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REV. S. R. DRIVER, D.D., LITT.D.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CAÑON OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWELL

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1898

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PREFACE

THE present volume is designed as a help to the comprehension of the Psalms. The Prayer-Book Version of the Psalms, with which English Churchmen are mostly familiar, while possessing high literary merits, labours unfortunately under serious defects as a translation: many passages in it express the sense of the original only more or less imperfectly, while there are others which cannot be said to express it at all. Hence it occurred to me that there might be some who, not having the time or the inclination to study elaborate Commentaries, might nevertheless be glad to have a trustworthy version of the Psalms, which could be readily compared with the Prayer-Book Psalter, and with the help of which they could ascertain and correct for themselves the deficiencies of the latter. Accordingly I conceived the plan of the present volume. On the left-hand page is printed the Prayer-Book Version, on the right-hand page a new version, modelled as far as was practicable upon the PrayerBook Version itself, but designed generally with the view of bringing out, as fully and clearly as I was able to do, the meaning of the original. I have endeavoured in my translation to avoid a needless and unidiomatic literalism: at the same time, precision rather than literary excellence has been my

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