ODE 3. {Priora destittt.) I put on : 2And his members are with him. And
on them do I hang, and He loves me: 3for I should not have known how to love the Lord, if He had not loved me. *For who is able to distinguish love, except the one that is loved? 5 1 love the Beloved, and my soul loves Him : ^and where His rest is there also am I ; ''and I shall be no stranger, for with the Lord Most High and Merciful there is no g^idging. «! have been united
1 Or it.
2 Bernard -./.T.S for Oct. 1910, p. 7. Diettrich : Die Reformation for May 1910, p- 3°7 "• ^ Cumont: Momiments, i. 318.
•"to Him"'S for the Lover has found the Beloved, ^and because I shall love Him that is the Son, I shall become a son^; ^°for he that is joined to Him that is immortal, will also himself become immortal ; '■''and he who has pleasure in the Living One'^>)'^^i^ will become living^ ''^This is the Spirit of the Lord, which doth not lie, which teacheth the sons of men to know His Ways. ''^Be wise and understanding and vigilant. Hallelujah.
Ode 3. This Psalm, of which the first verses have disappeared along with the leaves that contained the first two Psalms, is evidently a Christian product; the author is a mystic with a doctrine, or rather an experience, of union with the Son. With Him his whole nature has become mingled, as water is mixed with wine. In Pauline language, he has been joined to the Lord, and has become one spirit with Him". In Johannine language, because the Beloved lives, he himself lives also". He has, at least in hope and faith, attained immortality through union with the Living One. The name here given to Christ is very ancient, it has been detected by the Revisers of the English New Testament in the Apocalypse ('I am the Living One')', and it is found in the opening sentences of the Sayings of Jesus, recovered in recent years
from Egypt: ('these are the words which Jesus the Living One
spake'). [Cf also Ode 24. 14 where 'Him that liveth' is Christ.]
Other Johannine touches are the doctrine that ' we love Him because He first loved us".' For the Psalmist tells us that 'he should not have known how to love the Lord if the Lord had not loved him.'
It would be a mistake to suppose that we have here any direct (quotations or that the language necessarily involves acquaintance with the text of the New Testament. In translating the Syriac, I have not tried to distinguish the two words for love which are used : even if it could be inferred that the Greek had used dyaTr(G and cj>i\u), as in the 2ist chapter of John's Gospel, it would be a mistake to indicate this in the translation by a subtlety which is now exploded. For the Syriac makes no such distinction, nor need we imagine it in the original Aramaic spoken by Jesus. When the Syriac translators turn back our Lord's words in John xiv. 21, 'He it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father,' although the Greek word is consistently dyaTru), they use both the available Syriac words, without distinction, and where they do not distinguish we have no call to over-refinement.
1 Mingled with (as water with wine) ; cf. i C or, vi. 17. " Or the Son.
3 The MS. has 'in life.' Cf._ Apoc. i. 1 7^ * Or the living One.
^ I Cor. vi. 17. ^ John xiv. 19. ' Apoc. i. 17. * i John iv. 19.
.v.l
92 THE ODES OF SOLOMOlsr
-^ '';?P^ ^ ODE 4.
^' - ^ 1N0 man, O my God, changeth thy holy place ; ^and it is not •
[possible] that he should change it and put it in another place :
because he hath no power over it : ^for thy sanctuary thou hast
designed before thou didst make [other] places: *that which is
the elder shall not be altered by those that are younger than
itself. ^Thou hast given thy heart, O Lord, to thy believers :
never wilt thou fail, nor be without fruits: ^for one hour of thy
Ps. Ixxxiv. Faith is more precious than all days and years. ''For who is
"■ there that shall put on thy grace, and be hurt? ^For thy seal
,^^.-,_ I is known : and thy creatures know it : and thy [heavenly] hosts
possess it: and the elect archangels are clad with it. ^Thou hast
given us thy fellowship ; it was not that thou wast in need of us:
but that we are in need of thee: ■'°distil thy dews upon us and
open thy rich fountains that pour forth to us milk and honey:
■ ■'■'for there is no repentance with thee that thou shouldest repent
\of anything that thou hast promised : ■'^and the end was revealed
before thee : for what thou gavest, thou gavest freely : ■'^so that
thou mayest not draw them back and take them again : ■''*for
all was revealed before thee as God, and ordered from the
beginning before thee : and thou, O God, hast made all things.
Hallelujah.
Ode 4. This Psalm is one of the most important in the whole collection, on account of the historical allusion with which it commences. The reference to an unsuccessful attempt to alter the site of the Sanctuary of the Lord can only be explained by some unknown movement to carry on the Jewish worship outside the desolated and proscribed sanctuary, or by the closing of the Jewish temple at Leontopolis in Egypt, which was, perhaps, itself in the first instance built under the pressure of the situation which resulted in the desecration of the temple at Jerusalem by Andochus Epiphanes. As the latter explanation leans on fact, rather than on hypothesis, we may accept it provisionally as the real interpretation of our Psalm, which is thus dated soon after a.d. 73 when the temple of Onias was closed and dismantled by the Romans. The writer of the Psalm, if not of Jewish origin is, at least, Jewish in sympathy: he holds the Jewish belief that the Sanctuary at Jerusalem was older than the wodd in which it stood ; it was, according to Rabbinic teaching, prior to all other created things : thus we find in Bereshith Rabbah that ' seven things were created before the wodd, Thorah, Gehenna, the Garden of Eden, the Throne of Glory, the Sanctuary, Repentance and the name of Messiah.'
The proofs of these pre-existent creations can easily be made from the Scriptures : e.g. ' the Lord God had planted a garden in Eden from afore-time' (Gen. ii. 8)\ and so on. The matter is discussed with some detail in Pirqe Aboth vi. lo 'Five possessions possessed the Holy One, blessed is He, in His world : and these are they : Thorah, one possession ; Heaven and Earth, one possession ; Abraham, one possession : Israel, one possession ; the Sanctuary, one possession :
...The Sanctuary: whence [is it proved]? Because it is written. The place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established (Exod. xv. 17) : and it saith. And He brought them to the border of His sanctuary, even to this mountain, which His right hand had possessed (Ps. Ixxviii. 54).' This Rabbinical belief has affected the mind of our Psalmist, who comments upon the fall of the Egyptian temple unsympathetically, and evidently has his heart set amongst the ruins of the Sanctuary at Jerusalem. He does not think the covenant between God and the people of Israel is disannulled ; all God's promises are irrevocable ; His gifts and callings are without repentance on His part. But there are no lamentations on the part of the writer over the ruins of Jerusalem ; the temple which is in his thoughts has not developed a wailing-place. God has sealed His own people with the marks of His ownership. All creation, and both worlds, recognise this seal. And He is able to pour out blessings on His chosen, comparable to the dew of heaven, and the milk and honey 01 the earth. If we please, we may definitely call it a Judaeo-Christian Psalm : and it might very well have been composed by one of the refugees at Pella. It is not easy to see how it could have been written outside Palestine, nor by a purely Jewish hand.
There are no Scripture references ; perhaps the nearest parallels are Rom. xi. 29 ('the gifts and calling of God are without repentance,' a/iera/ncXrjTa), and the adaptation of Ps. Ixxxiv. 11 in w. 6, where again the temple is in the mind of the writer.
The 'thought that God does not need us, but we need God, is a common religious expression in this period, and is found constantly in Greek literature. We may compare the Apology of Aristides, c. i, and Irenaeus (ed. Mass. 244) ' ipse quidem nullius indigens : his vero qui indigent eius, suam praebens communionem,' which is very near indeed to the language of our Ode, and may almost be taken as a quotation. The opposite sentiment can be illustrated from Schiller :
' Freudios war der grosse Weltenmeister, Fuhlte Mangel, darum schuf er Geister, Sel'ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit.'
Clement of Rome, Ep. i. ad Cor., c. 52, takes an intermediate position: 'The Lord needs nothing... except our praise.'
^ So Jerome: aprincipio.
ODE 5.
U will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, because I love thee; 20 most High, thou wilt not forsake me\ for thou art my hope: ^freely I have received thy grace, I shall live thereby: ^my persecutors will come''' and not see me: ^a cloud of darkness shall fall ^on"' their eyes ; and an air of thick gloom shall darken them : ^and they shall have no light to see : that they may not take hold upon me. '^Let their counsel become thick darkness^, and what they have cunningly devised, let it return upon their own heads: ^for they have devised a counsel, and it did not succeed^: they have prepared themselves for eviP, and were found to be empty. ^For my hope is upon the Lord, and I will not fear, and because the Lord is m y_s alvatio n ^ I will not fear:
J°and He is as a fflrland on my head and I shall not be moved ; even if everything should be shaken, I stand firm; ^''and if
. all things visible should perish, I shall not die : because the Lord is with me and I am with Him. Hallelujah.
Ode 5. The interest of this Psalm lies in the fact that at this point we begin to strike the region of coincidences with the Gnostic book, known as the PisHs Sophia. The Ode has been used, apparently, in the composition of two Odes or Prophecies of Solomon, quoted respectively by Salome and the Virgin.
Salome recites nearly the whole of the Ode, with some slight variations and expansions : and it is possible that*one or two clauses may be missing in the Syriac and may be capable of restoration from the Coptic.
The remaining portion of the Ode before us appears, at first sight, from the parallelism of the first sentence, to be the same as what is given in the Pistis Sophia as the recitation of the Virgin from the 19th Ode of Solomon. And this ascription and numbering led Ryle and James astray, to identify the matter in question with the sentences about
' Or, as in the Coptic, do not thou forsake me.
^ Or, as in the Coptic, let my persecutors come.
5 Copt, weakness. * lit. and it became not to them.
'' lit. evilly, as in the Coptic, which expands as follows : Et vicerunt eos potentes et quae paraverant malitiose, descenderunt in eos. Cf. the German of Schmidt : ' Und sie sind besiegt, obwohl sie mdchtig sind, und was sie boswillig (icaicus) bereitet haben, ist auf sie herabgefallen.'
" Copt, quia tu es deus meus, salvator meus.
the Virgin quoted by Lactantius\ as from the 19th Ode of Solomon. We have, however, shown elsewhere that Lactantius' quotation is really in our 19th Ode, so that Lactantius does not appear in the discussion, having been found in another quarter. And we have suggested that the supposed 19th Ode of the Coptic writer is the first of our collection, and that it followed on the eighteen Psalms of Solomon. The mistake can be traced, by comparing, in the Pistis Sophia, the text and the Gnostic comment upon it ; it will be found that a wrong Ode has been copied out for the text of the Gnostic comment, in consequence of two Odes, the first and the fifth, having some similar sentences. The difference can be exhibited thus :
Coptic Ode 19 Syriac Ode 5.
[=our Ode i] ' The Lord is on my head ' He is like a crown on my
like a crown, and I shall not be head and I shall not be moved, separated from Him : a crown of Even if everything should be truth has been woven for me : my shaken, I stand firm : and if all branches were planted in me : for things visible should perish, I they did not bear a crown that shall not die : because the Lord was dried up, and without a shoot: is with me and I am with Him.' but thou livest upon my head : and thou growest upon me : thy fruits are full and perfect : they are filled with thy salvation.'
The comment upon the foregoing Coptic Ode follows the text of the Syriac Ode, by an unconscious error of the writer who mistook one hymn for the other.
It is clear, then, that the Coptic nineteenth Ode and the Syriac fifth Ode are two different Odes, as we have explained above. We thus recover the missing first Ode of our collection.
Whether this fifth Ode is Christian or not, does not appear decisively at the first reading. It opens in a rather Jewish strain of praise, accompanied by prayer for the discomfiture of enemies. If there is a definite Christian feature, perhaps it is the garland upon the singer's head, which appears in several other Odes. In the 17th Ode, for example, we get the same figure, and here the theme is the praise of the Messiah for His triumph over Hades. This must, of course, be Christian.
The crown is a crown of life, that is a living crown or garland : and this meaning is carefully brought out in the Coptic Ode, which explains
' Psalms of Solomon, p. 160. ' Ode ii. [of the Coptic Odes] should be another fragment of that quoted by Lactantius, the tglh Ode. Here alone is a number given. The Virgin, be it noted, is the reciter here, and the Virgin is the subject of Lactantius' quotation.'
that the crown does not wither, but (like Aaron's rod), it buds and bears fruit. We have similar allusions and explanations to the crown of life in the New Testament, as in i Pet. v. 4 ' a crown of glory, or glorious crown, which does not fade away.' The close of the Ode is a noble expression of trust in the Lord, amidst adverse circumstances, which one instinctively compares with the close of the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. It may be regarded as a Christian composition, on account of its affinity with other Odes that are certainly Christian, as well as on account of its intrinsic spiritual value.
ODE 6.
^As the hand' moves over the harp, and the strings speak, 2so speaks in my members the Spirit of the Lord, and I speak by His love. ^For it destroys what is foreign, and everything that is bitter^: "^for thus it was from the beginning and will be to the end, that nothing should be His adversary, and nothing should stand up against Him. ^The Lord has multiplied the knowledge of Himself, and is zealous Hhat these things should be known, which by His grace have been given to us^. 6And the praise of His name He gave us*: our spirits praise HisJialy_Spirit^ ^ por there went forth a stream and became a river great and broad ; ^for it flooded and broke up everything and it brought [water] to the Temple'' : ^and the restrainers of the children of men were not able to restrain it, nor the arts of those whose business it is to restrain waters ; ^°for it spread over the face of the whole earth, and filled everything : "and all the thirsty upon earth were given to drink of it"; ''^and thirst was relieved and quenched : for from the Most High the draught was given. ''^Blessed then are the ministers of that draught who are entrusted with that water of His : ^^they have assuaged the dry lips, 'and the will that had fainted they have raised up ; ■'^and souls that were near departing they have caught back from death': ''^and limbs that had fallen they straightened and
' Or perhaps plectrum.
^ Cod. and everything is of the Lord. ^""'' i Cor. ii. 12.
* lit. His praise He gave us to His name.
