GENEVA: Psalms

Although more than six hundred commentators have written on the Psalms,
it has long been difficult to find a comprehensive treatment of this book of
Scripture in one volume. Some expositions have excelled in scholarship, but,
unlike the Psalter, in instructing the mind they have failed to exercise the
heart. Dr Plumer's Commentary avoids this defect, the author believing
that from the Psalms 'piety has derived more nourishment than from any
other source,' and that his work should serve that same purpose. In 1211
pages he gives both exposition and doctrinal and practical remarks and presents
in readable form a great wealth of material drawn from all the leading
commentators who had gone before him. In the opinion of Dr John Macleod of
Edinburgh, he succeeded in producing the best single volume on this book of
Scripture.
Graduating from Princeton Seminary in 1826, Plumer was a well-known
Southern Presbyterian preacher and writer who spent the last thirteen years of
his life as a Professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, South Carolina. He
produced his exposition of the Psalms during the prime of life, and, as he
tells us, 'never felt more disposed to any work.' In the opinion of
others, Dr Plumer was outstanding as a spiritual Christian: 'His
prayers,' wrote Moses D. Hoge, 'were the tender pleadings of a soul
in communion with God.' Of the place which the Psalms had in his own
experience he writes: 'During a Christian and ministerial life, neither
short, uneventful, nor free from dark days and sharp sorrows, the author has
never been able to secure to himself, or administer to others, full support and
abounding consolation without a resort to the Psalms.'
Recommended € 34,90