It may be interesting to our readers to note the difference in tone between apocryphal and inspired Scriptures, and so we give them the following, which, with the introduction, we clipped from a recent number of the Independent. While it is true as to fact, the psalm has no likeness whatever to the genuine psalms of David. It simply lacks inspiration.
From a Syriac manuscript, formerly belonging to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, but now deposited in the University Library at Cambridge, Prof. W. Wright translates the following apocryphal psalm:
Psalm CLI. A Thanksgiving of David
"I was youngest among my brethren, and a youth in my father's house. I used to feed my father's flock, and I found a lion and a wolf, and I slew them and rent them. My hands made an organ, and my fingers fashioned a harp. Who will show me my Lord? He, my Lord, is become my God. He sent His angel and took me away from my father's flock, and anointed me with the oil of anointing. My brethren, the fair and the tall, in them the Lord had no pleasure. And I went forth to meet the Philistine, and he cursed me by his idols. But I drew his sword and cut off his head and took away the reproach from the children of Israel.(Psalm 151:1-8)
This sounds very much like the self-praise of the ancient Assyrian kings, but not at all like the songs in which the sweet psalmist of Israel praised God.--Signs of the Times, June 1, 1888