Psalms 72:5

They shall fear thee while the sun endureth,

And so long as the moon doth shine, throughout all generations.

Who is addressed? Not the king, who is spoken of throughout in the third person, but God. The just administration of the king will promote reverence for God, Whose representative he is (cp. 1 Kings 8:40; Matthew 5:16), so long as the established course of nature lasts. For the order of nature as an emblem of permanence cp. Jeremiah 31:35 ff; Jeremiah 33:20 ff.

The LXX however represents a different reading: He shall endure as long as the sun, &c.: a reference to the promise of eternal dominion to the house of David, as in Psalms 72:17: cp. Psalms 89:4; Psalms 89:29; Psalms 89:36-37; Psalms 21:4. The word presumed by the LXX (יאריך) closely resembles that in the Massoretic Text (ייראוך), so far as the consonants are concerned, and it may have been the original reading: still, the text gives a good sense.