gifts (notice how

the Prayer Book version will now do well enough)

from His Father " for men ", for the use of men, in

order to transmit them to men. And this relation

between the Ascension and the coming of the Spirit

is of course in full accordance with Our Lord's own

words, " It is expedient for you that I go away, for

if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto

you " (John 1 6, 7) ; as if the one were somehow

impossible without the other, as if the Ascension,

the withdrawal from the space-time in which our

present senses operate, of the incarnate God, were

the necessary condition of God's presence in another

mode. There is a mystery here that I will not even

attempt to sound.

That Psalm has led us through some complications ; those in which Christ appears as the sufferer are very much easier. And it is here too that the

second meaning is most inevitable. If Christ

" tasted death for all men ", became the archetypal

sufferer, then the expressions of all who ever suf-

1 26

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

fered in the world are, from the very nature of

things, related to His. Here (to speak in ludicrously

human terms) we feel that it needed no Divine

guidance to give the old texts their second meaning

but would rather have needed a special miracle to

keep it out. In Psalm 22, the terrible poem which

Christ quoted in His final torture, it is not " they

pierced my hands and my feet " (17) , striking

though this anticipation must always be, that

really matters most. It is the union of total privation with total adherence to God, to a God who makes no response, simply because of what God is :

" and thou continuest holy " (3) . All the sufferings

of the righteous speak here ; but in 40, 15, all the

sufferings of the guilty too-" my sins have taken

such hold upon me that I am not able to look up."

But this too is for us the voice of Christ, for we have

been taught that He who was without sin became

sin ior our sakes, plumbed the depth of that worst

suffering which comes to evil men who at last know

their own evil. Notice how this, in the original or

literal sense, is hardly consistent with verses 8, 9,

and what counterpoint of truth this apparent contradiction takes on once the speaker is understood to be Christ.

But to say more of these suffering Psalms wou1d be

to labour the obvious. What I, at any rate, took

longer to see was the full richness of that Christmas

Psalm we have already mentioned, Psalm 45,1 which

shows us so many aspects of the Nativity we could

never get from the carols or even (easily) from the

1 See Appendix I, page 1 4 1 .

1 27

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

gospels. This in its original intention was obviously

a laureate ode on a royal wedding. (We are

nowadays surprised to find that such an official bit of

work, made " to order " by a court poet for a special

occasion, should be good poetry. But in ages when

the arts had their full health no one would have

understood our surprise. All the great poets,

painters, and musicians of old could produce great

work " to order ". One who could not would have

seemed as great a humbug as a captain who could

navigate or a farmer who could farm only when

the fit took him.) And simply as a marriage odewhat the Greeks call an Epithalamium-it is magnificent. But it is far more valuable for the light it throws on the Incarnation.

Few things once seemed to me more frigid and

far-fetched than those interpretations, whether of

this Psalm or of the Song of Songs, which identify the

Bridegroom with Christ and the bride with the

Church. Indeed, as we read the frank erotic

poetry of the latter and contrast it with the edifying

headlines in our Bibles, it is easy to be moved to a

smile, even a cynically knowing smile, as if the pious

interpreters were feigning an absurd innocence. I

should still find it very hard to believe that anything

like the " spiritual " sense was remotely intended by

the original writers. But no one now (I fancy)

who accepts that spiritual or second sense is denying, or saying anything against, the very plain sense which the writers did intend. The Psalm remains a

rich, festive Epithalamium, the Song remains fine,

sometimes exquisite, love poetry, and this is not in

1 28

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

the least obliterated by the burden of the new

meaning. (Man is still one of the primates ; a poem

is still black marks on white paper.) And later I

began to see that the new meaning is not arbitrary

and springs from depths I had not suspected. First,

the language of nearly all great mystics, not even in

a common tradition, some of them Pagan, some

Islamic, most Christian, confronts us with evidence

that the image of marriage, of sexual union, is not

only profoundly natural but almost inevitable as a

means of expressing the desired union between God

and man. The very word " union" has already

entailed some such idea. Secondly, the god as

bridegroom, his " holy marriage " with the goddess,

is a recurrent theme and a recurrent ritual in many

forms of Paganism-Paganism not at what we

should call its purest or most enlightened, but perhaps at its most religious, at its most serious and convinced. And if, as I believe, Christ, in transcending and thus abrogating, also fulfils, both Paganism and Judaism> then we may expect that

He fulfils this side of it too. This, as well as all else,

is to be " summed up " in Him. Thirdly, the idea

appears, in a slightly different form, within Judaism.

