The criteria for determining the date of a psalm are few and meagre. The Psalter expresses the piety of more than half a millennium, and even the century cannot always be fixed. The language is often general, and the thoughts uttered would be as possible and appropriate to one century as another. Nearly forty years ago Nöldeke maintained that there were psalms of which we could not say with any definiteness to what period they belonged between 900 and 160 B.C. He himself referred Psalm ii. to Solomon, which had been referred by Hitzig to Alexander Jannaeus (105-78 B.C.). Even where the historical implications may seem fairly certain, there may be more than one legitimate interpretation. Psalm xlvi., e.g., which is usually regarded as a song of triumph sung after the departure of Sennacherib, is by some interpreted eschatologically; Zion is the ideal Zion of the latter days, and the stream that makes her glad is the stream of Paradise. Some psalms, of course, have their origin stamped very legibly upon them. Psalm cxxxvii. e.g., clearly implies that the exile is not long over. The presence of Aramaisms in a psalm is a fairly sure indication of a relatively late date. Within certain limits, also, its theological ideas may be a guide, though we know too little of the history of these ideas to use this criterion with much confidence. Still, so elaborate an emphasis on the omnipresence of God as we find in Psalm cxxxix. is only possible to a later age, and this inference is more than confirmed by its highly Aramaic flavour. Both these considerations render its ascription to David utterly untenable. The question was raised long ago and has been much discussed in recent times, whether the subject of the Psalter is the individual or the church; and till very recently the opinion has been gaining ground that the experience and aspiration of the Psalter are not personal and individual, but that in it is heard the collective voice of the church. Many difficulties undoubtedly disappear or are lessened on this interpretation, e.g., the bitterness of the imprecatory psalms, or the far-reaching consequences attached in other psalms (cf. xxii., xl.) to the deliverance of the singer. Till the exile, the religious unit was the nation, and the collective use of the singular pronoun is one of the commonest phenomena in Hebrew literature. The Decalogue is addressed to Israel in the 2nd pers. sing., in Deuteronomy the 2nd pers. sing, alternates with the pl., in the priestly blessing (Num. vi. 24ff.) Israel is blessed in the singular. In Deutero-Isaiah, the servant of Jehovah is undoubtedly to be interpreted collectively, and in many of the psalms the collective interpretation is put beyond all doubt by the very explicit language of the context: Much have they afflicted me from my youth up, Let _Israel_ now say, cxxix. 11