Psalms 45
ButlerFOR THE CHIEF MUSICIAN; SET TO SHOSHANNIM; A PSALM OF THE SONS OF KORAH. MASCHIL. A SONG OF LOVES.
1. My heart overfloweth with a goodly matter: I speak the things which I have made touching the king: My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. 2 Thou art fairer than the children of men; Grace is poured into thy lips: Therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. 3 Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty one, Thy glory and thy majesty. 4 And in thy majesty ride on prosperously, Because of truth and meekness and righteousness: And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. 5 Thine arrows are sharp; The peoples fall under thee; They are in the heart of the king’s enemies. 6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: A sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom. 7 Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness: Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee With the oil of gladness above thy fellows. 8 All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia; Out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made thee glad. 9 Kings’ daughters are among thy honourable women:
At thy right hand doth stand the queen in gold of Ophir.
10. Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house; 11 So shall the king desire thy beauty: For he is thy Lord; and worship thou him. 12 And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift; Even the rich among the people shall intreat thy favour. 13 The king’s daughter within the palace is all glorious: Her clothing is inwrought with gold. 14 She shall be led unto the king in broidered work: The virgins her companions that follow her Shall be brought unto thee. 15 With gladness and rejoicing shall they be led: They shall enter into the king’s palace. 16 Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, Whom thou shalt make princes in all the earth. 17 I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: Therefore shall the peoples give thee thanks for ever and ever.
THIS Psalm is evidently a marriage-song, composed for some day of royal espousals. It celebrates the nuptials of a Jewish king with a princess, apparently of foreign extraction; but in honor of what particular king it was written is matter of conjecture. The older, and perhaps the more common interpretation, refers it to Solomon’s nuptials with the daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. But “a greater than Solomon is here.” Evident as it is that much of the language of the poem is only properly applicable to the circumstances of the royal nuptials which occasioned it, it is no less evident that much of it greatly transcends them. The outward glory of Solomon was but a type and a foreshadowing of a better glory to be revealed. Israel’s true king was not David or Solomon, but One of whom they, at the best, were only faint and transient images. A righteous One was yet to come who should indeed rule in truth and equity, who should fulfil all the hopes which one human monarch after another, however fair the promise of his reign, had disappointed, and whose kingdom, because it was a righteous kingdom, should endure forever. Such a ruler would indeed be the vice-gerent of God. In such an one, and by such an one, God would reign. He would be of the seed of David, and yet more glorious than all his fellows; human, and yet above men. It was because of this wonderfully close and real relation between God and man—a relation which the true king would visibly symbolize—that the Psalmist could address him as God. In him God and man would, in some mysterious manner, meet. This perhaps he did see; more than this he could not see. P.
This Psalm celebrates the nuptials of an anointed king. It describes him as beautiful and gracious, blessed forevermore; as a conqueror, whose objects are truth, humility, and righteousness; as a Divine person, bearing the name of God, seated on an everlasting throne, ruling in righteousness, anointed with the oil of gladness, received with the strains of harps in ivory palaces; his bride is a king’s daughter, one of a foreign race, beautiful and glorious; her attendants are pure virgins; her children are to be princes in all the earth. Cook.
That this Psalm is Messianic has been the doctrine of those who have held the Word of God in hand and in honor throughout all the ages. The Chaldee Targum on v. 2 has this: “Thy beauty, O King Messiah, is greater than of the sons of men.” With this the Jewish Rabbis accord. The voice of the early Christian Church may be given in the words of Theodoret: “This is a Psalm for the beloved, i.e., for the beloved Son of God.” The writer to the Hebrews gives his emphatic indorsement by quoting vs. 6, 7 entire as the words of God to His Son (1 : 8, 9)—“But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever,” etc. The superlative beauty of this King is in the grace of His lips; He is the oracle of God to man—“never man spake like this man.” He came from heaven to earth to bring us words from God, and therefore is significantly called, The Word. He rides forth in majesty, not because of personal beauty, or martial prowess, or muscular strength, or majestic mien, but “because of truth, meekness, and righteousness.” It is because He loves righteousness and hates wickedness that his God anoints Him, i.e., makes Him His Anointed One, the true Messiah, far above all other anointed kings of the Theocracy. And finally, His children are to be princes in all the earth, and His name shall be remembered through all generations, Himself an object of praise from all the people forever and ever. Verily no personage less than Jesus the Messiah is here, King of kings and Lord of lords. “His kingdom an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion that which knows no end. C.
