After having recognised the fact that the double inscription of Ps 88 places two irreconcilable statements concerning the origin of that Psalm side by side, we renounce the artifices by which Ethan (איתן)[1] the Ezrahite, of the tribe of Judah (1Ki 5:11 1Ki 4:31, 1Ch 2:6), is made to be one and the same person with Ethan (Jeduthun) the son of Kushaiah the Merarite, of the tribe of Levi (1Ch 15:17; 1Ch 6:29-32; 1Ch 6:44-47), the master of the music together with Asaph and Heman, and the chief of the six classes of musicians over whom his six sons were placed as sub-directors (1 Chr. 25).
The collector has placed the Psalms of the two Ezrahites together. Without this relationship of the authors the juxtaposition would also be justified by the reciprocal relation in which the two Psalms stand to one another by their common, striking coincidences with the Book of Job. As to the rest, however, Ps 88 is a purely individual, and Psalms 89 a thoroughly nationally Psalm. Both the poetical character and the situation of the two Psalms are distinct.
The circumstances in which the writer of Psalms 89 finds himself are in most striking contradiction to the promises given to the house of David. He revels in the contents of these promises, and in the majesty and faithfulness of God, and then he pours forth his intense feeling of the great distance between these and the present circumstances in complaints over the afflicted lot of the anointed of God, and prays God to be mindful of His promises, and on the other hand, of the reproach by which at this time His anointed and His people are overwhelmed. The anointed one is not the nation itself (Hitzig), but he who at that time wears the crown. The crown of the king is defiled to the ground; his throne is cast down to the earth; he is become grey-headed before his time, for all the fences of his land are broken through, his fortresses fallen, and his enemies have driven him out of the field, so that reproach and scorn follow him at every step.
There was no occasion for such complaints in the reign of Solomon; but surely in the time of Rehoboam, into the first decade of whose reign Ethan the Ezrahite may have survived king Solomon, who died at the age of sixty. In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak (שׁישׁק = Σέσογχις = Shishonk I), the
- ↑ This name איתן is also Phoenician in the form יתן, Itan, Ἰτανός; ליתן, litan, is Phoenician, and equivalent to לעלם.)
