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simplest barest outline: so also the progress of history is typical, and not only as a whole, but also most surprisingly in single traits, the life of David is a vaticinium reale of the life of Him, whom prophecy calls directly עבדי דוד Eze 34:23., Psa 37:24. and דוד מלכם Hos 3:5; Jer 30:9, as the David who is, as it were, raised from the dead in a glorified form. Those psalms in which David himself (or even a poet throwing himself into David's position and mood) gives expression in lyric verse to prominent typical events and features of his life, we call typically Messianic psalms. This class, however, is not confined to those, of which David is directly or indirectly the subject, for the course of suffering of all the Old Testament saints, and especially of the prophets in their calling (vid., on Psa 34:20. and Ps 69), ), was to a certain extent a τύπος τοῦ μέλλοντος. All these psalms, not less than those of the first class, may be quoted in the New Testament with the words ἵνα πληρωθῇ, with this difference only, that in the former it is the prophetic word, in the latter the prophetic history, that is fulfilled. The older theologians, especially the Lutheran, contended against the supposition of such typological citations of the Old Testament in the New: they were destitute of that perception of the organic element in history granted to our age, and consequently were lacking in the true counterpoise to their rigid notions of inspiration.
But there is also a class of Psalms which we call typico-prophetically Messianic, viz., those in which David, describing his outward and inward experiences, - experiences even in themselves typical, - is carried beyond the limits of his individuality and present condition, and utters concerning himself that which, transcending human experience, is intended to become historically true only in Christ. Such psalms are typical, in as much as their contents is grounded in the individual, but typical, history of David; they are, however, at the same time prophetic, in as much as they express present individual experience in laments, hopes, and descriptions which point far forward beyond the present and are only fully realised in Christ. The psychological possibility of such psalms has been called in question; but they would only be psychologically impossible, if one were obliged