For the mystics God is the Bridegroom of the individual soul. For the Pagans, the god is the bridegroom of the mother-goddess, the earth, but his union with her also makes fertile the whole tribe

and its livestock, so that in a sense he is their bridegroom too. The Judaic conception is in some ways closer to the Pagan than to that of the mystics, for

in it the Bride of God is the whole nation, Israel.

1 2!1

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

This is worked out in one of the most moving and

graphic chapters of the whole Old Testament

(Ezekiel 16) . Finally, this is transferred in the

Apocalypse from the old Israel to the new, and the

Bride becomes the Church, " the whole blessed

company of faithf�l people ". It is this which has,

like the unworthy bride in Ezekiel, been rescued,

washed, clothed, and married by God-a marriage

like King Cophetua's. Thus the allegory which at

first seemed so arbitrary-the ingenuity of some

prudish commentator who was determined to

force flat edifications upon the most unpromising

texts-turned out, when you seriously tugged at it,

to have roots in the whole history of religion, to be

loaded with poetry, to yield insights. To reject

it because it does not immediately appeal to our

own age is to be provincial, to have the self-complacent blindness of the stay-at-home.

Read in this sense, the Psalm restores Christmas

to its proper complexity. The birth of Christ is the

arrival of the great warrior and the great king.

Also of the Lover, the Bridegroom, whose beauty surpasses that of man. But not only the Bridegroom as the lover, the desired ; the Bridegroom also as he

who makes fruitful, . the father of children still

to be begotten and born. (Certainly the image of a

Child in a manger by no means suggests to us a king,

giant-killer, bridegroom, and father. But it would

not suggest the eternal Word either-if we didn't

know. All alike are aspects of the same central

paradox.) Then the poet turns to the Bride, with

the exhortation, " forget also thine own people and

1 30

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

thy father's house " (I I) . This of course has a

plain, and to us painful, sense while we read the

Psalm as the poet probably intended it. One

thinks of home-sickness, of a girl (probably a mere

child) secretly crying in a strange hareem, of all the

miseries which may underlie any dynastic marriage,

especially an Oriental one. The poet (who of

course knew all about this-he probably had a

daughter of his own) consoles her : " Never mind,

you have lost your parents but you will presently

have children instead, and children who will be

great men." But all this has also its poignant

relevance when the Bride is the Church. A vocation

is a terrible thing. To be called out of nature into

the supernatural life is at first (or perhaps not quite

at first-the wrench of the parting may be felt later)

a costly honour. Even to be called from one natural

level to another is loss as well as gain. Man has

difficulties and sorrows which the other primates

escape. But to be called up higher still costs still

more. " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy

kindred, and from thy father's house ", said God to

Abraham (Genesis I 2, r) . It is a terrible command ;

turn your back on all you know. The consolation

(if it will at that moment console) is very like that

which the Psalmist offers to the bride : " I will make

of thee a great nation." This " turn your back " is

of course terribly repeated, one may say aggravated,

by Our Lord-" he that hateth not father and

mother and his own life." He speaks, as so often in

the proverbial, paradoxical manner ; hatred (in

cold prose) is not enjoined ; only the resolute, the

1 3 1

R E FLECTIONS ON THE PSALMS

apparently ruthless, rejection of natural claims

when, and if, the terrible choice comes to that

point. (Even so, this text is, I take it, profitable

only to those who read it with horror. The man who

finds it easy enough to hate his father, the woman

whose life is a long struggle not to hate her mother,

had probably best keep clear of it.) The consolation

of the Bride, in this allegory, consists, not (where the

mystics would put it) in the embraces of the

Spouse, but in her fruitfulness. If she does not bear

fruit, is not the mother of saints and sanctity, it may

be supposed that the marriage was an illusionfor " a god's embraces never are in vain ".

The choice of Psalm 81 for Ascension Day again

depends on an interpretation found in the New

Testament. In its literal sense this short, exquisite

lyric is simplicity itself-an expression of wonder

at man and man's place in Nature (there is a

chorus in Sophocles not unlike it) and therefore

at God who appointed it. God is wonderful both

as champion or "judge " and as Creator. When

one looks up at the sky, and all the stars .which are

His work, it seems strange that He should be

concerned at all with such things as man. Yet in

fact, though He has made us inferior to the celestial

beings, He has, down here on earth, given us extraordinary honour-made us lords of all the other creatures. But to the writer of Hebrews (2, 6-9)

