This Is Appendix 64 From The Companion Bible. 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. |