° i.e. the temple at Jerusalem. Schmidt : ' wandte sich gegeii den Tempel.' '"■' Schmidt : es tranken, die sich auf dem trockenen Sande befinden. Cf. Is. xxxv. i .- '"' Schmidt: ' Herzensfreude haben empfangen die Entkrafteten. Sie haben Seelen erfasst, indem sie den Hauch hineinstiessen, dass sie nicht stiirben.'
set up : ^^they gave strength for their feebleness^ and hght to
their eyes : ''^for everyone knew them in the Lord, and they A^^^^
Hved by the water of Hfe" for ever. Hallelujah.
Ode 6. In this Psalm again we are fortunate in having a large part of the Coptic text preserved to us : and, as is common in Coptic texts, some Greek words have been also preserved by it. But this very circumstance has led Ryle and James to a wrong supposition as to die existence of Gnostic elements in the Psalm. They recognize that it is a Christian Psalm but suggest, hesitatingly, that the use of the word amppoia may stamp it as Gnostic. It is quite unnecessary to pay this little tribute to Gnosticism. Neither here nor anywhere else is there anything definitely Gnostic in the book. And Ryle and James are right in saying, 'we cannot see that there is anything unmistakeably Gnostic in the doctrine^' They are also clearly right in saying that what is described in the Psalm is ' the preaching of the Gospel which no human effort can avail to hinder.' We must also recognize a reference to the waters in Ezekiel which go forth from the temple. But there is a suggestive difference in our Psalm from the parable in Ezekiel : in the Syriac text the stream appears to rise elsewhere than in the temple, and part of its function is to water the temple. It is a river deep and broad before it reaches the temple. If this be what is intended, then the restrainers who build dykes to keep waters out or cisterns to keep thein in are very likely the Temple officials themselves, who were often hard put to it to hinder the propaganda of the new rehgion within the limits of the Holy Place.
The writer is exultant in his universahsm ; the stream of living water has gone out into all the earth . thirsty souls everywhere have been refreshed by it : dying souls have been revived.
The writer is as universal as St Paul. But he is not so detached from Judaism as not to know that the living water was connected with the temple. Perhaps, then, he is a Judaeo-Christian of an enlightened type. Ryle and James suggest for him a date not later than the second century, and intimate the presence of Johannine phraseology and ideas. We think the date is too late ; the Johannine features do not appear to us to be directly due to the Gospel : if such a long composition had been under Johannine influence, it would have betrayed its ancestry more definitely. Neither here nor elsewhere does it seem possible definitely to convict the Psalms of having borrowed from St John. On the other hand there is one expression which
1 Cod. ex errore 'for their coming.' ^ lit. by living water.
' Harnack, who has missed the meaning of this liymn, called it a Gnostic baptismal hymn (Hist, of Dogma, i. 207 note). He admits now that it is not Gnostic, and it is doubtful if it has anything to do with baptism.
o. s. 13 recalls a sentence in i Cor., where the writer says that God is zealous ' that those things should be known, which have been given us by His grace': this is very hke i Cor. ii. 12, 'that we may know the things that have been freely given us of God.' Whether the coincidence should be pressed will depend to some extent upon the existence of further and similar echoes of New Testament speech.
Near the close of the Psalm the Greek word wapp-qa-ia occurs in the Coptic ; but the Syriac ' coming ' suggests irapovo-i'a. Ilappijcria, as the Fistis Sophia shows, is one of the words which the Coptic transliterates : so we must retain it, or else find a Greek word which may be misread either as irapprjcria or irapovaCa. We have suggested that TrapaXi/o-is is the right word. This is confirmed by the preceding clause, ' Members that had fallen they straightened and set up.' Here the Coptic has erexere for the two Syriac words which we render by ' straightened and set up.' The Syriac has been translating a compound verb by two simple verbs ; and the original was evidently avtipOuxrav. AVe may now compare Is. xxxv. 3 and Heb. xii. 1 2 ; especially note ra irapaXtXvfi.iva ywara avopduiaraTe. We now see the meaning of the words which follow, 'they gave strength to their paralysis'; it is a reflexion from laxuVaTc, yovara napaXeXvfji.eva. The correctness of the reference to Isaiah may be further seen from the following words ' and light to their eyes,' which are a reflexion from ' then shall the eyes of the blind be opened.' It is clear then that the writer is working from Isaiah and not from Hebrews : and in that case the airoppoia of which the Fistis Sophia makes so much is the stream of water which, in the prophecy, makes glad the wilderness and the solitary place. We can now explain the variation between the Syriac and Coptic in v. 10. The 'dry sand' is the eprjfto^ Suj/wa-a of Is. xxxv. i, and the Syriac should be 'all upon the thirsty land drank of it.'
[The Ode is translated into English by Barnes in £xposiior(J\ily igio). He suggests that we read 'wind' for 'hand ' in y. i as if the harp were an Aeolian harp ! Perhaps ' hand ' is wrong, as there is the trace of a connecting line before the actually visible Olaph. If it is not 'hand,' I suspect it is 'plectrum.']
ODE 7.
^As the impulse of anger against evil, so is the impulse of joy over what is lovely, and brings in of its fruits without restraint : ^my joy is the Lord and my impulse is toward Himi; this path of mine is excellent^: ^for I have a helper, the Lord^. *He hath caused me to know Himself, without grudging, by His
1 a. my running : cf. Cant. i. 3. ^ go Schulthess.
' B.-L. remove ■»<i.T.sa^ to the end of previous verse.
simplicity: His kindness has 'humbled His greatness^ ^He\ gr'^^ became like me, in order that I might receive Him: ^He was 1 reckoned like myself" in order that I might put Him on ; ^and I trembled not when I saw Him: because He was gracious to me: ^like my nature He became that I might learn Him and like my form, that I might not turn back from Him : ^the Father of knowledge is the word of knowledge : ''^He who created wisdom '^ ' is wiser than His works: "and He who created me when yet I was not knew what I should do when I came into being: '"^wherefore He pitied me in His abundant grace : and granted me to ask from Him and to receive from His sacrifice' : ''^ because He it is that is incorrupt, the fulness of the ages and the Father of them ^
"■^He hath given Him to be seen of them that are His, ''^in order that they may recognize Him that made them : and that they might not suppose that they came of themselves^: ''^for knowledge He hath appointed as its way. He hath widened it and extended it ; and brought it to all perfection ; ''''and set over it the traces of His light, and I walked '"therein^ from the beginning even to the end. ''^For by Him it was wrought, and He was resting in the Son, and for its salvation He will take hold of everything : ''^and the Most High shall be known in His Saints, to announce to those that have songs of the coming of the Lord; 2°that they may go forth to meet Him, and may sing to Him with joy and with the harp of many tones'*: ^''the seers shall come before Him and they shall be seen before Him, 22and they shall praise the Lord for His love : because He is near and beholdeth, ^Sand hatred shall be taken from the earth, and along with jealousy it shall be drowned : '^'^for ignorance hath been destroyed, because the knowledge of the Lord hath arrived, ^sj^gy who make songs shall sing the grace of the Lord Most High ; ^Sand they shall bring their songs, and their heart shall be like the day: and like the excellent beauty' of
i~i So Flemming: seine Grosse klein erscheinen lassen.
^ lit. in likeness as myself.
= Gk. eva-las : Nestle conjectures oia-ias : cf. Clem. £p. ii. aJ Cor. i. ■^ei\ri<T€v ex ToO fi.rj 6vTos eii-ai inias : and the verse of the Ode that precedes, ' when I came into being.' Also Ode 8. 16. For an opposite error see Cod. k in Mk. ix. 49.
* For th? expression ' Father of the Ages,' cf. i Clem, ad Cor. xxxv. 2, Iv. 6, Ixi. •.:, and Is. xi. 6 (Heb.).
' Ps. c. 3. ^ at- voices.
' Gk. lieyaXowpiireia as in Ps. Ixvii. (Ixviii.) 34.
lOO
the Lord their pleasant song: "and there shall neither be any thing that breathes without knowledge, nor any that is dumb: 28 for He hath given a mouth to His creation, to open the voice of the mouth towards Him, to praise Him : ^^confess ye His power, and show forth His grace. Hallelujah.
Ode 7. In this Psalm the writer dilates joyfully^ on the theme of the Incarnation ; and the combination of lowliness and wisdom that are involved therein. The condescension of Christ to human form is not only a sympathetic approach to human conditions, it is a divine welcome. He says 'Come unto me' by coming unto us. 'Like my nature He became that I might learn of Him.'
But the incarnate Messiah is still the maker and sustainer of all things, in whom all things consist. The knowledge of this revelation produces praise and expectation, praise for those who sing His advent, expectarion for those who look for His triumphant rule among men. All evil is to pass away, and all hate. The saints who sing are already exulting in the new life which He has bestowed upon them^.
For the argument with which the Ode opens we may compare Lactantius, de Div. Inst. iv. 26: 'is, qui humilis advenerat, ut humilibus et infimis opem ferret, et omnibus spem salutis ostenderet, eo genere afficiendus fuit, quo humiles et infimi solent, ne quis esset omnino, qui eum non posset imitari.'
[The difficulty in translating v. 3 has been variously met : Flemming translates ' ein Heifer zum Herrn,' Zahn, (in Verhaltnis) zum Herrn : Batiifol and Labourt, as intimated, remove the words ' to the Lord ' to the end of the previous verse.]
ODE 8.
1 Open ye, open ye your hearts to the exultation of the Lord : 2and let your love be multiplied from the heart and even to the lips, 3to bring forth fruit to the Lord, living '"fruif, holy '"fruit"'^ and to talk with watchfulness in His light. *Rise up, and stand erect, ye who sometime were brought low : ^tell forth ye who were in silence, that your mouth hath been opened. ^Ye, therefore, that were despised, be henceforth lifted up, because your righteousness hath been exalted. ''For the right hand of
' The opening sentence about the ' impulse against evil' may be illustrated from Clem. Alex. Paed. i. 8, p. 140 iiriTo-i t(JJ aya8<f, xi ^i^fff' aya66s iarw, i] fuaoirovripla.
^ The combination of 'seers' and 'singers' is peculiar, and belongs to a very early period in Church History ; it would be best illustrated by the saints in the beginning of Luke's Gospel, who were looking for redemption in Jerusalem, if we could imagine that peculiar religious society of prophets and singers continued and extended.
' Ungnad-Stark, a holy life.
^U^,-/-v^ the Lord is with you : and He is your helper : ^and peace was prepared for you, before ever your war was. 9 Hear the word of truth, and receive the knowledge of the Most High. ''OYour flesh has not known what I am saying to you : neither have Cf. Is. your hearts' known what I am showing to you. iiKeep my '"'''■ "*" seGret^ ye who are kept by it : i2keep my faith, ye who are kept by it. ^^^^j understand my knowledge, ye who know me in truth. ^'^Love me with affection, ye who love : ''^for I do not turn away my face from them that are mine ; ^^ for I know them, and before they came into being I took knowledge of them, and on their faces I set my seal: "i fashioned their members : my own breasts I prepared for them that they might drink my holy milk and live thereby, i^j ^ook pleasure in them and am not ashamed of them: ^^for my workmanship are they and the strength of my thoughts : ^°who then shall rise up against my handiwork, or who is there that is not subject to them? ^H willed and fashioned mind and heart: and they are mine, and by my own right hand I set my elect ones : ^z^nd my righteousness goeth before them and they shall not be deprived of my name, for it is with them. 23^3]^^ j^^d abouncfiknd abide ''-^^-^ in the love of the Lord, ^^''and"' ye beloved ones in the Beloved : those who are kept, in Him that liveth : ^Sand they that are saved in Him^^that wassaved ; ^^and ye shall be found incorrupt in all ages to the name of your Father. Hallelujah.
Ode 8. This Psalm again is Johannine in many of its ideas and expressions. But, even when this is conceded, it is difficult to prove a direct dependence on the Fourth Gospel.
The Psalm is, like a number of others, marked by a sudden transition of personahty from the Psalmist or Prophet to the Lord Himself: after the writer has addressed those who have been lifted up out of affliction and have found peace after war, he suddenly in prophetic manner, cries out, 'Hear the word of the Lord,' 'Receive the heavenly knowledge,' and then proceeds to speak in the person of the Lord. The same abrupt transitions are found in the canonical Psalter, and they appear to have characterized the Montanist inspirations. It will be remembered that Montanus describes his own spiritual exaltation in the words : ' Behold ! the man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as the plectrum. The man sleeps and I wake. Behold ! it is the Lord, who
' The MS. by an error of transcription reads, 'your raiment.' But perlmps the aiment means the human body ?
2 C/em. Horn. xix. 20; and Clem. Alex. Strom, v. 10, apparently from a lost Gospel. ' Fl. . Bittet ohne Unterlass.
estranges the souls of men from themselves, and gives men souls.' The same address by the Lord in the first person is in the utterance of Maximilla, the Montanist prophetess, who said, 'I am chased as a wolf from the midst of the flock. I am no wolf ; I am word, and spirit, and power.'
The language of Montanus finds a close parallel in the opening of the sixth Psalm, where the writer says, 'As the hand \or perhaps plectrum] moves over the harp, and the strings speak, so speaks in my members the Spirit of the Lord.' This might easily be claimed as a Montanist utterance, and I can imagine that on account of these and similar sayings, the whole Psalter might be claimed as a Montanist product. But the sentiments are simply Christian, on a high experimental plane; and we must not forget that one of the chief characteristics of Montanism is its attempt to perpetuate the life of the primitive Church. Towards the end of the Psalm the prophet returns abruptly to speech in his own name. There seems to be some breach of continuity in the discourse, as well as a change of personality.
I do not know whether the allusion to an actual war, from which the saints have emerged or escaped, is to be taken literally. If it be a literal, and not a spiritual reference, the choice will he between the Jewish war under Titus or that under Hadrian ; in either case we should be in Judaeo-Christian circles. It is, however, quite possible that the ' war ' and the ' peace ' refer only to spiritual experiences.
