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which Israel is summoned is the covenant which God made with Abraham, and the wonderful way in which the patriarchs were led. The summons to the heathen to acknowledge Jahve as alone God and King of the world, and to come before His presence with sacrificial offerings, together with the thought that Jahve will come to judge the earth, belong to the Messianic hopes. These had formed themselves upon the foundation of the promises given to the patriarchs, and the view they had of Jahve as Judge of the heathen, when He led His people out of Egypt,so early, that even in the song of Moses at the Red Sea (Ex. 15), ), and the song of the pious Hannah (1Sa 2:1-10), we meet with the first germs of them; and what we find in David and the prophets after him are only further development of these.
Yet all the later commentators, with the exception of Hitzig,die Psalmen, ii. S. ix.f., judge otherwise as to the origin of this festal hymn. Because the first half of it (1Ch 16:8-22) recurs in Psa 105:1-15, the second (1Ch 16:23-33) in Psa 96:1-13, and the conclusion (1Ch 16:34-36) in Ps.Psa 106:1, Psa 106:47-48, it is concluded that the author of the Chronicle compounded the hymn from these three psalms, in order to reproduce the festive songs which were heard after the ark had been brought in, in the same free way in which the speeches in Thucydides and Livy reproduce what was spoken at various times. Besides the later commentators, Aug. Koehler (in the Luth. Ztschr. 1867, S. 289ff.) and C. Ehrt (Abfassungszeit und Abschluss des Psalters, Leipz. 1869, S. 41ff.) are of the same opinion. The possibility that our hymn may have arisen in this way cannot be denied; for such a supposition would be in so far consistent with the character of the Chronicle, as we find in it speeches which have not been reported verbatim by the hearers, but are given in substance or in freer outline by the author of our Chronicle, or, as is more probable, by the author of the original documents made use of by the chronicler. But this view can only be shown to be correct if it corresponds to the relation in which our hymn may be ascertained to stand to the three psalms just mentioned. Besides the face that its different sections are again met with scattered about in different psalms, the grounds for supposing that our hymn is not an original poem are mainly the want of connection in the transition from 1Ch 16:22 to v.23, and from 1Ch 16:33 to v.34; the fact that in v.35 we have a verse referring to the Babylonian exile borrowed from Ps 106; ; and that [[Bible_(King_James)/1_Chronicles|1Ch 16: