Eschatology
Eschatology of the Psalter by Gerhard VosESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER
Geerhardus Vos
There are certain editions of the New Testament which
by way of appendix contain the Psalter, an arrangement
obviously intended to serve the convenience of devotion. It
has, however, the curious result of bringing the Apocalypse
and the Psalms into immediate proximity. On first thought
it might seem that scarcely two more diverse things could
be put together. The storm-ridden landscape of the Apoca-
lypse has little enough in common with the green pastures
and still waters of which the Psalmist sings. For us the
Psalter largely ministers to the needs of the devotional life
withdrawn into its privacy with God. Such a life is not
usually promotive of the tone and temper characteristic of
the eschatological reaction. This will explain why the ear
of both reader and interpreter has so often remained closed
to strains of a quite different nature in this favorite book.
It requires something more strenuous than the even tenor
of our devotional life to shake us out of this habit and force
us to take a look at the Psalter’s second face. It has hap-
pened more than once in the history of the Church, that
some great conflict has carried the use of the Psalms out
from the prayer-closet into the open places of a tumultuous
world. The period of the Reformation affords a striking
example of this. We ourselves, who are just emerging
from a time of great world-upheaval, have perhaps dis-
covered, that the Psalter adapted itself to still other situa-
tions than we were accustomed to imagine. To be sure,
these last tremendous years have not detracted in the least
from its familiar usefulness as an instrument of devotion.
But we have also found that voices from the Psalter accom-
panied us, when forced into the open to face the world-
1
2 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
tempest, and that they sprang to our lips on occasions when
otherwise we should have had to remain dumb in the pres-
ence of God’s judgments. This experience sufficiently
proves that there is material in the Psalms which it requires
the large impact of history to bring to our consciousness in
its full significance. It goes without saying that what can
be prayed and sung now in theatro mundi was never meant
for exclusive use in the oratory of the pious soul. This
other aspect of the Psalter has not been produced by litur-
gical accommodation; it was in its very origin a part of the
life and prayer and song of the writers themselves.
After all, these two uses, the devotional and the historical,
are not so divergent as one might imagine. We need only
to catch the devotional at its proper angle to perceive how
it forms part of a broader, more comprehensive piety uniting
in itself with perfect naturalness the two different attitudes
of withdrawal into the secrecy of God and of intense in-
terest in the unfolding of the world-drama. The deeper
fundamental character of the Psalter consists in this that
it voices the subjective response to the objective doings of
God for and among his people. Subjective responsiveness
is the specific quality of these songs. As prophecy is ob-
jective, being the address of Jehovah to Israel in word and
act, so the Psalter is subjective, being the answer of Israel
to that divine speech. If once this peculiarity is appre-
hended, it will follow that there must be place, and con-
siderable place, in the Psalms not merely for the historical
interest in general, but particularly for that heightened in-
terest which the normal religious mind brings to the last
goal and issue of redemption. To the vision of faith that
which Jehovah will do at the end, his conclusive, consum-
mate action, must surpass everything else in importance.
Faith will sing its supreme song when face to face, either
in anticipation or reality, with the supreme act of God.
Let Mary’s case be witness from whose heart the great
annunciation of Messianic fulfillment drew that Psalm
of all Psalms, the Magnificat. The time when God gathers
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 3
his fruit is the joyous vintage-feast of all high religion.
The value of a work lies in its ultimate product. Con-
sequently, where religion entwines itself around a progres-
sive work of God, such as redemption, its general respon-
siveness becomes prospective, cumulative, climacteric; it
gravitates with all its inherent weight toward the end. A
redemptive religion without eschatological interest would
be a contradiction in terms. The orthodox interpretation of
Scripture has always recognized this. To it redemption and
eschatology are co-eval in biblical history.1 The case stands
quite different with unorthodox criticism. By it the re-
demptive content and the teleological outlook of the ancient
religion of Israel are denied. The ancient, that is the pre-
prophetic, Israelite in this respect lived the life of a religious
animal. Hence for the older period the absence of es-
chatology is characteristic. Still, even from the standpoint
of this criticism, the eschatological aspect of the Psalms is
not affected. For the Psalter is now commonly considered
in these circles a product of the exilic and post-exilic times,
that is of a period when through the prophetic channel and
from foreign sources a flood of redemptive and eschato-
logical ideas had streamed in upon Israel, so that the Psalm-
singing Jew was bound to answer to its call in correspond-
ing notes. Besides, the great influx of eschatological ma-
terial is placed by many of these writers not in the early
period of written prophecy, but in the later exilic and post-
exilic times, most of the material of this kind now contained
in the older prophets being treated as spurious in its present
environment and brought down to a much later date. But
this late dating brings it into close proximity to the time fixed
by these same critics for the Psalter. Hence criticism has
a direct and powerful stimulus to search the Psalms for the
presence of that spirit with which the religious atmosphere
is supposed to have been charged in that period. And, since
under the control of God exegetical good not seldom comes
1 In so far as the covenant of works posited for mankind an absolute
goal and unchangeable future, the eschatological may be even said to
have preceded the soteric religion.
4 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
out of critical evil, it has happened here also, that a criticism
whose general methods and results we cannot but distrust,
has brought to light from the Psalter valuable facts, whose
existence had not been previously recognized with sufficient
clearness. It cannot be denied that unorthodox criticism
has done some valuable pioneer-work in exploring the
eschatological views of the Psalter.2 And what is true of
the Wellhausen school may in a different sense be applied
to its more modern competitor,—or shall we say successor?
—the school of Gunkel and Gressmann.3 Here it is not so
much the inclination to fit the Psalter into the post-exilic
world of thought, but rather the desire to assimilate it to
Babylonian religious ideas that predisposes for the wel-
coming of eschatological material. For our purpose this
is even better than the exegetical help received from the
other quarter. It yields not only acceptable exegesis stim-
ulated by perverse criticism, but has the additional advantage
of in certain instances drawing the criticism of the Psalter
back to a more conservative position from a chronological
point of view. For, since according to this recent school
there was an Oriental eschatology in very ancient times,
there remains no longer any reason for disputing its early
existence in Israel, nor for denying the pre-exilic date of
any piece on the sole ground of its occurrence therein. On
the contrary, other things being equal, the eschatalogical
complexion of a document speaks rather in favor of the
2 Cfr. especially Stade, Die Messianische Hoffnung im Psalter in
Zeitschrift fur Theologie and Kirche, 1892, pp. 369-412. The scope
of the article is wider than the antiquated use of the term “Messianic”
in the title would indicate. It covers the whole eschatological outlook
of the Psalter, whether the Messiah occupies a place in it or not.
Stade makes extensive use of a comparison between what he considers
the later material in the older prophecies and the Psalms.
3 Gunkel, Schap und and Chaos, in Urzeit and Endzeit, 1895;
Ausgewahlte Psalmen, 1911; Gressmann, Der Ursprung der israelitisch-
judischen Eschatologie, 1go5; Cfr. Sellin, Der alttesta.mentliche
Prophetismus; Zweite Studie: Alter, Wesen and Ursprung der alt-
testamentlichen Eschatologie, 1912; Stark, Lyrik (Psalmen, Hoheslied
and Verwandtes) in Die Schriften des Alten Testaments edited by
Gressmann, Gunkel, a. o. III, 1, 2, 1911.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 5
older date than otherwise. As a matter of fact some
Psalms have on this principle been again recognized as pre-
exilic possibilities.4
As a third source, from which in recent criticism the
eschatological interpretation of the Psalter has received en-
couragement, we may mention the widely-spread opinion,
that the speaking subject in the Psalms is in many cases not
a single person, but the collective mind of the congregation
of Israel, into which the original composers have merged
their religious individuality, nay, that many of the Psalms
were written outright for liturgical use in the service of
the second temple.5 It is hard to tell whether this theory
4 It should be remembered that critics of the type of Gunkel and
Gressmann remain, so far as the broad literary issue of Old Testa-
ment criticism is concerned, Wellhausenians. They do not revise the
verdict that the law is later than prophecy. In the reconstruction of
the pre-prophetic religion of Israel they pursue the same backward-
reasoning, divinatory method as the others. Only they apply this
method to a subject to which the Wellhausen school had, on the whole,
refrained from applying it, the question of pre-prophetic eschatology.
The general structure of Wellhausenianism implies that there was no
such early eschatology worth speaking of, that eschatology was a later
product. Consequently no inducement exists for it to trace its
origins in the ancient religion. Gunkel and Gressmann do not share in
this prejudice. Convinced that the thing must have existed they are on
the alert for every early indication of its presence.
5 The more recent literature on this subject consists chiefly of:
Smend, Ueber das Ich der Psalmen, in Zeitschrift fur die alttesta-
mentliche Wissenschaft, 1888, pp. 49-147; Theol. Literaturzeitung
1889, p. 547; Beer, Individual-und Gemeindepsalmen, 1894; Roy, Die
Volksgemeinde and die Gemeinde der Frommen im Psalter, 1897;
Cobienz, Ueber das betende Ich in den Psalmen, 1897. The collective
view, however, is by no means a modern product. For its history in the
earliest and latest exegesis, cfr. Coblenz, pp. 2-15; Cheyne, The Origin
and Religious Contents of the Psalter, Bampton Lectures for 1889,
1891, pp. 259-266; Beer, pp. xiii-xvii. Early traces are found in lxx;
it was applied by Theodor of Mopsuestia, by Raschi, Aben-Ezra and
Kimchi among the mediaeval Jewish expositors, by Rudinger among
the old-Protestant exegetes. in more recent times by Rosenmiiller, de
Wette. especially Olshausen, Graetz. After Smend’s reintroduction of
the subject, and in part independently of him, the same position has
been taken by Cheyne, Stade, Baethgen. Criticising, and restricting
Smend’s ideas are Stekhoven in Zeitschrift far die Alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft vol. 89, pp. 131-135; Stark, ibid. vol. 92, p. 146; Sellin.
6 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
apart from its intrinsic merit or demerit, has in its actual
working out done more good or evil to the cause of Psalter-
exegesis. For one thing it is often too-closely bound up
with belief in the post-exilic origin of the Psalms, because
not until after the exile, it is believed, did a specifically
religious congregation of Israel, a church-Israel, in whose
name such songs could have been sung, exist. Of course,
the intermarriage of these two views is not beyond the pos-
sibility of divorce. For one who recognizes a church
nation of Israel in much earlier times, it would be critically
quite safe to assume early Psalms of a collective import.
