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No. 4 | Vienna, 26 January 1900. | 4th Year

☞ As a considerable number of subscriptions expire at the end of this month, those concerned are reminded to renew them in good time, so that no interruption may occur in the delivery of the paper.

"Read Psalm 33!"

By G. Marcus.

Pious and valiant folk are the Dutch farmers in South Africa. They are fighting for the independence of their two republics with an enduring courage which the whole world admires. And to that courage there is joined an unshakable trust in God. They carry the sword in the one hand and the Bible in the other. Even before the war began, a speaker in the Volksraad of Pretoria cited the biblical parable of the "vineyard of Naboth", and a few days ago the old President Krüger called out to his generals in a manifesto: "Read Psalm 33! The enemy has set his trust upon Psalm 83; the enemy lays waste the territories into which he comes!"

Read Psalm 33! What stands in this Psalm?

A king is not helped by his great might, A giant is not delivered by his great strength. Horses too are of no help, and their great strength delivereth not. Behold, the eye of the Lord looketh upon them That fear Him, that hope in His goodness, That He may deliver their soul from death And feed them in the time of dearth.

Old Ohm Paul is well versed in the songs of the royal singer; he knows how to interpret them and how to apply them. And his valiant farmers, from the generals Joubert, Schalk Burger and Cronje down to the humblest farmer who has gone forth to the fight for freedom, all of them, in the trenches, upon the kopjes, in the face of the enemy, lay their finger upon the passage of the Psalm, and they draw courage and confidence and encouragement from the songs of the royal singer of Israel.

But the English too are pious and valiant. Who does not know that Cromwell's troopers stormed out into battle with the sword in the one hand and the Bible in the other? And the English too bear God's word in their mouth and draw courage and endurance from Holy Writ. Can they really, as Ohm Paul says, have set their trust upon Psalm 83? Upon that Psalm in which it is written:

They take crafty counsel against Thy people. Come, say they, let us root them out, That they be no people, that the name of Israel be no more remembered. They must be ashamed and be dismayed more and more, And be brought to confusion and perish.

However that may be, our royal psalmist lends this war its watchwords and its battle-cries; on both sides he strengthens, encourages, and fires the spirits. And this spectacle makes the war of the English and the Boers so instructive to us. Has the royal singer then, we ask ourselves, sung for all, and only not for us? Here is a little people of farmers who defend their clod of earth with the courage of heroes, and the Psalms of David are their battle-song. There mighty Albion strikes out with its enormous paw, and while its claw bleeds, the word of the Psalmist rings out movingly. For us Jews also a time has surely come in which we may remember the singer of Zion and call to one another: Read Psalm 128! There it is written:

The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion, That thou mayest see the good of Jerusalem all thy life long.

Read Psalm 128! But we do not read and we do not call, for it has been lost to us — the love of all that was created when we were a great and enlightening people, the longing for the soil that was our homeland, the faith in ourselves and in our traditions. And we imagine that if we forget what ought above all to be a holy longing to us, the others will forget it too! Yet they do not, however much we borrow from them clothes and thoughts and speech. They have received great things from us, the one God above all, and also that out of which Boers and Englishmen sing and speak in order to strengthen themselves in their valour and to raise themselves up in their distress — the Book of Books and the Psalms of David, these too they have from us. And they know what they possess in them. But we walk abroad in borrowed finery and are ashamed of that which is our own.