The injunction in v. 1 1 to keep the Lord's secret (/u.vo-Ti/pioi' kfx,ov) is frequently quoted in the Fathers. A striking instance will be found in Lactantius, Div. Instit. vii. 26: ' nos defendere hanc [doctrinam] publice atque asserere non solemus, Deo jubente, ut quieti ac silentes arcanum ejus in abdito atque intra nostram conscientiam teneamus... abscondi enim tegique mysterium quam fidelissime oportet, inaxime a nobis, qui nomen fidei gerimus.' The last sentence is very like the language of the Ode, ' Keep my secret ye who are kept by it ; keep my faith ye who are kept by it.' These Patristic quotations may be traced ultimately to a variant translation of Isaiah xxiv. 16, which has crept into some texts of the LXX from the Hexapla of Origen. But there are a number of cases where the citation is not directly from Isaiah, but from a saying of our Lord in an uncanonical Gospel. Thus in Clem. Alex. Strom. V. 10 we have ov yap (j>6ovwv, <j>r]cri, TraprjyyuXfv 6 Kvpios ev rivt €vayye\tw f).v(TTr]piov ifiov ijxoi nai tois uiots toC oikou /xov. Again in Clem. Horn. xix. 20 we have, (jLeixv-rj/xeda Tov Kvplov r]ij,<5v Koi StSao-KaXov, (us cvTcXA.ojuei'Os elirev tj/iaiv to. ix.v(rTrjpia i/xoX xai tois viols f).ov (^vXa^art. It seems that the Odist has been working from the same source as Clement of Alexandria and the Clementine Homilist : and if this be the case, the uncanonical Gospel of which he makes use is very likely the same which we shall find quoted in the 24th Ode. [Bernard thinks the reference is to the disdplina arcanii\
ODE 9.
^Open your ears and I will speak to you. Give me your souls that I may also give you my soul, ^the word of the Lord and His good pleasures, the holy thought which He has devised concerning His Messiah . ^For in the will of the Lord is your salvation', and His thought is everlasting life ; and your end is immortality''. *Be enriched in God the Father, and receive the thought of the Most High. ^Be strong and_be Is. lii. 7. '^ rede gmed by His grace^ ®For I announce to you peace, to you Cf. Ps. ^ His saints ; ''that none of those who hear may fall in war, and ^'""'^' ^' those again who have known Him may not perish, and that those who receive may not be ashamed. ^An everlasting crown for ever is Truth. Blessed are they who set it on their heads : ^a stone of great price is it; and there have _been_wars_on_ ac count of the crown_. ''°And righteousness hath taken it and hath given it to you. " Put on the crown in the true covenant of the Lord. ''^And all those who have conquered shall be \ written in His book. ''^For their book is victory which is yours. And she (Victory) sees you before her and wills that you shall be saved. Hallelujah.
Ode 9. This Psalm is, from a historical point of view, somewhat colourless. The only definite points are the allusions to the Lord's Messiah, or Christ : and a promise of peace and deliverance from war, which is made to the saints. Of the first of these allusions, we may say that while it makes the Psalm a Messianic one, this does not mean that it is not Christian. The promise of everlasting Hfe which follows must be the holy thought of God concerning the Christ. And this seems to definitely mark out the Psalm as Christian.
What then are we to say of the wars and victory to which the Psalm refers ; are they spiritual or are they outward, or a mixture of both ? We shall have the same problem before us in other Psalms. From the fact that Victory is personified and writes a book, with which we may compare Apoc. iii. 5 (' He that overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life '), we may perhaps conclude that the Victory spoken of is a spiritual one. This is in harmony with the references to redemption by grace and to the will of Victory that the saints should be saved. These are Christian expressions. On the other hand the promise that none of those who
' Hi. life. ^ Or, and without corruption is your perfection.
obey the Lord's word shall fall in war might have been very strikingly illustrated in the case of the Christians who escaped to Pella. But even then the Psalm is a Christian one, and it remains an open question -whether outward allusions may not have been coupled with inward victories;
The alternative rendering for the third verse suggests that the Syriac words answer to a Greek sentence, koI ev at^Oapcria to tc'Xos v[x.u}v.
ODE lo.
^The Lord hath directed my mouth by His word : and He hath opened my heart by His light : and He hath caused to dwell in me His deathless life; ^and gave me that I might speak the fruit of His peace : ^to convert the souls of them who are willing to come to Him : and to lead captive a good captivity for freedom. *I was strengthened and made mighty and took the world captive ; ^and it became to me for the praise of the Most High, and of God my Father. ®And the Gentiles^ were gathered together who were scattered abroad. '^And I was unpollutedf by my love ''for them^^ because they confessed me in high places : and the traces of the light were set upon their heart : ^and they walked in my life and were saved and became my people for ever and ever. Hallelujah.
Ode 10. In this vigorous little Psalm Christ must Himself be accounted the speaker- through the mouth of His prophet; unless we should prefer to say that any of the opening sentences are spoken in the Psalmist's own name, and that after them there is an abrupt alteration of personality, such as we have already referred to. It is certain, however, that the one who gathers the peoples together by his love must be the Messiah: ('unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be^ '). And it can be no psalmist or prophet who declares that the Gentiles became his people for ever and ever. The one who goes forth to lead captivity captive is again the Christ : we have in the New Testament (Eph. iv. 8) the Messianic interpretation of Ps. Ixviii. i8, 'He ascended up on high, he led captivity captive'; and the same explanation underlies the Ode before us. The Ode is, therefore, a Christian one : and its soteriology is universal in character. But we are still in the region where apologetic is necessary for the reception of the
^ Christ has accepted the Gentiles.
^ i.e. erasing the plural points, so as not to read 'by my sins.' Barnes suggests the emendation 'by their sins.' Wellhausen: ist naturlich /lauiai z\i s^iiechen, nicht hudii.
' Gen. xlix. lo.
Gentiles, and where it does not suffice to quote a verse of the Old Testament and say that such reception was foretold. In our Ode Christ explains that the reception of the Gentiles has not polluted Him. Such language does not belong to the Hellenic world, nor, we think, to the second century. But it is quite natural in a Judaeo-Christian community in Palestine in the first century.
The fact that prophets spoke in the person of God or of Christ was a common observation with the early fathers : a good illustration may be seen in Justin's Apology^, where Justin explains that the opening sentences of Isaiah ('The ox knoweth his owner... but my people doth not consider') are a case of the kind; and then goes on to explain that the words 'all day long I have stretched out my hands' are to be understood of the prophet speaking in the person of Christ. In the canonical Psalms also the same feature was easily traced, and those who composed the early books of Testimonies against the Jews constantly point out that the real speaker is not the prophet, but One whom he impersonates. It is inevitable that this impersonation should cause difficulties of interpretation, due to the obscurity of personality involved in the different parts of the prophecy or psalm. And we must not be surprised if we sometimes find it hard to tell in the text of our Odes who is to be regarded as the speaker.
ODE II.
■■My heart was cloven'' and its flovifer appeared ; and grace sprang up in it : and it brought forth fruit to the Lord, ^for the Most High clave ''my heart"" by His Holy Spirit and searched my affection'' towards Him: and filled me with His love. ^And His opening" of me became my salvation ; and I ran in His way in His peace, even in the way of truth : ''■from the beginning and even to the end I acquired His knowledge : ^and I was established upon the rock of truth, where He had set me up: ^and speaking waters^ touched my lips from the fountain of the Lord plenteously : ^and I drank and was inebriated with the living water that doth not die ; ^and my inebriation was not one without knowledge, but I forsook vanity and turned to the Most High my God, ^and I was enriched by His bounty,
' I Ap. 37, 38. ^ Or, circumcised.
' lit. clave me or circumcised me. Cf. Rom. ii. 29.
* lit. revealed my reins : cf. Sap. Sol. i. 6: Ps. vii. 9: Ps. Ixii. (Ixi.) 1 : Apoc. ii. 23. ' Or, circumcision.
^ Cf. Ignatius ad Rom. 7 iiSwp ^Siv ko.\ 'KaXauv. Wellhausen : das redende Wasser flndet sich bei den Mandaern. <- » V.^
O. S. 14 and I forsook the folly which is diffused' over the earth; and I stripped it off and cast it from me: '"'and the Lord renewed me in His raiment^ and possessed me by His light, and from above He gave me rest in incorruption ; ''■'and I became like the land which blossoms and rejoices in its fruits : ''^and the Lord was like the sun shining on the face of the land ; ''^He lightened my eyes, and my face received the dew ; and my nostrils" enjoyed the pleasant odour of the Lord ; ^* and He carried me to His Paradise; where is the abundance of the pleasure of the Lord; ''^and I worshipped the Lord on account of His glory; and I said, Blessed, O Lord, are they who are planted in thy land ! and those who have a place in thy Paradise ; ''^and they grow by the fruits of thy trees^. And they have changed from darkness to light. ''^Behold ! all thy servants are fair, who do good works, and turn away from wickedness to the pleasantness that is thine : ''^and they have turned back the bitterness of the trees from them, when they were planted in thy land ; ''^and everything became like a relic of thyself, and a memorial for ever of thy faithful works. 2° For there is abundant room in thy Paradise, and nothing is useless* therein ; ^^but everything is filled with fruit ; glory be to thee, O God, the delight of Paradise for ever. Hallelujah.
Ode 1 1. This lovely Psalm is altogether personal and experimental ; the writer describes the visitations of Divine Grace, which he calls the cutting open" of his heart, and his establishment upon the rock of eternal truth. He is renewed by these visitations, as if he had been newly clad in light and had already reached the eternal rest. He becomes like a land that drinks in the dew of heaven, and brings forth fruit to God. He finds himself at last in the Paradise of God and amongst the fragrant trees of a new creation. He breaks out into exultant praise of the good things which God has prepared for them that love Him.
There are no Scriptural references in the Psalm that can be claimed as quotations, however closely the language approximates to that of the ancient Scriptures. Perhaps the nearest parallel would be the promise m Apoc. ii. 7, that the one who overcomes, shall eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. '
' lit. cast. U.-S. . die auf Erden lagert.
2 Cp. Ps. civ. 2. 3 lit. my breathing.
^ Better with Fl. -. they grow according to the growth of thy trees.
° Or, idle = 0/1765. Cf. 2 Pet. i. 8: om dpyois om aKdpTrovs.
" perhaps the circumcising.
ODE 12.
^ He hath filled me with words of truth ; that I may speak the same ; ^and like the flow of waters flows truth from my mouth, and my lips show forth His fruit. ^And He has caused Ps. H. 17. His knowledge to abound in me, because the mouth of the Lord is the true Word, and the door of His light ; '*and the Most High hath given it to His worlds, [worlds] which are the interpreters of His own beauty, and the repeaters of His praise, and the confessors of His counsel, and the heralds of His thought, and the chasteners of His servants^ ^For the swiftness of the Word' is inexpressible, and like its expression is its swiftness and force ; ^and its course knows no limit. Never doth it fail, but it stands sure, and it knows not descent' nor the way of it^ '''For as its work is, so is its end : for it is light and the dawning of thought ; ^and by it the worlds^ talk one to the other ; and in the Word there were those that were silent ; ^and from it came love and concord ; and they spake, one to the other whatever was theirs ; and they were penetrated by the Word ; ''"and they knew Him who made them, because they were in concord ; for the mouth of the Most High spake to them; and His explanation ran by means of it: ''■'for the dwelling-place of the Word is man : and its truth is ' love. ^'^ Blessed are they who by means thereof have understood everything, and have known the Lord in His truth. Hallelujah.
Ode 12. This Psalm rises to a high level of spiritual thought, but for that very reason its language is occasionally obscure. The writer describes his own inspiration and how his heart knd lips become- iilled with the words of God. Here, as elsewhere, God's fruit is found in the lips of the faithful, and we are often reminded in these Psalms of the expression which is borrowed in Heb. xiii. 15, from the prophet Hosea, about offering to God the ' fruit of Hps that confess to His name.' From the general thought of the words of God, the writer rises to the abstract idea of the Word of God, or Logos, which is the totality of God's revelation and which interpenetrates all things, so that even things that are .silent iind their speech in it. But especially this Word, which is both truth and love, finds its dwelling-place in man. Happy
^ Or, works.
^ Cf. Sap. Sol. vii. 34. Philo, De Mut. Nom. 42 Kovijiov yap 6 \6yos /cat yrTqvhv (j>'inxei, ^^\ovs ScLttov 0ep6)«eyos Kal TavTrj dig.TTUji'.
^ Or by slight emendations, no man knoweth its length or breadth. * Or possibly, the aeons.
are they that have come to know Him. Here, perhaps, we are nearer to Gnostic ideas, such as the doctrine of the Word and the Silence, than in any other part of the Psalter: yet there is nothing that can fairly be called Gnostic. We are also very close to the doctrine of the Logos as we have it in John, where the Logos becomes flesh and dwells amongst us: but it is not the Johannine thought of the Incarnation that is imitated or reproduced. The dwelling of the Logos with man is personal and not collective; and we cannot infer from this Psalm a direct statement of the doctrine of Incarnation, for the writer does not go beyond Inspiration; but his thought is noble, even if, as we have said, it is sometimes obscure, at least in a translation.
ODE 13.
■'Behold! the Lord is our mirror^: open the eyes and see them in Him : and learn the manner of your face : ^and tell forth praise to His spirit : and wipe off the filth from your face : and love His holiness, and clothe yourselves therewith : ^and be without stain at all times before Him. Hallelujah.
S Ode 1 3. This strange little Psalm is an exhortation to holiness : we are to behold the Lord in the beauty of His holiness, but we are also to see ourselves reflected in God as in a mirror ; then we shall behold our natural face in an unexpected glass and know what manner of men we are : and in that glass we shall cleanse the dirt from off our faces, and attain to purity. We are reminded of St Paul's statement that we behold, as in a mirror, the glory of our Lord and are transfigured into the same image; though here the thought is not as high as in Corinthians, where holiness is found by the Vision of God rather than by the scrutiny of ourselves.
We may also in this connexion refer to a remarkable passage which is found in a tract falsely ascribed to Cyprian, and known as De Montihus Sina et Sioti. We are reminded in this passage first that Christ is the Unspotted Mirror of the Father, as is said of Wisdom in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon^. Hence the Father and the Son see one another by reflexion. The writer then continues as follows :
'And even we who believe in Him see Christ in us as in a mirror, as He Himself instructs and advises us in the Epistle of His disciple
' Cf Clem. Alex. Paed. i. 9, p. 172 T6 iaoirTfav ry aiaxpv ou KaitAv, Sn SeiKfiei oiiTW oUs ianv. Cf. Jac. i. 24. Clem. Horn. xiii. 16 KoKi^ ia^drTpij! opf [ij ffii<l>p<m>
^ Saf. Sol. vii. 26.
