Rightly or wrongly, the superscription ascribes this psalm to Solomon.
Its contents have led several commentators to take the superscription
in a meaning for which there is no warrant, as designating the
subject, not the author. Clearly, the whole is a prayer for the king;
but why should not he be both suppliant and object of supplication?
Modern critics reject this as incompatible with the "phraseological
evidence," and adduce the difference between the historical Solomon
and the ideal of the psalm as negativing reference to him. Ver. 8 is
said by them to be quoted from Zech. ix. 10, though Cheyne doubts
whether there is borrowing. Ver. 17 _b_ is said to be dependent on
Gen. xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, which are assumed to be later than the seventh
century. Ver. 12 is taken to be a reminiscence of Job xxix. 12, and
ver. 16 _b_ of Job v. 25. But these are too uncertain criteria to
use as conclusive,--partly because coincidence does not necessarily
imply quotation; partly because, quotation being admitted, the
delicate question of priority remains, which can rarely be settled by
comparison of the passages in question; and partly because, quotation
and priority being admitted, the date of the original is still under
discussion. The impossibility of Solomon's praying thus for himself
does not seem to the present writer so completely established that
the hypothesis must be abandoned, especially if the alternative is
to be, as Hitzig, followed by Olshausen and Cheyne, proposes, that
the king in the psalm is Ptolemy Philadelphus, to whom Psalm xlv. is
fitted by the same authorities. Baethgen puts the objections which
most will feel to such a theory with studied moderation when he says
"that the promises given to the patriarchs in Gen. xxii. 18, xxvi. 4,
should be transferred by a pious Israelite to a foreign king appears
to me improbable." But another course is open--namely, to admit that
the psalm gives no materials for defining its date, beyond the fact
that a king of Davidic descent was reigning when it was composed.
The authorship may be left uncertain, as may the name of the king
for whom such far-reaching blessings were invoked; for he was but a
partial embodiment of the kingly idea, and the very disproportion
between the reality seen in any Jewish monarch and the lofty idealisms
of the psalm compels us to regard the earthly ruler as but a shadow,
and the true theme of the singer as being the Messianic King. We are
not justified, however, in attempting to transfer every point of the
psalmist's prayer to the Messiah. The historical occasion of the psalm
is to be kept in mind. A human monarch stands in the foreground; but
the aspirations expressed are so far beyond anything that he is or can
be, that they are either extravagant flattery, or reach out beyond
their immediate occasion to the King Messiah.
The psalm is not properly a prediction, but a prayer. There is some
divergence of opinion as to the proper rendering of the principal
verbs,--some, as the A.V. and R.V. (text), taking them as uniformly
futures, which is manifestly wrong; some taking them as expressions of
wish throughout, which is also questionable; and others recognising pure
futures intermingled with petitions, which seems best. The boundaries
of the two are difficult to settle, just because the petitions are so
confident that they are all but predictions, and the two melt into
each other in the singer's mind. The flow of thought is simple. The
psalmist's prayers are broadly massed. In vv. 1-4 he prays for the
foundation of the king's reign in righteousness, which will bring peace;
in vv. 5-7 for its perpetuity, and in vv. 8-11 for its universality;
while in vv. 12-15 the ground of both these characteristics is laid
in the king's becoming the champion of the oppressed. A final prayer
for the increase of his people and the perpetuity and world-wide glory
of his name concludes the psalm, to which are appended in vv. 18-20 a
doxology, closing the Second Book of the Psalter.
The first petitions of the psalm all ask for one thing for the
king--namely, that he should give righteous judgment. They reflect
the antique conception of a king as the fountain of justice, himself
making and administering law and giving decisions. Thrice in these four
verses does "righteousness" occur as the foundation attribute of an
ideal king. Caprice, self-interest, and tyrannous injustice were rank
in the world's monarchies round the psalmist. Bitter experience and
sad observation had taught him that the first condition of national
prosperity was a righteous ruler. These petitions are also animated
by the conception, which is as true in the modern as in the ancient
world, that righteousness has its seat in the bosom of God, and that
earthly judgments are righteous when they conform to and are the echo
of His. "Righteousness" is the quality of mind, of which the several
"judgments" are the expressions. This king sits on an ancestral throne.
