Thoughts on Psalm 2

 The Moravian Brethren readings today take us to the Mount Sinai enshrouded by the glory of God, then to the Mount of Transfiguration, a NT parallel, and to Psalm 2. In Psalm 2 the Lord has "installed" his Anointed One in a position of authority over the earth. With such authority he can laugh at the petty kings and tyrants of this world who rage against his rule ""Why do the nations rage / and the people plot in vain?"). 

We can think about this Psalm as honoring the Davidic kings, who were for the most part a sorry lot. Indeed, so generally awful were they that, if this Psalm were to be taken solely as a reference to them, then it it is sheer absurdity. 

If we are to think of the Lord's anointed as a coming one, now yet upon the earth in that day, the Messiah, then perhaps it is beginning to make sense to us. "The nations" (all lesser earthly powers, non-anointed) will rage, but it will be helpless rage. The anointed one will defeat them.

In verse 7 the Psalm abruptly changes voice. It is the Anointed One himself speaking. God promises him "the ends of the earth," world-wide rule. He shall break those lesser powers, those raging nations, "with  rod of iron." He shall "dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel."

David did not achieve this position, nor did any Davidic king after him, so we can be sure this Anointed One has not yet come to enact this authority. The nations are still raging, are not shattered. Therefore we see this Psalm as a eschatological vision, one that has not yet come to pass. 

This is fine, and yet there are aspects of this vision in which the Anointed One seems more like a proud human ruler, one who must be appeased, whose anger we must fear. One whose "wrath is quickly kindled."

And then the Psalm ends with, "Blessed are all who take refuge in him."

I am not making an anti-wrath argument here (as if Jesus must never be portrayed as angry), but still this vision rankles a bit. Mostly we do not envision Jesus as wrathful. But then, we are not the kings plotting against him, we are those taking refuge in him (if we are Christians, that is).

In the end I don't think any one prophetic passage of the OT gives us a complete and rounded picture of that to which it prophetically refers. The Psalmist here is concerned with one thread in the tapestry, we might say, and so highlights that thread, so that to a NT believer in Jesus as the Christ it may seem a caricature. As if not nearly enough has been said, the portrait is woefully incomplete.

And yet we shouldn't expect complete portraits from such brief passages. It is from the whole word of God that we draw our complete portrait.

We are to think of this Anointed One as Jesus of course, but I want to take a moment to think about the ways that the description here does and does not resemble the Jesus of the four gospels. Here we have a confidant king in all his confidant authority laughing at the rebellious nations. He's going to terrify them into submission

This is an eschatological vision, one we are to accept as in some sense already accomplished, and yet in another sense not yet in effect.