John to the people: "See me in yourselves, in the same way as any one of you sees himself in water or in a mirror" ; and so he confirmed the saying of Solomon about Himself, that "He is the unspotted mirror of the Father.'"
Here we have the doctrine of dual vision in a mirror, as though the mirror saw the observer as well as the observer the mirror ; in this way the Father sees Himself in the Son and the Son sees Himself in the Father: and then we are told of something said by John, speaking in the person of Christ, in a lost epistle, that we are to see Christ in ourselves as in a glass. This is something like the doctrine of our Psalm that we are to see ourselves in Christ. If we could really be sure of the correctness of the reference of the supposed Cyprianic tract to St John, we should have more confidence in saying that here also we are in the region of Johannine ideas: but, even in that case, there would seem to be no question of direct quotation from canonical Johannine writings\
ODE 14.
^As the eyes 2 of a son to his father, so are my eyes, O Lord, at all times towards thee. ^For with thee are my consolations (lit. breasts) and my delight. ^Turn not away thy mercies from me, O Lord : and take not thy kindness from me. * Stretch out to me, O Lord, at all times thy right hand : and be my guide' even unto the end, according to thy good pleasure. ^Let me be well-pleasing'' before thee, because of thy glory and because of thy name: ^let me be preserved from evil, and let thy meekness, O Lord, abide with me, and the fruits of thy love. ''Teach me the Psalms of thy truth, that I may bring forth fruit in thee : ^and open to me the harp of thy Holy Spirit, that with all its notes I may praise thee, O Lord. ^And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, so thou shalt give to me ; and hasten to grant our petitions ; and thou art able for all our needs. Hallelujah.
' The passage in Ps. -Cyprian is so curious, that for convenience I transcribe the Latin: De Mont. Sina et Sion 13 : 'Ita inuenimus ipsum Saluatorem per Salomonem speculum inmaculatum patris esse dictum, eo quod sanctus spiritus Dei filius geminatum se uideat, pater in filio et filius in patre, utrosque se in se uident : ideo speculus inmaculatus. Nam et nos qui illi credimus Christum in nobis tanquam in speculo uidemus, ipso nos instruente et monente in epistula lohannis discipuli Sui ad populum: "ita me in uobis uidete, quomodo quis uestrum se uidet in aquam aut in speculum," et confinnauit Salomonicum dictum de se dicentem, "quis est speculus inmaculatus patris."'
^ Ps. cxxiii. L. ^ Ps. xlviii. 14.
* =(iia.fii<jTuv, walk before God, as Enoch, Gen. v. 24 etc.; cf. Peshitta.
Ode 14. In this Psalm the canonical Psalter is somewhat more closely imitated than is generally the case with our collection. The opening sentences recall Ps. exxiii. 2, 'As the eyes of servants to the hands of their masters, and as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so are our eyes to the Lord our God.' The prayer that the Lord will be 'my guide even to the end,' recalls Ps. xlviii. 14, 'This God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death.' But the Psalm is by no means a cento from the canonical Psalter, even though it does not contain anything that could, at the first reading, be definitely labelled as Christian.
ODE 15.
■•As the sun is the joy to them that seek for its daybreak 1, so is my joy the Lord ; '^because He is my Sun and His rays have lifted me up^; and His light hath dispelled all darkness from my face. ^In Him I have acquired eyes and have seen His holy day: '*ears have become mine and I have heard His truth. ^The thought of knowledge hath been mine, and I have been delighted through Him. ^The way of error I have left, and have walked towards Him and have received salvation from Him, without grudging. '^And according to His bounty He hath given to me, and according to His excellent beauty^ He hath made me. ^I have put on incorruption through His name : and have put off corruption by His grace. ^ Death hath been destroyed before my face : and Sheol hath been abolished by my word : ■'°and there hath gone up deathless life in the Lord's land, "and it hath been made known to His faithful ones, and hath been given without stint to all those that trust in Him. Hallelujah.
Ode 15. This beautiful Psalm, like so many others in the collection, opens with a similitude : these openings are characteristic of the book, and betray a single writer. This does not mean that they do not sometimes imitate the opening of the canonical Psalms. In the present case the 130th Psalm seems to have furnished the key-note, viz. the watchers for the morning. It is an experimental Psalm of the first order: the Sun has risen upon the soul of the writer. Eyes, ears and heart have all been opened. Salvation has been realized: the comeliness of the Lord has been put upon Jiim: death has lost its terrors, the grave its power.
Cf. Ps. cxxx. 6. 2 Q^^ made me rise up.
^ =Gk. fieyaXoirp^ireia,
There is one passage which is either obscure, incorrect or extravagant where the writer says that 'Sheol has been abolished by my word.' Unless there has been a transition of personality, this seems extravagant, and invites the correction 'has been abolished at His word.' In any case, I think the Psalm is a Christian one, though the positive or dogmatic identifications are not forthcoming, apart from the victory over death and the grave.
ODE i6.
^As the work of the husbandman is the ploughshare: and the work of the steersman is the guidance' of the ship: '^so also my work is the Psalm of the Lord : my craft and my occupation are in His praises^ : ^because His love hath nourished my heart, and even to my lips His fruits He poured out. ^For my love is the Lord, and therefore I will sing unto Him : ^for I am made strong ill His praise, and I have faith in Him. ^I will open my mouth and His spirit will utter in me ^the glory of the Lord and His beauty ; the work of His hands and the operation of His fingers : ^the multitude of His mercies and the strength of His word. ^For the word of the Lord searches out" all things, both the invisible and that which reveals His thought ; '"'for the eye sees His works, and the ear hears His thought. "He spread out the earth and He settled the waters in the sea: '^He measured the heavens and fixed the stars : and He established the creation and set it up : ''^and He rested from His works : ■■^and created things run in their courses, and do their works : ^^and they know not how to stand and be idle' ; and His '"heavenly"' hosts are subject to His word. ''^The treasurechamber of the light is the sun, and the treasury of the darkness is the night : ''^and He made the sun for the day that it " may be bright, but night brings darkness over the face of the land ; ^^and their alternations one to the other speak^ the beauty of God : ^^and there is nothing that is without the Lord ; for He was before any thing came into being: ^°and the worlds were cf. Heb. made by His word, and by the thought of His heart. Glory '• ^' and honour to His name. Hallelujah.
^ lit. traction. Schulthess suggests 'the mast.' (1. TO^Ti*.).
2 lit. in His praises is my craft and in His praises my occupation.
2 Or, searches out ; everything, the invisible and the revealed, (is) his thought.
* Justin, Dial. 12. " Cod. complete; dui rearf^AX^iSn.
Ode i6. This Psalm is, in its closing sentences, specifically Christian, and it is clearly from the same author as those that have immediately preceded. The theme is the beauty of God's creation; especially the writer considers the heavens which are the works of God's fingers, he contemplates the 'spacious firmament on high' (Ps. xviii.). We frequently catch refrains from the story of Creation. But curiously the writer appears to avoid the mention of the moon: instead of saying that God appointed the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night, he says that 'the treasure of the light is the sun, and the treasure of the darkness is — the night': and he tries to work out this broken parallel by a further statement about the offices of the sun and the darkness. It would be, perhaps, too much to assume that he had some reason for neglecting the moon: but the omission is curious: (there is a similar omission in Sap. Sol. vii. i8). The Psalm is certainly a beautiful one, especially in its opening verses. These find an appropriate parallel in Clement of Alexandria, who tells us^: 'We do not force the horse to plough nor the bull to hunt, but we allure each species of animal to the craft that suits it. So we also invite man to the vision of the open heaven, and to the knowledge of God, because he is of celestial
birth Plough, indeed, if ploughman thou be, but know God while
thou ploughest: sail, if thou love to voyage the seas, but make thy appeal to the steersman on high.'
The opening verses of this Ode find also a close parallel to Stoic thought in one of its loftiest expressions; for, according to Epictetus, the praise of God is the greatest of occupations: 'Seeing that most of you are Winded, should there not be some one to fill this place, and sing the hymn to God on behalf of all men?. ..Were I a nightingale, I should do after the manner of a nightingale. Were I a swan, I should do after the manner of a swan. But now, since I am a reasonable being, / must sing to God; that is my proper work : I do it, nor will I desert this my post, as long as it is granted to me to hold it: and unto you I call to join in this self-same hymn' (Epictetus, Discourses, i. i6). I am almost tempted to believe that our Odist knew this saying of Epictetus, and had Christianised it. It may well have been a popular religious quotation in the latter part of the first century. Stoicism and Christianity were, as is well known, very near neighbours; and this passage is one of the finest of Epictetus' sayings^.
On examining the Ode more closely we detect an unmistakeable case of anti-Judaic polemic. The writer after describing the beauty of
1 Clem. Alex. Protrepl. p. 80.
2 T. R. Glover [Conflict of Religions, p. 165) refers to this saying of Epictetus and remarks that ' Stoicism was never essentially musical. Epictetus announces a hymn to Zeus, but he never stavLs the tune.' Certainly the language of the Ode is much loftier and more musical than that of Epictetus.
creation and the Lord's rest from His works, goes on to say something which shows that he does not mean to deduce the Jewish Sabbath from the statements in Genesis. 'Created things run in their courses, and do their works and know not how to stand or be idle.' Suppose we turn to Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, c. 22, where Justin is arguing with Trypho for the non-necessity of circumcision and the Sabbath : ' I will declare to you and to those who may wish to become proselytes,' says Justin, ' a divine word which I heard from the old man to whom I owe my conversion. He said, "you observe that the heavenly bodies do not idle nor keep sabbath^. Remain, therefore, as you were born, do not keep sabbath nor practise circumcision."'
It is clear, then, that the i6th Ode means to say that the Sabbath is not kept by the Heavenly bodies; and as it goes on to say 'and the [Heavenly] hosts are subject to His word,' it follows that God is regulating the motions of the worlds on the Sabbath days as well as on the week-days: a point which Justin expressly makes in c. 29, 'God undertakes the regulation of the world on this day, exactly as on other days^.'.
The writer then is a Christian of the type of Justin Martyr, who accepts the Gospel without the obligation of the Law, and makes a quiet intimation of the position which he takes towards the stricter Judaism. But we notice, further, that the argument which underlies his verse is older than Justin Martyr; it is contained in the reply of the ancient Christian whom Justin consulted on the question of sabbath and circumcision; he calls it a Divine Word or Oracle (Qfiov Xoyov). It may, then, have come from some early Christian handbook; but, whether this be the case or not, it is a dictum of the first century ; for the very old man who talked with Justin was not inventing a solution for immediate perplexities, but giving him a rule which prevailed in the Church to which he belonged.
So it seems clear that the Ode is really Christian, and that its Christianity is of a very early type, to judge from the arguments involved in it.
ODE 17.
U was crov\ai£d_J3y_jiij^_Godjjnycrow^^ living: ^and I was justified in my Lord : my incorruptible salvation is He. ^I was loosed from vanity, and I was not condemned: ''■the choking bonds were cut off by her' hands : I received the face
' I.e. TO. a-TOLx^ta oiiK ipyet oidi aap^an^ei.
^ 6 ffeos TTjii aiTTjv SiolKijaw rod k6(t/wv o/iolus Kal iv t«i5ti; rp ijtiipq. ireTroiriTa KaOdirep iv rats aXXais aTdaats. ' Query his?
O.S. ,g and the fashion of a new person : and I walked in it and was saved ; ^and the thought of truth led me on. And I walked after it and did not wander: ^and all that have seen me were amazed : and I was regarded by them as a strange person : ''and He who knew and brought me up is the Most High in all His perfection. And He glorified me by His kindness, and raised my thought to the height of ''His"' truth. ^And from thence He gave me the way of His precepts' and I opened the doors that were closed, ^and brake in pieces the bars of iron ; but my iron melted and dissolved before me; i° nothing appeared closed to me: because X_WM-Jhe__doo^_of_everything. "And I went over all[m^ bondmen to loose them ; that I might not leave any man bound or binding: ^^and I imparted my knowledge without grudging: and my prayer was in my love: 13 and I sowed my fruits in hearts, and transformed them into myself: and they received my blessing and lived; ''*and they were gathered to me and were saved ; because they were to me as my own members and I was their head. Glory to thee our head, the Lord Messiah. Hallelujah.
Ode 17. This Psalm is one that we alluded to above in connexion with ' the crown of life ' that has been put upon the writer's head. That it is a Christian Psalm is evident : the Messiah or Christ is definitely referred to, and he is spoken of as being to believers in the relation of the head to the members. But we have again in this Psalm the peculiar change of personality: this time it comes so imperceptibly that we might be tempted to doubt the reality of the transition, if it were not for the. abruptness of the return from it at the close of the Psalm. The breaking of the bars of iron must surely refer to the Messiah" : it need not be an allusion to the descent into Hades^ ; for the problem of liberation of souls is stated in general terms : all men are to be free; there is to be no more one that binds and one that is bound. The transformation of believers into Christ's nature is also referred to; 'I transformed them into myself they became my own members.'
ODE 18.
1 My heart was lifted up in the love of the Most High and was enlarged : that I might praise Him for His^ name's sake.'
' lit. steps.
^ So Zahn : Wer anders soUte das sein als Jesus der Messias? ^ Batififol: Avec M. Harris, avec M. Harnack aussi, et contre M. Gunkel, je crois que ces vv. ne parlent pas de la descente du Christ aux enfers, * Cod. my.
members were strengthened that they might not fall from trength. ^ Sicknesses removed from my body, and it stood I Lord by His will. For His Kingdom is true. ■*© Lord, le sake of them that are deficient do not remove thy word me ! 5 Neither for the sake of their works do thou restrain me thy perfection 1 ^Let not the luminary be conquered cf.joh. tie darkness ; nor let truth flee away from falsehood, u wilt appoint me to victory ; our Salvation is thy
hand'. And thou wilt receive men from all quarters,
thou wilt preserve whosoever is held in evils : ^Thou art jod. falsehood and death* are not in thy mouth: '"'for /ill is perfection ; and vanity thou knowest not, "nor does ow thee. '^And error thou knowest not, ^^ neither does it ■thee. '*And ignorance appeared like a blind man'; and :he foam of the sea, ''^and they supposed of that vain thing it was something great ; ''^and they too came in likeness
and became vain ; and those have understood who have m and meditated ; '"''and they have not been corrupt in
imagination ; for such were in the mind of the Lord ; 1 they mocked at them that were walking in error ; ''^and
spake truth from the inspiration which the Most High :hed into them ; Praise and great comeliness^ to His name, elujah.