His people are God's people. Since, then, he is God's viceroy, the
desire cannot be vain that in his heart there may be some reflection
of God's righteousness, and that his decisions may accord with God's.
One cannot but remember Solomon's prayer for "an understanding heart,"
that he might judge this people; nor forget how darkly his later reign
showed against its bright beginning. A righteous king makes a peaceful
people, especially in a despotic monarchy. The sure results of such
a reign--which are, likewise, the psalmist's chief reason for his
petitions--are set forth in the vivid metaphor of ver. 3, in which
peace is regarded as the fruit which springs, by reason of the king's
righteousness, from mountains and hills. This psalmist has special
fondness for that figure of vegetable growth (vv. 7, 16, 17); and it
is especially suitable in this connection, as peace is frequently
represented in Scripture as the fruit of righteousness, both in single
souls and in a nation's history. The mountains come into view here
simply as being the most prominent features of the land, and not, as
in ver. 16, with any reference to their barrenness, which would make
abundant growth on them more wonderful, and indicative of yet greater
abundance on the plains.
A special manifestation of judicial righteousness is the vindication
of the oppressed and the punishment of the oppressor (ver. 4). The
word rendered "judge" in ver. 4 differs from that in ver. 2, and is
the same from which the name of the "Judges" in Israel is derived.
Like them, this king is not only to pronounce decisions, as the word
in ver. 2 means, but is to execute justice by acts of deliverance,
which smite in order to rescue. Functions which policy and dignity
require to be kept apart in the case of earthly rulers are united
in the ideal monarch. He executes his own sentences. His acts are
decisions. The psalmist has no thought of inferior officers by the
king's side. One figure fills his mind and his canvas. Surely such
an ideal is either destined to remain for ever a fair dream, or its
fulfilment is to be recognised in the historical Person in whom God's
righteousness dwelt in higher fashion than psalmists knew, who was,
"first, King of righteousness, and then, after that, also King of
peace," and who, by His deed, has broken every yoke, and appeared as
the defender of all the needy. The poet prayed that Israel's king
might perfectly discharge his office by Divine help; the Christian
gives thanks that the King of men has been and done all which Israel's
monarchs failed to be and do.
The perpetuity of the king's reign and of his subjects' peace is the
psalmists second aspiration (vv. 5-7). The "Thee" of ver. 5 presents a
difficulty, as it is doubtful to whom it refers. Throughout the psalm
the king is spoken _of_, and never _to_; and if it is further noticed
that, in the preceding verses, God has been directly addressed, and
"Thy" used thrice in regard to Him, it will appear more natural to
take the reference in ver. 5 to be to Him. The fear of God would be
diffused among the king's subjects, as a consequence of his rule in
righteousness. Hupfeld takes the word as referring to the king, and
suggests changing the text to "him" instead of "Thee"; while others,
among whom are Cheyne and Baethgen, follow the track of the LXX. in
adopting a reading which may be translated "May he live," or "Prolong
his days." But the thought yielded by the existing text, if referred
to God, is most natural and worthy. The king is, as it were, the
shadow on earth of God's righteousness, and consequently becomes an
organ for the manifestation thereof, in such manner as to draw men to
true devotion. The psalmist's desires are for something higher than
external prosperity, and his conceptions of the kingly office are very
sacred. Not only peace and material well-being, but also the fear of
Jehovah, are longed for by him to be diffused in Israel. And he prays
that these blessings may be perpetual. The connection between the
king's righteousness and the fear of God requires that that permanence
should belong to both. The cause is as lasting as its effect. Through
generation after generation he desires that each shall abide. He uses
peculiar expressions for continual duration: "with the sun"--_i.e._,
contemporaneous with that unfading splendour; "before the face of the
moon"--_i.e._, as long as she shines. But could the singer anticipate
such length of dominion for any human king? Psalm xxi. has similar
language in regard to the same person; and here, as there, it seems
sufficiently accounted for by the consideration that, while the
psalmist was speaking of an individual, he was thinking of the office
rather than of the person, and that the perpetual continuance of the
Davidic dynasty, not the undying life of any one representative of it,
was meant. The full light of the truth that there is a king whose
royalty, like his priesthood, passes to no other is not to be forced
upon the psalm. It stands as a witness that devout and inspired souls
longed for the establishment of a kingdom, against which revolutions
and enemies and mortality were powerless. They knew not that their
desires could not be fulfilled by the longest succession of dying
kings, but were to be more than accomplished by One, "of whom it is
witnessed that He liveth."