In the next place the theory, when one-sidedly and radically
carried through, threatens to wipe out all the individual
coloring which renders many of the Psalms so attractive
to the Christian reader and so faithful a mirror of his own
individual experience. All the concrete, plastic, lifelike
self-portrayal by which the figure of David stands before
our eyes as the most real of realities, and which plays such
a role in the New Testament, is at one stroke swept aside,
and figures like Asaph and Ethan likewise lose for us their
value as sources of individual comfort and delight. The
individual application made by our Lord to Himself of
certain Psalter-passages has to be artifically justified, if it
is justified at all, on the ground that He was entitled to
make of what was originally meant for Israel a personal
application, since in Him Israel was summed up. Still
further, and this is perhaps the most serious element in
the situation, the collectivistic exegesis now threatens to
swallow up all the directly Messianic material hitherto found
in the Psalter. It is seriously proposed that “the Anointed
of Jehovah,” “the King” in several places, where these titles
occur, shall not be understood of an individual eschato-
logical figure, but of the people of Israel as the collective
heir of the Messianic promises, the writers of such Psalms
being even credited with the clear consciousness of the ab-
rogation of the hope of an individual, Davidic Messiah.
De Origine Carminum quae primus Psalterii liber continet, 1892, pp.
26 ff ; Rahlfs, ynf und vnf in den Psalmen, 1892, p. 82.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 7
The nation of Israel then becomes the King set upon the
holy hill of Zion, receiving the nations for his inheritance,
the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. Last of
all, the collectivistic view has contributed toward eliminating
from the Psalter the expectation of a life after death for the
individual, the passages where this used to be found being
now not infrequently interpreted of the immortality of the
people of Israel. While undoubtedly in all these respects the
view under consideration has wrought harm, it should be
remembered that the several errors enumerated represent
not necessary corollaries, but only abuses of an otherwise
not implausible theory. The later liturgical use of the
Psalms in the Jewish Church certainly supports it, for the
liturgical is from its very nature collective. The instance
where “I” and “we” alternate as the speaking subject, and
where the context puts a national interpretation upon the
“we,” show how easily the self-personification of the people
took place in the poet’s mind, or at least how naturally
the collective plural alternated with the individual singular.
The sudden, abrupt changes in many Psalms from utter
depression to the most jubilant assurance, which the in-
dividualizing exegesis has found it is so hard to explain,
are perhaps more easily accounted for, if the personified
genius of the people of God, with its indestructible, in-
exhaustible hope in Jehovah may be assumed to experience
them. Even what may be called the pathological termi-
nology of the Psalms, sometimes considered a serious ob-
stacle to the collectivistic view, may be turned into an argu-
ment in its favor, for this reason that the symptoms of
disease and distress enumerated could scarcely coexist in
the state of an individual, whilst metaphorically explained,
as details entering into the picture of the stricken nation,
they cease to be subject to the same rigid test of consistency.
That the nation of Israel should “water its couch with its
tears” Ps. vi. 6, may seem an overbold figure to our re-
strained Western imagination, but we must remember the
richer and different endowment of Israel’s mentality. The
8 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
prophets, especially Isaiah and other parts of the Old Testa-
ment, bear witness to the strongly developed habit of per-
sonification in the Hebrew mind and supply us with a suffi-
cient basis of analogy. It is not necessary here to enter
into the psychological aspect of the problem by enquiring,
whether conscious and purposeful self-projection into the
mind of Israel, or spontaneous lyrical expansion of the
personality, or typical generalization of what was first felt
as an individual experience, will best explain the phe-
nomena.6 Only one feature should be briefly touched upon:
in certain cases the collective speaker is not the external,
ethnical Israel, but the people conceived as to its ideal,
spiritual vocation, or its pious nucleus, the church within the
church, sharply distinguishing itself from the religiously
disloyal majority. Such a cleavage of spirits would of
itself facilitate the absorption of the individual into the
ideal body.7 Keeping these various reservations in mind,
we shall have to acknowledge, I think, that to a greater or
6 Beer would find the explanation in the general law of lyrical
production deriving its themes from the common interests and feelings
of mankind, love, religion, nature, historical happenings affecting the
majority, pp. lxxix if. But the collective spirit and sentiment of the
Psalms are of too concrete and intimate a nature to rest on such a
general natural basis. If the phenomenon is spontaneous, it will have
to be explained from the unique cause of the special grace of God
drawing all its objects into the circle of an experience, which is at once
personal and alike in all individuals to whom it comes. The intenser
homogeneity of redemption should be taken into account. This seems
to us the truth underlying the early patristic efforts to account for the
facts: Christ was in the Psalms and back of their writers, Christ and
his mystical body are one, consequently the church spake in the
Psalter. In Christian hymnology we can trace the effect of the same
cause: hymns individual in their origin have become expressions of
communal feeling, and liturgically intended pieces have been appro-
priated by the individual. The theory of lyrical expansion has also been
brought to bear upon the problem of typical Messianism. Delitzsch
identified the mystery of the consciousness of David with the mystery
of all poetry: “The genuine lyric poet does not give a mere copy of
the impressions of his empirical ego.” Cheyne, The Origin, pp. 259, 260.
7 Roy very carefully works out this side of the case. He, as well as
Cheyne, makes much of the analogy between the “servant” in the
Psalms and “the servant of Jehovah” in the second part of Isaiah.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 9
lesser extent the mind of the congregation of Israel voices
itself in the Psalter.
The sole purpose for which we are led to mention this
fact lies in its bearing upon the question of eschatology in
the Psalter. For, if the great change, the reversal of
destiny, the deliverance, the victory so often spoken of in
the Psalms, concern not individuals, but Israel, or even the
pious nucleus of Israel, is it not plain that this whole com-
plex of ideas moves on eschatological ground? What
else could such a crisis, such a marvelous turn for the better,
nay for the best, when predicated of Israel, mean but the
eschatological transformation? What in the case of the
individual could be kept within the limits of the present
order of things and interpreted as a relative change, when
understood of Israel, necessarily bursts through these bonds
and opens us a totally new prospect, a wholly different mode
of existence. It is true, the frequent description of the
content of the hope in earthly, temporal forms, so charac-
teristic of the Old Testament, might seem to imply a merely
relative difference between present and future. But this
is only apparently so. Notwithstanding the retention of
this form there are two points which clearly mark off the
one from the other. On the one hand, the truly eschato-
logical expectation contemplates the fulfilment of all the
promises of God. It has too large a sweep to be simply
coordinated with any single good turn in the fortunes of
Israel. And on the other hand, the coming state of affairs
bears the stamp of unchangeableness, everlastingness: it
is no longer, like the present, subject to the vicissitudes of
history. Paradoxical though it may seem, revelation has
not shunned here to wed the eternal in point of duration to
the temporal in point of make-up. The inheriting of the
earth, the eating and drinking before Jehovah, and what
there is more of this description, is to be forevermore.
In the form of subjective responsiveness which the escha-
tological ideas assume in the Psalter lies for us the greater
part of their value. So far as the content objectively con-
10 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
sidered is concerned, the difference from prophecy is not
perhaps sufficiently pronounced to justify separate treat-
ment. The general scheme is in both essentially the same.
On the dynamic side we meet here as well as there such
ideas as that of Jehovah’s accession to the kingship, the
judgment, the conquest of the nations, the cup of wrath,
the recovery of territory, the vindication of Israel, the re-
pulsion of the last great assault by the nations. On the
static side we encounter the ideas of peace, universalism,
paradise restored, the dwelling of Jehovah’s presence in
the land, the vision of God, the enjoyment of glory, light,
satisfaction of all wants, the outlook beyond death towards
an uninterrupted contact with God and a resurrection.
Only in the Psalms all this is suffused with the genial
warmth of religious feeling. We have here a great prov-
ince of objectivity translated into terms of living religion,
and that religion at the very acme of its functioning. The
Psalter teaches us before all else what the proper, ideal
attitude of the religious mind ought to be with reference
to its vision of the absolute future. The trouble with
eschatology in the experience of the church has frequently
been that it was either dead or overmuch pathologically
alive. In the Psalter we can observe what is its normal
working. And through observing this we can learn the
even more principial lesson, what is the heart and essence
of all religion, because when eschatologically attuned the
religious mind responds to the highest inworking and
closest approach of God, and therefore operates up to the
full potentialities of its own nature. To this must be added
something else of almost equal value. Through the sub-
jective, practical spirit in which these things are treated
by the Psalter, we are most profoundly made aware of our
vital unity with the church of the old dispensation. It is
true, of course, that, just as we in the consciousness of the
fulfilment of prophecy, make our faith reach back into the
Old Testament, so the Old Testament, by means of pro-
phecy, in advance lays its hand upon us: we are sons of the
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 11
prophets and of the diatheke God made with Abraham.
But this is a purely objective bond; it is the bond between
a program and its execution; it does not directly enable us
to feel our oneness with the Old Covenant people of God.
No sooner, however, do we pass out from the region of
prophecy into that of psalmody, than we come into touch
with something that is internally akin to us, a preformation
of our own living religious embrace of the realities of re-
demption. This must be so all the more, because our
whole New Testament life and heritage was, from the Old
Testament point of view, an eschatological thing. Here,
therefore, we find ourselves and them occupied with iden-
tical fact; what they eschatologically contemplated we re-
trospectively enjoy, and the religious apprehension of it,
while formally different, is in essence the same. In the
eschatology of the Psalms we may trace the embryonic or-
ganism of our own full-grown state. We are enabled to
see how our faith was made in secret and curiously wrought,
when our substance was as yet imperfect and our members
continually fashioned before the eyes of God.
When we say that the Psalter is more practically akin
to us than prophecy, we must not be led by this to overlook
another feature well worth our notice. Response to the
work of God of necessity leads to a more or less reflective
state of mind. There is a point where the devotional, the
contemplative and the doctrinal, in its simplest form, touch
one another. Underneath all the emotion that pulsates
through the Psalter, there lies a deep water of serious
thought and reflection. The feeling here is not the sub-
stitute for faith, it is the natural outcome of faith, the wave-
swell of the sea, when the wind of the Lord has blown
upon it. If one will only read and sing with the understand-
ing, he shall perceive that the Psalmists pray and sing out
of a rich knowledge of God. It is not for nothing that
they have “meditated” upon Him and his works. Nor can
it be accidental that so considerable a part of the New
Testament faith-fabric is derived from this source. Paul
12 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
over and over again quotes from the Psalter, and his appeal
to it is not less apt and convincing than that to the Torah
and the prophets.
