Arthur Whitham - The Christian Use of the Psalter

This little book, based on three Lectures delivered to the S. Paul's Lecture Society in January, 1908, is not intended so much for the scholar as for the plain man who goes to Church and loves the Prayer Book, but finds the Psalms sometimes puzzling. They are certainly the most difficult, though the most characteristic, part of the daily offices of the Church. What has been attempted in these Lectures is not to explain them in detail, but to suggest the broad lines of interpretation which seem always to have been in the mind of the Church in her use of the Psalter. A few additional helps have been suggested in the Notes.

CULHAM, 1908.

The Christian use of the Psalter is as old as Christianity itself. The new-born Catholic Church, returning from her earliest conflict with the kingdoms of this world, found the most natural expression of her faith and her need in the words of the 2nd Psalm:

Before this, on the very birthday of the Church, the chief of the Apostles had appealed to the witness of "David," for the Resurrection and Triumph of the Holy One (Pss. xvi., cx. in Acts ii. 25-8, 34, 35). And even earlier, during the ten days of waiting, the great Psalms of righteous wrath (thought so impossible by many to-day) had supplied the prophecy of the fall of Judas:

and the justification of the election of Matthias:

So harmoniously did the praise-book of the Jewish Church pass into the service of Christ; so clearly did the first believers recognise that the Spirit of Christ was the same Who had spoken by "David." This immediate appropriation of the Psalter as a book of Christian witness is remarkable evidence to the felt unity and continuity of the two Covenants. No book of the Old Testament, with the exception of Isaiah, is so frequently quoted in the New as the book of Psalms.

But still more remarkable is the influence of the Psalter on Christian worship . The Church exists in the world not only as the teaching, but also as the worshipping community. As the ages pass she ceases not to bear the witness of her praise and thanksgiving to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. From the beginning she showed a tendency to do this in ordered and liturgical forms. The Apostolic Church continued steadfast in "the prayers" (Acts ii. 42, R.V.). The expression implies not merely a daily gathering for worship, but the offering of that worship in a fixed and orderly manner, suggested, no doubt, by the existing Jewish services. Whatever may have been the actual form of "the prayers" in the first age of the Church, or whatever stages they may have passed through, there can be no doubt that they are the germ of all the rich later developments of the liturgy of the Church, such as are represented in the Middle Ages by the Missal and the Breviary, and to-day by our own Book of Common Prayer.

The regular services of the Church fall naturally into two classes. The Eucharist, the service of the Altar, took the place of the sacrificial worship of the Temple. The Divine Office, the service of the Choir, may have been suggested by the services of the Synagogue. But if so, there is one most significant difference. The Christian Church made a much fuller public use of the Psalms than the Synagogue ever seems to have done. 1 1 Note A, p. 101. The Psalms in the Jewish Church seem to have been adjuncts or embellishments of the service, rather than its central feature. The Divine Office of the Christian Church practically is the Psalter. The readings from other parts of Scripture, so prominent in the Synagogue service, fall now into a secondary place. The recitation of the Psalms, which appears from very early times as the characteristic Christian devotion, became the very centre and core of the sevenfold daily Choir Office of the mediæval Church. The whole Psalter in theory was said through once a week, mainly at Mattins (the midnight office), while selected Psalms formed the chief part of the subsequent services of the day. 2 2 Note B, p. 102. The English Reformers, however hastily and trenchantly they may have cut down and simplified these services of the Breviary, showed the true Catholic instinct in this at least, that they provided as the leading feature of Morning and Evening Prayer an unbroken and systematic recitation of the Psalms. In this respect their claim was justified that they had provided an order "much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers." 3 3 "Concerning the Service of the Church," the original Preface to the Prayer Book. It was a return from mediæval complications to a more primitive ideal.

What, then, was this book of praise and worship which the Catholic Church found ready to hand, and made unhesitatingly her own, and which has set the standard and provided the chief material for her continual voice in the ear of God? The Psalter, as we know it now, had been for some time before Christ the recognised praise-book of Israel. Its Hebrew name is simple and significant— Tehillim , "praises." Its historical origins and growth are still indeed wrapt in obscurity, and to discuss them would be alien from our present purpose. Suffice it to say that there seems no conclusive reason for discrediting the universal Jewish and Christian tradition that the Psalter begins at least with David. Some of the earlier and more personal psalms are naturally felt to reflect his character and youthful struggles. Nor is it unreasonable to believe that the later historical books are substantially correct in making him the founder of the Temple choir (1 Chron. xv.; Ezra iii. 10). Doubtless the majority of the Psalms belong to a later age, and their collection is due to the scrupulous care and reverence of the period of Jewish history which begins with Ezra. The singers of the Temple after, perhaps even before, the Captivity formed various collections of sacred lyrics, which passed under characteristic names, some being entitled "Psalms of David" (though not of necessity all his work); others bearing the names of ancient leaders of the Temple choir, like Asaph, or of the guilds of singers, like "the sons of Korah." Another collection with a distinct individuality would be the "songs of degrees" or "ascents" (cxx.-cxxxii.), the pilgrim-songs of the faithful Israelites as they journeyed from their homes to keep the annual feasts at Jerusalem. At some unknown time these different collections, or selections from them, must have been brought together into one. Many scholars consider that the compilation cannot have been complete before the age of the Maccabees, as more than one Psalm is thought to refer to the agonies of faithful Israel during that great national crisis (e.g. Pss. xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., lxxx.). But it must have been substantially complete by the time that the Septuagint translation was made (in the second century B.C.); and so ancient then were the titles of the Psalms in the Hebrew that these Alexandrine scholars seem to have been frequently puzzled by them.

This collection of 150 Psalms, whenever precisely it may have been made, was divided into five books, each ending with an outburst of praise to the God of Israel. 4 4 xli. 13, lxxii. 18-19, lxxxix. 50, cvi. 46, cl. The key to this somewhat artificial arrangement is no doubt to be found in the desire to make the Psalter correspond with the Pentateuch. "Moses," says a Rabbinical commentator (Midrash Tillim ), "gave five-fifths of the Law, and correspondingly David gave the book of Tehillim , in which are five books." Of this Dr. Cheyne says, "The remark is a suggestive one: it seems to mean this—that the praise-book is the answer of the worshipping community to the demands made by its Lord in the Law, the reflexion of the external standard of faith and obedience in the utterance of the believing heart." This criticism is so illuminating that it may well suggest the first great principle in our own Christian use of the Psalter.