confession for an adulterer and murderer. These considerations lead us to enquire whether the Hebrew preposition translated "of" David denotes authorship; its accurate signification is "belonging to," and from the analogy of the other titles we infer this to mean that the editor found these Psalms in a collection ascribed to David. What gave the name of David to that collection? Some of the Psalms may be pre-exilic and may even go down to the early monarchy; Ps. xx. may belong to the Old Kingdom, but it can hardly have come from the lips of David; it is Ps. xviii. that has perhaps the greatest claim to Davidic authorship. This Psalm is also found in 2 Sam. xxii., but there it seems to be an interpolation, for it breaks apart verses that apparently once stood together (2 Sam. xxi. 22 and xxiii. 8). Yet we meet with a reference to the Temple even in this Psalm (2 Sam. xxi. 7); at the same time several of its passages would come very fittingly from the Warrior King, and would be suitable to his barbarous times. In this Psalm, if anywhere, we may possess some original Davidic fragments. We must conclude therefore, that the Davidic Psalter was so called because its origin was somehow due to David, or because it contained some Song of David which must have been considerably altered to suit liturgical purposes. The early tradition of David ascribes to him a poetic and musical gift (1 Sam. xvi. 18; Amos. vi. 5), and of this the lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i.) is a sufficient confirmation, but it should be noticed that it is remarkably free from any religious sentiment whatsoever. It must be due to the later tradition of the Chronicler that David has been credited as the saintly author of the whole Book of Psalms. The conclusion is that the titles are not, strictly speaking, a claim to authorship, but are names given, for various reasons, to pre-existing collections; that the earliest of these collections may contain pre-exilic Psalms, but that everything points to the collection being made for use in the time of the Second Temple. The references to a king do not necessitate any re-consideration of this verdict; they may be personifications of the nation in the light of Messianic conceptions.