1 Why have the Gentiles raged, and do the nations meditate a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the princes have consulted together, against Jehovah and against his anointed:
3 “Let us break their bands, and cast away their cords from us.”
4 He who sitteth in the heavens laugheth: the Lord derideth them.
5 Then he speaketh unto them in his anger, and in his wrath he confoundeth them:
6 “Yet have I anointed my king upon Zion the mountain of my holiness.”
7 “Let me declare the decree; Jehovah said unto me, ‘Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, and I will give the Gentiles [for] thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth [for] thy possession.
9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; as a potter’s vessel shalt thou dash them in pieces.’”
10 And now, O ye kings, be wise; be admonished, ye judges of the earth;
11 Serve Jehovah with fear and rejoice with trembling;
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish in the way when his anger consumeth but a little: blessed [are] all who trust in him.
Notes on Psalm 2
This again is prefatory like the first (to which its structure corresponds, only with double the length), and both not only to the first book (1-41) but to the entire collection. Here the Messiah is as evident and express, as His own are in the preceding psalm. The antagonistic nations and their kings are in full view, not the wicked as such, though wicked indeed those are.
Such is the first stanza of three verses in which the godless revolt against Jehovah and His Christ is set before us, with no less amazement than indignation. In Acts 4 it is applied to the rebellious union of Romans and Jews, of Pilate and Herod, against the Lord.
But Jehovah’s counsel stands and He answers the fool according to his folly, with a strikingly parallel reference to the rebellious agitation of the Gentiles and their rulers (vers. 4-6). Those doings and sayings in each case are an exact counterpart.
The constituted earthly royalty of Messiah in Zion opens the way to the next strophe (vers. 7-10). It is the Son of God born in time, the Messiah; neither eternal Sonship as in John’s Gospel and elsewhere, nor resurrection as in Paul’s Epistles. Sonship on earth and in time suits the kingdom here announced. But that kingdom, though with Zion its center, embraces the uttermost parts of the earth, and so the nations or Gentiles. It is the Messiah of Whom Solomon was but a type like David. But here the Christ only is described throughout. It is exclusively future. He has not yet asked the earth, but is now occupied with relations above it, of heaven and for eternity. Soon He will come in His Kingdom, and receive the world at His request, when He will rule with the rod of iron (how different from the gospel!) and shiver men as a potter’s vessel. What can be more contrasted with beseeching men, and with building up His body, the church?
Here too kings and judges are before us, for it is strictly a Messianic psalm. But it is the Son about to execute vengeance on a haughty and hostile world. Yet is He a blessing beyond every other, the only blessed object of trust for any or all: the secret spring, at the end of Psalm 2, of the blessings for the righteous proclaimed at the beginning of Psalm 50. These are unquestionably a pair, and in the only place suitable, were we to search for a preface in all the hundred and fifty.
Having Christ clearly brought in as the hope of Israel, as well as distinct from the mass, the happy or blessed man, just and one of those justified by faith in Him, we have next a series (from Psalm 3) which concludes with the Lord Jesus, not merely Son of God born here below and King on Zion, but Son of Man, and so humbled but so too exalted on high over all things (Ps. 8).
Here the Spirit of Christ expresses the feelings He inspires in the righteous remnant as experiencing rejection like that which was His portion in an infinitely greater degree. Circumstances are sad in the extreme; for these bitter but blessed lessons are learnt among God’s people when alas! alienated and hostile. Christ entered into it as none ever did; but His Spirit it is that works in the godly, directs their hearts, and expresses aright what ought to flow from them in the same path.