ii. 14 where 'Boaz said unto her, At meal-time come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar.' In Psalm lxix., it must not be assumed arbitrarily that the 'vinegar' is distasteful. Why may it not there too be a thing grateful to the palate of one athirst? tending, it may be, to inebriation1; but perhaps altogether harmless.

2. It is hard to determine precisely the nature of the gall.' Gesenius citing, 'papaveris capita' (Liv. I. 54), supposes it to be the poppy; which favours the hypothesis that it was calculated to induce stupefaction. 'Water of gall' denotes a stupefying drug in Jer. viii. 14; 'The LORD our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink ;' and a like meaning of 'gall' seems not inappropriate in Ps. lxix. 21. The vinegar, insidiously grateful to the palate, is drugged with gall, and thus proves a snare to the unsuspecting. The sufferer,-one of many2-receives drugged potions from the enemy; who would have their' table become a trap to them in their security. Reft of sense and power, may they prove an easy prey. 'Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.' So plot they, 'For they persecute [them] whom Thou hast smitten; &c.'

3. The enemy devise evil, not against an individual, but against the whole chosen people. The Psalmist, in the character of one of them, describes the outrage heaped upon himself, in the execution of their general plan; and hence the change from the singular ver. 21, to the plural in the following verses is accounted for. If this transition does not take place at the beginning of the first series of cursings, it must take place at its conclusion; or else, as seems still less suitable, in the middle of ver. 26. The plural in the second clause of the verse,' writes Mr Perowne, 'passes from the individual instance to the general conduct of these men, but implies at the same time that there are some few others exposed to the like treatment with himself.' Few or many, they are spoken of in

1 Numb. vi. 3.

2 He speaks as an ordinary Israelite: the calamity was national: the plot is

not laid against him personally, but he comes within its range, and describes what he himself undergoes.

the plural, till in ver. 29 the one sufferer stands out as before, and then again is lost sight of finally in ver. 32.

V. Other points in the Imprecations calling for Special Notice. I. In ver. 22, those on whom the curse lights are represented as at peace', if not men of peace. In Ps. lv. 20, the same word is applied to inoffensive sufferers, and it is said of the enemy: 'He hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him he hath broken his covenant.' Elsewhere, the notion of peace, implies not unfrequently a certain moral excellence, thus:

Mark the perfect; behold the upright:

For there is a futurity to a man of peace.

Whereas the futurity of the wicked shall be cut off (Ps. xxxvii. 37, 38). The Psalmist is peace,' in Ps. cxx. 7; his enemies, for war.' 'They speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land' (Ps. xxxv. 20). In accordance with such usages as the foregoing, it is more natural to apply the description, at peace (Ps. Ixix. 22), to the persecuted Israelites, than to their heathen persecutors. In other words, it is natural to suppose the first series of imprecations uttered against, not by, the Psalmist.

2. An objection to this view may be thought to arise from ver. 24. Is it likely that the heathen persecutors would curse the suffering Israelite in the form of an address to JEHOVAH? thus: Pour out thine indignation upon them: and let the furiousness of thine anger overtake them.' It may be granted that it is not likely. But the Psalmist is not giving the actual words of his enemy: the representation is subjective: the ills brought about by heathen instrumentality are referred to their first cause, and viewed as a Divine infliction; and the enemy, while compassing what is viewed as a manifestation of God's anger, may well be represented as praying that the furiousness of that anger may be displayed. A like remark applies to ver. 27, 28. The form of the curses 1p, tranquillis.'

1

is here too that in which they present themselves to the mind. of the Psalmist, in whose view sin goes hand in hand with punishment; and whereas the enemy curses in deed, by striving to aggravate the calamities of Israel, the Psalmist-with his vivid conception of sin as necessarily involving punishment-depicts the enemy as praying that the LORD would add to his people's iniquities.

