This Is Appendix 64 From The Companion Bible.
The key to the interpretation of these words has been lost for over twenty-two centuries.
Commentators and critics have confessed that they can make only conjectures as to the primitive meaning and use of the word (for it is only one word in Hebrew) lam
The Ancient Versions attempt a rendering. The Septuagint has eis to telos = unto, for, or, with a view to the end. The Arabic, Ethiopic, and Vulgate render it "at the end". The Chaldee renders it (Psalm 45) "to the praise". The Talmudists hold that it related to Him Who is to come; while Aquila (one of the Septuagint Revisers,
It is clear that a Person was intended by these various renderings; but they appear to be interpretations rather than translations. Regarded as the former, they may be useful in showing us how the Psalms point to Christ; for He is the end. It is He Who giveth victory; it is He Who is the Coming One : and, while the book is called Sepher T
All ancient Hebrew manuscripts, with the early and best later printed editions, show no break whatever between the lines of one Psalm and another.
The Septuagint translators had been many years in Babylon, and the oldest among them must have been very young when carried away thither.
There was none who had full knowledge and experience of the ancient usages of the Temple worship.
Consequently, when they came to their task some 197 years after the latest carrying away to Babylon, there was nothing to show them where one Psalm ended and where the next began.
Hence, when they came to the word lam
In each of these isolated Psalms we have the true models on which all the other Psalms are based.
In each case we have
In each of these two cases the word lamenazzeah, forms the sub-scription, and appears at the end of the Psalm.
This is the key thus discovered by Dr. J.W. Thirtle
The unspeakable importance of Dr. Thritle's discovery is at once seen. For it shows two things :
1. That, whatever the interpretation or application of the words may be, a Psalm which had this word in the sub-scription had a use beyond its local, temporary, or original purpose; and, being considered appropriate use, or for special occasions, was handed over to the Director of the Temple worship with any instructions which might be necessary for its use.
2. That such word or words of instruction, which to-day stand in the Septuagint and all subsequent Versions of the Bible as the super-scription, belong, not to that Psalm, but to the sub-scription of the Psalm preceding it.
This, at one stroke, removes the great difficulty, and solves the heretofore insoluble problem and impossible task which all Commentators have experienced, when they struggled in the attempt to find in one Psalm the explanation of words which belong to another.
Few problems so difficult and baffling have been removed by a solution so simple and self-explanatory.
This on feature, which by Dr. Thirtle's kind permission, has been taken over into The Companion Bible, must greatly enhance its value and usefulness, making it unique among all existing editions of the Bible.
1 These facts have been discovered, and admirably set forth by Dr. J. W. Thirtle, in his two works on this subject, videlicet, The Titles of the Psalms: their Nature and Meaning explained (1904), and Old Testament Problems (1907). Both published by Henry Frowde, Oxford Bible Warehouse, London.
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