Psalms 45:1-17

Psalms 45

DESCRIPTIVE TITLE

A Royal Marriage.

ANALYSIS

Stanza I., vet. 1, The Psalmist bespeaks Attention to his Poem. Stanza II., Psalms 45:2, The King's Surpassing. Beauty and Gracious Discourse bring down upon him an Abiding Divine Blessing. Stanza III., Psalms 45:3-7, The King is Suddenly Summoned to War; his Throne, Sceptre, Character and Anointing. Stanza IV., Psalms 45:8-9, Ready for the Marriage Ceremony. Stanza V., Psalms 45:10-12, Address to the Bride, Stanza VI., Psalms 45:13-15, The Queen and her Attendants brought into the King's Palace. Stanza VII., Psalms 45:16-17, Final Words to the Queen and to the King.

(Lm.) An Instructive Psalma Song of Love.

1

Astir is my heart with a theme that is good,

Recite I my poem concerning a king:
My tongue be the pen of a scribe that is skilled!

2

Beautiful beautiful![479] thou art, beyond the sons of men!

[479] The same word as that used of the Queen in Psalms 45:11, but here reduplicated.

a gracious charm hath been set on thy lips;[480]

[480] Graciousness is shed over thy lipsDr, Over his lips there is poured, viz., from above, hen, charm or graciousness, inasmuch, as even without his having to speak, the very form of his lips and every one of their motions awaken love and trust; but it is self-evident that from such lips, full of charis (-grace-'), there must also proceed logoi tees charitos (-words of grace-'), Luke 4:22, Ecclesiastes 10:12Del.

Therefore hath God blessed thee to the ages,

3

Gird thy sword upon thy thigh O hero!

in thy majesty and thy state:

4

Tread the bow[481] succeed ride on!

[481] So, following the Sep.

for the sake of truth and the humiliation of righteousness,[482]

[482] Or: righteousness with humilitynearly with Del. Or: the afflicting of righteousnessBr.

And thy right hand will teach thee fearful things.

5

Thine arrows are sharppeoples under thee fall:[483]

[483] The poet has the field of battle present to him as if he were an eye-witnessDel.

in the heart of the foes of the king.

6

Thy throne O God is to the ages and beyond,

A sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom;

7

Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness:

Therefore hath God thy God[484] anointed thee

[484] Doubtless for an original Jehovah thy GodSo Del.

with the oil of gladness above thy partners.

8

Myrrh and aloescassiasare all thy garments,

out of the palaces of ivory tones of strings have delighted thee.

9

Kings-' daughters are among thy female servants,[485]

[485] So the majority of MSS. which Ginsburg had consultedG. Intro. 268.

stationed[486] is the queen at thy right hand in gold of Ophir.

[486] In Sep. parastao, as in Ephesians 5:27. See Exposition.

10

Hearken O daughter and see, and bow down thine ear,

and forget thine own people and the house of thy father;

11

And the king will long for thy beauty,

for he is thy lord![487]

[487] Thus the Sep. See Exposition.

12

Homage to him will the daughters of Tyre with gifts render,

thine own face will the rich men of the people appease.

13

All glorious! daughter of a king![488]

[488] In this exclamatory form, this clause may be a father's fond note of comparison; as if=any king's daughter.

pearls[489] in chequer work of gold her clothing!

[489] Peninim, pearls, by some critics preferred to penimah within, which just here seems premature and disturbing.

14

On tapestry of divers colours is she conducted to the king:[490]

[490] Perowne has offered strong reasons for this rendering.

virgins in her train her companions are brought to her,

15

with gladness and exulting are they conducted to her,

brought into the king's palace to her.[491]

[491] The foregoing three lines have been conformed to Dr. Briggs restored Heb. text. The assonance of their endings has a pleasing effect.

(To the Bride.)

16

Instead of thy1 fathers be thy[492] sons!

[492] These pronouns (which are pointed as masculine in M.T.) shd. be feminine (w. Syr.)Gn.

thou wilt make them rulers in all the earth,

(To the Bridegroom,)

17

I will memorialise thy name through all succeeding generations,

Therefore peoples will thank thee to the ages and beyond.

(Lm.) To the Chief Musician.

(CMm.) For the sons of korah along with maidens.[493]

[493] Cp. Intro., Chap. II., 3.

