Psalms 2
ButlerThe first beatitude of the Psalter is, “Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord.” The last beatitude of the Apocalypse is, “Blessed are they that wash their robes that they may have right to the tree of life.” The last explains the first, shows us how it is possible to keep God’s commandments, and soars higher than the earlier utterance; giving us a glimpse of the calm delights and immortal joys that wait for us above. Here we drink of the river of His pleasures. There we shall slake our thirst at the fountain-head. Blessed are the living that thus live in the Lord. Yet more “blessed are the dead which thus die in the Lord.” A. M.
1. WHY do the nations rage, And the peoples imagine a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the LORD, and against his Anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, And cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall have them in derision. 5 Then shall He speak unto them in his wrath, And vex them in his sore displeasure: 6 Yet I have set my King Upon my holy hill of Zion. 7 I will tell of the decree: The LORD said unto Me, Thou art my Son; This day have I begotten thee. 8 Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for thine inheritance, And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. 9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a pot- ter’s vessel. 10 Now therefore be wise, O ye kings: Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. 11 Serve the LORD with fear, And rejoice with trembling. 1 Wherefore do the peoples rage, And the nations meditate vanity! 2 The kings of the earth rise in rebellion, And the rulers take counsel together— Against Jehovah and against his Anointed. 3 “Up! let us break their bonds asunder, And cast away from us their cords!” 4 He who is enthroned in the heavens laughs, The Lord of all mocks at them. 5 Then will He speak to them in his anger, And in his hot wrath thunder them down: 6 “— And yet have I established my King Upon Zion, my holy hill.” (The Divine King speaks :) 7 “I will tell of a decree! Jehovah said unto Me: Thou art my Son, I have this day begotten Thee. 8 Ask of Me, and I will give Thee nations for thine inheritance, And thy possession shall be the ends of the earth. 9 Thou shalt break them with a sceptre of iron, Like a potter’s vessel Thou shalt dash them in pieces.” 10 And now, ye kings, show yourselves wise; Be admonished, ye judges of the earth! 11 Serve Jehovah with reverence, And rejoice with trembling.
12. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way,
For his wrath will soon be kindled.
Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.
12. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish,
For his anger may easily be kindled—
Blessed are all they that take refuge in Him.
D.
THIS Psalm is Messianic, for it speaks of an Anointed One who transcends all earthly sovereigns; catholic, for it calls the Gentiles into the Church; evangelical, for it announces happiness to all who trust in the Lord; and monitory, for it warns the rebels to make a timely submission. It celebrates the kingly office of the Messiah. M.—In the Messianic Psalms, one King and His reign are distinguished from all kings and reigns before Him. His is a universal Kingdom; the whole earth is His inheritance; all nations are subject to Him, and under His sway righteousness and peace everywhere prevail. It is a Kingdom in permanent form and without end. Jehovah has found One who can be in the highest sense His King and His Priest; and this One, by whom He acts, in all His works, both of judgment and of blessing, is a Son of David. This King is thus distinguished from and lifted up above all of His predecessors. S. J. Andrews.
The Psalm celebrates the world-dominion of a king who is a son of David and a Son of God. The occurrences of his time, which determined the mood of the poet, are no longer clear to us. From these occurrences, however, he is transported in thought into the very middle of those commotions among the nations, which issue in their all becoming the kingdoms of God and of His Christ (Rev. 11: 15; 12: 10). In the New Testament this Psalm is cited more frequently than any other. D.—The proof is most abundant that the inspired apostles saw the Messiah, and Him only, throughout this Psalm. Appealing to it in proof that Jesus of Nazareth is the very Messiah of Old Testament prophecy, of course they assume this to be a prophecy of Him. C.
The second Psalm is a kind of inaugural hymn, intended to celebrate the appointment and final triumph of Jehovah’s king. The heathen nations are represented as foolishly opposing it; they agree among themselves to disown and resist it; the Almighty perseveres in His purpose, scorning the rebellious opposition of such impotent adversaries; the eternal decree goes forth that the anointed King is en- throned on Zion; that being Jehovah’s Son He is made the heir of all things, even to the utter most bounds of the habitable globe. And in consideration of what has thus been decreed and ratified in heaven, the Psalm concludes with a word of friendly counsel and admonition to earthly potentates and rulers, exhorting them to submit in time to the sway of this glorious King, and forewarning them of the inevitable ruin of resistance. That in all this we can trace the lines of Messiah’s history is obvious at a glance. P. F.