The nuptial song of Christ and the Church, which has for its peculiar theme the homehomering of Christ’s elect, that they may be joined to Him in a union that shall survive the everlasting hills. W. Binnie.—Under this delicate symbol is pictured the love of Christ for His Church. He admits her to the most near, loving, confidential communion; He elevates her to His own dignity and honor; and He will hereafter bestow upon her the full blessedness of His presence, the full glory of His kingdom. J. P. T.—The distinguishing peculiarity of the Psalm is vividly presented in the New Testament account of Christ and His Church. He is the bridegroom and His people are the bride (John 3 : 29). The marriage relation is used again and again to denote the mystical union between the Saviour and His chosen; and in the new heavens and new earth the body of the redeemed is said to be “made ready as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21 : 2). The Praise-book of Israel abounds with the praises of God, but never of man. Not a solitary lyric records the exploits of any ancient worthy. David’s beautiful elegy on Saul and Jonathan is kept on historical record, but not among the Psalms. In this respect the Psalter stands alone in the literature of the world. It has frequent references to the nation and to its great leaders, but never in express laudation. That is reserved for God alone. T. W. C.
TITLE. To the chief musician. Upon lilies. To the sons of Korah. Maschil. A song of loved (ones). The unusual accumulation of descriptive titles in this verse suggests at once that the Psalm is one of deep and solemn import, and thus raises a presumption against its being a mere epithalamium, or a secular poem of any kind. This presumption is confirmed by the inscription to the chief musician, implying that the Psalm was designed for permanent and public use. The same thing is true, in substance, of the next term, maschil, instruction. The Psalm before us is among the last which would have been selected by a modern critic as didactic in its character. The same thing is rendered still more certain by the ascription to the sons of Korah, whether as authors or performers, since in either character their function was a sacred one, as precentors in the temple worship. A song of loves, the usage of the Hebrew word requires to be taken in the concrete sense of loved or beloved, the plural feminine form serving to identify the persons thus described with the lilies of the other clause. These two phrases taken together represent the subject of the Psalm to be lovely and beloved women, while the other three terms of the description show that the love and marriage here referred to are not natural but spiritual—to wit, the union of Messiah with His people, or of Christ with His Church, an idea running through both Testaments. On the whole, then, this Psalm appears to be a description of Messiah in His conjugal relation both to Israel and other nations, composed either by or for the sons of Korah in the reign of Solomon, from which the imagery seems to be borrowed, and designed for the permanent instruction of the Church by being used as a vehicle of pious feeling in her public worship. A.
1. This verse is a kind of preface of a very unusual kind in Hebrew poetry, in which the singer tells how great is his subject, and how full his heart is of it. P.—My heart has overflowed—a good word (am) I saying—my works for the king—my tongue the pen of a rapid writer. The whole verse is a strong metaphorical description of the way in which his thoughts were engrossed, and his words suggested by one great theme. A.—A good word, i.e., a beautiful utterance, a hymn full of goodness and joy, gushing out from the full heart. Cook.