PARAPHRASE

Psalms 45

My heart is overflowing with a beautiful thought! I will write a lovely poem to the King for I am as full of words as the speediest writer pouring out his story.

2

You are the fairest of all;

Your words are filled with grace;
God Himself is blessing You forever!

3

Arm Yourself, O Mighty One,

So glorious, so majestic!

4

And in Your majesty

Go on to Victory,

Defending truth, humility, and justice.
Go forth to awe-inspiring deeds!

5

Your arrows are sharp

In Your enemies-' hearts;
They fall before You.

6

Your throne, O God, endures forever.

Justice is Your royal scepter.

7

You love what is good

And hate what is wrong.
Therefore God, Your God,
Has given You more gladness
Than anyone else.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

8

Your robes are perfumed with myrrh, aloes and cassia. In your inlaid palaces of ivory, lovely music is being played for your enjoyment.

9

Kings-' daughters are among your concubines.[494] Standing beside you is the queen, wearing jewelry of finest gold from Ophir.

[494] Literally, honorable women.

10, 11

I advise you, O daughter, not to fret about your parents in your homeland far away. Your royal husband delights in your beauty. Reverence him, for he is your lord.

12

The people of Tyre, the richest people of our day, will shower you with gifts and entreat your favors.

13

The bride,[495] a princess, waits within her chamber, robed in beautiful clothing woven with gold.

[495] Literally, The king's daughter.

14

Lovely[496] she is, led beside her maids of honor to the king!

[496] Literally, embroidered work.

15

What a joyful, glad procession as they enter in the palace gates!

16

Your sons will some day be kings like their father. They shall sit on thrones around the world!

17

I will cause your name to be honored in all generations; the nations of the earth will praise you forever.

EXPOSITION

Two things at the outset may be taken for granted: first, that the ultimate Hero of this psalm is the Messiah; and, second, that if we can find a Type of the Messiah in fair measure answering to the terms of the psalm, it will be a gain to allow that type to speak to us of the Antitypeas far as it may: this limitation being intended to remind us of the caution thrown out in dealing with Psalms 2, to the effect that we must not assume that the Spirit of Prophecy may not leave the type behind, and reach forth to greater things than any shadow can express. Adequately to fill up the terms of the psalm must be our governing aim: using the type as a help, and not becoming enslaved to it.

In the present instance the type and the writer are associated in a remarkable way. Dr. Thirtle has suggested (O.T.P., 49f, 318) that Hezekiah is the type; and instantly our deepest interest is excited. By all means Hezekiah, provided that the requirements of the psalm are thereby fairly met: much rather Hezekiah than Solomon, Joram, Jehu, or any of the rest whose names have been mentioned as probable; for, of these, we either know too little to feel drawn to them, or else what we do know renders them decidedly unacceptable for the honour of adumbrating the Messiah in a psalm of such pure and lofty idealism as this. Hezekiah, by all means: subject to necessary conditions. The one objection to his name, probably will turn out to be a commendation. We know that Hezekiah married a wife named Hephzibah, and Jewish tradition has it, that she was daughter to Isaiah the prophet. Hezekiah's trusty friend. Delightful, indeed, to think of the good King Hejekiah as marrying Isaiah's daughter. But then the psalm, it is thought, indicates that the Bride, in this marriage, is of Gentile descent. Nor can it be denied that to such a bride the advice would be peculiarly appropriate. Forget thine own people, and the house of thy father. Still, this indication alone can scarcely be said to be decisive; since people may mean, less widely, tribe, clan, or general circle of relatives; as to which it may be said that, not being of the royal family, the spirit of the advice would still be appropriate. Moreover, this measure of inferiority in the type may be regarded as sufficient to hint at a larger measure of inferiority in the Antitype: the non-royal element in the ancestry of Hezekiah's bride being regarded as enough to suggest the non-Israelitish strain in the Bride of the Messiah. Leaving these suggestions for the consideration of the thoughtful, it may be frankly admitted that the name of Hezekiah has an undeniable fascinationif for this reason only: The Jewish tradition that the Hephzibah who became Hezekiah's wife was Isaiah's daughter, naturally raises the question whether Isaiah himself was not the author of this psalm. Who so likely as he, to have been delighted with the restored monarch's beauty? Who so likely, to have admitted by implication, that the Queen's beauty was less striking than the King'S? Who so likely and so fitting to have addressed the Bride in the fatherly terms with which the writer of the psalm is credited: Hearken, O daughter? And, finally, if some commentators have concluded that Isaiah wrote the psalms immediately succeeding this, why may he not have written this also, when for this task he presumably had such a mighty impulse and such supreme qualifications? Isaiah's genius as a poet was transcendent; but is not this magnificent epithalamium worthy of it? And, to go for a moment deeper than to poetic genius, from whose pen could so appropriately have come the surprising words of the psalm, Thy throne, O God, as from his who declared that the Messiah's name should be called El gibborGod hero? (Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 10:21).

