Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/234

27]], and לחצרותיו וּבאוּ, Psa 96:8, instead of לפניו וּבאוּ, 1Ch 16:29. Neither the word מקדּשׁ nor the mention of “courts” is suitable in a hymn sung at the consecration of the holy tent in Zion, for at that time the old national sanctuary with the altar in the court (the tabernacle) still stood in Gibeon.
Here, therefore, the text of the Chronicle corresponds to the circumstances of David's time, while the mention of מקדּשׁ and of courts in the psalm presupposes the existence of the temple with its courts as the sanctuary of the people of Israel. Now a post-exilic poet would scarcely have paid so much attention to this delicate distinction between times and circumstances as to alter, in the already existing psalms, out of which he compounded this festal hymn, the expressions which were not suitable to the Davidic time. Against this, the use of the unusual word חדוה drow lau, joy, which occurs elsewhere only in Neh 10:8, Neh 10:10, and in Chaldee in Ezr 6:18, is no valid objection, for the use of the verb חדה as early as Exo 18:9 and Job 3:6 shows that the word does not belong to the later Hebrew. The discrepancy also between 1Ch 16:30 and 1Ch 16:31 and Psa 96:9-11, namely, the omission in the Chronicle of the strophe בּמישׁרים עמּים ידין (Psa 96:10), and the placing of the clause מלך יהוה בגּוים      ויאמרוּ after הארץ ותגל (1Ch 16:31, cf. Psa 96:10), does not really prove anything as to the priority of Psa 96:1-13. Hitzig, indeed, thinks that since by the omission of the one member the parallelism of the verses is disturbed, and a triple verse appears where all the others are double merely, and because by this alteration the clause,”Say among the people, Jahve is King,” has come into an apparently unsuitable position, between an exhortation to the heaven and earth to rejoice, and the roaring of the sea and its fulness, this clause must have been unsuitably placed by a copyist's error. But the transposition cannot be so explained; for not only is that one member of the verse misplaced, but also the אמרוּ of the psalm is altered into ויאמרוּ, and moreover, we get no explanation of the omission of the strophe וגו ידין. If we consider ויאמרוּ (with ו consecutive), “then will they say,” we see clearly that it corresponds to וגו ירנּנוּ אז in 1Ch 16:33; and in 1Ch 16:30 the recognition of Jahve's kingship over the peoples is represented as the issue and effect of the joyful exultation of the heaven and earth, just as in 1Ch 16:32 and 1Ch 16:33 the joyful shouting of the trees of the field before Jahve as He comes to judge the earth, is regarded as the result of the roaring of the sea and the gladness of the fields. The אמרוּ