this suggested something which we, of ourselves,

would never have thought of. The Psalmist said

" Thou has put all things in subjection under his

1 See Appendix I, page 1 3 9·

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

(man's) feet " (6) . The Christian writer observes

that, in the actual state of the universe, this is not

strictly true. Man is often killed, and still more

often defeated, by beasts, poisonous vegetables,

weather, earthquakes, etc. It would seem to

us merely perverse and captious thus to take a

poetic expression as if it were intended for a

scientific universal. We can get nearest to the point

of view if we imagine the commentator arguing

not (as I think he actually does) " Since this is not

true of the present, and since all the scriptures must

be true, the statement must really refer to the

future ", but rather, " This is of course true in the

poetic-and therefore, to a logician, the loos�

sense which the poet intended ; but how if it were

far truer than he knew?" This will lead us, by a

route that is easier for our habits of mind, to what

he thinks the real meaning-or I should say the

" over-meaning ", the new weight laid upon the

poet's words. Christ has ascended into Heaven.

And in due time all things, quite strictly all, will be

subjected to Him. It is He who having been made

(for a while) " lower than the angels ", will become

the conqueror and ruler of all things, including

death and ( death's patron) the devil.

To most of us this will seem a wire-drawn

allegory. But it is the very same which St. Paul

obviously has in mind in I Corinthians I S, 2o-28.

This, with the passage in Hebrews, makes it pretty

certain that the interpretation was established in

the earliest Christian tradition. It may even

descend from Our Lord. There was, after all, no

1 33

R E F L E CTIONS O N THE PSALMS

description of Himself which He delighted in more

than the " Son of Man " ; and of course, just as

" daughter of Babylon" means Babylon, so " Son

of Man " means Man, the Man, the archetypal

Man, in whose suffering, resurrection, and victories

all men (unless they refuse) can share.

And it is this, I believe, that most modern Christians need to be reminded of. It seems to me that I seldom meet any strong or exultant sense of the

continued, never-to-be-abandoned, Humanity of

Christ in glory, in eternity. We stress the Humanity

too exclusively at Christmas, and the Deity too

exclusively after the Resurrection ; almost as if

Christ once became a man and then presently

reverted to being simply God. We think of the

Resurrection and Ascension (rightly) as great acts

of God ; less often as the triumph of Man. The

ancient interpretation of Psalm 8, however arrived

at, is a cheering corrective. Nor, on further consideration, is the analogy of ·humanity's place m the universe (its greatness and littleness, its humble

origins and-even on the natural level-amazing

destiny) to the humiliation and victories of Christ,

really strained and far-fetched. At least it does not

seem so to me. As I have already indicated, there

seems to me to be something more than analogy

between the taking up of animality into man and

the taking up ·of man into God.

But I walk in wonders beyond myself. It is time

to conclude with a brief notice of some simpler

things.

One is the apparent (and often no doubt real)

1 34

S E C O N D M E AN I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

self-righteousneas of the Psalms : " Thou shalt find

no wickedness in me " ( 1 7, 3) , " I have walked

innocently " ( 26, 1), " Preserve thou my soul, for

I am holy " (86, 2) . For many people it will not

much mend matters if we say, as we probably

can with truth, that sometimes the speaker was ffOm

the first intended to be Israel, not the individual ;

and even, within Israel, the faithful remnant.

Yet it makes some difference ; up to a certain point

that remnant was holy and innocent compared

with some of the surrounding Pagan cultures.

It was often an "innocent sufferer " in the sense that

it had not deserved what was inflicted on it, nor

deserved it at the hands of those who inflicted it.

But of course there was to come a Sufferer who was

in fact holy and innocent. Plato's imaginary case

was to become actual. All these assertions were to

become true in His mouth. And if true, it was

necessary they should be made. The lesson that

perfect, unretaliating, forgiving innocence can

lead as the world is, not to love but to the screaming curses of the mob and to death, is essential.

Our Lord therefore becomes the speaker in these

passages when a Christian reads them ; by rightit would be an obscuring of the real issue if He did not. For He denied all sin of Himself. (That,

indeed, is no small argument of His Deity. For He

has not often made even on the enemies of Christianity the impression of arrogance ; many of them do not seem as shocked as we should expect at His

claim to be " meek and lowly of heart ". Yet He

said such things as, on any hypothesis but one,

1 35

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E P S A L M S

would be the arrogance of a paranoiac. It IS as if,

even where the hypothesis is rejected, some of the

reality which implies its truth " got across ".)