The psalmist turns for a moment from his prayer for the perpetuity
of the king's rule, to linger upon the thought of its blessedness as
set forth in the lovely image of ver. 6. Rain upon mown grass is no
blessing, as every farmer knows; but what is meant is, not the grass
which has already been mown, but the naked meadow from which it has
been taken. It needs drenching showers, in order to sprout again
and produce an aftermath. The poet's eye is caught by the contrast
between the bare look of the field immediately after cutting and the
rich growth that springs, as by magic, from the yellow roots after
a plentiful shower. This king's gracious influences shall fall upon
even what seems dead, and charm forth hidden life that will flush the
plain with greenness. The psalmist dwells on the picture, reiterating
the comparison in ver. 6 _b_, and using there an uncommon word, which
seems best rendered as meaning a heavy rainfall. With such affluence
of quickening powers will the righteous king bless his people. The
"Mirror for Magistrates," which is held up in the lovely poem in 2
Sam. xxiii. 4, has a remarkable parallel in its description of the
just ruler as resembling a "morning without clouds, when the tender
grass springeth out of the earth through clear shining after rain";
but the psalmist heightens the metaphor by the introduction of the
mown meadow as stimulated to new growth. This image of the rain
lingers with him and shapes his prayer in ver. 7 _a_. A righteous
king will insure prosperity to the righteous, and the number of such
will increase. Both these ideas seem to be contained in the figure
of their flourishing, which is literally _bud_ or _shoot_. And, as
the people become more and more prevailingly righteous, they receive
more abundant and unbroken peace. The psalmist had seen deeply into
the conditions of national prosperity, as well as those of individual
tranquillity, when he based these on rectitude.
With ver. 8 the singer takes a still loftier flight, and prays for
the universality of the king's dominion. In that verse the form of
the verb is that which expresses desire, but in ver. 9 and following
verses the verbs may be rendered as simple futures. Confident prayers
insensibly melt into assurances of their own fulfilment. As the
psalmist pours out his petitions, they glide into prophecies; for
they are desires fashioned upon promises, and bear, in their very
earnestness, the pledge of their realisation. As to the details of the
form which the expectation of universal dominion here takes, it need
only be noted that we have to do with a poet, not with a geographer.
We are not to treat the expressions as if they were instructions to
a boundary commission, and to be laid down upon a map. "The sea" is
probably the Mediterranean; but what the other sea which makes the
opposite boundary may be is hard to say. Commentators have thought
of the Persian Gulf, or of an imaginary ocean encircling the flat
earth, according to ancient ideas. But more probably the expression
is as indeterminate as the parallel one, "the ends of the earth."
In the first clause of the verse the psalmist starts from the
Mediterranean, the western boundary, and his anticipations travel
away into the unknown eastern regions; while, in the second clause,
he begins with the Euphrates, which was the eastern boundary of the
dominion promised to Israel, and, coming westward, he passes out in
thought to the dim regions beyond. The very impossibility of defining
the boundaries declares the boundlessness of the kingdom. The poet's
eyes have looked east and west, and in ver. 9 he turns to the south,
and sees the desert tribes, unconquered as they have hitherto been,
grovelling before the king, and his enemies in abject submission at
his feet. The word rendered "desert peoples" is that used in Psalm
lxxiv. 14 for wild beasts inhabiting the desert, but here it can only
mean _wilderness tribes_. There seems no need to alter the text, as
has been proposed, and to read "adversaries." In ver. 10 the psalmist
again looks westward, across the mysterious ocean of which he, like
all his nation, knew so little. The great city of Tarshish lay for
him at the farthest bounds of the world; and between him and it, or
perhaps still farther out in the waste unknown, were islands from
which rich and strange things sometimes reached Judæa. These shall
bring their wealth in token of fealty. Again he looks southward to
Sheba in Arabia, and Seba far south below Egypt, and foresees their
submission. His knowledge of distant lands is exhausted, and therefore
he ceases enumeration, and falls back on comprehensiveness. How little
he knew, and how much he believed! His conceptions of the sweep of
that "all" were childish; his faith that, however many these unknown
kings and nations were, God's anointed was their king was either
extravagant exaggeration, or it was nurtured in him by God, and meant
to be fulfilled when a world, wide beyond his dreams and needy
beyond his imagination, should own the sway of a King, endowed with
God's righteousness and communicative of God's peace, in a manner and
measure beyond his desires.
The triumphant swell of these anticipations passes with wonderful
pathos into gentler music, as if the softer tones of flutes should
follow trumpet blasts. How tenderly and profoundly the psalm bases
the universality of the dominion on the pitying care and delivering
power of the King! The whole secret of sway over men lies in that
"For," which ushers in the gracious picture of the beneficent and
tender-hearted Monarch. The world is so full of sorrow, and men are so
miserable and needy, that he who can stanch their wounds, solace their
griefs, and shelter their lives will win their hearts and be crowned
their king. Thrones based on force are as if set on an iceberg which
melts away. There is no solid foundation for rule except helpfulness.
In the world and for a little while "they that exercise authority are
called benefactors"; but in the long-run the terms of the sentence
are inverted, and they that are rightly called benefactors exercise
authority. The more earthly rulers approximate to this ideal portrait,
the more "broad-based upon their people's will" and love will their
thrones stand. If Israel's kings had adhered to it, their throne would
have endured. But their failures point to Him in whom the principle
declared by the psalmist receives its most tender illustration.
The universal dominion of Jesus Christ is based upon the fact that
He "tasted death for every man." In the Divine purpose, He has won
the right to rule men because He has died for them. In historical
realisation, He wins men's submission because He has given Himself
for them. Therefore does He command with absolute authority; therefore
do we obey with entire submission. His sway not only reaches out over
all the earth, inasmuch as the power of His cross extends to all men,
but it lays hold of the inmost will and makes submission a delight.
The king is represented in ver. 14 as taking on himself the office
of Goel, or Kinsman-Redeemer, and ransoming his subjects' lives from
"deceit and violence." That "their blood is precious in his eyes" is
another way of saying that they are too dear to him to be suffered to
perish. This king's treasure is the life of his subjects. Therefore
he will put forth his power to preserve them and deliver them. The
result of such tender care and delivering love is set forth in ver.
15, but in obscure language. The ambiguity arises from the absence
of expressed subjects for the four verbs in the verse. Who is he
who "lives"? Is the same person the giver of the gold of Sheba, and
to whom is it given? Who prays, and for whom? And who blesses, and
whom does he bless? The plain way of understanding the verse is to
suppose that the person spoken of in all the clauses is the same; and
then the question comes whether he is the king or the ransomed man.
