But,
practically, the Psalm began with David; and though many hands struck
the harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, he
remains emphatically "the sweet psalmist of Israel."

The psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a marked
similarity of manner. Their characteristics have been well summed up as
"creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form and
movement, antique but lucid style;"[A] to which may be added the
intensity of their devotion, the passion of Divine love that glows in
them all. They correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life as
given in the historical books. The early shepherd days, the manifold
sorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, the
triumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikingly
in the latter, all reappear in the psalms. The illusions, indeed, are
for the most part general rather than special, as is natural. His words
are thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials of
other lives. But it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the
allusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them with
any precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutually
illustrative. Much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed,
and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that
score have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process
sufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness
of many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as
throwing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made in
some degree in this volume.

[A] Delitzsch, Kommentar, u. d. Psalter II. 376.

It will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the Davidic
psalms in general. Can we tell which are David's? The Psalter, as is
generally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from some
idea that it corresponded with the Pentateuch. These five books are
marked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. The first
portion consists of Psa. i.-xli.; the second of Psa. xlii.-lxxii; the
third of Psa. lxxiii.-lxxxix; the fourth of Psa. xc.-cvi.; and the fifth
of Psa. cvii.-cl. The psalms attributed to David are unequally
distributed through these five books. There are seventy-three in all,
and they run thus:--In the first book there are thirty-seven; so that
if we regard psalms i. and ii.