The
key to the interpretation of these words has been lost for over twenty-two
centuries.
Commentators and critics have confessed that they can make
only conjectures as to the primitive meaning and use of the word (for it is only
one word in Hebrew) lam The Ancient Versions attempt a rendering. The Septuagint
has eis to telos = unto, for, or, with a view to the end. The
Arabic, Ethiopic, and Vulgate render it "at the end".
The Chaldee renders it (Psalm 45) "to the praise". The
Talmudists hold that it related to Him Who is to come; while Aquila (one of the
Septuagint Revisers, It is clear that a Person was intended by these various
renderings; but they appear to be interpretations rather than translations.
Regarded as the former, they may be useful in showing us how the Psalms point to
Christ; for He is the end. It is He Who giveth victory; it is He Who is the
Coming One : and, while the book is called Sepher T All ancient Hebrew manuscripts, with the early and best
later printed editions, show no break whatever between the lines of one Psalm
and another.
The Septuagint translators had been many years in Babylon,
and the oldest among them must have been very young when carried away thither.
There was none who had full knowledge and experience of the
ancient usages of the Temple worship.
Consequently, when they came to their task some 197 years
after the latest carrying away to Babylon, there was nothing to show them where
one Psalm ended and where the next began.
Hence, when they came to the word lam In each of these isolated Psalms we have the true models on
which all the other Psalms are based.
In
each case we have
In
each of these two cases the word lamenazzeah,
forms the sub-scription, and appears at the end of the Psalm.
This is the key thus discovered by Dr. J.W. Thirtle The unspeakable importance of Dr. Thritle's discovery is at
once seen. For it shows two things :
1. That, whatever the interpretation or application of the
words may be, a Psalm which had this word in the sub-scription had
a use beyond its local, temporary, or original purpose; and, being considered
appropriate use, or for special occasions, was handed over to the Director of
the Temple worship with any instructions which might be necessary for its use.
2. That such word or words of instruction, which to-day
stand in the Septuagint and all subsequent Versions of the Bible as the super-scription,
belong, not to that Psalm, but to the sub-scription of the Psalm
preceding it.
This, at one stroke, removes the great difficulty, and
solves the heretofore insoluble problem and impossible task which all
Commentators have experienced, when they struggled in the attempt to find in one
Psalm the explanation of words which belong to another.
Few problems so difficult and baffling have been removed by
a solution so simple and self-explanatory.
This on feature, which by Dr. Thirtle's kind permission,
has been taken over into The Companion Bible, must greatly enhance
its value and usefulness, making it unique among all existing editions of the
Bible.
1 These facts have been discovered, and admirably set forth by Dr. J. W. Thirtle, in his two works on this subject, videlicet, The Titles of the Psalms: their Nature and Meaning explained (1904), and Old Testament Problems (1907). Both published by Henry Frowde, Oxford Bible Warehouse, London.