This Psalm, in the spirit of prophecy, celebrates the inauguration of the Messiah as king in His Church, with authority and power to subdue the world. Neither David nor Solomon could have been the king whom the Psalm celebrates; nor did any subsequent period of the kingdom of Judah answer to these conditions. It was interpreted as a prophecy of Christ by the apostles, when “Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together against the holy child Jesus;” and again by Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where Christ is set above the angels, as the only begotten Son of God. He who was born into the world of a lowly virgin was, before His advent, consecrated in heaven to be King over God’s true Israel, with the promise of the universal triumph of His spiritual dominion. This is His coronation-hymn. John, in the Revelation, takes up the strain in a doxology to Christ as having Divine power and glory. J. P. T.
This Psalm rings with the tramp of gathering armies, and notes of lofty challenge addressed by the poet to the invaders of his country. It must have been written at a time when Jerusalem was threatened by a confederacy of hostile powers. It is plain from the language which the poet puts into their mouth—“Let us break their bonds asunder,” etc.—that the allies were vassal or tributary monarchs, who, having either been subdued in former wars, or having in some other way tendered their allegiance, had seized this opportunity to assert their independence. We may suppose the song to have been written when the news of their approach reached Jerusalem. The poet encourages his countrymen by reminding them of the covenant made with David’s house, and predicts for their enemies a disastrous overthrow. Their enterprise is in its very nature “a vain thing.” It cannot but come to naught, because the king whom they would dethrone is the Son and vicegerent of Jehovah Himself. The poet therefore counsels the rebels to return to their allegiance before it be too late. It is quite impossible now to say what the event was which occasioned this poem. Whatever the event, we need not suppose that the singer himself did not feel that his words went beyond their first occasion. He begins to speak of an earthly king, and his wars with the nations of the earth; but his words are too great to have their meaning exhausted in David, or Solomon, or Ahaz, or any Jewish monarch. Or ever he is aware, the local and the temporal are swallowed up in the universal and the eternal. The king who sits on David’s throne has become glorified and transfigured in the light of the promise. The picture is half ideal, half actual. It concerns itself with the present, but with that only so far as it is typical of greater things to come. The true King, who to the prophet’s mind is to fulfil all his largest hopes, has taken the place of the visible and earthly king. The nations are not merely those who are now mustering for the battle, but whatsoever opposeth and exalteth itself against Jehovah and His Anointed.
Hence this Psalm is of the nature of a prophecy, and still waits for its final accomplishment. It had a real fulfilment, no doubt, in the banding together of Herod and Pontius Pilate against Christ. But this was not a literal one. Only in a partial sense—rather in the way of application—did the words of this Psalm correspond to that event. But it may be said to have an ever-repeated fulfilment in the history of the Church, which is a history of God’s kingdom upon earth—a kingdom which in all ages has the powers of the world arrayed against it, and in all ages with the same disastrous result to those who have risen “against the Lord, and against His Anointed.” And so it shall be to the end, when, perhaps, that hostility will be manifested in some yet deadlier form, only to be overthrown forever, that the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ. P.
1-3. The Psalm opens abruptly; it is an utterance of amazement, breaking from the lips of one who looks out upon the nations and generations of man. He discerns, in his widespread view, one perpetual restlessness, one ceaseless movement of discontent, the throbbing of a rebellion that cannot be appeased, of a vain, bitter, ceaseless revolt. That rebellion against God which in the vast ignorant masses of the world is half unconscious, in their leaders finds utterance, assumes shape and formula.
It is from these men of the sword, paper, tongue, and brain—it is of these the wondering Psalmist challenges an answer. Why does the world fret against the government of God? Is there no better name for the laws of God and His Christ than “bands” and “cords”? If we study the aspects and explanations of the world’s rebellion against God, they may be found—in their clearest forms, at least—in the example, and spirit, and teaching of those whom the multitudes blindly follow—godless power, godless wealth, godless intellect. All these are represented among the kings and rulers of the earth. F. W. Macdonald.
1. It is Jehovah Himself who is assailed in the person of the king whom He has set on the throne. Such an enterprise cannot but fail. In its very nature it is “a vain thing.” In this word, says Luther, is comprised the argument of nearly the whole Psalm. How can they succeed who set themselves against Jehovah and against His Christ? The abrupt question is in the true spirit of lyric poetry. P.—The interrogation in this verse implies that no rational solution of the strange sight could be given, for reasons assigned in the remainder of the Psalm. This implied charge of irrationality is equally well founded in all cases where the same kind of opposition exists. A.
