ART. IV.-The Imprecatory Psalms.

THAT are called the Imprecatory Psalms, have been charged with expressing feelings of vindictiveness, altogether at variance with the spirit of the gospel. This charge of course, involves the character of the psalmists, and has been used to disparage the real worth of their religious affections and attainments and consequently affects painfully the feelings of those who are bound to the psalmists by those ties of brotherhood which connect with one another believers of all ages. Fortunately, however, so far as the psalmists are known to us, their character will not bear the stain. David, who alone is really put on his trial by this charge, was a man capable certainly, as all men are, of occasional acts of cruelty on sudden and strong temptation; but incapable of cherishing deliberately cruel designs, and much more incapable of deliberately publishing relentless passions. If there be any truth in psychology, if there be any laws regulating the development and consistency of character, we argue, not from the fact of his being a good man, but from the whole build of his moral constitution, that any psalm written by David must be misinterpreted, if it seems to breathe mere cruelty and vindictiveness. If nothing more was involved, however, than the character of David, the discussion would have comparatively little importance. We might have to adopt a new reading of his character, allowing it greater compass, and regarding it as a more striking instance than we had previously supposed, of the inconsistency by which unfortunately even good men are characterised.

But the charge against the Imprecatory Psalms has been pressed for the purpose of disparaging the Scriptures as a whole, and overthrowing their claim to anything worthy of being called inspiration. If these psalms do really breathe such cruelty and vindictiveness; if they are really at variance with the spirit of the gospel, then the verbal, and even the plenary inspiration of Scripture can no longer be maintained. Nay, more; not only must we, in accordance with the clamours of so many writers of the present day, withdraw our confidence from all such scriptural statements as refer to matters of science and history, but we must abandon Scripture as an authority, and even as a trustworthy guide in its own special region of moral and spiritual truth. This being evident, the case against these psalms has been urged to an extremity. Many would, apparently, have us regard them as singular in all literature for the rigour of pitiless wrath; while it must be allowed that too many of the pleas advanced in their defence have been such as still more to disturb those friends of revealed truth who were

already perplexed by the subject, and to afford to the adversary still more plausible grounds to impugn the morality of the psalms and their defenders.

There are two distinct platforms on which the subject may be discussed the lower or more general, and the higher or more particular. On the first of these, if the difficulties of the subject cannot be entirely removed, the virus of the charge at least is easily neutralised.

First, It will not be disputed that there are circumstances which not only warrant, but so absolutely and manifestly call for the feeling and expression of indignation, that, in failing then to exhibit such feelings, a man so far comes short of being a good man. When we see men devoted to evil courses, we may well wish and pray that they may be brought to higher views and sounder principles. But perverse, obstinate persistence in spite of experience and clear knowledge, in practices grossly evil, justly excites something beside, something different from, the mere desire for the amelioration of the evildoers. Sin involves misery, and that misery excites a good man's compassion; but sin is something more than misery, and the perception of that "something more" has its legitimate effect upon our minds. We pity a man even when his destitution arises from his own folly. But when he takes ignoble advantage of our pity, and underlying his apparent simplicity we see a cruel selfishness, a base deliberate unrighteousness, our pity gives place to hot indignation. Nor is this indignation to be blamed. No doubt it becomes us to cherish benevolent feelings towards our fellow-men. But while benevolence is a high and beautiful principle, it is not the highest, much less the only principle that should regulate our conduct. And besides, though we believe that all righteous action ultimately terminates in a beneficent result, yet, while the sum of the entire process is beneficent, it is possible that every single step in the process may arise from a motive, not of course inconsistent with, but quite distinct from, benevolence. And further, nowhere is he thought the best man who is least disposed to feel and express indignation at the sight of meanness and cruelty in man to man. And when the case of cruelty or meanness is flagrant, it is a mere necessity of an upright and generous nature to demand that punishment be inflicted on the evil-doer. Now this being so, it needs but to believe as firmly in the existence of God as in the existence of man; to love God as sincerely as we love man; and to realise as truly the rights of God as the rights of man; to justify the feeling and the expression of indignation against wilful and persevering wickedness. We do not regard this consideration as removing all difficulty from the Imprecatory Psalms. But it does avail so far as to

convince us that whatever other objections may be brought against them, the feelings which they express of indignation against determined sinners against God are neither misplaced nor unjustifiable. It carries us further, and warrants this stronger position, that the man who has at heart the glory of God, and who entertains a genuine reverence for truth and holiness, would not desire that those who trample truth and holiness under foot should go unpunished. No man indeed has a right to inflict or to measure the punishment due to a fellowman for his sins against God. But neither must compassion for our fellow-man absorb or obliterate all sense of justice, all zeal and reverence for truth and holiness, and for God himself. We may add, further, that patriotism has its own position and rightful claim. When a nation, hoping against hope, is struggling for its existence against mighty odds, the grim watchword that denounces death as the wages of treachery is allowed by all to be as just as it is stern. Nor could we justly attach blame to the poet whose vehement verse denounced wrath against the traitor, and held him up to the bitter execration of men. Now this is a light in which we may regard the Imprecatory Psalms. For it must be remembered that, owing to the peculiar constitution under which the Hebrews lived, ungodliness was with them directly unpatriotic. The tenure by which the people held the land was obedience to God, and it was emphatically declared-and history proved the declaration true that disobedience would be followed by national disaster and ruin. Now it is evident that the imprecations in these psalms were directed against men who were openly opposing all true religion and godliness. And when the Hebrew believer and patriot remembered the deplorable condition of bondage and prostration into which the nation had been brought in former times, by the prevalence among the people of infidel principles and idolatrous practices, why was he bound to speak softly? Why is he to be blamed for wishing that punishment should be inflicted by him to whom alone the appeal was made, upon those who trifled with the nation's safety, and perversely indulged their lawless desires and unholy inclinations, in defiance of all the lessons of history and all regard for righteousness and truth?