Of the cursing Psalms I suppose most of us make

our own moral allegorie�well aware that these

are personal and on a quite different level from the

high matters I have been trying to handle. We

know the proper object of utter hostility-wickedness, especially our own. Thus in 36, " My heart showeth me the wickedness of the ungodly," each

can reflect that his own heart is the specimen of that

wickedness best known to him. ¥ter that, the

upward plunge at verse 5 into the mercy high as

heaven and the righteousness solid as the mountains

takes on even more force and beauty. From this

point of view I can use even the horrible passage

in 1 37 about dashing the Babylonian babies against

the stones. I know things in the inner world which

are like babies ; the infantile beginnings of small

indulgences, small resentments, which may one

day become dipsomania or settled hatred, but

which woo us and wheedle us with special pleadings and seem so tiny, so helpless that in resisting them we feel we are being cruel to animals. They

begin whimpering to us " I don't ask much, but ",

or " I had at least hoped ", or " you owe yourself

some consideration ". Against all such pretty infants

(the dears have such winning ways) the advice of

the Psalm is the best. Knock the little bastards'

brains out. And " blessed " he who can, for it's

easier said than done.

Sometimes with no prompting from tradition a

1 36

S E C O N D M E A N I N G S I N T H E P S A L M S

second meaning will impose itself upon a reader

irresistibly. When the poet of Psalm 84 said (10)

" For one day in thy courts is better than a thousand ", he doubtless meant that one day there was better than a thousand elsewhere. I find it impossible to exclude while I read this the thought which, so far as I know, the Old Testament never quite

reaches. It is there in the New, beautifully introduced not by laying a new weight on old words but more simply by adding to them. In Psalm go (4)

it had been said that a thousand years were to

God like a single yesterday ; in 2 Peter 3, 8--not the

first place in the world where one would have

looked for so metaphysical a theology-we read

not only that a thousand years are as one day but

also that " one day is as a thousand years ". The

Psalmist only meant, I think, that God was everlasting, that His life was infinite in time. But the epistle takes us out of the time-series altogether.

As nothing outlasts God, so nothing slips away from

Him into a past. The later conception (later in

Christian thought-Plato had reached it) of the

timeless as an eternal present has been achieved. Ever

afterwards, for some of us, the " one day " in God's

courts which is better than a thousand, must carry

a double meaning. The Eternal may meet us in

what is, by our present measurements, a day, or

(more likely) a minute or a second ; but we have

touched what is not in any way commensurable

with lengths of time, whether long or short. Hence

our hope finally to emerge, if not altogether from

time (that might not suit our humanity) at any

1 37

RE F LECT I O N S O N T H E P SALMS

rate from the tyranny, the unilinear poverty, of

time, to ride it not to be ridden by it, and so to

,.::ure that always aching wound (" the wound man

was born for") which mere succession and mutability inflict on us, almost equally when we are happy and when we are unhappy. For we are so little

reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it.

" How he's grown ! " we exciaim, " How time

flies ! " as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the

wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed ;

unless of course the fish were destined to become,

one day, a land animal.

A P PEND I X 1

Selected Psalms

PSALM

8 Domine, Dominus noster

0 Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name

in all the world : thou that hast set thy glory above

the heavens !

2. Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings

hast thou ordained strength, because of thine

enemies : that thou mightest still the enemy and the

avenger.

3· For I will consider thy heavens, even the

works of thy fingers : the moon and the stars,

which thou hast ordained.

4· What is man, that thou art mindful of him :

and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5· Thou madest him lower than the angels :

to crown him with glory and worship.

6. Thou makest him to have dominion of the

works of thy hands : and thou has put all things

in subjection under his feet ;

7· All sheep and oxen : yea, and the beasts of the

field.

8. The fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea :

and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the

seas.

9· 0 Lord our Governor : how excellent is thy

Name in all the world !

19 Coeli ena"ant

The heavens declare the glory of God : and the

firmament sheweth his handywork

2. One day telleth another : and one night

certifieth another.

1 39

A P P E N D I X I

PSALM 3· There is neither speech nor language: but

their voices are heard among them.

4· Their sound is gone out into all lands : and

their words into the ends of the world.

5· In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun :

which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his

chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course.

6. It goeth forth from the uttermost part of the

heaven, and runneth about unto the end of it

again : and there is nothing hid from the heat

thereof.

7· The law of the Lord is an undefiled law, converting the soul : the testimony of the Lord is sure, and giveth wisdom unto the simple.