2. Anointed.** The original word here is Messiah—the Anointed One, to which the word Christ is the Greek equivalent. The idea of anointing comes from the Hebrew practice of inducting their high priests and their kings into office by this ceremony. The history gives prominence to the anointing of Saul, of David, and of Solomon; and says of David, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.” Anointing was the symbol of this Divine unction, and, therefore, makes the names Messiah and Christ specially significant and appropriate in the case of Him to whom God gave the Spirit “not by measure.” C.—External unction or anointing is a sign, in the Old Testament, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and especially of those conferred on prophets, priests, and kings, as ministers of the theocracy, and representatives of Christ Himself. To kings particularly, as the highest and most comprehensive order, and peculiar types of Christ in His supremacy as Head of the Church, the sacred history applies the title of the Lord’s Anointed. A.
3. But the singer not only sees the gathering host; he hears their menace of rebellion: “Let us burst their bonds asunder” (i.e., those of Jehovah and His Christ). The metaphor is borrowed from restive animals which break the cords, and throw off the yoke. P.—The language of the rebels in the verse before us is a genuine expression of the feelings entertained by the masses of mankind, so far as they have been brought into collision with the sovereignty of God and Christ, not only at the time of His appearance upon earth, but in the ages both before and after that event, in which the prophecy attained its height, but was not finally exhausted or fulfilled; since the same rash and hopeless opposition to the Lord and His Anointed still continues and is likely to continue until the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ (Rev. 11 : 15), an expression borrowed from this very passage. A.
4-6. The scene of the first act of this drama is laid on earth; the scene of the second is laid in heaven. As we pass onward we must pass upward. Watching all the turmoil and rebellion, watching below and calmly surveying the most turbulent outbreaks of the heathen as they rage, there sits the King against whose rule this revolt is made. We see in His attitude undisturbed repose and majesty. He occupies a point of observation. He occupies a judicial position. Mursel.—The transition here is a sublime one, from the noise and agitation of earth to the safety and tranquillity of heaven. No shifting of the scene could be more dramatic in effect or form. While the nations and their kings exhort each other to cast off their allegiance to Jehovah, and thereby virtually to dethrone Him, He reposes far above them and beyond their reach. A.
4. Shall laugh.** Put the Psalmist’s bold word here into our feeble prose, and it comes to this. The Psalmist sees the utter futility of revolt against God; he discerns the strength of the Almighty; the pillars of the eternal throne are before his soul; he sees from afar the strength and majesty of God, and looking down upon all the feeble, foolish wisdom of the world that sets itself against God, he can find no other words to express the vanity of man’s revolt than to say, “The Lord shall laugh.” F. W. Macdonald.
There is something very awful in the representation here given of God. First, as if in calm contempt, “He laughs;” then there is the bitter derision which, in its effects, brings their counsels to nought, and baffles their purposes. “He mocks them;” “then,” at last, with the thunder of His word He discomfits them. P.—“Who thought,” says Luther, “when Christ suffered and the Jews triumphed, that God was laughing all the time?” Beneath this bold anthropomorphism there is hidden a profound truth—namely, that to all superior beings, and above all to God Himself, there is something in sin not only odious, but absurd, something which cannot possibly escape the contempt of higher, much less of the highest intelligence. A.
6. The words of Jehovah, and the central truth of the Psalm. It is God’s own answer to them that oppose Him. I (the pronoun is emphatic in the Hebrew), the King of heaven and earth, have set My own king, My Son and My Vicegerent, on the throne. P.—And I have constituted My King upon Zion, My hill of holiness, or holy hill, i.e., consecrated, set apart, distinguished from all other hills and other places, as the seat of the theocracy, the royal residence, the capital city, of the Lord and of His Christ, from the time that David took up his abode, and deposited the ark there. A.
Notice—1. The royal office and character of our glorious Redeemer; He is a King, “This name He hath on His vesture and on His thigh” (Rev. 19 : 16). 2. The authority by which He reigns; He is “My King,” says God the Father, and I have set Him up from everlasting. The world disowns His authority, but I have set Him, I have “given Him to be head over all things to the Church.” 3. His particular kingdom over which He rules; it is over “My holy hill of Zion”—an eminent type of the Gospel Church. The temple was built upon Mount Zion, and therefore called a holy hill. Christ’s throne is in His Church, it is His headquarters, and the place of His peculiar residence. Charnock.—Christ’s throne is set up in His Church—that is, in the hearts of all believers, and in the societies they form. The evangelical law of Christ is said to go forth from Zion (Isa. 2 : 3 ; Micah 4 : 2), and therefore that is spoken of as the headquarters of this General, the royal seat of this Prince, in whom the children of men shall be joyful. H.