Let us now endeavor briefly to review the outstanding
characteristics of Psalter-eschatology. The first thing re-
quiring notice is the historical background in the past of
the Psalter’s treatment of the future. True, in this it only
proves itself a genuine Old Testament product, partaking
of the specific difference that marks off the biblical escha-
tology from that of the pagan nations. The pagan es-
chatological beliefs have a mythical or astronomic basis;
they bear no definite relation to any scheme of historical
progress, and, with the exception of Parsism, know of no
absolute final crisis, beyond which no further change is con-
templated. These two defects are closely connected. Be-
cause the ideas have their origin within the present world-
process, they cannot lead to anything beyond it. The world-
cycle runs its course, obeys its stars, absolves its round, and
then the end links on to a new beginning, ushering in a repe-
tition of the same sequence. The golden age is bound to
return, but it will be no more enduring than it was before.
Old Testament teaching concerning the end is not born
from myth and chaos and zodiacal “precession”. Its origin
lies in the realm of history, in the past creative and re-
demptive activity of God, ultimately in the theistic con-
ception of the character of Jehovah Himself, as an intel-
ligent, planning, building God, whose delight is ever in the
product of his freely shaping hands. And consequently,
what Israel expects is not a quasi-consummation, which
would bear on its face the Sisyphus-expression of endless
toil; it is an absolute goal, consisting in an age of more
than gold, made of a finer metal beyond all rust and de-
terioration.8
8 It is true, the Old Testament, and also the Psalter, know the
thought of a correspondence of the end to the beginning, of the point
of arrival to the point of departure. The river that makes glad the city
of God is a reproduction of the streams of paradise. But this is not
intended as a mere equation of the two. The past paradise is viewed as a
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 13
The Psalter is wide awake to the significance of history
as leading up to the eschatological act of God. It knows
that it deals with a God, who spake and speaks and shall
speak, who wrought and works and shall work, who came
and is coming and is about to come. To no small
extent it is the dignity of Jehovah as Creator and Re-
deemer from which the eschatological necessity springs.
As a Psalmist says, Jehovah cannot abandon the work of his
own hands (cxxxviii. 8); He will perfect that which con-
cerns his people. His work must appear unto his servants,
his glory unto their children (xc. 16). The Psalms that en-
gage in great historical retrospects were written with this
thought in mind. A more concise illustration is offered
by Ps. cxiv. Here we have first the retrospect: “When
Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people
of strange language, Judah was his sanctuary and Israel
his dominion. The sea saw it and fled; Jordan was driven
back,” and then, as a corresponding prospect, the vision of
the greater theophany at the end: “Tremble thou earth at
the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of
Jacob.” The references also to the flood, as bound to
repeat itself, must be interpreted on this principle. Je-
hovah’s control for his own purpose of the primeval world-
catastrophe is typical of his action in the final upheaval,
when out of the last judgment a last world will be born.
It is of importance to notice the sequence of the past and
future tense-forms in Psalms xciii. and xxix. “The floods
have (once) lifted up their voice . . . the floods will lift up
their waves. Jehovah on high is mightier than the noise of
many waters, the mighty breakers of the sea.” And again:
“Jehovah (once) sat (as King) at the flood, yea, Jehovah
will sit as King forever.
There are certain phrases and figures in the Psalter,
which are connected with the idea of plan and continuity
in the work of God and of its destination to arrive at a final
beginning, that of the future stands in the sign of consummation; that it
will inaugurate a new process is never reflected upon, far less that what
it introduces will be a repetition of the ancient course of history.
14 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
goal. Most characteristic of these, because most Psalm-
like, is the phrase “a new song,” occurring five times.9 It
receives light from the idea of the “new things” found in
prophecy, especially in the latter part of Isaiah. There the
“new things” mean the great unparalleled events about to
introduce the future state of Israel. The “new things”
and the “new song” belong together, as may be clearly
seen from Isa. xlii. 9, 10: “Behold the former things are
come to pass and new things do I declare . . Sing unto
Jehovah a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth.”
This prediction of the “new things” culminates in the
promise of the “new heavens and a new earth.”10 Here
seems to lie the root of the later employment of the word
“new” in eschatological connections, the new name, the new
creature, the new diatheke, the new Jerusalem.11 Further,
the use made of the term “morning,” again both in the
prophets and in the Psalter, is significant. From Isaiah we
are familiar with the figure of the watchman peering into
the darkness of the world-night, to, whom the prophet ad-
dresses the question, “Watchman, what of the night?”, and
from whom he received the answer, “The morning cometh,
and also the night.”12 In the Psalter we find again this
idea of “the morning” signifying the dawn of the new
great day of Jehovah, and hence symbolic of all hope and
deliverance: “God is in the midst of her she shall not
be moved, God will hear her and that in the morning.”
“Death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall have
dominion over them in the morning.” “My soul waiteth
for Jehovah, more than watchmen for the morning: 0
Israel, hope in Jehovah.”13 It is perhaps worth while ask-
ing, whether the phrase “the day of Jehovah”‘ has not some
connection with this eschatological use of the phrase
9 xxxiii. 3; xcvi. I ; xcviii. 1; cxliv. 9; cxlix. I,
10 Isa. lxv. 17; lxvi. 22.
11 Isa. lxii. 2; Jer. xxxi. 31; Mk. xiv. 24; 2 Cor. V.. 17; Gal. vi. 15;
Rev. ii. 17; iii, 12; V. 9; xiv. 3; xxi. 2, 5.
12 Isa. xxi. 6 ff.
13 Ps. xlvi. 6; xlix, 15; XC. 14; exxx. 6. Cfr. also xvii. 15; xlviii. 15.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 15
morning,” so that it would mean the great light-filled day
of the reign of Jehovah. It is hardly accidental that “the
day of Jehovah” appears in some passages associated with
the idea of light.14
Owing to this vivid consciousness of the historically-
conditioned appointment of the end, the attitude of the
Psalmists towards it is, on the whole, one of serene con-
fidence and quiet expectation. Their soul is as a weaned
child within them. There are Psalms that have as their
keynote the question “How long?”, but they are few, and
even in them towards the end the trusting mood regains
the upper hand.15 There are only three Psalms which con-
tain nothing but complaint.16 Of the feverish impatience
that is so apt to inflame the eschatological state of mind and
of its usual correlate, the apocalyptic calculation of times
and seasons, there is no trace in the Psalter. “True, with
characteristic eschatological eagerness they continually
suppose the end nearer than it actually is, but they do not
attach their faith to a near parousia in such a way that
it would be imperilled by disillusionment. . . . When
doubting thoughts beset . . . they go into the sanc-
tuary.”17
The Psalmists know that the end is not flung upon the
world out of the lap of chance, but that it proceeds with
stately, unhastened, unretarded step from the council-
chamber of God. The phrase “a set time” marks this con-
viction.18 The connection between prophecy and the Psalms
in this point may be observed in the statement “to execute
the judgment written!”19 The “judgment written” is the
judgment announced in the prophets; precisely because
written it cannot fail to come. In a most striking way the
dependence of the last great hope of redemption upon what
14 Am. v. 8, 18; Rom. xiii. II If. I Thess. v. 5.
15 PS. Vi. 4 ; xiii. I ; Ixxiv. 10; lxxvii. 8; lxxix. 5; Ixxxv. 6; xxxix. 47;
- xc. 13;xciv. 3.
16 Ps. xxxviii (but cfr. v. 16); xxxix. (but cfr. v. 8); lxxxviii.
17 Cheyne, Origin, p. 373.
18 Ps. cii. 31.
19 Ps. cxlix. 9.
16 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Jehovah has done before is expressed in Ps. lxxiv.: “God
is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the
earth; thou didst divide the sea by thy strength; thou break-
est the heads of the dragons in the waters: . . . . thou
didst cleave fountain and flood; . . . remember that the
enemy has reproached 0 Lord; 0 deliver not the soul of thy
turtle dove unto the multitude; forget not the congregation
of thy poor forever; have respect unto the covenant; . . .
arise 0 God.”
A second striking feature of the eschatology of the
Psalter consists in the central, dominating position it assigns
to Jehovah in all that pertains to the coming change. The
prospect of the future is God-centered in the highest degree.
Of course, the Psalmists who could say “Whom have I in
heaven but thee, and none upon earth I desire besides thee”;
“God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever”
and “Thou art my Lord, my welfare is naught without
thee,” might be confidently expected to carry this feeling
with them, when projecting themselves into the future.20
What is more characteristic of the Psalter is this, that, be-
sides eschatology evoking worship, the opposite also takes
place: The elemental urge of worship summons the last
great realities to its aid, because it cannot be satisfied with
aught short of this for expressing itself. The eschatology
of the Psalter is in part begotten by the praises of Israel.
No doubt the Psalter contains much of what is most
humanly human in all religious occupation with God: the
need and desire and prayer for help in distress. In their
extremity of danger and affliction the Psalmists sustain and
reassure themselves by the thought of the great deliverance
which the end must bring. They lift up their heads, be-
cause their redemption draws nigh. They will not fear,
though the earth be removed and the mountains be cast in
the midst of the sea. The absoluteness of the assurance and
the suddenness of attainment unto it are in many instances
accounted for by the eschatological import. The appeal
20 Pss. lxxiii. 25, 26; xvi. 2.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 17
lies not to second causes or elements of hopefulness within
the fabric of the present world, but to the great, crowning
interposition of Jehovah ab extra. At this point especially
we have occasion to remember, that often not an individual
but Israel is the speaking subject. What within the limita-
tions of the Old Testament the individual could scarcely
hope for himself, that the people of God carried as a sure
faith in its bosom through the ages. Ploughers might
plough upon Israel’s back and make long their furrows, the
waters might overwhelm them, it could not extinguish the
conviction, that the future and the end belonged to the
chosen of Jehovah. Specifically the thirst for justice over
against enemy and avenger quenched itself in anticipation
at this deep fountain of judgment to be opened up at the
last. But in the midst of all this soteric motivation the
higher point of view of the subserviency of Israel’s salva-
tion to the glory of God is never lost sight of. When the
Psalmists make eschatology the anchor of salvation, this
is not done in a self-centered spirit. The very fact of the
anchor being cast into such deep water implies a com-
parative estimate of human and divine help, which in itself
cannot but be honoring to God.21 The prayer for salvation
inevitably embodies praise of the Saviour. That at least no
individual selfishness underlies it, appears from the way
in which clearly individualistic Psalms join together the
deliverance of the suppliant and the salvation of Israel.