Difficulties arise in carrying out either reference through all the
clauses; and hence attempts have been made to vary the subject of the
verbs. Delitzsch, for instance, supposes that it is the ransomed man
who "lives," the king who gives to the ransomed man gold, and the man
who prays for and blesses the king. But such an arbitrary shuttling
about of the reference of "he" and "him" is impossible. Other attempts
of a similar kind need not be noticed here. The only satisfactory
course is to take one person as spoken of by all the verbs. But then
the question comes, Who is he? There is much to be said in favour of
either hypothesis as answering that question. The phrase which is
rendered above "So that he lives" is so like the common invocation
"May the king live," that it strongly favours taking the whole verse
as a continuance of the petitions for the monarch. But if so, the verb
in the second clause (_he shall give_) must be taken impersonally, as
equivalent to "one will give" or "there shall be given," and those
in the remaining clauses must be similarly dealt with, or the text
altered so as to make them plurals, reading, "They shall pray for him
(the king), ... and shall bless him." On the whole, it is best to
suppose that the ransomed man is the subject throughout, and that the
verse describes his glad tribute, and continual thankfulness. Ransomed
from death, he brings offerings to his deliverer. It seems singular
that he should be conceived of both as "needy" and as owning "gold"
which he can offer; but in the literal application the incongruity is
not sufficient to prevent the adoption of this view of the clause; and
in the higher application of the words to Christ and His subjects,
which we conceive to be warranted, the incongruity becomes fine and
deep truth; for the poorest soul, delivered by Him, can bring tribute,
which He esteems as precious beyond all earthly treasure. Nor need
the remaining clauses militate against the view that the ransomed man
is the subject in them. The psalm had a historical basis, and all its
points cannot be introduced into the Messianic interpretation. This
one of praying for the king cannot be; notwithstanding the attempts of
some commentators to find a meaning for it in Christian prayers for
the spread of Christ's kingdom. That explanation does violence to
the language, mistakes the nature of Messianic prophecy, and brings
discredit on the view that the psalm has a Messianic character.
The last part of the psalm (vv. 16, 17) recurs to petitions for the
growth of the nation and the perpetual flourishing of the king's
name. The fertility of the land and the increase of its people are
the psalmist's desires, which are also certainties, as expressed in
ver. 16. He sees in imagination the whole land waving with abundant
harvests, which reach even to the tops of the mountains, and rustle
in the summer air, with a sound like the cedars of Lebanon, when
they move their layers of greenness to the breeze. The word rendered
above "abundance" is doubtful; but there does not seem to be in
the psalmist's mind the contrast which he is often supposed to be
expressing, beautiful and true as it, is between the small beginnings
and the magnificent end of the kingdom on earth. The mountains are
here thought of as lofty and barren. If waving harvests clothe their
gaunt sides, how will the vales laugh in plentiful crops! As the earth
yields her increase, so the people of the king shall be multiplied,
and from all his cities they shall spring forth abundant as grass.
That figure would bear much expansion; for what could more beautifully
set forth rapidity of growth, close-knit community, multiplication of
units, and absorption of these in a lovely whole, than the picture of
a meadow clothed with its grassy carpet? Such hopes had only partial
fulfilment in Israel. Nor have they had adequate fulfilment up till
now. But they lie on the horizon of the future, and they shall one
day be reached. Much that is dim is treasured in them. There may
be a renovated world, from which the curse of barrenness has been
banished. There shall be a swift increase of the subjects of the
King, until the earlier hope of the psalm is fulfilled, and all
nations shall serve Him.
But bright as are the poet's visions concerning the kingdom, his last
gaze is fastened on its king, and he prays that his name may last for
ever, and may send forth shoots as long as the sun shines in the sky.
He probably meant no more than a prayer for the continual duration of
the dynasty, and his conception of the name as sending forth shoots was
probably that of its being perpetuated in descendants. But, as has been
already noticed, the perpetuity, which he conceived of as belonging
to a family and an office, really belongs to the One King, Jesus
Christ, whose Name is above every name, and will blossom anew in fresh
revelations of its infinite contents, not only while the sun shines,
but when its fires are cold and its light quenched. The psalmist's last
desire is that the ancient promise to the fathers may be fulfilled in
the King, their descendant, in whom men shall bless themselves. So full
of blessedness may He seem to all men, that they shall take Him for the
very type of felicity, and desire to be even as He is! In men's relation
to Christ the phrase assumes a deeper meaning still; and though that is
not intended by the psalmist, and is not the exposition of his words,
it still is true that in Christ all blessings for humanity are stored,
and that therefore if men are to be truly blessed they must plunge
themselves into Him, and in Him find all that they need for blessedness
and nobility of life and character. If He is our supreme type of
whatsoever things are fair and of good report, and if we have bowed
ourselves to Him because He has delivered us from death, then we share
in His life, and all His blessings are parted among us.