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4. Rivalling Professor Eichorne, or Doctor Geddes himself in temerity of guessing, the magazine writer in question thinks he has discovered that "the eighty-ninth Psalm was a dirge composed by Jeremiah the

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prophet, on the death of king Josiah, who

was killed at Hadadrimmon in battle;" "written with that carping disappointment "which pervades every work of Jeremiah, "and adapted exactly to the fortunes of "king Josiah +" That it began originally at the nineteenth verse; and states his descent from David, his anointment (v. 20), his respite (22), his piety (26), his renewal of the covenant (28): Then, with a somewhat querulous impiety, his desertion by Providence is bewailed: The irruption of Necho (40), the plunder of the land (41), the triumph of the adversary (42), and the monarch's flight wounded from the battle

* See the INSPECTOR, p. 134, &c. Strictures on EICHORNE, and p. 124, &c.-151, &c. Strictures on GEDDES.

+ It comes within our knowledge, that Dr. Geddes was, himself, the doer of these remarks in the Magazine alluded to.-EDITORS.

detailed;

detailed: The consequent loss of the throne (44), his early death (45) at the age of thirtynine, and the disgrace of his memory, are successively lamented. The poem closes with another angry expostulation against Providence, as if the king had performed his part of the covenant, and had not been duly seconded by THE LORD whom he worshipped.

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Not satisfied with perverting the drift, and reviling the composition of this most sublime and pathetic prophecy of the birth, the glories, and the sufferings of the MESSIAH, which are utterly inapplicable to Josiah throughout and, in the alledged “ disgrace "of his memory," which was always most highly honoured among the Jews; contradictory to what the author inconsistently calls, his dirge-and which in reality is still extant in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, ch. ii. iii. and iv. xx. and v. vi. Compare 2 Chron. xxxv. 25, and Josephus, Ant. x. 5, 1. p. 441, Hudson.—Ιερεμίας ὁ προφητης επικηδιον αυτε συνέταξε ΜΕΛΟΣ ΘΡΗΝΗΤΙΚΟΝ, ὁ και ΜΕΧPI NTN AIAMENEI.-" Jeremiah, the proΝΥΝ phet, composed his dirge, an elegiac poem

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[the Lamentations] which subsists even " until now:”—this whimsical and malignant leveller and defamer of Holy Writ, to supplant the authority of the principal prophetic psalms of David characteristic of THE MESSIAH, attributes them to Jeremiah as the author, and strangely distorts their drift; Thus, for instance, in his jaundiced imagination, Ps. lxix. 8, alludes to " Jeremiah's "(fictitious) quarrel with his nephew Se"raiah”—although Jeremiah, li. 59, assures us, "this Seraiah was a quiet prince !”— Ps. lv. 13, to another (equally fictitious) quarrel with the priest Zephaniah. — And that most important Psalm, xxii. 16, predictive of the peculiar sufferings of the MESSIAH, is, by the "blundering rashness" of this miserable and uninformed critic (to retort his own phrase), perverted to "the painful punishment of Jeremiah," when he was "smitten and put in the stocks," Jer,

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xxii. 2.

But to proceed, from this farrago of nonsense and blasphemy, to the Psalm itself:

PSALM

L

PSALM LXXXIX.

A HYMN OF ETHAN THE EZRAHITE,

1. Thy mercies, O LORD, will I sing for ever; with my mouth will I declare thy faithfulness from generation to ge2. neration; For thou saidst, [thy] mercy should be built for ever; and thy faithfulness, established in the very heavens: 3. "I have made a covenant with my "Chosen; I have sworn unto David

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my servant: Thy seed will I establish

for ever, and build up thy throne from “generation to generation.”

5. The heavens shall praise thy won❤ ders, O LORD! the saints also, thy 6. faithfulness, in the congregation: For who in the heaven can be compared unto THE LORD? [Who] among the sons of God can be likened unto the 7. Lord? God is greatly to be feared in the Council of the Saints, and to be reverenced above all that are round about Him:

8. O LORD GOD OF HOSTS! who is like unto Thee? O MIGHTY LORD,

even thy faithfulness is

9. Thee! Thou rulest the

round about raging of the

sea; Thou stillest the swelling of the 10. waves thereof; Thou didst subdue, as a warrior, the pride [of Egypt]: Thou didst scatter thine enemies with thy 11. mighty arm: The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine; Thou hast founded the world, and all that therein 12. is: Thou hast made the North and the South; Tabor [westward] and Hermon [eastward] shall rejoice in thy name. 13. Thou hast an arm endued with might. Strong is thy hand, and high, thy right 14. hand. Justice and judgment are the foundation of thy throne, mercy and truth go before thy face.

15. Blessed are the people that know how to praise Thee, O Lord! they shall walk in the light of thy coun16. tenance: In thy name shall they daily rejoice, and in thy righteousness shall 17. they be exalted: For Thou art the glory of their strength, and in thy loving-kindness shall our horn be exalted: 18. For

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