“My heart boils up (and overflows) with a good thing.” My emotions are stirred to their depths with ravishing thoughts of the glorious king and his beautiful bride. “I am to utter the song I have prepared concerning the king; my tongue is the pen of a swift writer,” for my heart is so full of thoughts, rich and beautiful, I have only to open my lips and they pour forth fast as the most rapid pen can write them. A wonderful exordium truly, indicating the profound interest which filled and stirred the soul of this poet-prophet. C.—Touching the king. It does not all concern the king immediately, for much of it concerns the queen, and about one half of it is directly addressed to her. But it relates to him inasmuch as it relates to his family. Christ ever identifies Himself with His people; so that whatever is done to them is done to Himself. Their interests are His. G. Harper.
2. Beautiful, beautiful, art Thou above the sons of man; grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore God hath blessed Thee to eternity. The first word in Hebrew is a reduplicated form, expressing the idea with intensity and emphasis. He is not praised as the fairest or most beautiful of men, but as fair or beautiful beyond all human standard or comparison. This general ascription of all loveliness is followed by the specification of a single charm, that of delightful, captivating speech. Grace, in Hebrew as in English, denotes both a cause and an effect; in this case, grace or beauty of expression, produced by the Divine grace or favor, and reciprocally tending to increase it. On any hypothesis, except the Messianic one, this verse is unintelligible. If the first clause were intended to describe a mere corporeal beauty, how could this be followed up by commending the grace of the lips, or either be recognized as the ground of an eternal blessing? It is only by supposing that the person here meant is the chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely, that the beauty predicated of him includes every moral and spiritual attraction, and that the grace of his lips has reference to his prophetic character and office, that the sentence can be made to seem coherent, and the promise at its close appropriate. A.
The beauty of the king is placed first with peculiar fitness in a bridal hymn; but the beauty here spoken of is a Divine attribute; the word is the same in derivation as that applied to Jehovah (Psalm 50: 2), but even stronger in its form, which occurs in no other passage. Beauty was regarded by the Hebrew as the outward manifestation of inherent nobleness, or of a nature akin to the Divine. In this case the beauty is expressly said to be above that of man, an expression which marks the object of the hymn, as One standing apart from and above those whose nature He shares. The representation is unquestionably ideal; it refers to the Messiah. (Compare Isa. 33: 17.) Thus the Chaldee paraphrast, “Thy beauty, O King Messiah, is greater than that of the sons of men.” Grace. The grace of sweetness, loveliness, all that is attractive and gracious in expression, has its seat upon the lips of the King; from such lips none but gracious words can flow; the anointing Spirit dwells upon them (cf. Luke 4: 18, 22), where the word is used with special reference to Isa. 61: 1-3. Therefore. The blessing is inseparable from the spiritual gifts and graces visibly represented in the person of the glorified Messiah; such a declaration would hardly have been made of a mere earthly king. Cook.
The beauty of the monarch first calls forth the poet’s praise, and then his persuasive eloquence. Calvin observes, it were more kingly for kings to win their subjects’ hearts by gracious words than to rule them by brute force. So, too, of the Great Antitype, the true King, we read that men wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His lips; for the Lord had given Him the tongue of the learned, that He might know how to speak a word in season to them that were weary (Isa. 50 : 4). P.—Kingly courtesy and kingly graciousness of word must be the characteristic of the Sovereign of men. The abundance of that bestowment is expressed by that word “poured.” We need only remember, “All wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth,” or how even the rough instruments of authority were touched and diverted from their appointed purpose, and came back and said, “Never man spake like this man.” A. M.
He has grace, and He has it for us. By His Word, His promise, His Gospel, the good will of God is made known to us, and the good work of God is begun and carried on in us. He received all grace from God, all the endowments that were requisite to qualify Him for His work and office as Mediator, that from His fulness we might receive. H.—In one Christ we may contemplate and must confess all the beauty and loveliness both of heaven and earth; the beauty of heaven is God, the beauty of earth is man; the beauty of heaven and earth together is this God-man. E. Hyde.—Never were there such words of love and sweetness spoken by any man as by Him; never was there such a loving and tender heart as the heart of Jesus Christ: “Grace was poured into His lips.” Certainly never were there such words of love, sweetness, and tenderness spoken here upon this earth as those last words of His which were uttered a little before His sufferings, and are recorded in the thirteenth to the seventeenth chapters of John. J. Row.
