The Book of Psalms Vol. 1

THE BOOK OF PSALMS A NEW TRANSLATION WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL By J. J. STEWART PEROWNE, D. D. Canon Residentiary of Llandaff Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge Hon. Chaplain to the Queen Late Praelector in Theology and Fellow of Trinity College VOL. I PSALMS 1-72 George Bell and Sons in 1878, 4th edition. Digitized by Ted Hildebrandt: Gordon College 2006 with the help of Kim Spaulding, Apurva Thanju, and Brianne Records PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION ALTHOUGH the Fourth Edition of this work does not differ very materially from those that have preceded it, either in the translation or in the notes, yet in one respect it will I hope, be found much more complete and accurate. In preparing it, I have had the advantage of consulting many original authorities in Talmudical and Rabbinical literature which before were not within my reach, and I have consequently been able to correct several errors of quotation from these sources, some of which have found their way into many commentaries, one writer having often merely copied and repeated the blunders of another. And, further, I have had throughout the valuable assistance of Dr. Schiller-Szinessy, the learned Reader in Talmudical and Rabbinical Literature in this University, who is a master of Jewish lore, and who has most kindly spared no labour in verifying and correcting my references. Their greater accuracy is, in a large measure, due to the conscientious care which he has bestowed upon them, and of which I am the more sensible, because I know that it has been viii PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. bestowed notwithstanding the pressure of other numerous and heavy engagements. It is a pleasure to me to take this opportunity of expressing my obligations to him, and my sense of the ready kindness with which his learning is always placed at the disposal of others. CAMBRIDGE, March 7, 1878. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION IN preparing a Third Edition of this work for the press, I have availed myself of the following critical aids and authorities:-- I. Baer's critical text of the Psalter. His preface on the Metrical Accentuation of the Poetical Books deserves notice. 2. Field's admirable Edition of Origen's Hexapla. I have corrected by reference to it many quotations which were given in my former editions on the authority of Montfaucon. 3. Moll's Commentary in Lange's Bibelwerk. 4. The 2nd Edition of Delitzsch's Psalter. 5. The 3rd Edition of Ewald's work on the Psalms. 6. The 2nd Edition of Hitzig's Commentary. 7. Dr. Kay's Psalms with Notes. 8. Professor Conant's Translation. 9. The 2nd Edition of Dr. Phillip's Commentary. My special thanks are due to R. L. Bensly, Esq., Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, who has been so kind as to revise the sheets of the work as it passed through the press; to his knowledge and accuracy I am greatly indebted. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, April 22, 1873. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION THE Second Edition of this work will not be found to differ very materially from the First. I have made a few additions, more particularly to the Critical Notes in some of the earlier Psalms; and I have corrected errors wherever I have dis- covered them, or where they have been pointed out to me by friends. All the references have been carefully revised. Many of the apparent mistakes in the references of the First Edition were due to my having used the Hebrew Bible, without taking due care to mark where the Hebrew divisions of chapters or verses varied from the English. Where these differ, it will now be found, I hope, that both references are given, those to the Hebrew text being enclosed in square brackets. If, however, the double reference has still been omitted in some cases, it may be borne in mind that in all Psalms which have an inscription, the inscription is reckoned as a verse (occasionally as two verses) in the Hebrew text, whereas this is not the case in the English. Consequently the first verse in the English may be the second or even the third in the Hebrew, and so on all through. In the Critical Notes the references are always to the Hebrew text. xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In revising my translation I have approached in several instances more nearly to the Authorized Version, and I have more frequently than before left the literal rendering of a clause for the note, giving the freer and more idiomatic in the text. In doing this, I have listened to the suggestions of my critics, some of whom, not agreeing in other respects, have agreed in censuring my trnaslation. And now as there is at last some reasonable hope that a revision of our Authorized Version will be undertaken by competent scholars, this question of translation possesses far more than a merely personal or temporary interest. Even a translator who has failed, if he has done his work honestly and conscientiously, may be a beacon, if he cannot be a guide, to those who come after him. I shal therefore be pardoned perhaps, if I discuss more fully than I should otherwise have done, some of the points that have been raised. The objections that have been brought against me are of this kind. One of my reviewers observes that, after having said that I had not “needlessly departed” from our Authorized Version, I have “judged if needful often enough to give an entirely new air to my translation.” Another writes: “The gain which is acquired by the greater accurarcy of the version by no means compensates for the loss of harmony and rhythm and sweetness, both of sound and of association. An English reader could undrestand the Psalms no better, and he could not enjoy them half so well.” I have been charged with going directly against “existing standards of public tastes and feeling,” in following the Hebrew order of the words, where such order is not the most natural in English. This is “to undo the work of such men as Wordsworth and Tennyson.” Again, “In the original, the paronomasia or alliteration” [to preserve which the structure of the sentence in English has been made to accomodate PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xiii itself to the structure in Hebrew] “amounts only to a delicate hint, which may pass unnoticed except to an observant eye; in the translation it obtrudes itself as a prominent feature of the style.” And both critics concur in thinking that I have myself fallen into the very errors in point of taste which I have condemned in other translations. Now I may at once say that to some extent, if not to the whole extent alleged by the reviewers, I plead guilty to the indictment. I have carried minute and punctilious accuracy too far. I have sometimes adhered too closely, without any adequate and compensating result, to the order of the words in the Hebrew. It will be an evidence of the sincerity of my reprentance on this head, that in the present edition I have in many instnaces corrected both the one fault and the other. But I cannot concede all that the critics demand of me. I. In the first place, I did not say, in the preface to my first edition, that I had not “needlessly departed from our Authorized Version,” but that I had “not needlessly departed from the sound English of our Authorized Version;” and my meaning was evident, because I immediately gave as instances of departure the use of the verb “to seize” and of the noun “sympathy.”* 2. In the next place, I feel quite sure that those who lay so much stress upon “harmony and rhythm and sweetness,” are thinking more of the Prayer-Book Version of the Psalms, than of that of King James’s translators. The former is far more musical, more balanced, and also more paraphrastic than the latter; and from constantly hearing it read in the Church Services, we have become so thoroughly habituated to it that almost any departure from its well-known cadences * So it ought to have stood: the verb “to sypmpathize” was put by mistake for the noun “sympathy.” I have only used it once in Ps. lxix., and there to express a Hebrew noun which occurs nowhere else. xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. offends the ear. Indeed our familiarity with this version is such, that not only would most English Churchmen having occasion to quote a verse of a Psalm quote it as it stands in the Prayer-Book, but they would often be very much sur- prised if they were told that the very sense of the Bible Version was different. Of the multitude of persons who are familiar with the phrase, "The iron entered into his soul," how many are aware that the rendering in our Bible is, “He was laid in iron” There can be no question as to which is the more rhythmical and the more expressive; but there can also be no question that the Authorized Version faithfully represents the Hebrew, which the other does not. It would be no difficult task to quote a number of passages from the Bible Version of the Psalms which fail essentially in rhythm just because they are faithful to the original. Take for instance the following (Ps. lviii. 7):—"Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces." Now contrast with this the freer but inaccurate rendering of the Prayer-Book Version:--"Let them fall away like water that runneth apace; and when they shoot their arrows, let them be rooted out." Again, the Bible version of lix.

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