The Psalmist succeeds in forgetting his own woes for the
woes or for the hopes of the people as a whole. But it is
even more important to notice that he is able to forget them
for the overwhelming thought of the glory of Jehovah.
The gloria in excelsis which the Psalter sings arises not
seldom from a veritable de profundis and, leaving behind the
storm-clouds of its own distress, mounts before Jehovah
in the serenity of a perfect praise.22 Nothing reveals more
clearly the innate nobility of the Psalter’s religion than this
quality of its praise. But even where this highest altitude
21 Pss. xx. 7; xli . 6; xlix. 6; cxviii. 8, 7; cxlvi. 3, 4.
22 Cfr. Roy, p. 25 note 2.
18 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
is not reached, where the thought of salvation remains con-
sciously present to the end, the closing note of praise is sel-
dom wanting.23 Praise and prayer are inseparable, because
God’s very divinity is in his saving habit.24 In the phrase
“for thy name’s sake” the recognition is expressed that the
ultimate purpose of salvation lies in the glory of God.25
Where the prayer assumes the form of a desire for vindica-
tion and deliverance through judgment and destruction of
the enemy, it might seem as if the center were shifted from
God to man. Still on closer examination this appears not
to be so. When the praying subject is Israel and the oppos-
ing party the hostile pagan world, the conflict between these
two, of course, coincides with that between Jehovah and the
world, between light and darkness. And when the two
parties belong both to Israel, their mutual opposition is
again due to the fact that the party praying represents the
cause of Jehovah and the true faith, whilst the party prayed
against has aligned itself with the other side and becomes
apostate from Jehovah and his people.26 So that in either
case the self-interest is identical with the interest of God.
Of personal rancor or party-animosity not religiously
motived there is no trace in the Psalter. While it is true,
therefore, that the eschatological pressure is heightened,
as it usually is, by fierce conflict and strife, this does not
detract in the present case from its purity and God-cen-
tered character.27
Cheyne offers the suggestion that an unselfish religion
was easier for the Psalmists than it is for us, because the
sense of individuality was less developed at that time.28
23 Pss. xxxii. 17; 1. 15; lXxx. i8, 19.
24 Cheyne, Origin, P. 344.
25 Roy, p. 42.
26 Ps. lxxiii. 15, 27, 28.
27 Cfr. Roy, pp. 28, 29, 73; not nations but two Weltanschauungen
stand over against each other; Cheyne, Origin, p. 293.
28 Origin, p. 265; cfr. Cheyne’s own striking statement at a later
point: “that the people of Israel is to work out the divine purpose in
the earth and do this with such utter self-forgetfulness, that each of
its own successes shall but add a fresh jewel to Jehovah’s crown,”
- 340.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 19
But this would apply only over against man and not over
against God. And it is hardly in accordance with his own
dating of the Psalms. The collectivism of the post-exilic Jews
was not of the naive, instinctive kind, a sort of primeval,
semi-physical sense of solidarity; it partakes far more of the
intelligent affectionate surrender to an ulterior object of de-
votion. Here collectivism is but another name for un-
selfishness. The awakening of the sense of individuality lies
not beyond but back of it. It is spiritual loyalty, not ethnic
coherence that binds the members of Israel together. The
same is true of the still closer bond uniting the pious Israel
within the larger body.
The acknowledgment that in the future salvation all is
for the glory of God is not of the nature of a mere formal
acknowledgment. Owing to the character of psalmody
as the instrument of responsiveness, and owing to the
uniqueness of the eschatological situation upon which it
works, it develops a peculiar fervor and attains a degree
of sympathetic projection into the interest of God scarcely
equalled elsewhere. The Psalmists sometimes succeed in
transporting themselves into the midst of the joy and
blessedness, wherewith Jehovah himself contemplates the
consummate perfection of his work. This faculty for enter-
ing into the inner spirit of God’s own share in the religious
process represents the highest and finest in worship; it closes
the ring of religion, and in Scripture, as we might expect,
it is peculiarly the Psalter that illustrates it. If even the
Psalm of nature, after enumerating the wonders of crea-
tion, closes with the exquisite note, “The glory of Jehovah
shall endure forever, the Lord shall rejoice in his works.
. . . I will sing . . . as long as I live . . . my meditation
of Him shall be sweet, I will be glad in Jehovah,” could we
expect less where the Psalmist’s mind turns to the greater
wonders in redemption?29 “Sing unto Jehovah a new song,
his praise in the congregation of saints, for Jehovah takes
pleasure in his people, He will beautify the meek with sal-
29 Ps. civ. 31-34.
20 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
vation.” And again, “Jehovah takes pleasure in them that
fear him, in them that hope in his mercy; Praise Jehovah,
0 Jerusalem, praise thy God, 0 Zion.”30 There is something
deeper in this than the spontaneous welling up of gratitude
from the heart that has received favor. It is the devotion
of a mind able to lose itself in the very inward grace of
God which is greater and more satisfying than even its
greatest and final gift.31
The theocentric character of Psalter-eschatology appears
also in this that it is prevailingly kingdom-eschatology. By
this is meant a form of statement representing Jehovah as
becoming, or revealing, Himself in the last crisis the
victorious King of Israel. Certain Psalms may be called
specific kingdom-Psalms. Pss. xciii, xcvii, xcix, open with
the words “Jehovah is King.” The context shows that this
is declared from the standpoint of the eschatological future,
when, after the judgment, his universal dominion shall be
established. Into this future the Psalmist projects himself.
The situation is the same in Ps. xcvi. 10, “Say among the
nations, Jehovah is King; the world also is established, and
it cannot be moved.”32 It will be remembered that the shout
“Absalom is King” was the shout of acclaim at his assump-
tion of the kingship.33 Still in the Apocalypse this mode of
30 Pss. cxlix. 1, 4; cxlvii. II, 12.
31 Cfr. Cheyne, Origin, p. 343. “Precious as is the sympathy of
God for us, still higher is the ability put by Him into us to enter into
his thoughts and feelings.”
32 Cfr. Ex. xv. 17; Isa. xxiv. 23; hi. 7.
33 2 Sam. xv. 30. Cfr. Gunkel, Ausgewahlte Psalmen, pp. 186-192;
324; Gressmann, Ursprung, pp. 294-301. According to Gunkel such
accession-hymns might have been first sung for human rulers and
afterwards transferred to the eschatological enthronement of Jehovah.
Gressmann seeks to meet the difficulty that Jehovah’s kingship is rep-
resented as purely future, by the suggestion, that the background is
polytheistic, Jehovah’s universal dominion being conceived as beginning
with the conquest of the other gods, and that this mode of speaking
was retained in the (no longer) polytheistic Psalms. The simple
solution seems to, lie in this that “kingship” is in the O. T. more a
concept of action than of status. Jehovah becomes King=Jehovah
works acts of deliverance.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 21
speaking is employed with eschatological reference, xix. 6
“Hallelujah, for the Lord God, the Almighty reigneth.”
In other cases the act of enthronement is described and the
accession is identified with an ascension. Thus Ps. xlvii.
5-8 “God is the King of all the earth . . . God reigneth
over the nations. God sitteth upon his holy throne.”34
The ascension-feature might be explained from the elevation
of the throne-seat, to which the king mounts by steps, or
from the going up to the height of Zion, after a victorious
return from war, in which Jehovah, as present in the ark,
would participate and lead. Pss. lxviii. 18 and xxiv. 7-10
suggest the possibility of another explanation. In the
former passage we read: “Thou hast ascended on high,
thou hast led away captives.” The Psalm is at its opening
escatologically-prospective, but vss. 7-20 seem to be his-
torically-retrospective, so that the statement about Jehovah’s
ascent is not directly eschatological. It does, however, de-
scribe a real ascent into heaven,, and not a mere going up
unto the earthly sanctuary.35 In Ps. xxiv the language
might more easily remind of the earthly dwelling-place of
Jehovah (cfr. vs. 3), but even here in the second part of
the Psalm the “everlasting doors” point to the higher
habitation.36 The idea of Jehovah’s glorious return into
heaven after accomplished victory, must have existed, and
if so, would influence directly-eschatological representa-
34 Besides the shout of acclaim the blowing of the trumpet and the
clapping of hands accompanied the enthronement, Ps. xlvii. i; I Kings
- i. 34-45; 2 Kings ix. 13; xi. 12.
35 Cfr. Baethgen, Die Psalmen, who observes that Mvrm is always
used of the height of heaven. The N. T. adaptation to the ascension
of Christ has, therefore, a good support, so far as the local concep-
tion is concerned. Gressmann also argues in favor of what he calls
the “mythical-eschatological” view of Ps. xlvii. 6 from the use of the
verb hlAfA, which according to him is not used of ordinary throne-
ascension, the proper term for this being bwayA. But the two acts of
“ascending” and “sitting down” are obviously distinct, and the idea of
ascent, might, as stated above, have arisen from the elevation of the
throne.
36 For the idea of the doors being opened by “lifting up” cfr. Gress-
mann, Ursprung, p, 295, note a.
22 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
tions, like that of Ps. xlvii. 5-8. In Ps. xxiv. this seems to
be actually the case.37
It is obvious that a representation which thus throws the
emphasis on the future enthronement of Jehovah intends to
magnify what the end means for God and for Israel in
relation to its God. The core of the belief is that there must
come and will come a time, when God will visibly take his
place as the end and focus of all the glory of the world pro-
cess. As the antique idea makes the state subserve the glory
of the king, so the ripened ages will be made to yield their
accumulated fruit to Him who is their King. Although the
kingdom-idea has also its soteric aspect, the Psalter shows
that side by side with this, and as even in a sense superior,
the manifestation of the glory of Jehovah is expressed by it.
