Sinners be consumed. — This imprecation, which comes in at the close of this otherwise uniformly glad hymn, has been variously excused. The truth seems to be that from a religious hymn of Israel, since religion and patriotism were one, the expression of the national feeling against heathen oppressors and apostates who sided with them could not well be absent, whatever its immediate subject and tone. But the poet touches even a profounder truth.[19] The harmony of creation was soon broken by sin, and the harmony of the song of creation would hardly be complete, or rather, would be false and unreal, did not a discord make itself heard. The form such a suggestion would take was conditioned by the nationality of the poet; the spirit of it brings this ancient hymn at its close into accord with the feeling of modern literature, as reflected in Wordsworth’s well-known “Verses Written in Early Spring”: —
[19] In reality the power of sin to interfere with God’s pleasure. in His universe is present as an undercurrent of thought in Psalms 103, as well as 104. In the former it is implied that forgiveness and restoration are requisite before the harmony of the universe (Psalms 104:20-22) can become audible. The two psalms are also closely related in form.
“I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I lay reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran
And much it grieved my heart to think
What Man has made of Man.”
Bless thou the Lord. — This is the first hallelujah in the psalter. Outside the psalter it is never found, and was therefore a liturgical expression coined in a comparatively late age. It is variously written as one or two words.