3,4. The martial genius of the age of David appears in this figure, the sword girded on the thigh; and yet the glory of this King marching forth in triumph lies not in routed armies and heaps of the slain; not in cities laid desolate, wives made widows, and children fatherless; but in “truth, meekness, and righteousness.” He comes to bring to men most blessed truth concerning their Great Father; to turn them from darkness, delusion, and crime, to light, truth, and love. C.
4. The King goes forth, “conquering and to conquer” (Rev. 6 : 2). Because of, i.e., for the sake of truth, and the meekness which is one with righteousness. The combination of the two words meekness and righteousness is marked by a singular construction in the Hebrew; the two attributes are, so to speak, identified. The one object of the wars of God’s Anointed is to make the attributes incarnate in Him triumphant (cf. Zech. 9 : 9). Cook.—His truth, meekness, and righteousness are His glory and majesty, and because of these He shall prosper. Men are brought to believe on Him because He is true, to learn of Him because He is meek, the gentleness of Christ is of mighty force. Men are brought to submit to Him because He is righteous, and rules with equity. The Gospel, as far as it prevails with men, sets up in their hearts truth, meekness, and righteousness, rectifies their mistakes by the light of truth, controls their passions by the power of meekness, and governs their hearts and lives by the laws of righteousness. H.
4,5. The poet desires that the king whom he celebrates may reign and triumph in a Messianic manner, that he may help forward truth and what is truly good and overcome the enmity of the world, or, as it is expressed in Psalm 2, that the divinely anointed King of Zion may with the sceptre of iron dash to pieces everything that resists. D.
6. Thy throne, (oh) God, (is) forever and ever; a sceptre of rectitude (is) the sceptre of Thy kingdom. To avoid the obvious ascription of divinity contained in the first clause, two very forced constructions have been proposed. 1. Thy throne (is the throne of) God forever and ever. 2. Thy God-throne (or Divine throne) is forever. The explanation of God as a vocative is not only the most obvious, and sustained by many analogies, but is found in all the ancient versions and adopted in the New Testament (Heb. 1 : 8), and was admitted even by the anti-Messianic interpreters, until they were obliged to abandon the position that Elohim might be taken in a lower sense. A.—The person before the Psalmist’s mind was a visible manifestation of the Godhead; the ideal King of whom his earthly sovereign was an imperfect type. The objection that the Messiah is never called God or addressed as God in the Old Testament begs the entire question, and is untrue (see Isa. 8 : 8, “O Immanuel”). Other explanations of this passage are contrary to its plain and literal meaning. Cook.
The Messiah is addressed as God. This is really the case in v. 7 as well as in v. 6. “Therefore, O God, hath Thy God anointed Thee,” etc. This is repeated by Isaiah (9 : 6): “His name shall be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.” His throne is eternal; forever and ever. Other kingdoms, the mightiest and proudest ever reared by mortals, are transient; the face of the world is strewn with their ruins; but this kingdom shall never collapse; no chronicler in the ages never so distant shall have to speak of its fall; no explorer shall traverse and survey its ruins. Beautifully it shall be thus enduring and imperishable because it is righteous; “the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.” C.
7. God, Thy God.** The old Versions and most interpreters take “God” and “Thy God” to be in apposition. The construction, however, is unusual, and the more natural interpretation would be, “Therefore, O God, Thy God hath anointed Thee.” This agrees with the preceding verse, “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” Cook.—“Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness; therefore, O God, hath Thy God anointed Thee with joy” more than any of Thy associate kings on the throne of Israel from whom the Messiah is thought of as coming forth. Precisely this is the strain of argument in Isa. 11: 1-9; “the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him;” “He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes;” “with righteousness shall He judge the poor;” “with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked;” therefore men “shall not hurt nor destroy in all this holy mountain,” etc. C.
