Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/87

to suppose that David's self-consciousness must under such circumstances pass over into that of his antitype; but it is in reality quite otherwise. As the poet in order to describe his experiences in verse, idealises them, i.e., seizes the idea of them at the very root, and, stripping off all that is adventitious and insignificant, rises into the region of the ideal: so David also in these psalms idealises his experiences, which even in itself results in the reduction of them to all that is essential to their continuance as types. This he does, however, not from his own poetic impulse, but under the inspiration of the Spirit of God; and a still further result which follows from this is, that the description of his typical fortunes and their corresponding states of feeling is moulded into the prophetic description of the fortunes and feelings of his antitype.
Beside these three classes of Messianic psalms one may regard psalms like Psa 45:1 and Psa 72:1 as a fourth class of indirectly eschatologically Messianic psalms. They are those in which, according to the time of their composition, Messianic hopes are referred to a contemporary king, but without having been fulfilled in him; so that, in the mouth of the church, still expecting their final accomplishment, these psalms have become eschatological hymns and their exposition as such, by the side of their chronological interpretation, is fully warranted.
A fifth class is formed by the eschatologically Jehovic psalms, which are taken up with describing the advent of Jahve and the consummation of His kingdom, which is all through brought about by judgment (vid., Psa 93:1-5). The number of these psalms in the Psalter greatly preponderates. They contain the other premiss to the divine-human end of the history of salvation. There are sudden flashes of light thrown upon this end in the prophets. But it remains reserved to the history itself to draw the inference of the unio personalis from these human and divine premises. The Redeemer, in whom the Old Testament faith reposed, is Jahve. The centre of the hope lay in the divine not in the human king. That the Redeemer, when He should appear, would be God and man in one person was alien to the mind of the Old Testament church. And the perception of the fact