8. The statutes of the Lord are right, and

rejoice the heart : the commandment of the Lord

is pure, and giveth light unto the eyes.

9· The fear of the Lord is clean, and endureth

for ever : the judgements of the Lord are true, and

righteous altogether.

ro. More to be desired are they than gold, yea,

than much fine gold : sweeter also than honey, and

the honeycomb.

rr. Moreover, by them is thy serv;; r).t taught :

_ _

and in keeping of them there is great reward.

r2. Who can tell how oft he offendeth : 0 cleanse

thou me from my secret faults.

Ij. Keep thy servant also from presumptuous

sins, lest they get the dominion over me : so shall

I be undefiled, and innocent from the great offence.

r4. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart : be alway acceptable in thy sight.

rs. 0 Lord : my strength, and my redeemer.

36 Dixit injustus

My heart sheweth me the wickedness of the ungodly : that there is no fear of God before his eyes.

S E L E C T E D P SA L MS

PSALM 2. For he flattereth himself in his own sight:

until his abominable sin be found out.

3· The words of his mouth are unrighteous, and

full of deceit : he hath left off to behave himself

wisely, and to do good.

4· He imagineth mischief upon his bed, and

hath set himself in no good way : neither doth he

abhor any thing that is evil.

5· Thy mercy, 0 Lord, t·eacheth unto the

heavens : and thy faithfulness unto the clouds.

6. Thy righteousness standeth like the strong

mountains : thy judgements are like the great deep.

7· Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast ;

How excellent is thy mercy, 0 God : and the

children of men shall put their trust under the

shadow of thy wings.

8. They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness

of thy house : and thou shalt give them drink of

thy pleasures, as out of the river.

9· For with thee is the well of life : and in thy

light shall we see light.

ro. 0 continue forth thy loving-kindness unto

them that know thee : and thy righteousness unto

them that are true of heart.

I I . 0 let not the foot of pride come against me :

and let not the hand of the ungodly cast me down.

12. There are they fallen, all that work wickedness : they are cast down, and shall not be able to stand.

45 Eructavit cor meum

My heart is inditing of a good matter : I speak of

the things which I have made unto the King.

2. My tongue is the pen : of a ready writer.

3· Thou art fairer than the children of men :

full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blessed

thee for ever.

A P P E N D I X I

4· Gird thee with thy sword upon thy thigh, 0

thou most Mighty : according to thy worship and

renown.

5· Good luck have thou with thine honour : ride

on, because of the word of truth, of meekness, and

righteousness ; and thy right hand shall teach thee

terrible things.

6. The arrows are very sharp, and the people

shall be subdued unto thee : even in the midst

among the King's enemies.

7· Thy seat, 0 God, endureth for ever : the

sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.

8. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated

iniquity : wherefore God, even thy God, hath

anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy

fellows.

9· All the garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and

cassia : out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have

made thee glad.

ro. Kings' daughters were among thy honourable women : upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with

divers colours.

rr. Hearken, 0 daughter, and consider, incline

thine ear : forget also thine own people, and

thy father's house.

r2. So shall the King have pleasure in thy

beauty : for he is thy Lord God, and worship thou

him.

Ij. And the daughter ofTyre shall be there with

a gift : like as the rich also among the people shall

make their supplication before thee.

r4. The King's daughter is all glorious within :

her clothing is of wrought gold.

r5. She shall be brought unto the King in

raiment of needlework : the virgins that be her

fellows shall bear her company, and shall be

brought unto thee.

S E L E C T E D P S A L M S

PSALM

r6. With joy and gladness shall they be brought :

and shall enter into the King's palace.

17· Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have

children : whom thou mayest make princes in all

lands.

r8. I will remember thy Name from one generation to another : therefore shall the people give thanks unto thee, world without end.

68 Exurgat Deus

Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered :

let them also that hate him flee before him.

2. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou

drive them away : and like as wax melteth at the

fire, so let the ungodly perish at the presence of

God.

3· But let the righteous be glad and rejoice

before God : let them also be merry and joyful.

4· 0 sing unto God, and sing praises unto his

Name : magnify him that rideth upon the heavens,

as it were upon an horse ; praise him in his Name

JAH, and rejoice before him.

5· He is a Father of the fatherless, and defendeth

the cause of the widows : even God in his Holy

habitation.

6. He is the God that maketh men to be of one

mind in an house, and bringeth the prisoners out

of captivity : but letteth the runagates continue in

scarceness.