7-9. With inimitable beauty and pertinence the Messiah Himself now appears and speaks, witnessing to His sonship and kingship, and to the constitution—the grand charter of rights—under which this fallen world is given to Him as His empire. C.—No word of transition, no formula of introduction marks this sudden passage from the words of Jehovah to those of His Christ; the singer is a seer; his Psalm is a reflection of what he has seen, an echo of what he has heard. Just as Jehovah in opposition to the rebels acknowledges the King upon Zion, so in opposition to the same rebels the King upon Zion appeals to Him. D.—He proclaims the Father’s counsel concerning Himself. He has received of Jehovah a decree, the new law of His kingdom. He reigns not by the will of man, but by the grace of God; not by right only as the Son of Jehovah, but by covenant and promise likewise. (See the stress laid on this Divine calling as fulfilled in Christ in Heb. 5: 5.) This is true of the type in a primary sense, 2 Sam. 7: 14, “I will be His Father, and He shall be My son.” But the emphatic, “This day have I begotten Thee,” is true in its highest sense only of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world. (Compare the argument in Heb. 1: 5.) P.
7. The plain thought seems to be: This day, by anointing Thee as King on My hill of Zion, I have recognized Thee as My Son. This enthroning is My public and solemn recognition of this relation—the relation being essentially eternal in the past, but never brought forth to the knowledge of created minds till this momentous inauguration as king. So Paul understood this verse, for he finds it fulfilled in Christ’s resurrection and consequent ascension and enthronement in heaven. (See Acts 13: 33.) C.
He is the Son of God, and therefore dear to Him, His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased; and upon this account we are to receive Him as a King; for because the Father loveth the Son, He hath given all things into His hand (John 3: 35; 5: 20). Being a Son, He is Heir of all things, and the Father having made the worlds by Him, it is easy to infer thence that by Him also He governs them; for he is the eternal Wisdom and the eternal Word. If God hath said unto Him, “Thou art My Son,” it becomes each of us to say to Him, “Thou art my Lord, my Sovereign.” H.—No man with a natural conscience but knows that if he lives, moves and has his being, depends for his destiny upon and must have his good and joy from the loving and continual agency of God, he ought to render something to God in return, and he ought to render to God what is His due; and if He is the highest object of knowledge, He ought to be known; if He is worthy of perfect trust, He ought to be trusted, and if He is infinitely lovely and loving, He ought to be loved; and our natural conscience would teach us that we ought to know and love and trust God. Very well; there is no other way to do it, except to take God as God comes to us, and He never comes to any man except in the Son, and He never will. He hath sworn His decree, and He will never take it back.
And not only are we never to know Him except as He is revealed in the Son, but we shall never be able to approach Him except as He comes to us in the Son. Duryea.
8. The scene of the last act is once more laid on earth. It intimates the proclamation here of the secret decree there—the proclamation on earth of the decree of Heaven. What, in point of fact, is this “declaring the decree” but the preaching of the Gospel? The Father not merely gives the throne, but He guarantees by covenant a large kingdom. The heathen are to be given for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. A. Mursell.
9. Some readers will ask: Is it not the fair sense of this verse that all the nations promised to Christ as His inheritance and possession are given Him only to be destroyed? To this I answer: It is probably due in part to the salient points of David’s own sway over the hostile nations—Philistia, Syria, Moab, Ammon and Edom—that the language of this verse contemplates the subject nations as being crushed by physical power rather than saved by moral. Moreover, this view is in keeping with the leading thought of the Psalm—these nations seen in their malign rage against Jehovah and His anointed Son; and the Lord asserting His infinite right to reign, and giving dominion to His Son that He may reign to the subjugation of every foe. This is one of the main points in this Psalm. Yet v. 8 must contemplate the masses of the nations as converted, to become Christ’s true inheritance. The last three verses assume most clearly and delightfully that there is mercy most abundant for the gulliest rebel who will submit to Christ and be a rebel no more. These “terrors of the Lord” are here for the very purpose of persuading men to be wise and to submit while yet pardon is possible. Beyond all question, the doctrine of the entire Bible, the New Testament and the Old, is that Jesus becomes King and Lord of all, to bring rebels to penitence and penitent souls back to purity and blessedness; but to give the incorrigibly impenitent their righteous doom—remediless ruin. Who will not bow in submission must fall beneath His rod. Justice demands this and Jesus will execute it. Whosoever will may come to Him for life; but whosoever will not have life must have death! It suffices therefore to say of our passage, and indeed of the whole Psalm, that it contemplates as its main theme the case of Christ’s enemies in hostile league against Him, but sure to fall beneath His rod unless they will bow to His sceptre. C.
