The Divine Lamp

The Text: My translation unless otherwise noted

Vs 1 Why do the nations rage, and the gentiles mutter vainly?
Vs 2 The kings of the earth stand up, the rulers consult in counsel together, opposing the Lord, and opposing his Anointed one, saying,
Vs 3 “Let us burst their bonds completely, cast their chains off from us.
Vs 4 He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh: The Lord will have them in derision.
Vs 5 Then will he speak unto them in his wrath, And vex them in his sore displeasure:
Vs 6 Yet I have set my king Upon my holy hill of Zion. (ASV. Public domain)
Vs 7 I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son; this day have I begotten you.
Vs 8 Ask it of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and put the ends of the earth into your pessesion.
Vs 9 With an iron rod you shall break them; like a clay dish you shall smash them to pieces.
Vs 10 Be wise, O you kings; be instructed rulers of the earth.
Vs 11 Serve God with fear, tremble as you bow down to him.
Vs 12 Render him homage, lest he grow angry with you and you perish from the way, for his anger ignites suddenly. Happy are those who put their trust in him.
The heading for this Psalm used in the Divine Office speaks of the Messiah as a royal and victorious figure.  The heading for the Psalm in the Douay-Rheims Translation reads: The Vain Efforts of Persecutors Against Christ and His Church.

The Antiphon used in Ordinary Time with this Psalm emphasizes that the Messiah reigns by God’s choice, an idea which receives major emphasis in this Psalm.

Psalm 2 is a sublime vision of the nations in revolt against God and his anointed, with a declaration of the divine purpose to maintain his kings authority, and a warning to the world that it must bow down or perish. The structure of this psalm is extremely regular. It naturally falls into four stanzas of three verses each. In the first (1-3), the conduct of the rebellious nations is described. In the second(4-6) , God replies to them by word an deed. In the third (7-9), the Messiah or Anointed One declares the divine decree in relation to himself. In the fourth (10-12), the Psalmist exhorts the rulers of the nations to submission, with a threatening of the divine wrath to the disobedient, and a closing benediction on believers. The several sentences are also very regular in form, exhibiting parallelism of great uniformity. Little as this psalm might, at first sight, seem to resemble the one coming before it, there is really a very strong affinity between them. Even in form they are related to one another. The number of verses and of stanzas in this psalm is just double that of the first, and this Psalm moreover begins, as the first ends, with a threat, and ends, as the first begins, with a beatitude. There is also a resemblance in their subject and contents. The contrast indicated in the first is carried out and rendered more distinct in the second. The first is in fact an introduction to the second, and the second to what follows. And as the psalms which follow bear the name of David, there is the strongest reason to believe that these two psalms are his likewise, a conclusion confirmed by the authority of Acts 4:25, as well as by the internal character of the psalm itself. The imagery of the scene presented is evidently borrowed from the warlike and eventful times of David. He cannot, however, be himself the subject of the composition, the terms of which are wholly inappropriate to any king but the Messiah, to whom they are applied by the oldest Jewish writers, and again and again in the New Testament. This is the first of those prophetic psalms, in which the promise made to David, with respect to the Messiah (2 Sam 7:16; 1 Chron 17:11-14), is wrought into the lyrical devotions of the ancient church. The supposition of a double reference to David, or to some one of his successors, and to Christ, is not only needless and gratuitous, but hurtful to the sense by the confusion which it introduces, and forbidden by the utter inappropriateness of some of the expressions used to any lower subject. The style of this psalm, although not less pure and simple, is livelier than that of the first, a difference arising partly from the nature of the subject, but still more from the dramatic structure of the composition.

For Consideration and Further Study:

Vs 1 Why do the nations rage, and the gentiles mutter vainly?
Vs 2 The kings of the earth stand up, the rulers consult in counsel together, opposing the Lord, and opposing his Anointed one, saying,
Vs 3 “Let us burst their bonds completely, cast their chains off from us.

The word here translated as rage ( רגשׁ = ragash) is used only here in the OT, however, an identical Chaldean word (regash) is used several times in Daniel 6 where it refers to opposition against God and his followers:  Then the princes, and the governors, craftily suggested (regash) to the king, and spoke thus unto him: King Darius, live for ever: All the princes of the kingdom, the magistrates, and governors, the senators, and judges, have consulted together, that an imperial decree, and an edict be published: That whosoever shall ask any petition of any god, or man, for thirty days, but of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of the lions (Dan 6:6-7, see also vss 11 & 15).  Opposition to God, His will, His teaching, His Christ, His Church, renders one no better than a heathen (Matt 18:17), this is why the Apostles could direct this Psalm toward the Jewish leaders who persecuted them: The kings of the earth stood up: and the princes assembled together against the Lord and his Christ.  For of a truth there assembled together in this city against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, To do what thy hand and thy counsel decreed to be done.  And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants that with all confidence they may speak thy word…(see Acts 4:26-30).