It is easy to admit that Hezekiah does not completely fill up the terms of the psalm: who, as type does? But this at least may be maintained: That, on the whole, Hezekiah goes further than Solomon, and much further than Jehoram, Jehu, or any of the rest, to fill the outline required. Suffice it, that there is nothing incongruous in the type, as such, so long as we think of the good king, Hezekiah.

That every possible type comes short of fully answering to the large terms of the psalms,that, no matter who may be fixed on as probable, it must finally be allowed that he falls behind the description in almost every particular,THIS is the contention herewith most earnestly made, and for the consistent maintenance of which the preliminary caution was submitted, against being bound down by types When interpreting the prophetic word. Allowance must ever be made for the possible bearing away of the prophet under the mighty afflatus of the Divine Spirit of wisdom and knowledge. In interpreting the Holy Scriptures, we have to reckon, not only upon their sight of things present, but also upon their foresight (Galatians 3:8) of things to come; and, therefore, if we are to expound them congenially, we must be prepared to see with their eyes. If it be said, that if God is at all to speak to man, then we must presuppose his condescension to the employment of human speech, with its limitations,it may be said in reply: Granted; and yet the impress of a new genius and a new spirit on the old forms may at any time appear; and though types may be accepted as a species of Divine-human alphabet, to which we must needs submit our minds, and which we have no right to suppose that the Spirit of Prophecy will discard or wholly transcend, yet may we venture to challenge any man's claim to confine to a single type the reachings forth of that Spirit towards the Antitype. For anything we know to the contrary, there may yet lie in the future an August Union in consummation of the tenderness and purity of Divine Love, which it may tax all the purest Royal Marriages in Israel only faintly to foreshadow. Still, we are glad of the types: without them we could not hope to spell out the revealed mind of God. In the present instance, for the forth-shadowing of royal magnificence, we might prefer Solomon; for proved skill as an archer, we might prefer Jehu; for the yet higher qualities of faith and suffering noblenessyea and possibly of deferred marital blessednesswe might greatly prefer Hezekiah: all we protest against is a crude and over-stringent typology. Let our Divine Father speak to us as he pleases.

But what, precisely, have we here, in the psalm now before us? Let us make sure of our facts, as far as we can.
First and foremost (Stanza I.) we have a poet deeply moved by his theme; and if he knows that his mind has ever travailed in birth with grand and godly conceptions almost too big for utterance, he is conscious that it is so now.
Next (Stanza II.) we have an observable inversion of the usual delicacy of male preference for female beauty: here it is the King's surpassing beauty which throws its radiance over all the canvas; the queen's beauty being only incidentally alluded to later on. Either the poet is a sycophant; or he has before him a King most wonderful. Nor is it beauty of form and feature alone which attracts his admiration. To beauty of appearance is added the worthy concomitant consisting in graciousness of discourse: charming the ear and delighting the mind at the same time that the eye rests upon the pleasing vision of his person. That is all: no more is said for the present. These two things, the poet feels, must please God as well as man. Therefore hath God blessed thee to the ages. The first and most natural sense of the word therefore is, that these qualities satisfy God and evoke his abiding benediction. Such a king he will delight to bless for so long a time that the poet cannot see beyond it. Short is this stanza, but it is complete; and the refrain marks that it is so.

