An Enduring Covenant Confronts a Crown in the Dust

The heading gives the psalm to Ethan the Ezrahite, one of the wise men whom 1 Kings 4:31 says Solomon surpassed. It opens with a vow of praise though most of what follows is complaint. “Mercies” is the plural of chesed, loyal covenant love, and the same plural returns in verse 49 as “former lovingkindnesses”, so the psalm begins and ends on that word.

“Built up” is banah, the verb of 2 Samuel 7, where God promises to build David a house. Faithfulness is fixed “in the very heavens”, the permanent part of the world, which prepares the sun and moon that will stand as witnesses in verses 36 and 37.

God’s voice cuts in with no “thus saith the LORD” to announce it. The prophecy of Nathan in 2 Samuel 7 never uses the word oath, yet this psalm and Psalm 132:11 both call it a sworn promise, which raises its weight: an oath binds the one who swears.

Seed and throne are the two halves of 2 Samuel 7:12–16, a line of descendants and a seat for them to sit on. “To all generations” picks up verse 1 exactly, so the singer’s praise and the king’s dynasty are measured on the same scale. The first of four Selahs falls here.

“Saints” here are not people on earth. The Hebrew qedoshim, holy ones, are heavenly beings, and “congregation” pictures them gathered as a court. Praise of God’s faithfulness begins above before it is argued over below.

“Sons of the mighty” is bene elim, the same phrase Psalm 29:1 addresses as “ye mighty”, members of the heavenly council. The two questions expect the answer nobody, and they borrow the form of Exodus 15:11, “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?”

“Assembly” is sod, the inner council where decisions are taken, the word Jeremiah 23:18 uses when it asks who has “stood in the counsel of the LORD”. Even the beings closest to the throne stand in fear of the one who sits on it.

“Strong LORD” renders the short form of the divine name, Yah, beside a word for mighty. Faithfulness is placed “round about thee” like a retinue or a garment, as if it were the company God keeps.

“Raging” is literally the swelling or pride of the sea. In the Canaanite texts from Ugarit, Baal must fight Yam, the sea god, to win his throne. In this verse no fight is described at all: the waves rise and God stills them.

This Rahab is not the woman of Jericho; the Hebrew spellings differ. Rahab here is a sea monster of arrogance, a name Isaiah 30:7 and Psalm 87:4 also use for Egypt. “As one that is slain” uses chalal, the word for a corpse lying on a battlefield.

“The world and the fulness thereof” is the phrase of Psalm 24:1, where it also answers who owns everything. “Founded” is yasad, the verb for laying a foundation stone, so the cosmos is imagined as a building with God as its builder.

The south is yamin, the right hand, because the Hebrew orientation faces east. Tabor is the lone dome rising out of the Jezreel valley and Hermon the snowbound peak on the northern border. Mountains that the nations treated as holy places are pictured here cheering for the LORD.

Arm, hand and right hand stack three words for the same power. A hand held “high” is the gesture of victory, as in Exodus 14:8, where Israel went out of Egypt “with an high hand”. Verse 42 will say this raised right hand has changed sides.

The line recurs almost word for word in Psalm 97:2. Egyptian royal thrones were carved to stand on a plinth shaped like the sign for maat, justice, so the image of justice as the base of the throne would have been familiar. Mercy and truth walk ahead like heralds before a king.

“Joyful sound” is teruah, the trumpet blast and shout of acclamation raised at festivals and at a king’s enthronement; Numbers 23:21 calls it “the shout of a king”. “The light of thy countenance” echoes the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:25, the LORD making his face shine.

Rejoicing “all the day” is continuous, not a festival moment. “Exalted” is rum, to be raised, the verb that will run through the psalm: the people’s horn in verse 17, the chosen king in verse 19, and, bitterly, the enemies’ right hand in verse 42.

A horn is the wild ox’s weapon, a picture of strength held high. Hannah’s song closes with God exalting “the horn of his anointed” (1 Samuel 2:10), the first time the Bible calls the king the anointed, and this psalm moves in the same direction toward its king.