7· 0 God, when thou wentest forth before the

people : when thou wen test through the wilderness,

8. The earth shook, and the heavens dropped at

the presence of God : even as Sinai also was moved

at the presence of God, who is the God of Israel.

9· Thou, 0 God, sentest a gracious rain upon

thine inheritance : and refreshedst it when it was

weary.

1 43

A P P E N D I X I

IO. Thy congregation shall dwell therein : for

thou, 0 God, hast of thy goodness prepared for

the poor.

I I. The Lord gave the word : great was the

company of the preachers.

I2. Kings with their armies did flee, and were

discomfited : and they of the houSehold divided

the spoil.

Ij. Though ye have lien among the pots, yet

shall ye be as the wings of a dove : that is covered

with silver wings, and her feathers like gold.

I4. When the Almighty scattered kings for their

sake : then were they as white as snow in Salmon.

IS· As the hill ofBasan, so is God's hill : even an

high hill, as the hill of Basan.

I6. Why hop ye so, ye high hills ? this is God's

hill, in the which it pleaseth him to dwell : yea, the

Lord will abide in it for ever.

I7. The chariots of God are twenty thousand,

even thousands of angels : and the Lord is among

them, as in the holy place of Sinai.

IB. Thou art gone up on high, thou hast led

captivity captive, and received gifts for men : yea,

even for thine enemies, that the Lord God might

dwell among them.

I9. Praised be the Lord daily : even the God

who helpeth us, and poureth his benefits upon us.

20. He is our God, even the God of whom

cometh salvation : God is the Lord, by whom we

escape death.

21. God shall wound the head of his enemies :

and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in

wickedness.

22. The Lord hath said, I will bring my people

again, as I did from Basan : mine own will I bring

again, as I did sometime from the deep of the sea.

23. That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of

thine enemies : and that the tongue of thy dogs

may be red through the same.

1 44

S E L E C T E D P S A L M S

PSALM

24. It is well seen, 0 God, how thou goest : how

thou, my God and King, goest in the sanctuary.

25. The singers go before, the minstrels follow

after : in the midst are the damsels playing with

the timbrels.

!16. Give thanks, 0 Israel, unto God the Lord

in the congregations : from the ground of the heart.

27. There is little Benjamin, their ruler, and the

princes of Judah their counsel : the princes of

Zabulon, and the princes of Nephthali.

28. Thy God hath sent forth strength for thee :

stablish the thing, 0 God, that thou hast wrought

in us.

!19· For thy temple's sake at Jerusalem : so shall

kings bring presents unto thee.

30· When the company of the spear-men, and

multitude of the mighty are scattered abroad

among the beasts of the people, so that they

humbly bring pieces of silver : and when he hath

scattered the people that delight in war ;

3r. Then shall the princes come out of Egypt :

the Morians' land shall soon stretch out her hands

unto God.

32. Sing unto God, 0 ye kingdoms of the earth :

0 sing praises unto the Lord.

33· Who sitteth in the heavens over all from the

beginning : lo, he doth send out his voice, yea, and

that a mighty voice.

34· Ascribe ye the power to God over Israel :

his worship and strength is in the clouds.

35· 0 God, wonderful art thou in thy holy

places : even the God of Israel ; he will give strength

and power unto his people ; blessed be God.

104 Benedic, anima mea

Praise the Lord, 0 my soul : 0 Lord my God,

thou art become exceeding glorious ; thou art

clothed with majesty and honour.

145

A P P E N D I X I

2. Thou deckest thyself with light as it were with

a garment : and spreadest out the heavens like a

curtain.

3· Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the

waters : and maketh the clouds his chariot, anci

walketh upon the wings of the wind.

4· He maketh his angels spirits : and his ministers a flaming fire.

5· He laid the foundations of the earth : that it

never should move at any time.

6. Thou coveredst it with the deep like as with a

garment : the waters stand in the hills.

7· At thy rebuke they flee : at the voice of thy

thunder they are afraid.

8. They go up as high as the hills, and down to

the valleys beneath : even unto the place which

thou hast appointed for them.

9· Thou hast set them their bounds which they

shall not pass : neither tum again to cover the

earth.

10. He sendeth the springs into the rivers :

which run among the hills.

1 1 . All beasts of the field drink thereof: and the

wild asses quench their thirst.

12. Beside them shall the fowls of the air have

their habitation : and sing among the branches.

13. He watereth the hills from above : the earth

is filled with the fruit of thy works.

14. He bringeth forth grass for the cattle : and

green herb for the service of men.