DE 1 8. The writer of this Psalm speaks as a prophet, who has n the Divine visitation, and has felt its effect both on mind and in the dispelling of error and the healing of disease. He prays continuance of the heavenly gift for the sake of the needy people lom he gives his message. He has evidently been regarded by as a light and foolish person, whose talk is like the foam on the of the sea. But there are others who are inspired like himself, ?ho mock at the unbelievers for their stupidity and ignorance. We the echo of some serious controversy upon religious matters, but ubject of the dispute is unknown. There are no definitely tian features in the Psalm.
V, To Victory may thy right hand bring our Salvation. Perhaps Falsehood and the like.
Ir by a slight change. And I appeared like a blind man without knowledge. 'er, like chaff, reading y^^cc^ (so Schulthess). Cf. Ode 29. 10. rk. fieyaXoTrpitreta.
" \" ODE T9.
■"A cup of milk was offered to me: and I drank it in the sweetness of the delight of the Lord. ^The Son is the cup, and He who was milked is the Father: ^and.the Holy Spirit milked Him: because His breasts were full, and it was necessary for Him that His milk should be sufficiently released ; ^and the^ Holy Spirit opened His' bosom and mingled the milk from the two breasts of the Father ; and gave the mixture to the world without th eir knowing: ^and they who receive in its fulness are the
/ones on the right hand. ^[The Spirit]^ opened the womb of the Virgin and she received conception and brought forth ; and the
.Virgin became a Mother with many mercies ; ^and she travailed and brought forth a Son, without incurring pain ; ^and because she was not sufficiently prepared^ and she had not sought a midwife, (for He brought her to bear), she brought forth, as if she were a man^ of her own will' ; ^and she brought Him forth openly, and acquired Him with great dignity, ''"and loved Him in His swaddling clothes", and guarded Him kindly, and showed Him in Majesty. Hallelujah.
Ode 19. Fantastic as this Psalm is, it might at first sight have been discarded as being out of harmony with the lofty spiritual tone of the rest of the collection. But it happens to be attested by Lactantius, and in the MSS. of his Divine Institutes we have not only a quotation from the Psalm in regard to the painless delivery of the Blessed Virgin, but we have also the number of the Psalm given, either as 19 or 20. So it was found in the collection known to Lactantius.
The harshness of the opening figure with regard to the bosom of the Father does not necessarily detach it from the rest of the collection ; for we have had already allusion to the breasts of God. Thus in Psalm 8, the Lord is represented as saying : ' My own breasts I prepared for them that they might drink my holy milk and live thereby.' The eighth and the nineteenth of our Psalms appear therefore to be connected together by a common authorship. For the figure of the breasts of God in the literature of the early Church we may refer to Clement of Alexandria who, in the Paedagogtis (lib. i. c. 6, p. 124), has
' MS. her bosom.
^ Lact. Div. Iiislit. iv. 12; Epit. Div. Iiistit. i;. 44. The original Greek was perhaps ^j-eKoXTriVS); ( = Aram. f]B3). FJemming: er umarmte .(?) •' Perhaps: and because there was not (pain) she was sufficient. ^ Batiffol : as it were a man : 7'eading ws dvBptiiiTov for ws avdpuvos. '' Batiffol : by the will [of God] : cf. Joh. i. 13 ^fc 6e\ri/i,aTos. " Reading »ir^\~kia2i for rilnScv^.^ a long discussion of the milk with which Christ's babes are nourished; Our nourishment, he says, is the Divine Word, it is ' the milk vf the Father, by which only the babes are fed.' Through the Word 'we have believed in God, to whose care-allaying breast we have fled.' And again (p. 125) 'to the babes, who seek for the Word, the breasts of the Father's kindness supply the milk' (toTs ^rjroCcrt vrjirtois toi' Aoyov ai
TraTpiKal T^s <jii\.av6puiTriai OrjXai )(Oprjyov(Ti to yaXd). So Clement
comes very near to the figurative language of the Ode, without its crudity of expression. The harshness of the figures employed and the tritheistic character of the theology may be paralleled in writers of the middle ages, whose repute in the Church is very wide. For Ls it not St Bernard who expounds the Evangelic statement that the' beloved disciple leaned on Jesus' breast in the words ' hausit de sinu Uriigeniff quod de paterno hauserat ille ' ? but if John imbibed from the breast of the Only-begotten what He had imbibed in like manner from the Father, we can only say that a very lofty theology is presented in a very harsh metaphor; but we cannot dismiss St Bernard as unworthy of further notice. And if it comes to tritheisrh, with which all the Christian Ages are more or less discoloured, where shall we find it more pronounced than in John Tauler's great sermon on fhe coming of the Bridegroom, where God the Father presides over the nuptials of Christ and the Church, and where the Holy Spirit acts as cup-bearer at the feast : a representation which is not so very remote from what we have in our Psalm, when wine has been substituted for milk. But I am afraid the matter is past apologetic. Further than this, we must admit that it is in many ways perplexing : the doctrine seems too highly evolved to allow us to reckon the Psalm to the same period of production as the rest of the book. When the writer speaks of milk from the two breasts of God, he evidently means the two covenants, or testaments. But that exegesis implies that the writer is no Marcionite rejecting an old covenant in the interests of a new, or else he wishes us to understand that he is no Jew, clinging to an old covenant to the neglect of the new covenant. And he seems to imply that the Christians whom he represents are distinguished from some other body of believers by being on the right hand of Christ. Is it the Jews from whom he wishes to be distinguished or is it the Marcionites? The Ode must be, at the earliest, a product of the second century. It is conceivable that the allusion to the Cup of Milk may cover an early Milk-Eucharist. Wine is nowhere mentioned in the religious language of our Psalter.
Turn in the next place to the account of the Virgin Birth, which follows the parable of the cup of milk, and can almost be detached as a separate composition. It certainly presents the miraculous conception and birth in a form which has already undergone considerable development : that • the birth was painless was a very
ii8 The odes of solomon
early corollary to the statement that it was supernatural; in the commentary of Ephrem on the Gospel there was a statement that ' it was indecent that she who had been a habitation of the Spirit should bring forth with pains and curses"; and this must have been a very early reflection upon the statement of the Virgin Birth. But our writer goes much further than that : he dispenses with the usual aids to child-birth, and introduces details for which we find parallels in the Apocryphal Gospels of the Infancy. And it is frankly impossible that the doctrine of the Miraculous Birth should have become so highly evolved in the first century. So that the doubts raised by the first part of the Psalm are reinforced by a study of its latter half. As far then as this Psalm is concerned, it seems as if we must refer it to a later date than the majority of those which we have been discussing. We detected something like polemical tendency in the first half of the composition, as if the writer turned aside to rebuke either Jews or Marcionites : if we might assume tendency in the latter half, it must be directed against persons who did not believe in the Virgin Birth. Palestine and especially trans-Jordanic Palestine would furnish opponents of all the classes mentioned ; so that, if we should be obliged to depress the date to the second century, we have no reason to remove the composition to another locality than that which has already been suggested.
ODE 20.
^ I am a priest of the Lord, and to Him I do priestly service : and to Him I offer the sacrifice of His thought. ^For His thought is not like '"the thought of the world nor '"the thought oP the flesh, nor like them that serve carnally. ^The sacrifice of the Lord is righteousness, and purity of heart and lips. ''■Present your reins before Him blamelessly : and let not thy heart do violence to heart, nor thy soul to soul. ^Thou shalt not acquire a stranger by '"the price of thy silver"'^ neither shalt thou seek to devour thy neighbour', ^neither shalt thou deprive him of the covering of his nakedness ^ '^But put on the grace of the Lord / without stint ; and come into His Paradise and make thee a Vgarland from its tree, ^and put it on thy head and be glad ; and recline on His rest, and glory shall go before thee, ^and thou shalt receive of His kindness and of His grace ; and thou shalt be flourishing" in truth in the praise of His holiness. Praise and honour be to His name. Hallelujah.
■■ J. R. Harris, Ephrem on the Gospel, p. 31.
^ Literally, by the blood of thy soul. I correct the Syriac, which is faulty, and' has repeated ' thy soul ' from the previous verse. i
' Cf. Exod. xxii. 24. ^ Exod. xxii. 26. ^ m^ f^t.
Ode 20; This Psalm is a mixture of ethics and of mysticism, of the golden rule and of the tree of life. The writer, whether Jew or Christian, is wholly detached from external ritual ; he calls himself a priest of God, but explains that this means the thinking of God's thought, and that the sacrifice he offers is the pure heart and life. He might be an Essene, one of that strange company who did not frequent the temple because they had purer sacrifices of their own. He drops a few ethical maxims, such as we find in the Pentateuch, protests against the owning, of slaves (another Essene tenet) and against taking the neighbour's garment in pledge. Then he leaves morals and is away in search of the honey-dew and milk of Paradise. There glory waits the soul that enters into the Divine rest.
It is a beautiful Psalm, but one could not say of it, taken by itself, that it was necessarily Christian ; though its affinities are with Psalms that are definitely Christian. For the sacrifices which the good man offers to God we may compare Lactantius, Div. histU. vi. 25 ' Donum est integritas animi ; sacrificium, laus et hymnus : si enim Deus non videtur, ergo iis rebus coli debet, quae non videntur. Nulla igitur alia religio est vera, nisi quae virtute et justitia constat.'
In Clem. Alex. Strom, v. 11 the sacrifice is an ascetic life.
ODE 21.
^My arms I lifted up to the Most High, even to the grace of the Lord : because He had cast off my bonds from me : and my Helper had lifted me up to His grace and to His salvation : ^and I put ofT darkness and clothed myself with light, ^and my soul acquired a body' free from sorrow or affliction or pains. "^And increasingly helpful to me was the thought of the Lord, and His fellowship in incorruption : ^and I was lifted up in His light; and I served before Him, ^and I became near to Him, praising and confessing Him; ^my heart ran over and was found in my mouth: and it arose upon my lips ; and the exultation of the Lord increased on my face, and His praise likewise. Hallelujah.
Ode 21. This Psalm is short, and somewhat obscure. The reason for this lies in the fact that the writer is assuming a mystical explanation of the ' coats of skin ' in the third chapter of Genesis, which are held to represent the ordinary human body which has replaced a body originally clad in light. See Ode 25 where the same idea of the acquisition of a Light-Body, and of its freedom from pain is more definitely expressed- It is impossible to decide definitely from the reading of the
1 lit. theie became members to my soul, etc.
Psalm whether it is Christian or Jewish : if the writer was a Christian, he was a very joyous Christian ; if he was a Jew, he knew the salvation of Israel that comes out of Zion, and had the dew of Heaven upon his vineyard.
ODE 22.
■■He who brought me down from on high, also brought me up from the regions below ; ^and He who gathers together the things that are betwixt is He also who cast me down : ^He who scattered my enemies and my adversaries: *He who gave me authority over bonds that I might loose them ; ^He that overthrew by my hands the dragon with seven heads^ : and thou hast set me over his roots that I might destroy his seed. ^Thou wast there and didst help me, and in every place thy name was a rampart to mel '^Thy right hand destroyed his wicked poison'*; and thy hand levelled the way for those who believe in thee : ^and thou didst choose them from the graves and didst separate them from the dead. ^Thou didst take dead bones and didst cover them with bodies ; ^°they were motionless, and thou didst give '"them"' energy for life. "Thy way was without corruption, and thy face ; thou didst bring* thy world to corruption : that everything might be dissolved^ and then renewed, ''^and that the foundation for everything might be thy rock" : and on it thou didst build thy Kingdom ; and it became the dwelling-place of the saints. Hallelujah.
Ode 2 2. In this Psalm we seem to be nearer to the known Psalter of Solomon than elsewhere. There is a pointed reference to a dragon with seven heads whose seed is to be destroyed, and whose wicked poison has found its antidote in the Divine power. We think at once of the description of Pompey as the great dragon in the second of the published Psalms of Solomon. But dragons generally are difiScult to identify. Who, for instance, is the dragon in Ps. Ixxiii. (Ixxiv.) 14 whose heads are broken ? Is it Tiamat the Babylonian cosmic monster or the Leviathan whom the faithful are to eat in the last day, or is it a real person ? In Ezekiel xxix. 3 it is Pharaoh of Egypt that is called the great dragon in the midst of the waters, but it might not be so easy to say which Pharaoh : any political monster may be a beast or a dragon :
1 Cf. Apoc. xii. 3: and Pistis Sophia: see Introd. pp. 61 — 63.
^ Rea3ing~i^'\Si with the Coptic, so Diettrich and others.
' Copt, the poison of the slanderer.
* Following a correction of Flemming.
° Cf. 2 Pet. iii. II. e Cf. Matt. xvi. 18.
so in the present case we have to hunt around among the fallen gods to find him. There has evidently been a great slaughter of Jews for the writer uses the imagery of the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel, in order to show that God can raise up His people from the gates of death : the ruin of all things becomes the occasion for a new Kingdom founded upon the rock.