A surprise now awaits us (Stanza III.) in the sudden summons of the beautiful and eloquent king to make ready for war. Had the poet merely clad his hero with armour, and bade him ride in his chariot for display and for impressive suggestion of what on occasion he might be trusted to achieve,we could have admired the poet's art, and been ready to pass on to the next scene. But it is far otherwise. An occasion for war has arisen. The king has to vindicate his faithfulness to the implied obligations of his kingship. Righteousness has been humiliated within his domain, and for this cause he is summoned to interpose. An enemy has arisen on whom avengement must be inflicted, involving fearful punishment. No plan of campaign can be assigned the avenging monarch: his own skilled right hand will teach him what to do, first and last. No companion warriors are named, yet the king's arrows are sharp and their execution is so widespread that peoples fall under them; and the overthrow of the king's foes is so sudden that the description is broken, that the reader may behold it. As intimated, not only is the issue of the battle seemingly immediate; but the summons to wage this war is inferentially unexpected. So, at least, the poet's art suggests; since, to permit of this royal campaign, the royal marriage is postponed. This may, in exegesis, mean little; but it may mean much, and the poet's skill will be best vindicated should it appear to have been carefully designed. The foreseen issue of this war furnishes the poet with an occasion to speak the praises of the Warrior's throne, sceptre, and character; and then to crown this view of the King with another logical refrain, longer and larger than the first. His throne is an abiding throne, says the poet; and he takes pains to negative the thought of its overthrow or removal or disuse, by adding a word to his time reference: to the ages and beyond shall that throne stand! It may be naturally inferred, that it is the King's promptitude and prowess in making the war for the vindication of downtrodden righteousness, already noticed, which occasion the poet's reflection on the stability of his throne. And the same may be said of the notice of his scepture. But this is now distinctly traced to the King's character: He loveth righteousness and hateth lawlessnessthe which, indeed, is thrown into the form of direct address, and stated in the complete tense which is fitted to comprehend an abiding quality with its recent manifestation. Thereforebecause of this, the triumphant hero is anointed with the oil of gladness above his partners. It is a Divine anointing: Jehovah his God has bestowed it. It is a festive gift: causing joy to its recipient. This joy is superlative in degree: above thy partnerswhoever these may be, which is not yet declared. Placed where this anointing is: after the warbefore the marriage: it looks in both directions. The Hero is made supremely glad, inasmuch as he has been able to deal so decisive a blow to lawlessness: being so made glad, he is ready for his Bride.

The marriage approaches (Stanza IV.). Again the King most wonderful comes into view, not now clad in armour, but with flowing robes redolent of sweetest spices, as though woven of nothing else. In the near distance music is heard: reminding him of the happy occasion, in response to which his heart leaps for joy, King's daughters are proud to serve as menials in his household. And now the Queen, his Bride, is stationed at his right hand, place of highest honour; clad in gold-decked raiment. The poet recites these facts in language addressed to the King: thy garmentsdelighted theethy servantsthy right hand. This prepares us for a marked change of address, which is thereby rendered impressive.

For hearken! the venerable poet (Stanza V.), who may be regarded as at once giving away the Bride and solemnising the nuptials, presumes to address the Queen. His address is familiar, for he calls the Bride daughter; but his words are few, and much to the pointif the Lady whom he accosts has either been brought from a foreign land or promoted from a lowly station: one caution, one inference, one sanction. One caution: let the Bride be supremely devoted to her husband, comparatively forgetting all else. One inference: thus will the king long, for thy beauty. One sanction: he is thy lordhe owns thee, thou art his, he will be within his rights. No more. That short line from the Septuagint is splendidly eloquent in its stern reticence. Nothing can be added without spoiling it. How the harpist would deal with so short a line, is a minor question: we recall several such short lines, left short for emphasis (Psalms 1:1; Psalms 1:4, Psalms 8:1; Psalms 8:9, Psalms 150:6); or the musician by a simple repeat could expand this line into a tetrameter, a measure which is characteristic of this psalm. Let the bowing down in homage be reverently (with the Septuagint) handed on for the daughters of Tyre, and so help to form a well-balanced line to match the respectful suit for the Queen's favour pressed by the rich men of the honoured nation to whom the King is related.