3. It is unnatural to say of heathens, qua heathens, 'Let them not come into Thy righteousness;' for God's 'righteousness' was the especial hope of the chosen people. God's 'righteousness' may include (or stand in parallelism with) salvation and deliverance, from Captivity, as from other evils. The following passages serve to illustrate this usage. 'Deliver me in Thy righteousness, and cause me to escape: incline Thine ear unto me, and save me.... ..My mouth shall shew forth Thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof' (Ps. lxxi. 2, 15). 'Deliver me in Thy righteousness' (xxxi. 1). 'In Thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in Thy righteousness shall they be exalted. For Thou art the glory of their strength and in Thy favour our horn shall be exalted. For the Lord is our defence; and the Holy One of Israel is our king' (lxxxix. 16-18). 'Quicken me, O LORD, for Thy name's sake: for Thy righteousness' sake bring my soul out of trouble. And of Thy mercy slay mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am Thy servant' (cxliii. 11, 12). 'Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely and this is the name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS' (Jer. xxiii. 5, 6). They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness' (Ps. xxii. 31). In this last passage, the primary reference is to restoration from captivity, as that whereby God's 'righteousness' displays itself. In Ps. lxix. 27 we have then, it might be conjectured, curses not against Gentiles but against Jews, for:

(a) Gentiles, as such, would not have been thought of at all as having hope to enter into God's righteousness.

(b) Another possible explanation is unnatural; for to say, 'Let them not come into Thy righteousness;' in the sense, Let them not be converted, and become objects of Thy mercy,' is out of harmony with the conclusion of the Psalm itself (ver. 34), not to say, with Psalms xxii., cii., &c. Whereas, on the other hand, a complete consistency is given to the Psalm, if the imprecations proceed from the enemy. They had plotted how their unsuspecting prey might be treacherously disabled:-Let their habitation be desolate. Let them not experience the salvation of Thy righteousness, but be blotted out of the book of the living.'-In ver. 29 comes the assurance that these plots will fail. Poor as I am and sorrowful, Thy salvation shall set me up on high. For Thou wilt save Zion, and build the cities of Judah, and they that love Thy name shall dwell therein.'

VI. Imprecations cited by St Paul from Psalm lxix.

Some verses of this Psalm are quoted by St Paul, in Rom. xi. 9, 10, in his argument against the inference that God had cast away His people which He foreknew. The case of Elias leads up to the citation from the Psalm. Wot ye not what the Scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace....What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for: but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (according as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them: Let their

eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back alway. I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy' (Rom. xi. 2—11).

If we might argue back from the Apostle's citation of Ps. Ixix. 22, 23, to the primary allusion of the verses cited, two considerations would suggest themselves.

I. Whether these imprecations proceed from the Psalmist or from his enemies, it takes away from their prima facie virulence, to note that they are not only temporal but temporary, in their nature. It is not the total ruin of persons cursed which, in St Paul's application of them, is contemplated, but the removal of an obstruction which opposes itself to the attainment of an all-important end. 'Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid.'

2. According to Rom. xi. 9, 10,' it has been said, 'the rejection of Israel may be best described in the words of Ps. lxix. 22, 23.' This being granted, it might be inferred, as not improbable, that the Psalm deals with those historical1 circumstances which are most closely analogous to the rejection of the Jews, and the admission of the Gentiles to the Gospel covenant; and hence arises a retrospective argument in corroboration of the view already propounded, that Ps. Ixix. refers to the Captivity. Between the Captivity and the later casting-off of Israel there is the intimate correspondence of type and antitype. The Jews were not, argues the Apostle, cast off for ever; but their rejection was for the reconciling of the world; and finally, by their restoration, there should be as life from the dead. In the season of captivity, it is notorious that their minds were opened to the spirituality of their religion and the non-essentiality of its external rites. Then, more distinctly than before, they contemplated the universality of the inheritance, which they had counted

1 Other references in the context (e. g. that to Elias) being historical, it

might be surmised that the reference in the Psalm is in like manner historical.