The Psalm is one of those which are transferred to the pages of the Pistis Sophia where it is recited by Matthew from an Ode of Solomon. It is suggested by Ryle and James that the opening sentences are of a Gnostic character, from the allusion to things above and things below and things between. But the whole tenor of our Psalms is foreign to Gnosticism, and I do not see any reason to introduce it as a factor in the interpretation. If the Psalm is really the expression of some person triumphing over a fallen tyrant, or of Israel personified in such a situation, we have to search the political crises for such a time of trial and recovery. It is not easy to find the solution. The Hadrianic wars are too late, and they were followed by no recovery on the part of the Jews in Palestine. Antiochus Epiphanes is too early, in every respect. The next cases to examine are those of Pompey and Titus. Pompey is already known as the dragon, and the destruction of the dragon is historical. Titus on the other hand is a triumphant dragon without a subsequent collapse : nor does there seem to be in his case a sufficient recovery of Judaism to justify the triumphant language of the Odist. The statement that God levelled the way for those who believe in Him seems to imply a return from exile, in greater or less degree ; but this also is not easy to justify from a historical point of view. [Bernard thinks the dragon is to be explained by Patristic gnosis of the defeat of the devil in the waters of Baptism, as in Cyril Cat. iii. 1 1 and the Baptismal rituals. I add to Dr Bernard's references one from a MS. of Moses Bar Kepha on Baptism, in my own collection: 'Our Lord was baptized that he might trample on the head of the spiritual dragon that lurked in the water etc' The passage has been borrowed by Bar Salibi, Comni. in Matt. p. 98. See Preface to this edition.]
ODE 23.
''Joy is of the saints ! and who shall put it on, but they alone .-" ^ Grace is of the elect! and who shall receive it except those who trust in it from the beginning.' ^Love is of the elect ! And who shall put it on except those who have possessed it from the beginning .'' *Walk ye in the knowledge of the Most High without grudging : to His exultation and to the perfection of His knowledge. ^And His thought was like a
o. s. 16
.letter; His will descended from on high, and it was sent like an
*" arrow which is violently shot from the bow : ^and many hands rushed to the letter to seize it and to take and read it : ^and it escaped their fingers and they were affrighted at it and at the seal that was upon it. ^ Because it was not permitted to them to loose its seal : for the power that was over the seal was greater
" than they. ^But those who saw it went after the letter that they might know where it would alight, and who should read it and who should hear it. ■'°But a wheel received it and came over it : 11 and there was with it a sign of the Kingdom and of the Govern— ment : ^^and everything which tried to move the wheel it mowed
- and cut down : i^and it gathered the multitude of adversaries, andbfidge,^' the rivers and crossed over and rooted up many
~ foFestsand^made a broad path. i^The head went down to the feet, for down to the feet ran the wheel, and (that which was a sign upon it. ■'s-phe letter was one of command, for there were included^ in 'it all districts ; ^^and there was seen at its [?] head, the head which was revealed, even the Son of Truth from the Most High Father, "and He inherited and took possession of everything. And the thought of the many was brought to nought, ■■Sand all the apostates hasited and fled away. And those who persecuted and"Vere enragefi became extinct.
■"9 And the letter was a great volume^ which was wholly written by the finger of God : ^^and the name of the Father was on it, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, to rule for ever and ever. Hallelujah.
Ode 23. This is the most difficult of all the Psalms in the collection, and I have almost despaired of being able to explain it. It describes the descent from heaven of a sealed document, with a message from God in it. The description is something like that of the little sealed book in the Apocalypse, which no one can open, except the triumphant Lamb^. If the allusion in the Apocalypse is to some previous document which the author has incorporated, perhaps the same thing may be true here. Some book may have been published, claiming Divine Authority. What can it have been ? A Gospel ? An Apocalypse ? It appeared suddenly, unexpectedly, and met with opposition rather than with universal acceptance. It came from the head and it went down to the feet. If we may use the language of a later Psalm in which the saints
1 lit. covered. ^ lit. gathered. ^ Or tablet.
^ Another parallel would be the letter sent from the home-land in Bardesanes' Hymn of the Soul in the Acts of Thomas.
in Hades are called the feet of Christ, we should say that the mysterious little book conveyed a message to those below from one above, and that it interpreted the region below to include the invisible world. Was the little book then a 'Descensus ad Inferos'? It is impossible to decide with certainty. It contained some pronounced statement concerning the Trinity, for we are expressly told that it had the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost upon it. When any one writes in cipher, about a document which itself appears to have been written in cipher, for that is the natural meaning of a sealed book, we ought not to be surprised if it is not quite obvious, two thousand years later, what the writer meant or to what he was referring.
ODE 24.
■■The Dove fluttered over the Messiah, because He was her head ; and she sang over Him and her voice was heard : ^and the inhabitants were afraid and the sojourners were moved : ^the birds dropped their wings, and all creepingthings died in their holes : and the abysses were opened 'which ha3^ -been, hidden; and they cried to "the Lord like „women in , travail): *and^o|food was given to themp^because(k did_not belong to them]; ^^and they sealed up) the abysses\_with the seal of)the Lord^- ^And they perished, in the thought, those that had existed from ancient times^; ^for they were corrupt from the beginning ; and the end of their corruption was life* : ''and every one of them that was imperfect perished : for it was not possible to give '"them"' a word that they might remain : ^and the Lord destroyed the imaginations of all them that had not the truth with them. ^For they who in their hearts were lifted up were deficient in wisdom, and so they were rejected, because the truth was not with them. ■'°For the Lord disclosed His way, and spread abroad His grace : and those who understood if^, know His holiness. Hallelujah.
'"' Or perhaps, because that which was non-existent belonged to them.
2-2 U.-S. ; unci es versanken die Abgriinde in der Versenkung des Herrn.
'■"^ Fl. : und es gingen zugrunde durch diesen Gedanken sie, die vorher existiert hatten.
U.-S. : und es gingen durch jenen Gedanken die zugrunde, die vor alters gewesen waren.
*■ Or, was the life of all; and whatever of them, etc. ^ sc. the way.
Ode 24. The Psalm opens with a reference to the Baptism of the Lord, when the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a Dove on the head of the Messiah. The occasion was one of great dread to all created things, man and beast and creeping things shared the terror. The abysses, personified as living creatures, cried out in pain. They were sealed up and ended, as belonging to the order of non-existent things. Men also whose hearts were proud were rejected, when the way of the Lord was revealed and His holiness known.
Li this Psalm with its reference to the abysses, and the things which ' are not and are brought to nought, we seem to be nearer to the world of Gnostic ideas : but it would be difficult to say that any of the catchwords or peculiar terms of Gnosticism are here. If we are right in referring the Psalm to the Baptism of the Lord, we are only furnishing one more proof of the extraordinary prominence given to that event in the early Church, for which it was the beginning of the Gospel : and we need not be surprised that the event should be treated in many ways, both theological and hymnological.
If it is not the Baptism that is alluded to, it must be the Crucifixion, and in that case we must assume an unknown incident connected with the Crucifixion, comparable with the appearance of the Dove at the Baptism. In that case the plaint of the abysses is another allusion to the descent into Hades.
But there is a special reason why I feel sure that the Baptism must be the incident to which reference is made : I think we can say that a written Gospel has here been employed, but not a Canonical Gospel. It will be remembered that Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho, c. 88, takes his account of the Baptism from a source which is either uncanonical : or, if canonical, is interpolated. When Jesus went down into the water, a fire was kindled in the Jordan, and when He came up from the water, the Holy Spirit, like a dove, fluttered upon Him (eirt- TTTrjvac ETT avTov (US ■Trepiarrepav to ayiov Trvtvfia) : and Justin says expressly that this was recorded by the Apostles of our Christ (eypaij/av ol diroa-ToXoL avTov tovtov tov XpcaTOv ijixuiv). This ' fluttering down ' of the dove is very near indeed to the language of our Ode. Its ultimate origin is probably to be found in the language of Gen. i. 3.
It is well known that the account of the Baptism by Justin has been the centre of serious controversy, on account of the apocryphal expansions of the narrative, especially the reference to the Fire which appeared at the Jordan : and it has been argued, reasonably enough, that Justin cannot have used our Canonical Gospels, or at least must have used an uncanonical Gospel with them. The same difficulty turns up in the descent of the Dove, for the word iimrT-^vai, which recurs in Justin, must come from the written source which the author is using. A reference to Resch, Aussercanonische Parallele zu Luc. p. 15, will show the wide diffusion of the account from which Justin is working'- The word iirnrT-^vai can be traced in Celsus and in Origen and in the seventh book of Sibylhnes, as well as in a number of Latin authors. The inference, therefore, is that a very early written Gospel is responsible for the detail : and it is this early Gospel that has been employed by the writer of the Ode. We conclude, then, that the reference is to the Baptism and that it is taken from a lost primitive Gospel. [If the Dove sang the words ' Thou art my beloved Son,' the Holy Spirit must be regarded as the mother of Jesus as in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. The same belief is involved in Ode 36.]
There is, however, a possible suggestion that the Psalm may refer to the Descent into Hades, and to the Baptism, as events happening in close connexion. I mean that it is not out of the region of reasonable criticism to suggest that in the earliest times the Baptism of Christ was the occasion of His triumph over Hades. We find suspicious hints of this in the Descensus ad Inferos. Thus in c. xx^ we have a statement made by Seth concerning his father Adam that he will receive the oil of healing from Paradise in the last days : ' veniet enim amantissimus dei filius de caelis in munduni, et baptizabitur a Johanne in Jordane flumine, et tunc recipiet pater tuus Adam de hoc oleo misericordiae et omnes credentes in eum.'
And in c. xxi we find Jesus talking to John the Baptist concerning his Descent into Hades: 'Ego Johannes vocem patris de caelo super eum intonantem audivi et proclamantem. Hie est filius meus dilectus, in quo mihi bene complacuit. Ego ab eo responsum accept quia ipse descensurus esset ad inferos J
Here are two curious references connecting the Baptism and the Descent into Hades. And the question arises whether this 24th Ode may not look in the same direction. The evidence is, of course, inadequate, but the statement of the case may perhaps lead to the discovery of fresh evidence in the same direction.
ODE 25.
U was rescued from my bonds and unto thee, my God, I fled : 2 for thou art the right hand of my Salvation and my helper. ^Thou hast restrained those that rise up against me, *and I shall see him' no more : because thy face was with me, which saved me by thy grace. ^But I was despised and rejected in the eyes of many : and I was in their eyes like lead*,
1 See Introd. pp. 84, 85..
" Tischendorf, Ev. Apoc. p. 425. ' /. them.
■* Cf. Sap. Sol. ii. 16 tli Kip5t\Kav i^oylaBrnn.en aiiTif.
^and strength was mine from thyself and help. '^Thou didst set me a lamp^ at my right hand and at my left : and in me there shall be nothing that is not bright^: ^and I was clothed with the covering of thy Spirit, and thou didst remove from me my raiment of skin^; ^for thy right hand lifted me up and removed sickness from me: ''°and I became mighty in the truth, and holy by thy righteousness ; and all my adversaries were afraid of me; ''^and I became admirable by the name of the Lord, and was justified by His gentleness, and His rest is for ever and ever. Hallelujah.
Ode 25. In this Psalm we are back again in the region of personal experience, and there is no allusion to any definite historical event. The writer, whether Christian or Jew, has been brought out of spiritual bondage into liberty : he has had to face contempt and scorn, but the Lord has filled him with brightness and covered him with beauty, and given him health of mind and body : his enemies have turned back, and his portion is with the justified saints of the Most High. It is possible that this Psalm may be meant to express the experience of the Messiah, emerging from His conflicts into victory : in that case it need not be the Christian conception of the Messiah, but it might conceivably be such a human representation as we find in the Psalms of the Pharisees {e.g. Ps. 17, which is our Ps. 60). But our collection, as to its first block of Psalms, is certainly of a later period than the Pharisee Psalms, so we ought to hesitate before ascribing the same Messianic ideas to the two parts of the hymnal. For the allusion to the 'coat of skin,' see Introd. pp. 66 — 70, and cf. Ode 21.
ODE 26.
T poured out praise to the Lord, for I am His : ^and I will speak His holy song, for my heart is with Him. ^For His harp is in my hands, and the Odes of His rest shall not be silent. *I will cry unto Him from my whole heart : I will praise and exalt Him with all my members. ^For from the east and even to the west is His praise : ^and from the south and even to the north is the confession of Him : ^and from the top of the hills to their utmost bound is His perfection. ^Who can write the Psalms of the Lord, or who read them? ^or who can train his
' Ps. cxxxii. 17. 2 [{/_ ];gj,j_
" Cp. Clem, Alex. Paed. i. 6, p. ri? rrji ra/clas iKSvirifi^voi. t6i> x'tmi/o and Gen. iii. 21.
soul for life, that his soul may be saved, ''°or who can rest on the Most High, so that with His mouth he may speak ? "Who is able to interpret the wonders of the Lord? '"^For he(who could interpret "woufclj be dissolved and (would become^ that which is interpretec^. "'^Fofll suffices to know and to rest= : for in rest the singers stand, ^*like a river which has an abundant fountain, and flows to the help of them that seek it'. Hallelujah.
Ode 26. This beautiful song of praise recounts the goodness and greatness of the Lord. All within the writer magnifies the great Name, but all within is insufficient to tell out what waits to be told. His praise is widespread to the utmost bound of earth and beyond the bound of the everlasting hills. The creature cannot express God's praise perfectly ; if he could, he would be no longer a creature : he would be the Word, and not the interpreter of the Word. So it suffices to know and to rest, while at our feet the river of grace rolls on, an unchanging flood :
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.
It is impossible to say whether the Psalm, as detached from the rest of the collection, is Jewish or Christian.
ODE 27.
■■I stretched out my hands and sanctified my Lord*: ^for the extension of my hands is His sign : ^and my expansion is the upright tree {or cross).
Ode 27. This tiny Psalm is Christian, and is based upon the early Christian fondness for finding the Cross everywhere in the outward world : in the handle of the labourer's plough, in the mast and yards of the seaman's ship ; and in the human body, when the man stands erect in the act of prayer with outstretched arms. There can, therefore, be no doubt that this is a Christian Psalm, and the figurative language which it employs is characteristic of the second century and not unknown in the first century. Justin Martyr, for example, sees the
' Cf. Lactantius, Div. Inst, praef. : 'there would be no difference between God and man, if human thought could reach to the counsels and arrangements of that eternal Majesty.'
^ Cf. Clem. Alex. Paed, i. 6 (p. 115) wan t] /ih yvSxn^ iv t$ (paricrfiaTi.- to Si ir^pas Tijs yvLiiaeus, i} dvAiravai^.
' Cf. Lactantius, Dip. Inst. iv. 30 'Si quis aquam vitae cupiat haurire, non ad detritos lacus deferatur, qui non habent venam, sed uberrimum Dei noverit fontem, quo irrigatus perenni luce potiatur.'