The thought is not merely that Jehovah becomes King in
order to save, but that through the salvation, as well as in
other acts, He arrives at the acme of his royal splendor.
In still another way we can trace the same principle by
observing the mode of Jehovah’s activity in the coming
crisis. The fundamental conception is that of the theo-
phany. It may seem at first a trite thought, that Jehovah
must appear on the scene before He can interpose. But the
theophany does not occur as the mere prerequisite or pre-
cursor of the divine action, it is the vehicle of the action
itself. This is facilitated by the realistic conception of the
judgment, as a judgment of execution, rather than a formal
forensic procedure. In a forensic procedure the bare ap-
pearance of Jehovah could figure only as the initial act,
after which further steps would be indispensable. The
realistic idea, putting sentence and execution in one, con-
denses the whole into a single act and this act is the super-
natural arrival of God upon the field. While, however,
fitting into this view of the judgment, the epiphanic char-
acter of Jehovah’s action has not been exclusively produced
by it. At the basis lies again the motive to exalt the majesty
and power of Him, who by his mere entrance into the crisis
37 Acording to Stade, Zeitschrift f. Theol. u. Kirche, II. p. 407, the.
scene of Ps. xxiv is eschatological.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 23
decides the issue and thus centers all attention and interest
upon Himself. Here lies the source of that technical es-
chatological phrase “the coming of the Lord,” which like an
unbroken thread runs through both testaments.38 He comes,
Jehovah comes, the Messiah comes, from Genesis to Revela-
tion this is the import of the message in which ultimately
the eschatological hope embodies itself. And the imagery
of the theophanic representation is wholly in accord with
this intent to make God the central figure. No matter
whether Jehovah’s coming be linked with or compared to
the thunder-storm, or the tempest, or the flood or the vol-
canic eruption, in each case the sudden, inavertible, over-
whelming nature of the event is emphasized.39 Precisely
for this reason the impression is sometimes most vivid
where every attempt at the use of concrete imagery is
abandoned, because the figures threaten to break down
under the sheer weight of the reality signified. Nothing
could be more effective than the studied avoidance of all
intermediate apparatus, nay even of the mention of Jehovah
Himself in a passage like Ps. xlvii. 4, 5, “For, lo the kings
assembled themselves, they passed by together. They saw
it, then they were amazed; they were dismayed, they
hastened away.” It need not so much as be said, that
Jehovah appears; it suffices that He exists: his being God
brings the crisis to its inevitable issue.40
38 Cfr. Sellin, Der alttestarnentliche Prophetismus, p. 181.
39 For the reason stated the description of the eschatological scene
has an inherent tendency to turn into a, description of the theophany
as such, even to the extent of the purpose of the latter being for the
moment lost sight of. This is a feature observed also in prophecy,
eft.. Isa. ii. The Psalm in Hab. iii. and also the opening part of
Ps. xviii illustrate this. For an enunciation of the principle involved
by Jehovah Himself, cfr. Ps. xlvi. io “Be still and know that I am
God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the
earth.”
40 Stade, Zeitschrift f. Theol. u. Kirche, pp. 393-398 finds the escha-
tological theophany in a number of recurring phrases in the Psalter.
He enumerates as such “to arise”; “to be exalted” or “lifted up”; “to
awake”; “to be not silent”; “to hasten”; “to be not far”; “to stir up
might”; “to restore”; “to heal”; “to quicken”; “to redeem”; to save”;
24 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
One more observation may be made under this head.
The profoundly religious state of mind with which the end
is contemplated appears in this that it imparts the same
coloring to the Psalmist’s mood in view of its retardation
as does the prospect of impending death by itself. As has
been often remarked the attitude towards to latter fur-
nishes a gauge for the depth of religious attachment to
Jehovah. There is much in death to terrify the creature
regardless of religious considerations. We find that with
the Psalmists the chief cause of solicitude and perplexity is
the problem of their future relation to Jehovah. Will there
be in these strange shadowy regions remembrance of Je-
hovah, experience of his goodness, praise of his glory?
“What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the
pit, shall the dust praise thee, shall it declare thy truth?”41
What they most feared was not death as such, nor that they
might lose themselves in death, but that they might lose con-
tact with Jehovah. Now the same state of feeling asserts
itself in regard to the great future coming of Jehovah.
“How long, 0 Jehovah? Wilt thou hide thyself forever?
. . . 0 remember how short my time is. For what vanity
hast thou created all the children of men! What man is he
that shall live and not see death? That shall deliver his soul
from the power of Sheol? Lord, where are thy former
loving kindnesses, which thou swarest unto David in thy
faithfulness ?”42 Here the bitterness of death is measured
by the danger that it may sweep out of reach the vision of
Jehovah and the enjoyment of his glorious reign at the end.
To lose touch with Him in Sheol would be painful, to miss
Him at his final epiphany intolerable, it would be the su-
preme tragedy of religion. This is convincing proof that
the eschatology of the Psalter seeks and loves nought above
Jehovah Himself.
“to be gracious”; “to snatch out”; “to do justice.” Although many or
all of these terms find eschatological employment, it cannot be proven
that all or any of them had become technical in that sense.
41 Pss. xxx. 9; cfr. vi. 5; lxxx. 5.
42 Ps. lxxxix. 46-49. A new Testament parallel is I Thess. iv. 13-18.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 25
From a specific point of view we can observe the same
principle in the universalistic statements of the Psalter.
Here as in the prophets the subjection of the nations to
Jehovah and their conversion form part of the great future
change. In both cases this remains a hope and does not
become a challenge to missionary activity. It is only
through the gateway of eschatology that universalism and
the missionary idea come in. More particularly it is, the
greatness and majesty of Jehovah from which they spring.
Jehovah is so great that the nations must come and worship
before Him. This is of itself a certainty. But when the
idea is raised to the eschatological degree, when He is con-
templated in the overpowering majesty of his final appear-
ance, then a super-certainty results, that all the earth will
be flooded with the knowledge of his glory.43 While, how-
ever, with the prophets this remains, like so many other
things, a matter of mere futurity, in the Psalter, owing to
the entrance of the subjective element something more re-
sults. The mind of the Psalmist is not satisfied with hold-
ing the idea at the distance of objective contemplation, but
translates it into an eager desire for witnessing the fulfil-
ment of the prospect. Thus a real missionary urge is born
out of the eschatological vision of Jehovah and his kingdom.
This desire projects itself into the future and breaks out
into a direct missionary appeal conceived as addressed to
the Gentiles from that standpoint.” The world at large is
summoned to acknowledge and praise Jehovah. Of course,
this is not actual missionary propaganda.45 Yet, at bottom,
in its spiritual motivation, it is not different from the latter;
perhaps one might even say that the impulse back of it is
stronger than the fervor wherewith the Church seizes her
present possibilities. The closest analogy to this is again
43 Ps. ix. 19, 20; xviii. 47 ff.: xxii. 27, 28; xxiii. 8; xlvi. to; xlvii. 1-3,
8, g; lxxxvi. 8-to; xcvii. 1, 6; xcviii. 2, 3. 9; cii. 15, 21, 22.
44 Ps. lvii. 8-11; lxvi. 1-4; lxvii. 2-5; xcvi. 3, 7-13; xcix. 3 (in the
form of prayer) ; c. 1-3; cviii. 3; cxiii 3, 4; cxvii. 1, 2; cxlv. 21.
45 Rhetorically it may be put on a line with the prophetic summons
to nature to “clap hands” and “sing.”
26 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
found in the hymnodic portions of Isaiah. The remem-
brance of these things may afford us help in ever anew
attuning the strain of our missionary-enthusiasm to its
highest God-centered key. When we profess to mission-
arize, not in the last analysis, to improve the world, but to
glorify God in the eternal salvation of sinners, this expresses
not merely a theological conviction, but it is also eminently
true to the principle inherent in the birth of the mission-
ary idea itself. For this the missionary idea was born and
for this cause came it into the world, that it should con-
tribute to the glory of God. It was for Him and not for
man alone that it was conceived in the womb of the Old
Testament.
The question next claiming attention concerns the de-
gree of spirituality in the eschatological outlook of the
Psalter. This degree is often placed low, because for
their descriptions of the future age the Psalms are depend-
ent on earthly, material, time-bound forms, The future
theocracy is a replica of the present one. The expected state
is a state in which the eschatological people of Jehovah,
dwelling in the holy land, with Jerusalem as its center, will
forever enjoy without measure the blessedness afforded by
Canaan, the paradise-garden of God. It would be difficult
to prove, that all this was understood by the Psalmists with
a clear consciousness of its symbolic, typical significance,
as we, on the basis of the New Testament, believe it lay in
the mind of God, the author of revelation. But, while this
is true, and should not be covered up in the interest of un-
historical allegorizing, it should not, on the other hand,
close our eyes to the profound spirituality with which in
the Psalter even this ostensibly material content of the
future is approached and apprehended. The main question
is after all not what forms and colors enter into the picture,
but what is the subtler atmosphere that pervades it to the
eye of the pious Israelite, what with his finer religious
sensibilities he sought and loved and admired in it. When
the question is put in this way there can be no doubt as to
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 27
the answer. The very fact of the intense concentration of
the hope in God Himself supplies it in advance. The escha-
tological state is before all else a state in which the enjoy-
ment of Jehovah, the beatific vision of his face, the pleasures
at his right hand, the perpetual dwelling with Him in his
sanctuary, form the supreme good. “Satisfy us in the
morning with thy loving kindness, that we may rejoice and
be glad all our days, . . . and let the beauty of Jehovah
our God be upon us,” these and other similar strains are
characteristic of the future-music of the Psalter.46 Whether
the familiar passages in Pss. xvi., xvii., xlix., lxxiii, where
the confidence of uninterrupted fellowship with Jehovah is
expressed, are based on the belief in a future blessed life
after death, as we think they are, or whether, on the
ground of the collectivistic theory, the statements in ques-
tion are interpreted of the imperishable life of Israel,
on either view the underlying sentiment is clearly that
of the supreme absorption of the religious life in the things
of God.47 And it will be noticed that this sentiment finds
readiest expression in view of the future state. If only
care be taken to exclude every idea obliterative of the sense
of human personality, there is ground for speaking of a
certain group of Psalms as mystical in their complexion,
as in fact a mystically-inclined type of piety has shown a
46 Ps. xc. 14, 16. Cheyne, perhaps, goes too far in spiritualizing the
language of the Psalmists when he assumes the theophanic statements
to have been meant as .pure symbolism. This would hardly agree
with the parallel drawn between the eschatological and the earlier,
historic theophanies. The latter were certainly in part realistically
understood. Another instance of the same nature is, where Cheyne
credits the Psalmists who believed in spiritual sacrifice with the idea
of a purely-spiritual sanctuary. But is there not some difference be-
tween these two? The spiritual sacrifice remains objective, the
spiritual sanctuary would be a subjectivizing conception. Cfr. Origin,
- 344, 387.
