So far the thoughts and language are limpid, but ver. 5 _c_ interrupts their clear flow. Who is the speaker thus suddenly introduced? What is the "language" (lit., lip) which he "knew not"? The explanation implied by the A.V. and R.V., that the collective Israel speaks, and that the reference is, as in Psalm cxiv. 1, to the "strange language" of the Egyptians, is given by most of the older authorities, and by Ewald and Hengstenberg, but has against it the necessity for the supplement "where," and the difficulty of referring the "I" to the nation. The more usual explanation in modern times is that the speaker is the psalmist, and that the language which he hears is the voice of God, the substance of which follows in the remainder of the psalm. As in Job iv. 16 Eliphaz could not discern the appearance of the mysterious form that stood before his eyes, and thus its supernatural character is suggested, so the psalmist hears an utterance of a hitherto unknown kind, which he thus implies to have been Divine. God Himself speaks, to impress the lessons of the past, and to excite the thoughts and feelings which would rightly celebrate the feast. The glad noises of song, harp, and trumpet are hushed; the psalmist is silent, to hear that dread Voice, and then with lowly lips he repeats so much of the majestic syllables as he could translate into words which it was possible for a man to utter. The inner coherence of the two parts of the psalm is, on this explanation, so obvious, that there is no need nor room for the hypothesis of two fragments having been fused into one.