Thy God. Christ, as Mediator, called God His God (John 20: 17), as commissioned by Him, and the Head of those that are taken into covenant with Him. He has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness. “In order to this righteous government of thine, God has given Thee His Spirit, that Divine unction, to qualify Thee for thine undertaking.” Isaiah 61: 1—The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me. He was anointed with the Spirit above all his fellows, above all those that were anointed, whether priests or kings. H.
Thy fellows. In these words you have two parts—namely, first, the saints’ dignity; and, secondly, Christ’s pre-eminency. The saints’ dignity consists in this, that they are Christ’s “fellows.” Doth the Spirit of holiness dwell in Him? So He doth in them, too. Is Christ King and Priest? So are they, too, by the grace of union with Him. He hath made us kings and priests to God and His Father. This is the saints’ dignity, to be Christ’s fellows, consorts, or co-partners. But whatever dignity is ascribed herein to the saints, there is and still must be a pre-eminency acknowledged and ascribed to Christ; if they are anointed with the spirit of grace, much more abundantly is Christ: “God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows” Flavel.
8. The song here reaches its culminating point in the description of the king. It has portrayed the king as man, as warrior, as god-like ruler; now it pictures him as bridegroom on the day of his espousals. P.—The sequence of the thoughts and figures corresponds with the history of the future. When Babylon has fallen and the hero on a white horse with the name written on His garment and on His thigh: “King of kings and Lord of lords,” shall have slain the hostile peoples with the sword of His mouth, then follows the marriage of the Lamb, which paves a way for itself by means of these penal victories (Rev. 19: 7). It is this final marriage, which the Psalm as a song of the Church sees beforehand in the dawning light of the Old Testament, and which it hails with shouts of exultation. D.
Myrrh and aloes (and) cassia (are) all thy garments, from palaces of ivory, from (thence) have they gladdened thee. The figure of unction in the close of the preceding verse suggests the idea of perfumes and aromatic substances. His dress is described as so impregnated with these odors that it may be poetically said to be composed of them. By another natural association, these perfumed garments, which were not usually worn, suggest the idea of some rare festivity, and especially of that which is most joyous in all countries. A.
9. The queen.** The Hebrew word is not that which is generally used to designate the queens of Israelitish princes. It is a poetical word, and denotes a peculiarity in the choice and position of the bride. Mystically it must refer to the Church, but in her perfect purity and unity, as she is described in the Book of Revelation (19: 7, 8; 21: 2). Cook.
10. Hear, daughter, and see, and bend thine ear, and forget thy people and the house of thy father.** The Psalmist, in view of the ideal scene which he has brought before us, utters a kind of nuptial exhortation to the queen or chief bride of Messiah. Hear what I have to say; see, with the mind’s eye, what I set before thee, look at it, consider it. Incline thine ear, lean forward as a sign of attention, so that nothing shall escape thee. This preliminary summons to attend implies that something of serious moment is to follow. A.—The earnestness of this threefold address is peculiarly suitable to the occasion; how difficult to gain the attention of the bride, how needful to make her fully conscious of the complete change of sphere, involving the disruption of old ties, and the entire surrender of heart to new duties. Equally true and forcible is the application to the Church; she has one work, to give herself up to Christ; one sacrifice to make—that of all associations and bonds alien to Him. Cook.
10,11. Forget thy people and thy father’s house.** So the bride of Christ should expel from her heart all her old and earthly loves, to give a pure and a whole heart to her affianced Lord, entering upon this new relation with a radically changed heart and life, old things passing away, and all things, all affections, all the heart’s love, and all the soul’s real life, made new. So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty; so thou mayest become sure of His love. Such beauty of soul is forever precious in His eyes. He is thy Lord, thy husband—to be accepted with the sincerest love and obedience of thy heart. C.
