after language resembling the Psalm before us, he continues in words taken from Psa 79:6. When Hitzig maintains that David could no more have composed this disconcertedly despondent Psalm than Isaiah could the words in Isa 21:3-4, we refer, in answer to him, to Isa 22:4 and to the many attestations that David did weep, 2Sa 1:12; 2Sa 3:32; 2Sa 12:21; 2Sa 15:30; 2Sa 19:1.
The accompanying musical direction runs: To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, upon the Octave. The lxx translates ὑπὲρ τῆς ὀγδόης, and the Fathers associate with it the thought of the octave of eternal happiness, ἡ ὀγδόη ἐκείνη, as Gregory of Nyssa says, ἥτίς ἐστιν ὁ ἐφεξῆς αἰών. But there is no doubt whatever that על־השּׁמינית has reference to music. It is also found by Psa 12:1-8, and besides in 1Ch 15:21. From this latter passage it is at least clear that it is not the name of an instrument. An instrument with eight strings could not have been called an octave instead of an octachord. In that passage they played upon nablas על־עלמות, and with citherns על־השּׁמינית. If עלמות denotes maidens = maidens' voices i.e., soprano, then, as it seems, השּׁמינית is a designation of the bass, and על־השׁמינית equivalent to all' ottava bassa. The fact that Psa 46:1-11, which is accompanied by the direction על־עלמות, is a joyous song, whereas Psa 6:1-10 is a plaintive one and Psa 12:1-8 not less gloomy and sad, accords with this. These two were to be played in the lower octave, that one in the higher.
Verses 1-3
Psa 6:1-3 (Hebrew_Bible_6:2-4) There is a chastisement which proceeds from God's love to the man as being pardoned and which is designed to purify or to prove him, and a chastisement which proceeds from God's wrath against the man as striving obstinately against, or as fallen away from, favour, and which satisfies divine justice. Psa 94:12; Psa 118:17; Pro 3:11. speak of this loving chastisement. The man who should decline it, would act against his own salvation. Accordingly David, like Jeremiah (Jer 10:24), does not pray for the removal of the chastisement but of the chastisement in wrath, or what is the same thing, of the judgment proceeding