After this address to the Queen, it is at least poetically correct to conceive of all eyes as now (Stanza VI.) directed to her, and to have her resplendent appearance made the subject of admiring exclamations. Ere the King finally disappears in his palace, and the Queen is conducted to him, and her companions follow in her train, appropriate good wishes are by the poet addressed to them both (Stanza VII.): first, as Dr. Ginsburg has pointed out, to the Queen; to whom is assigned the privilege, in the event of the fulfillment of the good wishes, of furnishing rulers for all the land, or as better suiting the wide outlook of the psalm, all the earth, a wish not more notable for its delicacy than for its boldness; and then, finally, the address passes over to the Kinggood wishes for whom take the form of a positive intention, as the avowed motive on the poet's part. It might have passed as an obvious and natural compliment, to have merely said, that he, the poet, hoped to memorialise his hero's name to all succeeding generations: but, when he gees on to foretell that the thanks of all coming time will, by virtue of this marriage-song, be tendered to his hero by peoples or nations, then we feel that the poet is either guilty of extravagance or is assuming the role of a prophet. Only by assuming that he is a prophet, and that the Messiah is his ultimate theme, can be acquit him of such suspicion. Shall we lower our estimate of holy men of God, or shall we elevate our conceptions of their message? This question brings us to the crux of the interpretation of this psalm.

The foregoing survey of the actual contents of the psalm will have served its purpose, if it should now be deemed needless to urge with any prolonged tenacity any question concerning the Types: it is time that all our interest should converge on the Antitype. No mere type can stay the psalm from collapsing on our hands. It is a good start, in quest of the Antitype, to find Jewish expositors frankly admitting that Messiah himself is THE hero of the psalm (The Targum paraphrasing Psalms 45:2 thus: Thy beauty, O King Messiah, exceeds that of the children of men; a spirit of prophecy is bestowed on thy lips)Kp.; but it is a sorry finish, to find any of them protesting, that no other Messiah than Hezekiah need be looked for by their nation (Rabbi Hillel saying, Israel shall have no more Messiah: for they have had him in the days of HezekiahTalmud, quoted by Thirtle, O.T.P., 277). In truth, the key to the psalm is in the Christian Expositor's hands; and it is merely a question of degree, how far his use of the key can be pronounced satisfactory. All Christians are agreed in finding in Jesus of Nazareth the King most beautiful, most wonderful, of whom this psalm speaks. He is, indeed, most beautiful in their eyes: they admire and love him with a passionate devotion which has led myriads of them to die for his sake. So far the solution is perfect. But Christian Expositors have been driven against two rocks which have well-nigh shattered their exegesis. In the first place, they have wrongfully applied the war-picture, which delays the marriage, to the gracious deliveryby their King's heralds to the nations of the wooing message of his love, which they rightly call their gospel. Had they restricted this feature of their exegesis to the apostolic prediction of their Messiah's personal onslaught on The Lawless One by direct interposition from heaven (2 Thessalonians 2), and resolutely thrown forward the alleged fulfillment of that prediction into the future when that Wicked One shall incontestably have appeared, this rock would have been avoided, and we should have been spared the humiliation of being chargeable with such a gross misapplication of terms as that which confounds the Messiah's sudden overthrow of his enemies on a fearfully vast scale, with the gently elective process by which he wins individual friends and disciples from among the nations. The second rock on which Christian exegesis has been well-nigh wrecked, is the double error of failing to regard the Church, considered as Messiah's Bride, in the light of an absolutely spiritual incorporation, to be rendered spotless before being presented beside her Lord; and concomitantly with that, failing to regard the Marriage of the Lamb as a future consummation, consisting of the blessed union with its Head, in immortal glory, of the Corporate Body, the completed Ecclesia. This rock also escaped, there is nothing to hinder the triumphant sailing of Christian Interpretation into the harbour of an invincible application of this psalm to its true prospective realisation. Kirkpatrick well says that Such poems as this. are ennobled and consecrated by being thus made the vehicle for lofty thoughts and the type of spiritual mysteries (Ephesians 5:23 ff); but the way in which some expositors excuse themselves just where, as it might be supposed, the type ought to be regarded as profoundly significant, probably proves neither more nor less than the loss of the correct prophetic point of view from which to interpret a psalm like the present. Let all thoughts of the Messiah's Bride, as realisable in the Church, be resolutely held fast to the following most obvious and most necessary restrictionsthat by the Church, in such a connection, we mean the Church collective, and therefore no mere individual soul, the Church final, and therefore no temporary organization, and consequently the Church immortal, freed from all the desires of earth, from whose communion with her Lord is banished every thought of fellowship other than the heavenly and spiritual communion in the high interests of the kingdom of God, only let these restrictions be observed, and there need be no shrinking from the broad and bold expectation, that the consummating crisis which lies between this Dispensation and the next will be fruitful in blessedness to the nations of the earth, in providing them with rulers worthy and capable of sharing with the Messiah the honour and responsibility of reigning over all the earth in righteousness, and ruling it in justice (Isaiah 32:1). Patience, dear suffering souls. Keep the word intactand wait!