47 Writers who deny the presence of the idea of personal blessedness
after death in such passages, yet do not deny that the Psalmists expect
participation in the Messianic era. Cfr. Beer, p. 70. Can this be
entirely due to an acute sense of the nearness of the event?
28 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
marked preference for them in all ages.48 But there is only
a difference of degree between these and the Psalter in
general. It is Jehovah’s rest which the Psalmist desires
Israel to enter, the city of his vision is the city of God.49
How pervasively and intensely spiritual the atmosphere of
the eschatology of the Psalter is, can best be appreciated by
remembering to what an extent our Lord has reproduced it
in his teaching. Most of the second clauses of the beati-
tudes are to all intent a description of the eschatological
kingdom in Psalter-language. “The poor in spirit,” “the
pure in heart,” “the meek,” “the merciful,” “the peace-
makers,” together with their respective predicates, the en-
dowment with the kingdom, the inheritance of the earth, the
obtaining of mercy, the vision of God, the adoption into
sonship, these are all Psalter-types and Psalter-hopes, found
fit to enter into a most highly spiritualized description of
the future by the Psalter’s greatest interpreter. The way
in which the sanctuary is spoken of, the comparatively rare
references to ceremonial sacrifice, the peculiar tenor of these
references, where they do occur, which has led some to
speak of a class of Puritanical psalms, the deritualisation of
heaven, the emphasis on the nearness of Jehovah in the
sanctuary, all these plainly show where the center of the
interest lies.50 Add to this the total absence of the weird
apocalyptic element, and the predominance of a truly spirit-
ual atmosphere, can not fail to be recognized.51 Here also,
however, we should note how this fine spirituality is closely
interwoven with the fundamental character of the Psalter,
as that of subjective responsiveness to the divine approach
and embrace in religion. Devotion, worship, the giving
answer to God, cannot but spiritualize. It is, as it were, the
projection into the objective sphere of the intrinsically trans-
48 Cfr. Cheyne, Origin, pp. 387, 388; Beer, p. 62, refers in connection
with Ps. Ixxiii. 28 to the Jewish Kirbath Elohirn, the unio mystica, as
eschatologically ,approached ; Montefiore, Mystical Passages in the
Psalms, Jewish Qurterly Review 1889, pp. 143-161.
49 Ps. xcv. 11; xlvi. 4; xlviii. 1.
50 Cheyne, Origin, pp. 314-327; Beer, p. 47.
51 Cheyne, Origin, p. 428.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE :PSALTER 29
lucent essence of the religious soul itself. And it is called to
enter into the direct presence of and lay hold upon Jehovah
Himself, in doing which it grasps the root of all spirituality.
Truly, the new invisible throne of God, in distinction from
the ark, rests in a yet higher sense upon the praises of
Israel.52
In conclusion we may briefly consider the Messianic element
in the eschatology of the Psalter. Here also the subjectively
responsive and appropriative attitude has left some traces.
To be sure, before speaking of such matters, one is at pres-
ent compelled to raise the question whether in the old,
familiar sense there is a “Messiah” in the Psalter at all.
Belief in “typically-Messianic” Psalms has practically dis-
appeared from contemporary critical exegesis. But not
only this, the Psalms which used once to be quoted as
directly-prophetically Messianic are now frequently under-
stood as relating to the people of Israel as the real “An-
ointed of Jehovah.” The curious fact results that on such
a view the title “Messiah” in its technical sense, as the
designation of the individual eschatological King, disappears
from the Old Testament, for it is in the Psalter and in the
Psalter alone, that, on the old interpretation, this title is
found.53 In this situation little comfort can be taken from
the quasi-rehabilitation which the idea of typical Mes-
sianism has undergone at the hands of Babylonianizing
interpreters such as Gunkel. Calling attention to the fact
that in Babylonian and Assyrian documents the reigning
king, especially at his accession, was invested by courtiers
and court-poets with superhuman or eschatological predi-
cates, they have found this custom back in certain Psalms,
52 Cheyne, Origin, p. 327.
53 This leaves out of account Dan. ix. 25, 26, of doubtful interpreta-
tion. Cheyne, Origin, p. 340 and others, can, of course, continue to
speak of “Messianic psalms,” since the term “Anointed” is in a
more or less technical sense, with eschatological associations, bestowed
upon the people. Still, in view of the long traditional usage, it would
be better for those adopting such exegesis to avoid the term.
30 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
notably Pss. ii., xlv., lxxii, cx.54 On this view the users of
such language might be said to have seen their present ruler
in the mirror of the conception of the great eschatological
King, which would involve a certain resemblance to the
old typological scheme. Now, if this adaptation of Oriental
court-style to the case of an Israelitish king could be taken
as sincere and naive in its intent, something might be made
out of it, in connection with the fact, that at first no one
knew which of the Davidic descendants would fulfill the
promises, each new accession being capable of giving rise to
new hopes. We are not allowed, however, to impose such
a meaning upon the custom. These phrases formed a reg-
ular court-style; they were no more than “loyal hyperboles”
to which no one, least of all those who flatteringly spoke
them, attached any real significance. The only useful pur-
pose which the discovery of this ancient ceremonial may
serve to the conservative exegete consists in this, that it
may prove the early existence of eschatological belief and
eschatological interest in these pagan circles and so furnish
an argument against the theory of a late emergence of such
belief and interest among Israel.55 If, refusing to assume
such a style in the Psalter, and finding here not the insin-
cerities of court-life, but a solid typical groundwork in-
54 Cfr. Gunkel, Ausgewahlte Psalmen, under the head of Pss. ii.,
xlv., cx. He does not discuss Ps. lxxii.
55 Acording to Gressmann, Ursprung, p. 252, note 4, Gunkel is mis-
taken in assuming a transfer of Messianic-eschatological language to
the human king. The extravagant language, then, would have noth-
ing to do with eschatology. It would be court-style pure and simple:
“Der Messias hat hier nichts zu suchen.” We do not see how this is
to be reconciled with the later statements on pp. 236-293 where we
read that “the contemporaneous prince or dynasty is celebrated as
the introducer of the golden age, as once the first King. This ex-
plains the chief activity of the Messiah, etc.” According to this
“mythical-paradise elements” have been received into the court-style.
Gressmann further believes that the ceremonial must have originated
in the great empires of the East, the kingdom of Israel having been
too small for aught else than snobbish imitation. He compares the
reproduction of the customs of the court of Louis XIV. in the courts
of the little principalities of that period. This would emphasize the
utter emptiness of the custom in Israel.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 31
wrought by the Spirit of God in the religious experience of
David and others, it will be obvious how significant this is
for the nearness and intimacy which the figure of the Mes-
siah had acquired for the religious consciousness. No mat-
ter what peculiar philosophy or psychology of the typical
relation be adopted, this much will be common to all, that
the thought of the Messiah must have had a vital existence
in the hearts of the Psalmists in order to make this pre-
figuration of him in themselves more than an empty, un-
real show. The David, who could speak of himself in Mes-
sianic terms, must have held the Messianic concept in a
warm religious embrace.
So much for the typical side of the matter. The other
question had reference to the directly-Messianic element
in the Psalter. Here the phenomena are so peculiar that
modern criticism, though obviously shrinking and moving
away from the old, solid Messianic ground, has not suc-
ceeded in finding a satisfactory substitute. The chief
peculiarity of the passages in question is, that they speak
of the King or the Anointed as a present, existing figure.56
To account for this three possibilities offer themselves. If
one, with Gunkel and Gressmann, applies the court-style
hypothesis, the King spoken of or addressed is simply a
contemporary ruler and has nothing to do with the Mes-
siah.57 Or, if one has recourse to the collectivistic theory,
56 The Psalms constituting this group of so-called “King-Psalms”
are the following: ii; xviii. 50; xx ; xxi; xxviii. 8; xlv; lxi. 6, 7; lxiii.
ii; lxxii ; lxxxiv. 10; lxxxix. 38. 51; cx; cxxxii. Cfr. Buchanan Gray,
The references to the King in the Psalter in their Bearing on Questions
of Date and Messianic Belief in Jewish Quarterly Review, vii. pp.
658-686.
The only exception to the above statement about the present exist-
ence of the King or Messiah is Ps. ii., on the view that this Psalm
from beginning to end, with all the speakers in it, the writer in-
cluded, is projected into that point of the future, when the last great
attack of the nations against Zion takes place. In that case, of course,
the existence of the King at the actual time of writing would not be
necessarily implied.
57 Here what was once supposed to be directly-Messianic is turned
into the quasi-typical, i.e. into the embellishment of the character
32 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the King or Messiah fades away into the figure of Israel.
Again, if one is prepared to attach the extraordinary lan-
guage employed in such Psalms as ii. and cx. to one or the
other of the Maccabaean rulers, he may yet save the directly-
Messianic character at the expense of having it connected
with an unworthy figure. But on all three views the present
existence of the “King” is explained. It would require,
however, a combination of at least two of them to cover all
the facts,. In the case of Pss. xlv.; lxxii. and cx. the col-
lectivistic exegesis is, of course, excluded, and the attempt
to carry it through in Ps. ii. is open to most serious objec-
tions.58 Here then it will be necessary to fall back upon
either the one or the other or both of the two other pro-
posals. We believe orthodox exegetes will find it difficult
to get rid of the feeling, that neither of these two is in keep-
ing with the dignity of revelation. Subjectively the in-
sincerities of a court-ceremonial, and objectively the char-
of an existing king with originally eschatological traits. Gunkel ad-
mits that, contrary to the intent of the writers, very early readers of
such Psalms found in them a direct-Messianic import, Ausgewahte
Psalmen, p. 18. “So ist also dieser Stoff, der ursprunglich escha-
tologisch war, schliesslich auch wieder eschatologisch verstanden
worden.”
