history contained in the Books of the Kings does not confirm this. The Chronicler, who from his interest in these matters seems to have been a member of one of the Levite choirs, really gives us the customs current in his times, and infers that they went back unchanged to the time of the building of the first Temple and to the preparatory work of David. These considerations, together with the admitted lateness of many of the Psalms, some of them undoubtedly belonging to the times of the Maccabæan wars, bring us down to that late age and perhaps more precisely to the time of the rededicated Temple (165 B.C.), and demand that the final edition of the Psalter is to be placed somewhere about 150 B.C. We might expect to find traces of the growth of the Psalter in the division into five books (at xli., lxxii., cvi., cl., see R. V.), but there seems no real division necessary between Books IV. and V. and the five-fold division may be due to the desire to imitate the divisions of the Law; the other divisions however contain more hopeful suggestions. The first book, for instance, is almost entirely ascribed to David (Ps. i. is an introduction to the whole book, composed for the final edition, and Ps. ii. may have been also placed in front as part of the introduction. Ps. xxxiii., which is very late, may have been added as a kind of doxology to Ps. xxxii. The rest are ascribed to David). The second book is largely Davidic and it concludes with the statement: "the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended." In spite of this notice Psalms are found ascribed to David in the books that follow, so that the remark must have been found appended to a collection that the final editor took over; it cannot be due to his own hand. Further evidence of compilation is to be found in the strange occurrence of the different names for God: Elohim and Jehovah. In the first book the name of Jehovah preponderates. In Book II. the name Elohim is found most frequently. Then in Book III. Psalms lxxiii.-lxxxiii. use Elohim only, and lxxxiv.-lxxxix. Jehovah mainly; and in practically the whole of Books IV. and V. Jehovah is almost solely used, The reason for this phenomenon must be sought in editorial redaction, for in the duplicate Psalms, xiv. and liii., xl. 13-17 and lxx., Jehovah is found in the first recension and Elohim in the second. The Elohistic character of lxxiii.-lxxxiii. may be due to the original compiler since they are all ascribed to Asaph and otherwise bear marks of common production. The Elohistic redaction may have been made in a period when the name Jehovah sounded tribal and almost heathenish; but a similar test leads to the conclusion that the first collection enjoyed by this time a liturgical familiarity, which did not permit of alteration. The reversion to the name of Jehovah in Books IV. and V. might be explained by the fact that in later times the name was written but never pronounced. On the line of these suggestions we