* U.-S. : und heiligte [sie] meinem Herrn.
Cross, in the outspread arms of Moses in the battle against Amalek ; but so does Barnabas also : and the same thought is involved in the conclusion of the Teaching of the Apostles, where an outspread cross in the sky is one of the signs of the Advent and answers to the Sign of the Son of Man in Matthew. So it is very likely that the figure in our Psalm is one of the oldest forms of Christian symbolic teaching. We shall find it used again in the 42nd Psalm which may, therefore, be by the same hand as the present one : otherwise it would be an imitation of it.
Those who care to have a Gnostic example of the use of this widespread Christian figure, will find one in Schmidt, Unhekamtes altgnostisches Werk (I.e. p. 336): 'Die Haare seines Gesichtes sind die Zahl der ausseren Welten, und die Ausbreitung seiner Hande 1st die Offenbarung des Krauzes.'
ODE 28.
^ As the wrings of doves over their nestlings ; and the mouth of their nestlings towards their mouths, ^so also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart: ^my heart is delighted and exults: like the babe who exults^ in the womb of his mother^: ■*! believed ; therefore I was at rest ; for faithful is He in whom I have believed : ^He has richly blessed me and my head is with Him : and the sword shall not divide me from Him, nor the scimitar; ^for I am ready before destruction comes: and I have been set on His immortal' pinions : ^and immortal life has(come forth and given me to drink\ and from that life is the spirit within me, and it cannot die, for it lives. ^They who saw me marvelled at me, because I was persecuted, and they supposed that I was swallowed up : for I seemed to them as one of the lost ; ^and my oppression became my salvation ; and I was their reprobation because there was no zeal in me*; ''° because I did good to every man I was hated, ''^and they came round me like mad dogs", who ignorantly attack their masters, ''^for their thought is corrupt and their understanding perverted. ''^But I was carrying water in my right hand', and their bitterness^ I
1 Or, leaps. '- Cf. Luke i. 41.
' lit. pinions without corruption.
■• Reading , 'n"" t^. F1. : has kissed me. So U.-S.
^ Perhaps because I was not a Zealot. ^ Ps. xxii. 16.
' Query '"that I might put out their flame.''
8 As water is plural, Fl. would refer the bitterness to it; but Zahn says: 'das pluralische Suffix an dem Worte Bitterkeit ist selbstverstandlich nicht mit Fl. auf das Wasser zu beziehen.'
endured by my sweetness; ^*anfd"I did not perish, for I was not their brother nor was my birth like theirs, ^^and they sought for my death and did not find it : for I was older than the memorial of them ; ^^and vainly did they make attack upon me^ and those who, without reward, came after me" : ''^they sought to destroy the memorial of him who was before them : ''^for the thought of the Most High cannot be anticipated ; and His heart is superior to all wisdom. Hallelujah.
Ode 28. This exquisite Psalm has the music in it of the ' Quis separabit?' of Romans viii. Nor sword nor scimitar divide the believer from the Lord. In some respects the Psalm appears to be Messianic in a Christian sense, for the writer concludes his exulting strain over enemies who had come round him like. mad dogs and had left him for dead, with the remark that it was not possible for them tO blot out the memory of one who existed before them, and who was of a different birth from theirs. He also speaks of their attacks as having been directed against his followers as well as himself Perhaps, then, the writer is speaking, in these verses, as if in the person of Christ.
ODE 29.
■•The Lord is my hope : in Him I shall not be confounded. 2 For according to His praise He made me, and according to His goodness even so He gave unto me: ^and according to His mercies He exalted me : and according to His excellent beauty He set me on high : *and brought me up out of the depths of Sheol : and from the mouth of death He drew me: ^and thou didst lay my enemies low, and He justifiedjri.e by His grace. ^For I believed in the Lord's Messiah' : and it appeared to me that He is the Lord ; ^and He showed him'' His sign : and He led me by His light, and gave me the rod of His power; ^that I might subdue the imaginations of the peoples ; and the power of the men of might to bring them low : ^to make war by His word, and to take victory by His power. '■"And the Lord overthrew my enemy by His word ; and he became like the stubble which the wind carries away; "and I gave praise to the Most High because He exalted ^me'^ His servant and the son of His handmaid. Hallelujah.
1 The margin suggests, slaughtering me ; i.e. reading ■.^v^^^^ for the marginal .1^X1^} (cast lots).
* Or, who came after me. To no purpose they sought, etc. ^ Or, Christ. * Query me ?
o. s. 17
Ode 29. Some one wrote this Psalm, who was a follower of the Christ and had recognised Him to be the Lord. Out of great conflicts he had been brought into the place of victory: his enemies had become like the straw before the wind : he has passed through deep distresses, which he speaks of figuratively as the pains of Sheol and the gates of death. But for the reference to the Lordship of the Messiah and to faith in Him, we might have imagined this Psalm to belong to the ancient Psalter: we shall be justified in regarding it as a Judaeo- Christjan composition.
ODE 30.
^Fill ye waters for yourselves from the living fountain of the Lord, for it is opened to you : ^and come all ye thirsty, and take the draught; and rest by the fountain of the Lord. ^For fair it is and pure and gives rest to the soul. Much more pleasant are its waters than honey ; *and the honeycomb of bees is not to be compared with it. ^ For it flows forth from the lips of the Lord and from the heart of the Lord is its name. ^And it came infinitely and invisibly: and until it was set^ in the midst they did not know it : '^ blessed are they who have drunk therefrom and have found rest thereby. Hallelujah.
Ode 30. The Psalm is an invitation to the thirsty, somewhat in the manner of Isaiah Iv. The water of life, which here is explained to be the teaching of the Lord, is flowing from an open fountain, whose waters, to use the language of the 19th Psalm in the canonical Psalter, are 'sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.' The Ode is not so far removed from Old Testament thought and expression that we can positively call it a Christian composition. The writer is fond of the similitude of honey and the honeycomb : we find it, for instance, again in our fortieth Ode, where we have it for the opening similitude :
'Like the honey that drops from the comb of the bees so is my
hope on thee, O God.'
But this Psalm, also, appears, at first sight, to be destitute of specific Christian colouring.
The fountain, however, whose waters come without limit, and invisibly, corresponds to the unexpected appearance of Christ and Christ's teaching in the world, when there stood in the midst One whom they knew not.
1 lit. given.
ODE 31.
''The abysses were dissolved before the Lord : and darkness was destroyed by His appearance : '^error went astray and perished at His hand : ^and folly found no path to walk in\ and was submerged by the truth of the Lord. ^He opened His mouth and spake grace and joy : and He spake a new song of praise to His name : *and He lifted up His voice to the Most High, and offered to Him the sons that were with Him^. ^And His face was justified, for thus His holy Father had given to Him. ^Come forth, ye that have been afflicted and receive joy, a-nd possess your souls by His grace ; and take to you immortal life. '^And they made me a debtor when I rose up, me who had not been a debtor^ : and they divided my spoil, though nothing was due to them. ^But I endured and held my peace and was silent*, as if not moved by them. ^But I stood unshaken like a firm rock which is beaten by the waves and endures. '"'And I bore their bitterness for humility's sake: ''''in order that I might redeem my people, and inherit it, and that I might not make void my promises to the fathers', to whom I promised the salvation of their seed. Hallelujah.
Ode 31. The Psalm is Messianic, and records how the Christ fulfilled the promises which, in a pre-existent state, He had made to the fathers. He has closed the abysses and banished error and vanity. 'With a new song in His mouth. He appears before God with the children whom God has given Him. His similitude is the rock against which the waves had beaten in vain. It stands firm, whether the waves advance or retire. Here Christian speech comes near to the language of the Stoics. One thinks of Marcus Aurelius, and his advice to ' be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it".' One thinks also of Ignatius, and his advice 'to stand steady like the beaten anvil'.' For the opening sentences about the destroying of the abysses, we must compare the language of the 24th Psalm of our collection, where the abysses cry out in pain at the time of the Baptism of the Lord. These Psalms are by the same Christian hand.
'~^ lit. and folly, there was given her no path,
* lit. in His hands. Cf. Is. viii. 18; Heb. ii. 13.
^ 2 Cor. V. 21. Perhaps we should translate 'a criminal.'
■* I Pet. ii. 23. ^ Rom. XV. 8; Luke i. 55.
6 Medit. iv. 49. ' ad Polyc. 3.
ODE 32.
^To the blessed there is joy from their hearts, and light from Him that dv/ells in them : ^and words from the Truth, who was self-originate' : for He is strengthened by the holy power of the Most High : and He is unperturbed for ever and ever. Hallelujah.
Ode 32. Joy, Light, Inspiration, Strength and Calmness belong to the believer through Him that dwells within.
ODE 33.
■'Again Grace ran and forsook corruption, and came down in Him to bring it to nought ; '^and He destroyed perdition from before Him, and devastated all its order ; ^and He stood on a lofty summit^ and uttered His voice from one end of the earth to the other : *and drew to Him all those who obeyed Him ; and there did not appear as it were an evil person, ^but there stood a perfect virgin' who was proclaiming and calling and saying, ^O ye sons of men^ return ye, and ye daughters of men, come ye : ''and forsake the ways of that corruption and draw near unto me, and I will enter into you, and will bring you forth from perdition, ^and make you wise in the ways of truth : that you be not destroyed nor perish : ^hear ye me and be redeemed. For the grace of God I am telling among you : and by my means you shall be redeemed and become blessed. ^°I am your judge; and they who have put me on shall not be '^^injured : but they shall possess the new world that is incorrupt : "my chosen ones walk in me, and my ways I will make known to them that seek me, and I will make them trust in my name. Hallelujah.
Ode 33. Apparently this Psalm is Messianic, though Christ is not named. He must be the one that rises from the dead and sends forth his triumphant voice to the ends of the earth. A virgin also stands and proclaims, who must be either the Divine Wisdom (the language is
' Gk. aiToipvrii, as in the oracular reply to the enquiry as to the Divine Nature, avTo<t>vTjs, ASldaKTOs, A|in)Ta)p, d.(TTV<p4\iKTos. See Lact. De Div. Inst. i. 7. ^ Prov. viii. i. ■*. PrOv. viii. 1. * Prov. viii. 4, very like that of the eighth chapter of Proverbs) or the Church^ She promises salvation by Divine Grace and immortality in a new world to those that walk in her ways.
ODE 34.
^No way is hard where there is a simple heart. '^Nor is there any wound where the thoughts are upright : ^nor is there any storm in the depth of the illuminated thought : *where one is surrounded on every side by beauty, there is nothing that is divided. ^The likeness of what is below is that which is above ; for everything is above : what is below is nothing but the imagination of those that are without knowledge. ^ Grace has been revealed for your salvation. Believe and live and be saved. Hallelujah.
Ode 34. All the hard things are easy, where the soul itself is right : no storms invade the hidden place of communion with God. Evil itself becomes unreal, and that which is beneath exists not before that which is above.
ODE 35.
^The dew of the Lord in quietness He distilled upon me: ^and the cloud of peace He caused to rise over my head, which guarded me continually; ^it was to me for salvation: everything was shaken and they were affrighted ; *and there came forth from them a smoke and a judgment; and I was keeping quiet in the order of the Lord : ^more than shelter was He to me, and more than foundation. ^And I was carried like a child by his mother : ^and He gave me milk, the dew of the Lord^ : ^and I grew great by His bounty, and rested in His perfection, ^and I spread out my hands in the lifting up of my soul : and I was made right with the Most High, and I was redeemed with Him. Hallelujah.
Ode 35. The dew lies on the branch of the man that sings this Psalm : Divine Peace guards him like a sheltering cloud. The Lord is his sure defence in the day of evil. Mother's arms are his place and mother's milk his portion. ' No cradled child more softly lies than I : Come soon, eternity.'
' Or Prov. i. 20. Cf. Clem. Alex. Paed. i. 6 (p. 123) tiXa. Sk n6vri ylverai /i'^rrip JlapOhof 'EKK\ri<riap i/ioi ipl\oi> aiiTrjv xaXeTv. See also Introd. p. 77. 2~^ Or, and the dew of the Lord gave me milk. U.-S.
ODE 36.
1 1 rested on the Spirit of the Lord : and f'the Spirif raised me on high : ^and made me stand on my feet in the height of the Lord, before His perfection and His glory, while I was praising '"Him'i by the composition of His songs, ^rj^g Spirif brought me forth before the face of the Lord : and, although a son of man, Ijwas _ named Jhe Illuminate, the Son of jjod; "^whiie I praised amongst the praising ones, and great was I amongst the mighty ones. ^For according to the greatness of the Most High, so He made me: and like His own newness He renewed me ; and He anointed me from His own perfection: ^and I became one of His neighbours ; and my mouth was opened, like a cloud of dew; ''and my heart poured out as it were a gushing stream of righteousness, ^and 'my access ^to Him"'' was in peace ; and I was established by the spirit of His government. Hallelujah.
Ode 36. This is a perplexing Psalm, from a theological point of view. It is almost impossible to determine whether the Psalmist is speaking in his own name, or in that of the Messiah ; or whether it is an alternation of one with the other. It seems almost a necessity, when the Holy Spirit is spoken of as a Mother, that the offspring should be the Son of God : and that such was the theology of certain early behevers we know from the fragment of the Ebionite Gospel, in which Christ speaks of being taken by the hair of His head by His mother, the Holy Spirit, and carried to Mount Tabor. If this be the right interpretation, then the Illuminated Son of God is Christ. But the latter part of the Psalm seems to be in too low a strain for this interpretadon : to be one of those who are near to God is certainly not orthodox theology, though it may conceivably be Adoptionist : and the heart that pours out righteousness and makes its offering in peace seems rather to be the language that describes one of the pious in Israel.
ODE 37.
■■ I stretched out my hands to my Lord : and to the Most High I raised my voice : ^and I spake with the lips of my heart; and He heard me, when my voice reached Him^ : ^His answer came to me, and gave me the fruits of my labours ; "^and it gave me rest by the grace of the Lord. Hallelujah. .
'-' Or perhaps, my offering. 2 /;/. fell to Him.
