_A thanksgiving for victory.—Confidence of further success._
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.
The king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord: and in thy salvation how
greatly shall he rejoice!
Thou hast given him his heart’s desire, and hast not withholden the
request of his lips. Selah.
For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness: thou settest a
crown of pure gold on his head.
He asked life of thee, _and_ thou gavest _it_ him, _even_ length of
days for ever and ever.
His glory _is_ great in thy salvation: honour and majesty hast thou
laid upon him.
For thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him
exceeding glad with thy countenance.
For the king trusteth in the LORD; and, through the mercy of the Most
High, he shall not be moved.
Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies; thy right hand shall find
out those that hate thee.
Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the
LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour
them.
Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from
among the children of men.
For they intended evil against thee; they imagined a mischievous
device, _which_ they are not able _to perform_:
Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, _when_ thou shalt make
ready _thine arrows_ upon thy strings against the face of them.
Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength: _so_ will we sing and
praise thy power.
This is a prophecy concerning the kingdom of Christ;—that his kingdom
shall be temporal and eternal. The beginning of the Psalm gloriously
predicts that it shall come to pass that this king and this people
shall rejoice in this kingdom, and that the glory of it shall be
great. But you must understand that all this will be, not before the
world or according to the flesh, but in God. For Christ entered into
glory through the flesh and by the cross.
This Psalm foretels also that this kingdom, that is, the Church of
Christ, although afflicted before the world, shall be enriched with
spiritual blessings and glorified; and that this word of grace and the
remission of sins, this joyful and all-sweet Gospel shall be diffused
abroad among all nations, and that the godly and those that believe,
shall rejoice and be glad, and exult in it with a full and perfect
joy, which no creature shall be able to destroy or to take away.
On the other hand, David shews that the Jews who opposed this counsel
of God, and the whole of their kingdom should be destroyed by the
awful judgment of God, “Thou shalt make them (says he) to turn their
back;” that is, because that people opposed themselves to the Gospel,
and crucified Christ, thou shalt afflict them with heavy calamities;
and, having rejected the people destroyed their kingdom, and having
done away with, and abrogated the whole of their law and worship for
which they so furiously fight, thou shalt reduce them to a miserable
slavery, so that they shall be oppressed under a foreign yoke and
laws, and shall thus suffer the punishment due to their sins.
This Psalm belongs to the first commandment, and to the second
petition of the Lord’s Prayer: for it foretells of a people that
should not be under the law of Moses, but in a kingdom of rejoicing
and thanksgiving, and it speaks of a new manner of worship.