One  feature  which  they  share  in  common  and  which
differentiates  them  both  from  the  second  and  third  books,
is  their  prevailing  use  of  the  word  Jehovah  as  the  name
of  deity.  The  second  and  third  books,  on  the  other  hand,
ordinarily  use  the  word  Elohim,  that  is,  God ;  in  the  first
book,  again,  the  prevailing  word  is  Jehovah.  It  would
hardly  be  natural  to  suppose  that  this  was  an  accident ;
but  the  psalms  which  are  repeated  from  one  group  in  an-
other furnish  proof  positive  that  this  peculiarity  is  actually
due  to  editorial  revision.  When  the  fourteenth  psalm,
for  example,  appears  in  the  second  book  as  Psalm  53,
the  original  Jehovah  is  found  to  have  been  carefully  re-
placed by  the  word  Elohim.^  The  two  psalms  are  prac-
tically identical  in  all  but  their  name  for  God,  and  clearly
it  is  the  place  of  Psalm  53  in  an  Elohistic  collection  that
has  determined  the  change  in  the  name,  which  we  can
thus  only  regard  as  deliberate.  Now  this  use  of  Elohim
characterizes  book  three — or  most  of  it  (to  ps.  83) — as  well
as  book  two,  and  suggests  that  books  two  and  three  ought

'True,  the  word  Elohim  also  occurs  in  Ps.  14,  but  only  in  general
phrases,  where  it  is  natural  and  appropriate;  cf.  v.  i,  "The  fool  hath  said
in  his  heart,  there  is  no  God.''^

18


the  Psalmists  Introduction


to  be  considered  together,  just  as  four  and  five  were.  We
are  the  more  confirmed  in  this  opinion  when  we  find  that
the  constituent  groups  of  both  books  are  very  similar  ;  in
both,  for  example,  occur  "  Psalms  of  Asaph  "  and  "  Psalms
of  the  Sons  of  Korah."  The  result  then  is  to  give  us  a
division  into  three  groups  instead  of  five  ;  the  first  book,
Jehovistic;  books  two  and  three,  Elohistic ;  and  books
four  and  five,  Jehovistic.
