Of the remaining oracles, one (Mal. iii. 6-12) urges to the honest consecration of the tithes (dues to the temple); another (ii. 10-16), as commonly interpreted, condemns the marriages with heathen women which so disturbed the soul of Nehemiah and Ezra, and especially the divorce of native wives to take foreign ones; but the language should perhaps rather be taken as figurative for foreign worship. The two remaining prophecies (ii. 17-iii. 5; iii. 13-iv. 3) are addressed to such as thought that God did not trouble himself about men's affairs: the long threatened day of doom gave no sign of coming, nor was the promised reward of serving God bestowed. The prophet declares that the Day will come, sudden and terrible, and the ungodly will get their deserts. The last verses (iv. 4-6) are not improbably an addition by an editorial hand. CHAPTER XXI PSALMS. LAMENTATIONS The Book of Psalms counts one hundred and fifty hymns, and this evidently by design, for the Greek Version, which sometimes unites in one what are two psalms in the Hebrew and divides one Hebrew psalm into two, comes out with the same number. It is divided into five books, as is indicated in the Revised English Version, vis. Book I., Pss. 1-41; Book II., Pss. 42-72; Book III., Pss. 73-89; Book IV., Pss. 90-106; Book V., Pss. 107-150, each book ending with a liturgical doxology. The rabbis were probably right in the opinion that this fivefold division was made in imitation of the five books of the Pentateuch, but in some cases, as we shall see, the limits correspond to those of older separate books. The psalter has not inaptly been called the hymn book of the second temple. We learn from Jewish tradition that certain psalms were used in the liturgy of the Herodian temple on certain days or at certain seasons, and to many of them musical or liturgical directions are prefixed and interludes are noted ("Selah"), from which, apart from tradition, such a use would be inferred. It is evident from the familiarity with the Psalms which is shown in the New Testament and in contemporary Jewish writings, both Greek and Hebrew, that, like our hymn books, the Psalter was largely used for private devotion and edification. The poems contained in the Psalter are from different ages and authors, and of widely diverse religious worth and poetical excellence. Some of them are unsurpassed in the religious literature of the world; others are the tedious production of authors who, like so many hymnists of all climes, were neither born nor made poets. Thanks to the translators, such pieces are a great deal better, so far as expression goes, in the Authorized English Version or in Luther's, than the original.