Nothing now remains but to add: That the provision of an Elect Assemblyconsisting chiefly of Gentilesas the Bride of the Messiah, is indeed a Sacred Secret, unrevealed in the olden prophetic days (Ephesians 3:3-7; Ephesians 5:32; Colossians 1:26-27); and, therefore; that had it been plainly disclosed in this psalmthe sagacity at least of the Apostle Paul, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of it, would have been shown to be at fault. But such a thought cannot be entertained, inasmuch as a fair treatment of the psalm leaves it absolutely true that it contains nothing beyond a veiled allusion of the Queen's gentilic descent, with no reference at all to her corporate character. We thank the authors of the Targum for suggesting, on Psalms 45:10, that Messiah's Bride was to be a congregation, and not an individual. But, as Christians, we cannot but be content to follow the guidance of our beloved Apostle Paul in his identification of the one pure Bride designed for the Messiah (Ephesians 5:25 ff)for whom in an especial sense he gave up his life. And again we have to thank the ancient Greek Translators for providing our Apostle with a word (pareste), of which he has not failed to make good use in his triumphant note to the Ephesians (para-stese) which we have been very dull in not sooner discerning to mean this: that HE might presentwith himselfall gloriousthe ecclesia. With himself (heauto); for so, assuredly, should it be rendered, seeing that there it is, in the psalm, before our eyes: the King, with the Queen placed at his right hand. Dull, indeed, must we have been, if we have not before seen this, and have not found our exact Pauline parallel in Colossians 3:4 :

As soon as the Christ shall be made manifestour Life!

Then ye also, together with him, shall be made manifest in glory. In view of these fruitful suggestions, we can afford to wait and see how near to mortal view the Queen will be brought, before we permit ourselves to be entangled in any small questions as to how far literal and how far figurative the language may be which describes the daughters of Tyre as bowing down in homage to our King, and the rich men of the people (of Israel) as seeking a smile on the fair face of his Queen. Enough has already been fulfilled in the King, in pursuance of this magnificent psalm, and enough has been suggested as already in preparation with regard to the Queen, to make us patiently expectant of the solving and harmonising effects of complete accomplishment. To be of any use beforehand, the general drift of prophecy should be plain; but it must be left to fulfillment to solve questions of detail. In deference to the severe beauty of holiness demanded in the Messiah's Ecclesia, we may well expect that the first exclamation, on occasion of her unveiling will beAll glorious! and that the discovery of the Divine Fatherhood of the Ecclesia will occasion a second acclaimDaughter of a King! After which it will be fitting that the Hallelujahs of heaven should burst upon the World's astonished ear, and that Earth should respond with a loud AMEN!

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1.

Please notice carefully the outline of this psalmwhatever understanding of this psalm we obtain, it will be based on the outlineit is progressive as well as cumulative: (1) The bridegroom. Psalms 45:1-2; (2) The battle. Psalms 45:3-5; (3) The throne. Psalms 45:6-9; (4) The bride. Psalms 45:10-14; (5) The beautiful home and rule. Psalms 45:15-17. Who is the bride and groom? Discuss.

2.

Our hearts should overflow with the beautiful thought here described. Apply this psalm to Christ, and His bride the Church. Since we are that bride, there is much to learn. Discuss.

3.

The king or groom is presented in verses one and twoHis battle and His throne are described in verses three through nine. Please apply these qualities to our Lord and make present day application.

4.

The bride of Christ or the Church could be described in verses ten through fourteen. Please make two or three comparisons for our learning and application.

5.

There are several hymns that discuss the beauty of this psalm. Name and discuss at least two of them.