Ode 37. A colourless Psalm, something like one of the shorter and more elementary Psalms of the Hebrew Psalter. The writer has cried to God : his prayer has been heard : his heart has appealed, and an answer has come. His work has been followed by Divine blessing.
ODE 38.
■■I went up to the light of truth as if into a chariot: '^and the Truth took me and led me: and carried me across pits and guileys; and from the rocks and the waves it preserved me: ^and it became to me a haven of Salvation : and set me on the arms of immortal life : ^and it went with me and made me rest, and suffered me not to wander, because it was the Truth; ^and I ran no risk, because I walked with Him ; ®and I did not make an error in anything because I obeyed the Truth. '^For Error flees away from it, and meets it not : but the Truth proceeds in the right path, and ^whatever I did not know, it made clear to me, all the poisons of error, and the plagues of death which they think to be sweetness: ^and I saw the destroyer of destruction, when the bride who is corrupted is adorned; and the bridegrQojTi who %^'''- ■''''' '^ corrupts and is corrupted ; ''"and I asked the Truth, ' Who are these ?'; and He said to me. This is the deceiver and the error: ijoh. 7 "and theyvare alike in ):he beloved and(iri)his bride : and they lead astray and corrupt the '"whole"' world : '"^and they invite many to the banquet, ''^and give them to drink^o.f the wine of their intoxication, and remove^ their wisdom and knowledge, and '"so they ' make them without intelligence ; ^^and then they leave them; and then these go about like madmen corrupting : seeing that they are without heart, nor do they seek for it. '^And I was made wise so as not to fall into the hands of the deceiver; and I congratulated myself because the Truth went with me, ''^and I was established and lived and was redeemed, ^^and my foundations were laid on the hand of the Lord : because He established me. ^^For He set the root and watered it and fixed it and blessed it; and its fruits are for ever. ''^It struck deep and sprung up and spread out, and was full and enlarged; 2°and the Lord alone was glorified in His planting and in His husbandry: by His care and by the blessing of His Jips, '^^by the beautiful planting of His right hand^ : and by the
1 /zA they vomit up. '' Is. Ix. 2j, discovery^ of His planting, and by the thought of His mind. Hallelujah.
Ode 38. The Psalm opens with a beautiful description of the power of the truth over those that surrender to it. Truth becomes to them guidance in all difificult and rough and dangerous places. But the Psalm is not merely a Psalm of the Truth, it is a Psalm concerning Truth and Error. They appear to stand like Christ and Antichrist. We are tempted to believe that the writer had at one time been brought face to face with some special outbreak of erroneous teaching, one of the many Antichrists of the first century. There are some things which suggest Simon Magus and his Helena, who went about to mislead the faithful. It is, however, useless to try and define the situation more closely. Whatever form the attractions of Truth and Error took to the Psalmist, he tells us that he escaped the Circean blandishments, and sailed past the Sirens. His foundations were in the holy mountain ; his growth was in God and of God. God planted, God watered, God gave the increase. The Father was the husbandman.
ODE 39.
^ Great rivers are the power of the Lord^: ^and they carry headlong those who despise Him : and entangle their paths : ''and they sweep away their fords, and catch their bodies and destroy their lives. ^For they are more swift than lightning and more rapid, and those who cross them in faith are not moved; ^and those who walk on them without blemish shall not be afraid. ^For the sign in them is the Lord ; and the sign is the way of those who cross in the name of the Lord ; ^put on, therefore, the name of the Most High, and know Him : and you shall cross without danger, for the rivers will be subject to you. ^The Lord has bridged them by His word ; and He walked and crossed them on foot^: ^and His footsteps stand '"firm'^ on the water, and are not injured ; they are as firm as a tree that is truly set up. ''°And the waves were lifted up on this side and on that, but the footsteps of our Lord Messiah stand firm and are not obliterated and are not defaced. "And a way has been appointed for those who cross after Him and for those who adhere to' the course of faith in Him and worship His name\ Hallelujah.
1 Or perhaps, reading T^d\om— it, with Schulthess, 'by the splendour of His planting.'
2 Is. xliii. 1. ^ Matt. xiv. 25.
^ 1 follow the correction of Flemming. * Cf. Matt. xiv. 38.-
Ode 39. When I first read this Psahin I thoUght that we had another historical landmark, in the allusion to some great accident connected with the sudden rise of one of the great Oriental rivers. But upon reflection, I have come to the conclusion , that the writer is speaking of disasters generally, under the natural figure of a rising and rushing river. In such times of flood the unbeHevers find no footing and are swept away : believers on the other hand walk the waters like their Lord and with their Lord. Perhaps there is a reference to Isaiah xliii. 2, 'When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee.' The same promise appears to be quoted in Psalms of Solomon vi. 5, 'When he passeth through rivers, yea, through the surge of the sea, he is not affrighted.' Their feet stand firm where His feet had stood unmoved. Here the background of the teaching is the account of our Lord's walking on the sea of Galilee. The reference is valuable S for we have hardly any other allusion to events recorded in the Gospel, beyond the Birth, Baptism and Crucifixion, to which we have already referred. The paucity of parallels to the New Testament in the new Psalter should be one of the strongest reasons for believing that, as regards the major part of the collection, we are dealing with very early material.
ODE 40.
^As the honey distils from the comb of the bees, ^and the milk flows from the w^oman that loves her children^; ^so also is my hope on Thee, my God. *As the fountain gushes out its w^ater, ^so my heart gushes out the praise of the Lord and my lips utter praise to Him, and my tongue His psalms. ®And my face exults with His gladness, and my spirit exults in His love, and my soul shines in Him : ^and reverence confides in Him ; and redemption in Him stands assured : ^and His inheritance" is immortal life, and those who participate in it are incorrupt. Hallelujah.
Ode 40. One may say of the writer in the language of St Bernard: ' Inebriabuntur ab ubertate domus tuae et torrente voluptatis tuae potabis eos (Ps. xxxv. 9). O quanta amoris vis ! quanta in spiritu libertatis fiducia.' Praise flows out of his life and from his lips as honey drops from the comb or milk from the breast. God's gladness
' Moreover, if Peter's walking on the sea is involved in tlie reference of the Odist, it is not Mark's gospel that is being quoted, nor any of the canonical four except Matthew.
" Cf. Clem. Alex. Paed. i. 6 (p. 119) ^iXoffT-ipyois Triydt^ovja /ioffrois.
^ Following the emendation of Charles.
O. S. 18 makes his face without to shine, and his soul within to be radiant. If mortality is not quite swallowed up of life, it is irradiated by it. There is assurance of faith and the confident hope of immortality.
ODE 41.
^All the Lord's children will praise Him, and will collect the truth of His faith. ^And His children shall be known to Him. Therefore we will sing in His love : ^we live in the Lord by His grace : and life we receive in His Messiah : *for a great.day has shined upon us: and marvellous is He who has given us of His glory. ^Let us, therefore, all of us unite together in the name of the Lord, and let us honour Him in His goodness, ^and let our faces shine in His light : and let our hearts meditate in His love by night and by day. ''Let us exult with the joy of the Lord. ^All those will be astonished that see me. For from another race am I : ^for the Father of truth remembered me: He who possessed me from the beginning : ^°for His bounty begat me, and the thought of His heart : ''^and His Word is with us in all our way ; ''^the Saviour who makes alive and does not reject our souls : ^^the man who was humbled, and exalted by His own righteousness, ''^the Son of the Most High appeared in the perfection of His Father ; ''^and light dawned from the Word that was beforetime in Him ; ''^the Messiah is truly one' ; and He was known before the foundation of the world, ''^that He might save souls for ever by the truth of His name : a new song '"arises"' from those who love Him. Hallelujah.
Ode 41. This Psalm, again, is Messianic, but certainly not in the prophetic sense. The writer knows that the Son of God is come. The glorious day of which prophets spoke has dawned : the dayspring from on high has become the noontide glory. Christ who was humbled is now exalted ; the Word, who existed before the foundation of the world, has appeared. The language finds its nearest parallel in the Johannine theology.
It is not, at first sight, quite clear what the writer means by being sprung from another race'. Is it that he is of Gentile origin and persuaded to dwell in the tents of Shem ? That would agree well with the general Palestinian origin of the Psalms. In that case he has become
' Cf. Ign . ad Magn. 7 eIs iariv 'IijiroOs 'S.piaris. ' But see Inti'od. p. 66.
sufficiently Hebraized to sing Zion's songs in a Zionite manner : and to praise God night and day, where a Gentile would naturally have done it by day and night.
ODE 42.
^ I stretched out my hands and approached my Lord : '^for the stretching of my hands is His sign: ^my expansion is the outspread tree which was set up on the way of the Righteous One^ ^And P became of no account to those who did not take hold of me; and I shall be with those who love me. ^All my persecutors are dead ; and they sought after me who hoped in me, because I was alive : ^and I rose up and am with them; and I will speak by their mouths. '^For they have despised those who persecuted them ; ^and I lifted up over themi the yoke of my love ; ^like the arm of the bridegroom over the bride, i°so was my yoke' over those that know me : ^^and as the^ couch that is spread in the house of the ^'"bridegroom and bride"'^ ■•^so is my love over those that believe in me. ^^ And I was not rejected though I was reckoned to be so. ''^I did not perish, though they devised '"if against me. ''^Sheol saw me and was made miserable : ''^death cast me up and many along with me. ■■^P had gall and bitterness", and I went down with him to the utmost of his'' depth : ^^and the feet and the head he let go, for they were not able to endure my face : ^^and I made a congregation of living men amongst his dead men, and I spake with them by living lips : ^"because my word shall not be void : *and those who had died ran towards me : and they cried and said. Son of God, have pity on us, and do with us according to thy kindness, ^'^and bring us out from the bonds of darkness: and open to us the door by which we shall come out to thee. ^^Pqi- ^g ggg that our death has not touched thee. ^* Let us also be redeemed with thee : for thou art our
^ Zahn thinks the text of this verse has been altered, and suggests ^\*dl\ri:( ii^^uu^ -Tf ^"^ 'on which the Beloved was hanged.'
" Christ speaks.
' Matt. xi. 29. *"■* lit. bridegrooms. ° Cod. He.
" Cf. Descensus ad Inferos 4 'They crucified him, and gave him gall and vinegar to drink. Be ready, therefore, to hold him firmly when he cometh. ' Flemming objects to the correction which I have made in the text, and says we should render 'I was gall and bitterness to him.' So U.-S. Probably this is the right sense of the passage: but I am not quite satisfied. ' or its : sc. Sheol's.
140 THE ODES OE SOLOMON
Redeemer. 25 And I heard their voice ; and my name I sealed upon their heads : ^sfor they are free men and they are mine. Hallelujah.
Ode 42. This Psalm concludes the collection of Odes ascribed to Solomon : what follows is the extant book of Solomonic Psalms. The collection up to the present point is marked in each case with a final Hallelujah. The remaining Psalms, with one accidental exception, are not marked this way. So we may add the editorial remark at the end of this Psalm, that ' the Odes of Solomon, the Son of David, are ended.'
The concluding Psalm is Christian and Messianic : its main theme is the descent of Christ into Hades in order to liberate the imprisoned souls of the fathers : and it should be read along with the extant apocryphal books that deal with this subject.
Almost the whole of the Psalm is ex ore Christi : the writer begins, as in the short 29th Ode, with the statement that his hfted hands make the figure of the Cross of the Righteous One. But he soon diverges into the harrowing of hell. The imprisoned souls cry out for release to Him over whom death, which binds them, has no power. A congregation of saints is gathered in the place of the dead. They become Christ's free men. Incidentally an expression is used of their relation to the Lord which appears to be employed elsewhere : they are called, not the members, but the feet of the Lord. Hades disgorges both the head and the feet : the head is, of course, Christ ; and the feet are the saints of old time'- [For z;. 18 we may compare Acta Thomae c. 156 ov Tqv Oeav oiiK ■^veyKav oi tov Oavdrov ap;^ovT£S.]
The Psalm is too highly evolved, in its imaginary treatment of the Descent into Hell, to be reckoned as belonging to the same period as the main body of the collection. Still it cannot be very much later, for its mystical language is in close agreement with many of the most beautiful of the Psalms before us : and the union of Christ with the Church, under the figure of the Bridegroom and the Bride, is expressed with great beauty. Incidentally the textual critic will find something suggestive for his New Testament apparatus. The writer speaks of 'the couch that is spread in the house of the bridegrooms,' marking the plural by dots in the usual Syriac manner : it is evident that he means 'in the house of the bridegroom and the bride.' Perhaps, then, the curious Western reading of Matt. xxv. i, ' went out to meet the bridegroom and the bride,' may be due to a more accurate interpretarion of an Aramaic original than what we find in the received and edited texts.
1 Cf. Ode 23.
PSALM 43 = Psalms of Solomon i.
^ I cried unto the Lord, when I was in affliction at my end ; and to God when sinners set upon me : ^for suddenly there was heard before me the sound of war : for He will hear me, because I am filled with righteousness : ^and I reckoned in my heart that I was filled with righteousness : in the day that I became rich and was with the multitude of my children. *Their wealth, however, has been given to the whole earth : and their glory as far as the ends of the earth. ^They were lifted up as high as the stars: and they said, ^speaking without knowledge.... '^ For their sins were in secret, and I knew them not : ^and their wickedness exceeded that of the nations that had been before them : and they defiled the sanctuary of the Lord with pollution.
PSALM 44 = Psalms of Solomon 2.
^In the insolence of the sinful man, he cast down with battering rams' the strong walls and thou didst not restrain him. ^And the Gentile foreigners went up on thy altar, and were trampling on it with their shoes in their insolence. ^For the children of Jerusalem had polluted the Holy House of the Lord : and they were profaning the offerings *to God'' with wickedness. ^Wherefore He said. Remove them, cast them away from me. And He did not establish with them the beauty of His glory: ^it was rejected before the Lord : and they were utterly torn in pieces. ^Her sons and her daughters were in bitter captivity: and on their neck was put the sealed yoke of the Gentiles : ^according to their sins, so He dealt with them : for He suffered them to pass into the hand of him that was stronger than they : ^for He turned away His face from His mercy : young men and old men
' Hi. great beams. '■'''■' lit- of God.