58 The subject of the equation Israel=the Messiah is a most interest-
ing one, but too large to be handled in the present connection. There
can be no a priori objection to the investment of Israel not only with
the predicate of “anointed,” but even with the title of “The Anointed
One.” The anointed king and the people are closely related, and the
parallel case of the attribution of sonship to both, suggests a common
possession by both of the anointing. In the New Testament the
anointing is bestowed upon both Christ and believers. Besides, the
anointing was not strictly confined to the kings. It is quite plausible,
therefore, to understand the term of Israel in such passages as
Hab. iii. 13; Ps. xxviii. 8, where the parallelismus membrorum favors
- The serious objection to the theory arises from the concrete way
in which it is applied, viz. that the Messianizing of the nation shall
have been an intentional substitute for the hope of a Davidic individual
Messiah. Usually Isa. 1v. 3 is cited as furnishing either an instance,
or the original precedent of the replacement of the Messiah by Israel.
But the passage does not require this interpretation, and in view of
the fact that it calls the mercies of David “sure” i.e. unalterable, re-
liable, it is absurd to find in a statement emphasizing this very thing the
idea of their abrogation or even transfer.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 33
acter and life of the later Maccabaean leaders seem unfit to
be the bearers of such a high and sacred conception.59 As
compared with these, there is at least a kernel of attractive
truth in the collectivistic idea. Not as if the Messiahship
of the Davidic prince could have been abrogated and the
Messiahship of Israel substituted for it, but in this way
that in certain Psalms a strong sense of the close appurten-
ance of the Messiah to Israel and of Israel to the Messiah
reveals itself. It is not identity, but identification of life
that creates the appearance as if Israel were the real Messiah
to the exclusion of the personal figure. These Psalmists,
when they call Israel the Anointed of Jehovah, do so be-
cause they realize the significance of the Messiah’s office
for the religious life of Israel. Even Wellhausen observes
that in a representation, like that of Ps. ii. the Messiah and
Israel can be scarcely distinguished.60 Such a close iden-
tification is after all what may and must be expected, if
the root-idea of the Messiahship is taken into account. The
deepest motivation of the Messianic conception lies in the
absolute, concrete, palpable assurance it affords of Jehovah’s
permanent presence among his people as the supreme bliss
of the future.61 He is sacramental in the profoundest sense
of the word. Consequently it cannot be indifferent which
59 The Maccabaean reference is, even in the case of Ps. cx. where
it might seem to be most plausible, rejected by Gunkel, Ausgewaahlte
Psalmen, p. 223. Cfr. Sellin, Der Alttestamentliche Prophetismus, pp.
168, 169.
60 The Book of Psalms in Sacred Books of the Old and New
Testaments, 1898, p. 164: “The Messiah is the speaker, and the whole
Psalm is composed in his name . . . the Messiah is the incarnation of
Israel’s universal rule. He and Israel are almost identical, and it
matters little whether we say, that Israel has or is the Messiah.” But
we cannot agree with the clause “It matters little,” for, as above stated,
the Messiah has his whole significance in this, that he stands as the
God-given pledge of Israel’s religious privilege and salvation. Israel
become itself the Messiah would be thrown back upon itself, and the
whole concept would be useless. Baethgen. Die Psalmen,3 p. 4 well ob-
serves that while the name “son” might fittingly apply to Israel this
can not be said of the title “king (over Zion).”
61 Cfr. Cheyne, Origin, pp. 338, 340.
34 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of the two is considered the prius, the Messiahship of the
people, or that of the eschatological King. There is in this
respect a difference between the joint-application of the idea
of sonship to Israel and the coming King, and the joint-
application of the idea of Messiahship to the same two
subjects. In regard to the sonship, the sonship of Israel
comes first in order of revelation; in regard to the Messiah-
ship the anointed character of the Davidic heir has the pre-
cedence. Israel has its anointing because of the Messiah.62
The question involuntarily occurs whether such a close
religious embrace as seems indicated by the facts is con-
ceivable with regard to a mere concept, a person purely
seen through the medium of futurity. To speak of the pre-
existence of the Messiah in the Psalms may sound pre-
posterous in many critical ears, but there is no escape from
the force that draws in that direction, once the actual occur-
rence of the individual Messianic figure in the Psalter is
recognized. The Messiah leads, as it were, a mysterious
life, that is somehow woven into the life of his people.
After all those who place the Psalter in so late a period,
have least reason to ridicule such a view. Will it not
be necessary to assign to a date older than most of the
Psalms the mysterious statement of Micah according to
which the “goings forth” of the great coming ruler in Israel,
are “from of old, from everlasting”?63 If we might as-
sume that in this way the Messiah, apprehended as a present
reality, played a vital part in the piety of the Psalmists, this
would furnish another illustration of the penetrating sub-
62 The analogy of the collective “Servant of Jehovah” in Isaiah is
often quoted to support the collective Messiahship of Israel. But this
would be an analogy only if the individual idea of the Servant were
entirely absent from these prophecies, as Giesebrecht and others
contend. Criticism, however, seems to be well on the way of receding
from this extreme position. And, if “the Servant of Jehovah” be
both individual and collective, and the two closely united, the
individual Messiah will have to be recognized in the Psalter also, and
that in close union with the people in order to make a true parallel
with Isaiah. Cfr. Sellin, Das Ratsel des deuterojesajanischen Buches,
- Gressmann,Ursprung, pp. 301, 333.
63 Mic. v. 2.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 35
jectivity with which the truth of revelation is appropriated
here and enable us to feel more strongly than at any other
point, how profoundly at one the Christian’s Messianic ori-
entation of faith is with that of those who could say: “Be-
hold 0 God our shield, and look upon the face of thine
Anointed.”64
In concluding our rapid survey of the eschatology of the
Psalter, a few words may be added in regard to its prac-
tical bearing on present-day conditions in the religious and
social world. Perhaps our study of the Psalms can be of
some help to us in taking our bearings in the midst of the
loud and universal demand for what is called “reconstruc-
tion.” It cannot be denied that the eschatological teaching
of the Psalms, and Old Testament eschatology in general,
bear a certain striking resemblance to the desires and ideals
of this eminently modern drift of life. In the Psalter we
meet not only with the conception of a reconstruction of
things on the grandest of scales, but this is actually pro-
jected on the stage of earthly existence. Here, then, an
opportunity is afforded for testing, and, if necessary, cor-
recting the ends and methods with which the modern move-
ment for world-reconstruction occupies itself. This is all
the more timely, since the Church herself is invited to lend
a helping hand in the making over of things, and to let
herself be registered as one of several coequal and coopera-
tive forces making ready for this gigantic enterprise. Now
it is plain from the eschatological teaching of Scripture in
general and from the Psalms in particular, that the Church
has already in advance an outlook and a program towards
an absolute and ideal future, which is governed by certain
distinct and definite principles, to such a degree bound up
with her very essence of belief, that to ignore these prin-
ciples or to cease insisting upon them in any line of altruistic
work, would mean self-abdication and disloyalty to her
charter as the Church of God. The foremost of these
principles is that the end of existence for all things lies in
64 Ps. lxxxiv. 9.
36 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
God, and that, therefore, to religion must be assigned the
highest place in every ideal condition contemplated as a goal.
It is the special function of the Church to speak unceasingly
and unfalteringly for this one supreme aspect of the future
world, to insist in season and out of season that in it God
and the service of God are to the highest good and satis-
faction of mankind, that without which all other desirable
things will lose their value and abiding significance. To
work for the amelioration of the world without putting at
the top of its program the bestowal upon this world of the
baptism of religion as the primal requisite, should be im-
possible for the Church so long as she retains a clear con-
sciousness of her own specific calling. Nor is this merely
one or the foremost of the tasks of the Church, it is in such
a unique sense her “business,” that every other activity in
order to legitimatize itself as a church-function should be
able to prove its vital connection, direct or indirect, with the
service of God and of religion as her one unique mission
in the world. For the Church to indulge in the advocacy of
social and economic programs, without taking the time or
the trouble of deriving these from her religious root-con-
sciousness, and subordinating them to the glory of God, is a
precarious undertaking, not only because in so doing the
Church would speak without authority, but also because by
every form of experimentizing in such a field she endangers
the authority, which within the sphere of strictly-religious
principles is properly hers. Undoubtedly the Church even
so, will do her royal share in making the world better, and
that more effectually than she could possibly do in any other
way. The by-product of the genuinely-religious activity
will be more abundant and more valuable, than any scheme
to substitute it for the main product could possibly make it.
For the Church, to keep this in mind is not to be indifferent
to the lesser and secondary needs and distresses of mankind;
it is in reality to obey the conviction that in no other way
her deep solicitude for the sinful world, and the resources
she carries within herself for its healing, can be successfully
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 37
brought to bear upon it. There can be no doubt that the
Church owes the success with which in the past she has con-
tributed to the progress of the world in civilization to her
fidelity to this fundamental principle and the self-limitation
it imposes upon her; through it mainly she has become and
remained the antiqua mater out of whose blessed womb
the liberties and reforms among mankind have been born
and reborn. When measured by this standard of a
genuinely-religious and God centered consciousness, it will
have to be confessed that, taken as a whole, the modern
reconstruction-movement is sadly deficient. It appears to be
more humanistic than religious, to derive its motives and
ideals from man rather than from God. In the vision of
the land to be reached there seems to be little of the wor-
ship and enjoyment of him who is the center of every hope
worth cherishing for man. God is enthroned but seldom
in these Eutopian palaces. And the fear is not altogether
groundless, that the Church, in her pragmatic desire to
accomplish concrete and speedy results, has opportunis-
tically fallen in line with such humanitarian efforts, and for
the moment waived the consciousness of her unique and
privileged position, as voicing the specific claims of God upon
the service of man. A compromise of this kind born from
opportunism is serious enough; far more serious would the
situation be, if internal doubt as to the reality or primacy
and efficacy of the God-ward side of religion within the
consciousness of professed Christians should underlie this
tendency. That would mean not merely the death of
religion as such, but would result in the utter sterility, so
far as lasting, deeper results are concerned, of all uplifting
work conducted in its name. Christianity can make the
world better in the sign of religion; that standard abandoned
she will not only fail of success, but face actual defeat.