Our Blessed Lord Himself, in His end-time discourse in Mark’s Gospel (13:24-25), applies certain images to the destruction of Jerusalem which in the OT were originally referred to the punishments of Pagan nations and cities.  Because the city had rejected Him it was no better off than ancient Babylon (compare the Marcan passage with Isa 13:9-10; 34:4; Ezek 32:7-8; Joel 2:10, 31; Amos 8:9).  This is not an excuse for triumphalism, still less for anti-semitism; recall what St Paul wrote: I want you to know, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ.  Nevertheless with most of them God was not pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now these things are warnings for us, not to desire evil as they did.  Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to dance.”  We must not indulge in immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.  We must not put the Lord to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents; nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.  Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.  Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall (RSV 1 Cor 10:1-12.  See also Rom 1:11-24).

Those who are within the Church and who continue to live as unbelievers are far worse than the unbelievers who are outside her boundries: Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump?  Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened. For Christ our pasch is sacrificed.  Therefore, let us feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.   wrote to you in an epistle not to keep company with fornicators.   I mean not with the fornicators of this world or with the covetous or the extortioners or the servers of idols: otherwise you must needs go out of this world.  But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator or covetous or a server of idols or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat.  For what have I to do to judge them that are without? Do not you judge them that are within?  For them that are without, God will judge. Put away the evil one from among yourselves…Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers: Nor the effeminate nor liers with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor railers nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God (see 1 Cor 5:5-13 & 6:9-10).

Vs 4 He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh: The Lord will have them in derision.
Vs 5 Then will he speak unto them in his wrath, And vex them in his sore displeasure:
Vs 6 Yet I have set my king Upon my holy hill of Zion. (ASV. Public domain)

The raging and vain muttering of the enemies of God and his Anointed remind me of the first psalm.  The happy man is one who “walks not according to the counsel of the wicked,” and who “sits not in the assmebly of scorners” (Ps 1:1); rather, upon God’s teaching (the manifestation of His will) “he ponders day and night.” As I pointed out in my notes on Psalm 1, the term “scorner” refers to someone who talks in a childish, mocking voice.  This stands in contrast to the “pondering” of the just man.  Again, as I pointed out in my notes on Psalm 1, the term “ponder” implies the soft repetition of God’s teaching.  Here, in Psalm 2, we are not dealing with just a few men acting childish, rather, we are looking at wide-scale rebellion; the petualnt mimicking has become great sound and fury.  All of this is about as troublesome as a cloudy day to God: while the nations  speak in rage (so the Hebrew word implies) and vainly mutter, and while the the kings of the earth stand up and rulers take counsel against the Lord and His anointed, God sits calmly on his throne, responding to their verbal violence and their plotting with mere laughter.   God knows that such as these will not withstand the judgment, and that sinners will not stand in the assembly of the righteous (Ps 1:5).

At this point in the Psalm the Anointed king (Messiah) speaks.  Like the just man who has pondered the teachings of the Lord he knows the decrees of God and trusts in Him, therefore he is confident and unafraid:

Vs 7 I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son; this day have I begotten you.
Vs 8 Ask it of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and put the ends of the earth into your pessesion.
Vs 9 With an iron rod you shall break them; like a clay dish you shall smash them to pieces.

At this point the Anointed One gives the rebels advice and warning:

Vs 10 Be wise, O you kings; be instructed rulers of the earth. The terms kings and rulers recalls verse 2.  The exhortaion to be wise and instructed recalls the purpose of Psalm 1, a Wisdom Psalm which extolled God’s instructions.

Vs 11 Serve God with fear, tremble as you bow down to him. Serving God is the exact opposite of rebelling against Him.  The call to bow down to Him is in contrast to their attempt to stand up against Him (vs 2).

Vs 12 Render him homage, lest he grow angry with you and you perish from the way, for his anger ignites suddenly. Happy are those who put their trust in him. As noted at the beginning, the phrase perish from the way recalls the end of Psalm 1, while the phrase happy are those recalls its beginning.

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