The second book concludes with these words: "The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended." This is accepted to mean that none of the psalms following this book belong to David. The Korahite psalms, assigned to David's reign, belong to a later age. Twelve psalms are ascribed to Asaph, who lived in David's reign. This passage from one of them was written at least 430 years after David's death: "O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled: they have laid Jerusalem on heaps" (lxxix, 1). In the second and third books the word God occurs 206 times, while Jehovah, translated "Lord God," occurs but 44 times; in the remaining three books, God occurs but 23 times, while Jehovah occurs 640 times. Psalms xlii and xliii are merely parts of the same psalm. Psalm xix consists of two distinct psalms, the first eleven verses constituting one, the last three another. Psalms xiv and liii are the same; lx and cviii, omitting the first four or five verses, are also the same. The Septuagint version and the Alexandrian manuscript contain 151 psalms, the last one being omitted from other versions. Some of the more conservative German critics credit David with as many as thirty psalms. Dr. Lyman Abbott contends that he did not write more than fifteen. The Dutch scholars, Kuenen and Oort, believe that he wrote none. And this is probably the truth. While collections of these psalms doubtless existed at an earlier period, the book, in its present form, was compiled during the Maccabean age, about one hundred and fifty years before the Christian era. Many of these psalms are fine poetical compositions; but the greater portion of them are crude in construction, and some of them fiendish in sentiment. Proverbs. The authorship of Proverbs has been ascribed to Solomon. He could have written but few of these proverbs, and probably wrote none. It is a compilation of maxims made many centuries after his time. Tradition represented Solomon as the wisest of men, and every wise saying whose origin was unknown was credited to him. Dr. Oort says: "The history of Solomon's wisdom resembles that of David's music. In either case the imagination of posterity has given a thoroughly religious character to what was in reality purely secular; and just as David was made the author of a number of psalms, so various works of the so-called sages, or proverb-makers, were ascribed to Solomon" (Bible for Learners, vol. ii, p. 75). The book consists of seven different collections of proverbs, as follows: 1. i, 7-ix; 2. x-xxii, 16; 3. xxii, 17-xxiv; 4. xxv-xxix; 5. xxx; 6. xxxi, 1-9; 7. xxxi, 10-31. The first six verses are a preface.