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peculiarly its own, that we meet with no less than thirteen words that do no occur anywhere else. It is so distinctly Elohimic in its impress, that the simple Elohim occurs twenty-three times; but in addition to this, it is as though the whole cornucopia of divine names were poured out upon it: יהוה in Psa 68:17; אדני six times; האל twice; שׁדּי in Psa 68:15; יהּ in Psa 68:5; אדני יהוה in Psa 68:21; אלהים yh in Psa 68:19; so that this Psalm among all the Elohimic Psalms is the most resplendent. In connection with the great difficulty that is involved in it, it is no wonder that expositors, more especially the earlier expositors, should differ widely in their apprehension of it as a whole or in separate parts. This circumstance has been turned to wrong account by Ed. Reuss in his essay, “Der acht-und-sechzigste Psalm, Ein Denkmal exegetischer Noth und Kunst zu Ehren unsrer ganzen Zunft, Jena, 1851,” for the purpose of holding up to ridicule the uncertainty of Old Testament exegesis, as illustrated in this Psalm.
The Psalm is said, as Reuss ultimately decides, to have been written between the times of Alexander the Great and the Maccabees, and to give expression to the wish that the Israelites, many of whom were far removed from Palestine and scattered abroad in the wide earth, might soon be again united in their fatherland. But this apprehension rests entirely upon violence done to the exegesis, more particularly in the supposition that in v. 23 the exiles are the persons intended by those whom God will bring back. Reuss makes out those who are brought back out of Bashan to be the exiles in Syria, and those who are brought back out of the depths of the sea he makes out to be the exiles in Egypt. He knows nothing of the remarkable concurrence of the mention of the Northern tribes (including Benjamin) in Psa 68:28 with the Asaphic Psalms: Judah and Benjamin, to his mind, is Judaea; and Zebulun and Naphtali, Galilee in the sense of the time after the return from exile. The “wild beast of the reed” he correctly takes to be an emblem of Egypt; but he makes use of violence in order to bring in a reference to Syria by the side of it. Nevertheless Olshausen praises the services Reuss has rendered with respect to this Psalm; but after incorporating two whole pages of the “Denkmal” in his commentary he cannot satisfy himself with the period between Alexander and the Maccabees, and by