Paravi lucernam Christo meo.
Jewish and Christian tradition alike connect the Psalter with the great name of David. Whether David himself wrote any of the Psalms or not is a question that may continue to agitate the minds of scholars. But there can be no question that the permanency of the throne of David and the Divine promises on which it rested are leading thoughts in the Psalter. The starting-point must be sought earlier in the Old Testament, in the great oracle communicated by Nathan to David (2 Sam. vii., referred to directly in Ps. lxxxix. 20, etc.), "Thy throne shall be established for ever." In this was recognised from the first something more than a mere promise of the long continuance of the crown in the family of the son of Jesse. It carried with it some special sanction and blessing over and above the ordinary Divine authority of heaven-anointed kings. The words "I will be his Father, and he shall be My son" seemed to imply a peculiar and unique relationship between God Himself, the true King of Israel, and His earthly representative. The comment ascribed to David himself is significant: "Is this the manner of man, O Lord God?" No mere human sovereignty, however glorious or firmly settled, would satisfy such a prophecy as this.
The thoughts of the pious in Israel must have dwelt often and deeply in after-time upon this promise and its connection with the Divine calling of the sacred nation and her mission in the world. It is remarkable how persistently this thought of the permanence and supernatural character of the Davidic sovereignty recurs in the prophetic writings—even when the crown had passed to an unworthy head, or seemed to have been plucked off for ever. Jeremiah, when the clouds are gathering thickly round the doomed city, foretells that the covenant of David will be as lasting as that of "the day and the night in their season," and that the seed of David will be unnumbered "as the host of heaven and the sand of the sea" (Jer. xxxiii.). Ezekiel from his far-off exile by the waters of Babylon, while he proclaims the Divine sentence against the degenerate son of David—"Remove the mitre, and take off the crown: this shall be no more: ... I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, ... until He come Whose right it is"—predicts the time when Judah and Ephraim shall be one, and "David My servant shall be their prince for ever" (Ezek. xxi. 26, 27, xxxvii. 15-28). Haggai, in the days of the Return, continues the promise to the uncrowned prince, Zerubbabel—"I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of hosts" (Hag. ii. 23).
It is not to be wondered at that in the Psalter, the inspired response of worshipping Israel to the revelation of God, we should find Psalms that rejoice in this indestructible and royal hope, Psalms that look beyond present failures and imminent perils to a perfect fulfilment of what God had spoken "sometime in visions to His saints." Thus the 2nd Psalm tells triumphantly of the Divine "law" or "decree" concerning David's son, and sees in it the assurance of a world-wide empire, the discomfiture of the raging of the nations and the gathering of the kings of the earth:
Thou art My son, this day have I begotten thee.
Desire of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance:
And the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.
The 18th describes the Almighty riding on His chariot of whirlwind and storm, coming down from heaven itself in His condescension, to pluck His anointed out of "many waters," "to deliver him from the strivings of the people, and to make him the head of the heathen." The 45th tells, with "the pen of a ready writer," of this everlasting sceptre and throne, founded on truth and righteousness, of a king to whom Divine titles are given, "anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows," and sees in the marriage of this king with a foreign princess the earnest of a kingdom over all the earth. The 72nd describes not only the prosperity, but the moral greatness of this empire stretching from sea to sea, "from the river to the ends of the earth." Not like the giant empires of the East, founded on aggression and cruelty, with no motive but the monstrous pride of their founders and rulers, the Davidic king is to be the champion of the poor, the needy, and the helpless:
He shall deliver their souls from falsehood and wrong:
And dear shall their blood be in his sight.
The 89th, while it tells how God has found David His servant and anointed him with holy oil, and made him "His first-born, higher than the kings of the earth," is bold to face in those later days the agonising problem of the apparent failure of all this lofty promise:
But Thou hast abhorred and forsaken Thine anointed:
And art displeased at him.
Thou hast broken the covenant of Thy servant,
And cast his crown to the ground.
"Lord, how long? ... Lord, where are Thy old loving-kindnesses? ... Remember, Lord!"