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bury them.” The formula of citation κατὰ τὸν λόγον ὃν (τοὺς λόγου οὓς) ἔγραψε, and more particularly the ἔγραψε - which as being the aorist cannot have the Scripture (ἡ γραφή), and, since the citation is a prayer to god, not God, but only the anonymous psalmist, as its subject (vid., however, the various readings in Grimm on this passage) - sounds as though the historian were himself conscious that he was quoting a portion of Scripture that had taken its rise among the calamities of that time. In fact, no age could be regarded as better warranted in incorporating some of its songs in the Psalter than the Maccabaean, the sixty-third week predicted by Daniel, the week of suffering bearing in itself the character of the time of the end, this strictly martyr age of the Old Covenant, to which the Book of Daniel awards a high typical significance in relation to the history of redemption.
But unbiassed as we are in the presence of the question whether there are Maccabaean Psalms, still there is, on the other hand, much, too, that is against the referring of the two Psalms to the Maccabaean age. In Psa 79:1-13 there is nothing that militates against referring it to the Chaldaean age, and Psa 79:11 (cf. Psa 102:21; Psa 69:34) is even favourable to this. And in Psalms 74, in which Psa 74:4, Psa 74:8, Psa 74:9 are the most satisfactorily explained from the Maccabaean age, there are, again, other parts which are better explained from the Chaldaean. For what is said in Psa 74:7, “they have set Thy Temple on fire,” applies just as unconditionally as it runs to the Chaldaeans, but not to the Syrians. And the cry of prayer, Psa 74:3, “lift up Thy footsteps to the eternal ruins,” appears to assume a laying waste that has taken place within the last few years at least, such as the Maccabaean age cannot exhibit, although at the exaltation of the Maccabees Jerusalem was ἀοίκητος ὡς ἔρημος (1 Macc. 3:45). Hitzig, it is true, renders: raise Thy footsteps for sudden attacks without end; but both the passages in which משּׁוּאות occurs mutually secure to this word the signification “desolations” (Targum, Symmachus, Jerome, and Saadia). If, however, the Chaldaean catastrophe were meant, then the author of both Psalms, on the ground of Ezr 2:41; Neh 7:44 (cf. Neh 11:22), might be regarded as an Asaphite of the time of the Exile, although they might also be composed by any one in the Asaphic style. And as regards their relation to Jeremiah,