This is a very striking little Psalm, and one of easy simple interpretation.
The first verse gives us the thanksgiving of the nation now, by anticipation, saved and avenged in answer to their cry in the previous Psalm. God’s works in that salvation, and vengeance just executed, had shown Him to be near His people, as they here celebrate. His name had been for a long time distant from Israel. But now, as their faith anticipates, about to do His “wondrous works” for them, they know that He is returning and bringing His name near again.
The following verses, from the second to the end, are Messiah’s utterance. He vows to rule in righteousness, when He receives the people as His inheritance (Psa. 75:2; see 2 Sam. 23:4; Psa. 101). He recognizes the apostasy of all kingdoms and systems till His own scepter arise. (Psa. 75:3; see 1 Sam. 2:8-10; Dan. 2:44.) He challenges the rebels or apostate powers of the world, who had erected themselves against the Lord, assuring them that God would soon visit them. (Psa. 75:4-8; see Psa. 82; Psa. 83; Hag. 2:22; Heb. 12:27.) He then, in contrast with them, pledges Himself to hold His scepter unto God’s praise, and in the righteous dispensation of reward and punishment. (Psa. 75:9-10; see Matt. 25:31, Rev. 3:21.)
What holy and glorious consciounesss of Himself fills the soul of Messiah in all this utterance! He knows that when He receives the congregation He will judge uprightly. And He knows too that He alone sustains the pillars of the world.
Thus, the material of this Psalm clearly shows itself to us. The wine cup, the cup of trembling, the cup of His fury, the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath, are various titles of the same cup, which is the emblem of divine judgments, like the vials of Revelation 16. The cup of salvation, on the other hand, expresses the joy of the kingdom. (See Psa. 116; Luke 22:18.) Oh what a morning without clouds will the rise and waving of this righteous scepter, here anticipated by the Lord Himself, spread over this groaning and thorny creation! And it is a striking and beautiful point in this Psalm, that the cup here drunk by the people of the earth does not pass on to Messiah. He takes instead of it the other cup, and at once calls on the name of the Lord. (See Psa. 75:8-9, and Psa. 116:3.) The cup of anger is for their hand, the cup of salvation for His. He once took, indeed, the cup of sorrows, the cup of Gethsemane, for us poor sinners; but it is the cup of praise, the joy of the kingdom, that remains for Him now, while the apostate powers of the earth are wringing out the dregs of the cup of fury.