“Defence” is magen, shield, a word often used of the king himself, as in Psalm 84:9: “O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed.” Many modern versions read the Hebrew as “our shield belongs to the LORD, our king to the Holy One of Israel”, which makes the human king God’s possession.

Many Hebrew manuscripts have the plural, “thy holy ones”. The vision is Nathan’s, since 2 Samuel 7:17 calls the promise “all this vision”. “Chosen out of the people” means David came up from the ranks, a shepherd rather than a prince born to a throne.

“Found” suggests a search completed, the sense of 1 Samuel 13:14, where the LORD “hath sought him a man after his own heart”. Paul’s sermon in Acts 13:22 quotes this line. The “holy oil” is the sacred compound of Exodus 30:25, which Samuel poured from a horn over David in 1 Samuel 16:13.

“Established” is from the same root as the throne that will be established in verse 4. God’s hand and arm, praised in verse 13, are now promised to the king: the power that stills the sea is the power that holds him up.

“Exact upon him” is a creditor’s verb, nasha, to press a debtor for payment, the sense of “exact” in Deuteronomy 15:2. The second half repeats 2 Samuel 7:10 almost exactly, where the children of wickedness shall not “afflict them any more”.

“Beat down” is katat, to crush fine, as pottery is broken to pieces; “plague” is nagaph, to strike, the verb of the blows on Egypt. God does the fighting and the king merely watches his enemies fall “before his face”.

The pair that went before God’s face in verse 14, mercy and faithfulness, are now assigned to accompany the king. The horn exalted “in my name” repeats the people’s hope of verse 17, making the king the place where their strength is lifted.

Sea and rivers are the limits of the promised land in Exodus 23:31, from the sea of the Philistines to “the river”, the Euphrates. The king’s hand is placed over the very waters God was praised for ruling in verse 9, a delegated share in that rule.

2 Samuel 7:14 had God say “I will be his father”; here the king answers the other way round. No king in Samuel or Kings is recorded addressing God as “my father”, which makes the words given to him here unusually intimate. “Rock of my salvation” is David’s phrase in 2 Samuel 22:47.

“Higher” is elyon, the word used as God’s own title, the Most High. The king is made elyon over earthly kings, a remarkable borrowing. Israel as a nation was called God’s firstborn in Exodus 4:22; the title is now concentrated in one man.

“Stand fast” is ne’emenet, from the same root as emunah, faithfulness: the covenant will prove reliable, the way a faithful person does. The verbs are keep and stand, both promises of something that will not be taken back.

“The days of heaven” means as long as the sky lasts, the phrase Deuteronomy 11:21 uses for Israel’s tenure in the land. The singer measures the dynasty against the sky he could see above him every day.

The conditional clauses stretch Nathan’s promise to a whole line of heirs; 2 Samuel 7:14 spoke only of the son who would build the temple. Law and judgments are the first two of four terms for God’s instruction gathered across these two verses.

Statutes and commandments complete the list of four. “Break” is chalal, to profane, to treat a holy thing as common. The verb will return in verse 34, when God swears not to profane his covenant, and in verse 39, when the crown is profaned.

“Visit” is paqad, to attend to, here in the sense of calling a debt to account. The rod and stripes are corporal punishment, the discipline of a father or a court (Deuteronomy 25:2–3). 2 Samuel 7:14 said the rod would be “the rod of men”, punishment through human hands.

2 Samuel 7:15 adds a name this psalm leaves out: God’s mercy shall not depart from David’s son “as I took it from Saul”. Saul is the case of a king from whom favour was withdrawn entirely, and that is exactly what is ruled out here.

Verse 31 said “if they break my statutes”; here, with the same verb chalal, “my covenant will I not break”. They may profane what God gave; God will not profane what he promised. “The thing that is gone out of my lips” is the language of Numbers 30:2 for a binding vow.

“Once” means once for all, an oath that needs no renewal. God swears “by my holiness”, as in Amos 4:2, since there is nothing greater to swear by. The Hebrew uses the oath formula “if I lie unto David”, with the curse left unspoken.