15. That he may bring food out of the earth, and

wine that maketh glad the heart of man : and oil

to make him a cheerful COWltenance, and bread to

strengthen man's heart.

16. The trees of the Lord also are full of sap :

even the cedars of Libanus which he hath planted.

17. \\'herein the birds make their nests ; and the

rir-trees are a dwelling for the stork.

146

S E L E C T E D P S A L M S

18. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats �

and so are the stony rocks for the conies.

19. He appointed the moon for certain seasons :

and the sun knoweth his going down.

ro. Thou makest darkness that it may be night :

wherein all the beasts of the forest do move.

!/1. The lions roaring after their prey : do seek

their meat from God.

!JR. The sun ariseth, and they get them away

together : and lay them down in their dens.

!lj. Man goeth forth to his work, and to his

labour ; until the evening.

R4. 0 Lord, how manifold are thy works : in

wisdom hast thou made them all ; the earth is full

of thy ricl,es.

!/5· So is the great and wide sea also : wherein

are things creeping innumerable, both small and

great beasts.

26. There go the ships, and there is that Leviathan : whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.

27. These wait all upon thee : that thou maye.s,

give them their meat in due season.

28. When thou givest it them they gather it :

and when thou openest thy hand they are filled

with good.

29· When thou hidest thy face they are troubled :

when thou takest away their breath they die, and

are turned again to their dust.

30· When thou lettest thy breath go forth they

shall be made : and thou shalt renew the face of the

earth.

31. The glorious majesty of the Lord shall

endure for ever : the Lord shall rejoice in his

works.

32. The eanh shall tremble at the look of him :

if he do but touch the hills, they shall smoke.

33· I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live � I

will praise my God while I have my being.

147

A P P E N D I X I

PSALM 34· And so shall my words please him: my joy

shall be in the Lord.

35· As for sinners, they shall be consumed out of

the earth, and the ungodly shall come to an end :

praise thou the Lord, 0 my soul. praise the Lord.

I 10 Dixit Dominus

The Lord said unto my Lord : Sit thou on my

right hand, until I make thine enem;PS thy footstool.

2. The Lord shall send the rod of thy power out

of Sion . be thou ruler, even in the midst among

thine enemies.

3· In the day of thy power shall the people offer

thee free-will offerings with an holy worship : the

dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.

4· The Lord sware, and will not repent : Thou

art a Priest for ever after the order ofMelchisedech.

5· The Lord upon thy right hand : shall wound

even kings in the day of his wrath.

6. He shall judge among the heathen ; he shall

fill the places with the dead bodies : and smite in

sunder the heads over divers countries.

7· He shall drink of the brook in the way ;

therefore shall he lift up his head.

APPENDIX II Psalms discussed or mentioned

PSALM

pages

I. Blessed is the man (Baetus vir)

5�

2. Why do the heathen (Q,uare fremuerunt)

3, 1 2 1

5· Ponder my words ( Verba mea auribus)

75

6. 0 Lord, rebuke me not (Domine ne in furore)

38

7· 0 Lord my God (Domine Deus Meus)

1 7, 18

8. 0 Lord our governor (Domine, Dominus noster)

132-4

•

g. I will give thanks ( Confitebor tibi) •

I I , 5 I

I O. Why standest thou so far off (Ut quid Domine ?)

I S, 75

1 1 . In the Lord put I my trust (In Domino confido)

6 I

I 2. Help me, Lord (Salvum mefac)

75

I3· How long wilt thou forget me (Usque quo, Domine?)

I2 I

I 6. Preserve me, 0 God (Conserl:le me, Domine)

I I9

I 7. Hear the right, 0 Lord (Exaudi, Domine)

34, I 34

I 8. I will love thee (Diligam te, Domine)

2, 58, 8 I , 82

1 9. The heavens declare (Coeli enarrant)

54, 63-4, 8 I

2 I . The King shall rejoice (Domine in virtute tua)

66

22. My God, My God; look upon me (Deus, Deus me) 1 I8, 127

23. The Lord is my shepherd (Dominus regit me)

2 I

26. Be thou my Judge (Judica me, Domine)

66, I 35

27. The Lord is my light (Dominus illuminatio)

48, 50

•

28. Unto thee will I cry (Ad te, Domine)

I 2 I

29. Bring unto the Lord (Affirte Domino)

8 I

30. I will magnify thee (Exaltabo te, Domine)

38, 9I

•

3 1 . In thee, 0 Lord (In te, Domine, speravi)

66, 75

33· Rejoice in the Lord (Exultate, justi)