But we cannot further enlarge upon this less important part of the subject. If these psalms are to make good their claim to form a part of the inspired word of God, we must take higher ground and make a more complete defence. What we have said, however, may suffice to shew that there is no reason to shudder at these psalms as breathing any spirit of inhuman cruelty. Apart from the form of expression-which is certainly peculiar, as is every ancient thing-the general spirit of

Unsound Explanations.

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indignation against determined persisters in unrighteousness, and against the enemies of the nation's welfare, is a spirit which our own consciences approve; and there are few, if any, of the Imprecatory Psalms in which it is not manifest that this is the preponderating spirit.

Dismissing, then, as groundless, the charge that these psalms, by manifesting an inhuman spirit, violate the principles of ordinary morality, we ascend to the higher platform and apply a higher standard. Admitting that it is lawful to express, on occasion, indignation against persistent unrighteousness, and that this is exemplified in the New Testament, as in what John says of Diotrephes, what Paul says of Alexander and the High Priest, and what Christ says of the Pharisees, it is objected that in the New Testament this is exceptional, whereas in these psalms it is the rule; that the New Testament habitually looks to the renewal and forgiveness of the sinnerthese psalms exclusively to his punishment, and that to extremity; that, in short, the characteristic of the New Testament is intercession, that of the psalms imprecation. Thus, it is agreed, the spirit of these psalms is evidently alien and opposite to the spirit of the New Testament.

This difficulty was early recognised, and to obviate it various explanations were offered. Of these it may be said that they were not only unsatisfactory, but were so strained and violent, as to do rather more harm than the difficulty which they proposed to remove. They exhibited all the well-meaning untruthfulness of special pleading which, in the region of religious inquiry, is far more demoralising than the frank confession of ignorance and perplexity. We purpose to mention and briefly discuss the chief of these explanations before stating that one which satisfies us as fairly and fully meeting the case.

First, there was an attempt to shew that it was entirely owing to mistranslation that these psalms appeared to contain imprecations; that in the original the language was prophetic rather than imprecatory. This attempt, however, had to be abandoned, the instances being too numerous in which the verbs refused to bear any other than the imperative force. The explanation was then modified into this form: that these psalms, though uttered in the form of a wish or prayer, are to be considered as simply predictions of what would afterwards come to pass, i.e. that they were predictions in the form of imprecations. It is strange that such an explanation should ever have been propounded; for it is evident that, to find a prediction where the words signify nothing but a wish, is to violate all the laws of fair exegesis and honest interpretation. If we may admit that the inspired writer does say one thing, but, for the sake of orthodoxy, must be regarded as having said some

thing quite different, there is an end altogether of the Bible as a rule of faith, and any text may support any opinion. In short, this "explanation" is a singularly rank specimen of what is usually styled "explaining away." But further; if this explanation were received, it would be more disastrous to the cause which it is brought to serve than the very disaster it professes to remove. It implies, in the most emphatic way possible, that the wish, if really entertained, would be a wicked one; for the very and only ground on which it can be proposed to convert the wish into a prediction is that the wish would be too wicked for a good man to entertain. And yet, what but the very existence of that malign desire in the writer's heart, and his rejoicing in it, could lead him to express the prediction in the form of a wish? The explanation, therefore, is worse than the difficulty.

The next theory we notice is that which regards the Imprecatory Psalms as uttered by the psalmist when representing the Messiah; uttered, as the adherents of this theory prefer to express themselves, by the psalmist in the person of Christ, denouncing calamities against those who persecute himself, and oppose his work. Now of course we admit that the psalmists do sometimes speak prophetically in the person of Christ. The words they utter sometimes are in their full sense applicable to Christ, and to Christ alone. We admit, also, that whatever may be said of those who opposed David or Asaph, none of the calamities imprecated are more than deserved by those who persecuted the Lord, and resisted his redeeming work. But surely it will be admitted, on the other hand, that the words spoken for any one ought to be in character with him for whom they are spoken; that the sentiments which, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, are uttered in the person of Christ, ought to breathe the spirit of Christ. Prophecy, of course, is nothing if it be not truth. And surely it will be admitted that the prophetic Christ of the Old Testament should be one in spirit with the actual Christ of the New; the prophetic picture should correspond in its leading features with the gospel original. But could any two things be more dissimilar than the gospel Jesus is from that supposed prophetic picture? "Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate. Add iniquity to their iniquity. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living." Can that possibly be the picture of which the original is, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"? In truth, those who advocate this theory can hardly have reflected for a moment on the nature of their argument. The precepts and practice of Jesus form the standard and test of all true spirituality and genuine charity; the test also by