PSALMS IX. AND X. 269
presented (with many differences in detail) by
Bickell, by Dr. T. K. Abbot, whose valuable
article,^1 dependent in the main on Bickell, but
with important independent suggestions, seems
to have exercised less influence than it deserved,
by Dr. Cheyne in the second edition of his Book
of Psalms, and by Duhm. It is, I believe, sub-
stantially correct, and its failure to gain more
general support from English writers is probably
due to the numerous and, in some cases, neces-
sarily uncertain conjectures with which its
presentation has been connected. My more
particular purpose is to show that the alphabetic
arrangement certainly extends further than has
been generally admitted except by those who
have argued that it extended throughout. If
this can be established, it will invalidate the most
attractive of the theories that deny the unity of
the poem, that of Baethgen, which I shall describe
below, and it will establish at the least a consider-
able presumption that the alphabetic arrange-
ment, where it now fails to appear or appears
less clearly, once existed, and consequently that
the two psalms are a unity whose integrity has
been impaired mainly, if not exclusively, by the
ordinary accidents of textual transmission.
To facilitate the discussion I give first a
translation with some notes on the text, chiefly
1 In Hermathena, 1889, pp. 21-28; also in Essays chiefly on the
Original Texts of the Old and New Testaments, pp. 200-207.