83

35· Plead thou my cause (Judica, Domine)

IO, I 7

•

36. My heart sheweth me (Dixit injustus)

62, 75, 8 I , 1 36

37· Fret not thyself (Noli aemulari)

3

149

A P P E N D I X I I

PSALM

pages

39· I said, I will take heed (Dixi, custodiam)

38

•

40. I waited patiently (Expectans expectavi}

127

41 . Blessed is he that considereth (Beatus qui intelligit)

75

42. Like as the hart (Qpemadmodum}

50

43· Give sentence with me, 0 God (Hudica me, Deus)

5 1

45· My heart is inditing (Eructavit cor meum)

1 24, 127-32

•

47· 0 clap your hands (Omnes gentes, plaudite)

5 1

49· 0 hear ye this (Audite haec, omnes}

35, 38

•

50. The Lord, even the most mighty God (Deus

deorum)

1 6, so, 5 1 , 66, 9 1 , 93, 98

•

52. Why boastest thou thyself (Q;tid gloriaris?)

75

54· Save me, 0 God (Deus in nomine) •

91

55· Hear my prayer, 0 God (Exaudi, Deus}

75, 1 2 1

•

57· Be merciful unto me (Miserere mei, Deus)

5 1

•

58. Are your minds set (Si vere utique)

3 I

•

63. 0 God, thou art my God (Deus, Deus meus)

5 1

65. Thou, 0 God, art praised ( Te decet hymnus}

51, 77, 83

67. God be merciful unto us (Deus misereatur)

9

68. Let God arise (Exurgat Deus)

1 I , 47, 1 25-6

69. Save me, 0 God (Salvum me Jac) •

2 I

72. Give the King thy judgements (Deus judicium)

I I, 1 2 1

76. In Jewry is God known (Notus in Judaea)

1 2

81. Sing we merrily (Exultate Deo)

5 1

82. God standeth in the congregation (Deus stetit)

1 2

84. How amiable (Q.uam dilecta/)

5 1 , 136-8

86. Bow down thine ear (Inclina, Domine)

135

88. 0 Lord God of my salvation (Domine Deus)

38, 91

•

89. My song shall be alway (Misericordias Domini)

g8, 1 24

go. Lord, thou hast been our refuge (Domine, refugium)

1 37

9 1 . Whoso dwelleth (Qjli habitat)

1 18

g6. 0 sing unto the Lord (Cantate Domino)

9

97· The Lord is King (Dominus regnavit)

52

102. Hear my prayer, 0 Lord (Domw exaudi)

75, 1 2 1

•

1 04. Praise the Lord, 0 my soul (Benedic, anima mea)

77, 81, 82, 83, 84, s5

P S A L M S D I S C U S S E D O R M E N T I O N E D

PSALM

pages

1 06. 0 give thanks (Confitemini Domino)

37

1 07. 0 give thanks (Confitemini Domino)

4

1 09. Hold not thy tongue (Deus laudem)

'20

I 1 0. The Lord said unto my Lord (Dixit Dominus)

I IB, 120 122-4

1 I I . I will give thanks (Confitebor tibi}

6o

.

u 6. I am well pleased (Dilexi, quoniam)

39

1 1 8. 0 give thanks (Confitemini Domino)

ug

1 1 9. Blessed are those (Beati immaculati)

4, 58-61, 91

132. Lord, remember David (Memento Domine)

1 24

1 36. 0 give thanks (Confitemini)

83

•

1 3 7· By the waters of Babylon (Superjlumina)

20, 136

I 39· 0 Lord, thou hast searched me out (Domine

probasti)

2 1 , 66, 8g

•

•

•

•

•

1 4 1 . Lord, I call upon thee (Domine, clamavi)

66

•

I43· Hear my prayer (Domine, exaudi)

16, 2 1

•

•

146. Praise the Lord, 0 my soul (Lauda, anima mea)

38

147. 0 praise the Lord (Laudate Dominum)

85

148. 0 praise the Lord (Laudate Dominum)

83

1 50. 0 praise God (Laudate Dominum)

52

Document Outline

Cover

Title page

Dedication

Contents

I Introductory

II "Judgement" in the Psalms

III The Cursings

IV Death in the Psalms

V "The Fair Beauty of the Lord"

VI "Sweeter than Honey"

VII Connivance

VIII Nature

IX A Word About Praising

X Second Meanings

XI Scripture

XII Second Meanings in the Psalms

Appendix I Selected Psalms

Appendix II Psalms discussed or mentioned