The second principle with which the biblical prospect of
a better order of affairs is inseparably bound up is that
of supernaturalism. The Psalter expects the marvelous
future from no other source or cause than a God who only
38 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
doeth wonders. Whatever there may be in it of teaching and
learning and meditating upon the law, these human en-
deavors or performances are not credited with bringing on
the world-change. It is not through evolution from be-
neath, but through descent and theophany and interposition
from above, that the face of the earth is to be renewed. The
comparison with and the appeal to the supernatural past
is sufficient proof of this. That the help of man is vanity is
a conviction deeply inwoven into the consciousness of the
Psalmists. Their true help is in the name of Jehovah
who made heaven and earth. Here again a sad difference
is to be observed between this frame of mind, and that in
which much of the reconstructive effort of the present time
is being applied. The latter often cherishes a most doctri-
naire and tenacious belief in the inherent and endless per-
fectibility of human nature, a humanistic optimism which
manages to thrive, no one knows how, in the face of the
most discouraging circumstances. It is a faith and has
some of the noble characteristics of faith, its imperviousness
to discouragement, its sovereign indifference to obstacles,
its resiliency under apparent defeat, but it is after all a
faith in man rather than in God, and since faith in the last
analysis can be glorified only through its object, it lacks
the supreme glory of the faith of Christianity. It cannot
overcome the world, because it has its resources in the world
itself. Even much of its unshakable confidence in man is
due to this that it feels itself shut up within the sphere of
the purely-human, and so tied down to man and his natural
potentialities, that to doubt of man would mean to despair
of itself and its own mission. And unfortunately at this
point also there is observable a certain tendency in the pro-
cedure of the Church to bend and lend itself to this mode
of thinking. Some of its educative and reformatory work
does not at least scorn the appeal to it as a motive force ,and
gives the impression, if not by direct avowal, at least in-
directly and through the assent of silence, that much can be
made of man, if only his better nature is cultivated and his
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 39
environment improved and his evil propensities repressed.
True, this may seem a mere matter of temporary accommo-
dation, an innocent shifting of the emphasis. Even as such,
however, it is serious enough. The idea of God and his
indispensable, all-determining part in the transformation
of the world, and central place in the world as transformed,
is not a thing that, like some secondary factor, can be for a
while ignored or neglected with impunity. The Christian
who allows himself to be drawn into this mode of thought,
can not escape in the end having his whole religious con-
sciousness deflected by it from its original and proper
center. A dualism which reckons with God in the inner
life of the soul and takes no account of Him in its outward
activities for reclaiming others, is in the long run impossible.
Moreover, the tendency in question minimizes and virtually
denies the fact of sin as the primal element in the situation
to be met. The slighting of the thought of God has for its
inevitable correlate the weakening and ultimate loss of the
specific consciousness of sin. But, serious as all this may
be, there is sometimes reason to fear that the things en-
umerated are not simply consequences of a drift of thought
superficially followed, but are the deeper-lying causes of
an inclination to fall in with the drift. The humanitarian
movement in its most pronounced and specific form, not
seldom has for its background a weakened or tottering
faith in the dependableness of God and the supernatural.
Where this shows itself the Church should be on her guard.
lest by countenancing it she deny herself and her Master
and renounce the most precious heritage of power she has
received from Him. To withdraw herself from participating
in such action is not abandonment of the world to itself;
it is the simple refusal to encourage a huge system of
quackery, and, that, if for no higher reasons, in the interest
of sinful, suffering humanity itself.
Finally the third lesson to be learned from the eschatology
of the Psalter is the importance of the strand of other-
worldliness in our Christian thought-fabric and love-service
40 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
with reference to the future. It might seem, to be sure, as
if the Psalter were ill-adapted to instruct us here, because
its own outlook is confined to the earthly state, because
while expecting another world-order, it postulates no other
milieu for this than the terrestrial one already known. And
so it might seem as if both the Psalter and Old Testament
eschatology in general lent real support to the view that it is
this lower earthly sphere, that must be transformed, and
that, leaving the question of a higher sphere to itself, the
Christian can be contented with directing his reclaiming
effort to it alone. But this is only apparently so, and the
Psalter is, of all biblical books, the best adapted to correct
this impression, because it gives us a glimpse not merely of a
higher future world objectively, but gives us a glimpse of
the subjective psychological process by which the revelation
of such a higher world was carried home to the minds of
the Psalmists, and consequently of the depth to which it is
rooted in the very heart of the religious consciousness itself.
It was because they could not conceive of the communion
between themselves and their God as other than endless, that
the Psalmists projected it into a future life. It was the
challenge of death flung into the face of religion that led
to this supreme victory of faith. It was this that opened the
gates of brass and broke the iron bars in sunder. Thus
religion reached the consciousness of the inadequacy of the
present life to meet its most instinctive and deepest de-
sires, and threw its anchor into the greater, eternal beyond.
And from that moment onward there could be no more
doubt as to where the emphasis in biblical religion would
finally lie. The New Testament has, of course, added to
this the clearer and more principal knowledge, that not
merely will God not withdraw himself from the believer in
death, but that first on the other side of death the perfectly
normal and satisfying, the true life can begin. It has
brought life and immortality to light in their most positive
self-evidencing aspect. This revelation is so rich and over-
whelming; it shows such a tremendous disproportion be-
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 41
tween what religion can mean and bring to us here, and
what it will mean and bring to us hereafter, that merely to
believe it is bound to make other-worldliness the dominating
attitude of the Christian mind. This is so much the case
that the slightest shifting of emphasis here may justly be
considered the symptom of some religious abnormality.
The gauge of health in the Christian is the degree of his
gravitation to the future, eternal world. The Christian
train of thought in this respect is the reversal of that of
the Old Testament: the eternal is not so much a prolonga-
tion of the temporal, but the temporal rather an anticipa-
tion of the eternal. And what is true of life is true of the
ministering and self-propagating function. The Church
of Christ in all its complex service to the world can never
forget that its primary concern is to call men into and pre-
pare them for the life eternal. Now, if one compares
these obvious facts with the spirit in which the modern
humanitarian movement estimates this life and the future
life in their relative importance, it can not be denied, that
the Christian point of view is not only not always consist-
ently maintained, but that sometimes it is openly scorned and
rejected. The taunt of the masses, who feel themselves dis-
criminated against in the treasures and comforts of this
world, is that religion seeks to reconcile them to their spoil-
ing of the present with the promise of an illusory or at best
doubtful future. The temptation is strong to overcome this
prejudice through giving greater prominence to the secular
advantage connected with the Christian life and promoted
by Christian activity. There is some warrant for this, for
we are taught that godliness is profitable unto all things,
having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to
come. At the same time the danger should not be underes-
timated that out of this strategic concession to the demand of
the age, may spring an actual compromise with the spirit that
would secularize and terrestrialize Christianity as to its
essence. Leaving for a moment higher things out of
account, it is obvious that from the Christian standpoint no
42 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
greater injury can be done to the true progress and healing
of humanity in this present evil world than to make it
promises and offer it remedies which have no vital connec-
tion with the hope of eternal life. For this hope alone can
in the long run feed and keep flowing every stream, of
altruistic activity that deserves the name of religion. The
life of this earth as a mere passing episode in time is not
worth the aeonian toil expended upon it. Precisely be-
cause the Christian other-worldliness is inspired by the
thought of God and not of self, it involves no danger of
monastic withdrawal from or indifference to the present
world. The same thirst for the divine glory which is the
root of all heavenly-mindedness, also compels the consecra-
tion of all earthly existence to the promotion of God’s king-
dom. Here also the by-product cannot continue, if the main
object of pursuit is lost sight of or neglected. But, what is
most serious of all, the vanishing of the belief in the
transcendent importance of the world to come would most
surely spell the death of the Christian religion itself.
Whatever may have been possible under Old Testament
conditions, in the beginnings of revelation, it is absolutely
impossible now with the New Testament behind us to con-
strue a religious relationship between God and man on the
basis of and within the limits of the present life alone. A
religion which touched only the little span of consciousness
between birth and death would be a pseudo-religion and
its God a pseudo-God. A God who treated the fugitive
generations of the race as so many passing acquaintances,
content to see them afloat in and float out of the luminous
circle of his own immortal life, could not continue to evoke
the worship of his creatures. Pagan cult He might receive,
but Christian service not. Men would become, and in a
far more tragic sense than the Psalmist meant it, strangers
and sojourners with Him. The Psalter bears eloquent
witness to the truth that a hope of indefinite perpetuation
for the collective body is not enough. It requires the as-
surance of the eternity of religion in the individual soul to
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE PSALTER 43
secure the permanence of religion as such. The Psalmists
had their faces set towards this and through wrestlings of
prayer with Jehovah won their way to the light. The
modern, humanistic movement prefers to cultivate the
secular and earthly in part because it has come to doubt the
heavenly and eternal; its zeal for the improvement of the
world often springs not from faith, but from scepticism.
The Church by compromising and affiliating with this
would sign her own death-warrant as a distinct institution.
When religion submerges itself in the concerns of time and
becomes a mere servant of these, it thereby renders itself
subject to the inexorable flux of time. Kronos has eaten
all his children and he will not spare even this noblest of
his offspring, once it passes wholly into his realm and
closes behind itself the doors of eternity. On the other
hand, in a pure and firm eschatological conviction, which
keeps eternal hopes and interests well to the front, lies the
safeguard and pledge of the perpetual vigor of Christianity.
It cannot lose its youth here, because it knows eternal youth
is promised in the hereafter. Through faith in this promise
alone it defies the attrition of time and history. Its es-
chatology is its greatest religious glory, for in this the
Church expresses her faith in a future when all the
accidents and externals of religion shall drop away, a great.
purging of the world-stage, which shall leave only the per-
fect and ripe fruitage of all God’s intercourse with man
from the beginning. The Gospel of the life to come is the
Gospel of a Church sure of herself and her own endless
destiny. No other creed can bring it, and the Christian
Church can bring nothing less. In it lies the believer’s own
portion and it is the only portion he should think it worth
while to offer to a spiritually empoverished and starving
world. It is moreover the portion which has the promise
that all other things shall be added to it.
Princeton. GEERHARDUS VOS.