Thy forty-fifth Psalm is the coronation oath of Christ to His Church. And here are three thoughts strung together to do honor to the occasion—Christ’s delight in His Church’s beauty, Christ’s claim to His Church’s service, and Christ the centre of His Church’s worship, J. Vaughan.—Our beauty does not consist in our own virtues, nor even in the gifts which we have received from God, by which we put forth virtues, and do all those things which pertain unto the life of the law; but in this—our apprehending Christ and believing in Him. Then it is that we are truly beautiful; and it is this beauty alone that Christ looks upon, and upon no other. Luther.
12. In the time of Solomon, the Tyrians were the most commercial nation in the world, and the one with which the Israelites had most commercial intercourse. It was natural therefore to use Tyre as a type for the wealth and commerce of the world, as employed by later writers. Thus understood, the promise that the daughter of Tyre should seek, by means of gifts, to conciliate the favor of the queen, is a prediction that the richest of the nations should seek union and communion with the chosen people. A.—“The daughter of Tyre,” the richest of the nations, with gifts shall conciliate thy favor. Here, as in Isa. 60: 5-17 and 49: 18-23 and Psalm 72: 10, the sentiment is that in the fulness of the Messianic times the wealth of the nations shall be cheerfully laid at His feet. C.—The power of missions abroad lies at home: a holy church will be a powerful church. Nor shall there be lack of treasure in her coffers when grace is in her heart; the free gifts of a willing people shall enable the workers for God to carry on their sacred enterprises without stint. Commerce shall send in its revenue to endow, not with forced levies and imperial taxes, but with willing gifts the Church of the Great King. S.
13. A description of the magnificent appearance presented by the queen, as she stands, or perhaps sits, beside the king on the throne, arrayed in her royal and bridal apparel in the inner apartments of the palace—the presence-chamber where the throne was placed. Her arrival there is anticipated in this verse, as the bridal procession is subsequently described; unless, as Maurer suggests, this was not the king’s palace, but some other, where the bride was first lodged, and whence she was conducted to the king.
14,15. The bridal procession described. The bride walks, in Oriental fashion, on the richly woven carpets spread for her feet, accompanied by her maidens, and a festive band with music, dancing, etc. P.
14. With (or on) variegated cloths shall she be conducted to the king; virgins behind her, her companions, brought unto thee. The lively picture of an Oriental wedding is now completed by a view of the procession to the bridegroom’s house. The customary train of female friends is not forgotten, but with this peculiar feature added, that the bridesmaids are themselves described as brides being brought (or made to come) to the king, precisely as the queen was. This departure from the usages of real life is peculiarly appropriate, as it enables the writer to include in his description a striking figurative representation of the eventual accession of the Gentiles to the spiritual privileges and prerogatives which for ages were confined to Israel. A.—She comes with a train of maidens, attached to her in heart and ready to serve her, who along with her also become the possession of her husband. This also fits in with the allegorical interpretation of the Psalm as a hymn of the Church. The Lamb’s bride, whom the seer in the Apocalypse beholds clothed in resplendent white linen, which denotes her righteousness, as the variegated golden garments here denote her glory, is neither one person nor one Church, but the Church of Israel along with the Church of the Gentiles, which have had a glorious and active share in the bringing in again of the daughter of Zion. D.
16. After having thus dwelt on the personal graces of the royal pair, the magnificence of their attire, and the splendor of their retinue, the poet again addresses the king, and concludes with congratulations and hopes expressed as to the issue of the marriage. The monarch cannot trace his descent from a long line of kings, but his children shall be better to him than royal ancestry. The sacred poet sees the earthly king and the human marriage before his eyes; but, while he strikes his harp to celebrate these, a vision of a higher glory streams in upon him. Thus the earthly and the heav-
enly mingle. The Divine penetrates, hallows, goes beyond the human; but the human is there. P.