Sun and moon were set in the sky in Genesis 1:16 to rule day and night and to mark seasons. Psalm 72:5 and 72:17 use the sun in the same way for the king’s endurance. The throne is said to stand “before me”, in God’s own sight.

Ancient treaties invoked heaven and earth as witnesses, as Moses does in Deuteronomy 30:19. Whether the “faithful witness” is the moon or God himself is disputed. “Faithful” is ne’eman again, the root of this psalm’s repeated faithfulness.

“Abhorred” is ma’as, reject, the verb Samuel used of Saul: “he hath also rejected thee from being king” (1 Samuel 15:23). The fear is exactly the one verse 33 ruled out, that David’s line should go the way of Saul’s. “Anointed” is mashiach, the king.

“Made void” is a rare verb, found elsewhere only in Lamentations 2:7, where the Lord has “abhorred his sanctuary”. “Profaned” is chalal once more, the verb God swore in verse 34 not to use of his covenant. The crown is the nezer, a consecrated diadem, now lying in the dirt.

Hedges are the stone walls that kept animals out of a vineyard, and Psalm 80:12 uses the same image of Israel: “Why hast thou then broken down her hedges?” The king, like the vine, has been left without a fence.

Psalm 80:12 continues, “all they which pass by the way do pluck her”, and this line takes up those passers-by. The second half is almost the wording of Psalm 79:4. Psalms 79, 80 and 89 share a single vocabulary of loss.

“Set up” is rum, to raise, the verb that exalted the people in verse 16, their horn in 17 and 24, and the chosen king in 19. Now it is the adversaries’ right hand that God has lifted, the right hand that verse 13 called high.

“Edge” is tsur, literally rock or flint, the same word as “the rock of my salvation” in verse 26. The king who called God his rock now finds the rock of his own sword blunted. The complaint is not that he fought badly but that he was “not made to stand”.

The first half is obscure in Hebrew, probably “thou hast ended his brightness” or splendour. The throne that verse 29 compared to the days of heaven and verse 36 to the sun is thrown to the ground, as far down as it had been placed high.

The line could describe a king cut off young, and some have thought of Jehoiachin, taken to Babylon at eighteen (2 Kings 24:8); others read it of a dynasty aged before its time. Either way it is an inference. Shame is pictured as a garment wrapped round him in place of a royal robe.

The line is close to Psalm 79:5, “How long, LORD? wilt thou be angry for ever? shall thy jealousy burn like fire?” The phrase “hide thyself” names the worst of it: not an enemy’s strength, but God apparently absent.

“Time” is cheled, a lifespan, the word of Psalm 39:5, “mine age is as nothing before thee”. “All men” is literally “all the sons of Adam”. “In vain” is shav, emptiness: if the promise waits beyond a lifetime, what was a human life made for?

“Man” is gever, the strong man, the warrior, so even the mightiest cannot bargain with death. “The hand of the grave” gives Sheol a grip. The fourth and last Selah falls on this unanswered question.

“Lovingkindnesses” is the same plural chesed as “mercies” in verse 1, now asked for rather than sung about. “Truth” is emunah, the psalm’s seventh use of the word the King James elsewhere in the psalm renders faithfulness.

The Hebrew is difficult; it reads roughly “I bear in my bosom all the many peoples”. The bosom is where a shepherd carries lambs in Isaiah 40:11; the speaker carries insults there instead. Manuscripts differ between “thy servant” and “thy servants”.

The “footsteps” are the heels or tracks of the anointed: the enemies mock him wherever he goes. The Aramaic Targum took the phrase as scorn at the slowness of the Messiah’s coming, reading the lament as a question about delay.

This blessing probably belongs to the arrangement of the Psalter rather than to Ethan’s psalm, closing the third book as 41:13 closes the first and 72:19 the second, each with “Amen, and Amen”. The last word of Book III is praise, set directly after the mocked footsteps of the king.