This extensive grant had been accompanied by that of power adequate to hold it. That power was to be exercised in wrath as well as mercy. The former is here rendered prominent, because the previous context has respect to audacious rebels, over whom Messiah is invested with the necessary power of punishment, and even of destruction. This view of the Messiah as a destroyer is in perfect keeping with the New Testament doctrine that those who reject Christ will incur an aggravated doom, and that Christ Himself is in some sense the destroyer of those who will not let Him be their Saviour; or, to borrow terms from one of His own parables, in strict agreement with the scene presented by the Psalm before us, “these Mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before Me.” That false view of the Divine nature which regards God as delighting in the death of the sinner is more revolting but not more dangerous than that which looks upon His justice as extinguished by His mercy, and supposes that the death of Christ has rendered perdition impossible, even to those who will not believe in Him. The terms of this verse are repeatedly applied to Christ in the Book of Revelation (2 : 27 ; 12 : 5 ; 19 : 15). A.
10-12. Finally, the poet who has heard the words of Jehovah and the words of His Anointed, seeks by wise counsel to dissuade the rebels from their mad enterprise.
Learn wisdom, receive instruction. Submit yourselves; not only in a political sense, but also in a religious sense—become His true worshippers. In the Jewish mind the two ideas would never be dissociated. P.
12. Kiss the Son. An ancient mode of doing homage or allegiance to a king. Even in modern European courts the kissing of the hand has this significance. In the case before us there may possibly be an allusion to the kiss as a religious act among the heathen. The Son, the Son of God, the Messiah, so called by the Jews in Christ’s time. A.
He be angry. The office of the Messiah is not only that of one who brings salvation, but also that of one who is a judge. Redemption is the beginning and judgment the end of His work. It is to this end that the Psalm points. D.—The same view of the Messiah as a judge and an avenger, which appeared in v. 9, is again presented here, but only for a moment, and as a prelude to the closing beatitude or benediction. Blessed (are) all; oh, the felicities of all—those trusting Him, believing on Him, and confiding in Him. This delightful contrast of salvation and perdition, at one and the same view, is characteristic of the Scriptures, and should teach us not to look ourselves, and not to turn the eyes of others, toward either of these objects without due regard to the other also. A.
Thus closes this sublime and solemnly impressive Psalm. Comparing it with the first Psalm, it ends where that begins—with the blessedness of the righteous. Like that, it makes prominent the heaven-wide contrast between the righteous and the wicked in respect to both present condition and future destiny. Like that, its great moral purpose is to commend true piety; to dissuade men from the ways of sin and rebellion; and to press them to submission to God as the path of life and blessedness. C.
It should be observed that two of the names given by the Jews themselves to the Hope of Israel were taken from this Psalm (and Dan. 9 : 25), the Messiah, v. 2, and the Son of God, v. 7. Both names are joined together by the high priest, Matt. 26 : 63. In like manner the name, Son of man, is taken from Psalm 8 : 4 and Dan. 7 : 13. P.
The Hebrew monarchy presents a clear and unmistakable prophecy of a Divine and everlasting kingdom. We have to trace two distinct lines of thought rising in different ages, and gradually growing into one, till both are fully realized in that kingdom which embraces earth and heaven, and links time with eternity. The first thought is that God alone is the King of Israel, the second that David shall not want a man to sit upon his throne forever. The former belief is by far the more ancient; it was born with the people in their deliverance from Egypt, and became the one enduring foundation of the national polity. Out of this truth grows the national life, and on it are based morality, religion, and law. Hardly less wonderful was the second thought, which sprang up in a later age: that in the little State of Israel a King should be born of the seed of David according to the flesh who should extend His dominion from one end of the earth to the other, and reign as long as the sun and moon endure. To bring this new hope into harmony with the ancient creed that seems so utterly opposed to it, to reconcile the perpetual reign of David’s seed with the exclusive sovereignty of Jehovah, is the new task upon which prophecy now enters. The first advance is clearly marked when the title “Messiah,”
hitherto applied only to “the priest that is anointed,” is transferred to the promised King. Hannah is the first that so uses it, in her song of thanksgiving (1 Sam. 2: 10). Observe how carefully the great truth of God’s sole sovereignty is guarded in this first announcement of an earthly King. It is still Jehovah that shall judge the ends of the earth; He shall give strength to the rising monarchy; He shall anoint, and in anointing choose and consecrate, the human king as His viceroy on earth. In David we have a soul conformed to the ideal of a true king—a soul ready to be quickened and illuminated by the Holy Spirit of prophecy, until, amid the kindling glow of thought, there should shine forth the image of a King like David himself, but fairer than the children of men. One in whom all gifts and graces of which man is capable should be combined with the perfections that belong to God only. E. H. Gifford.