This again is prefatory like the first (to which its structure corresponds, only with double the length), and both not only to the first book (1-41) but to the entire collection. Here the Messiah is as evident and express, as His own are in the preceding psalm. The antagonistic nations and their kings are in full view, not the wicked as such, though wicked indeed those are.

Such is the first stanza of three verses in which the godless revolt against Jehovah and His Christ is set before us, with no less amazement than indignation. In Acts 4 it is applied to the rebellious union of Romans and Jews, of Pilate and Herod, against the Lord.

But Jehovah's counsel stands, and He answers the fool according to his folly, with a strikingly parallel reference to the rebellious agitation of the Gentiles and their rulers (vers. 4-6). Those doings and savings in each case are an exact counterpart.

The constituted earthly royalty of Messiah in Zion opens the way to the next strophe (vers. 7-10). It is the Son of God born in time, the Messiah; neither eternal Sonship as in John's Gospel and elsewhere, nor resurrection as in Paul's Epistles. Sonship on earth and in time suits the kingdom here announced. But that kingdom, though with Zion its centre, embraces the uttermost parts of the earth, and so the nations or Gentiles. It is the Messiah of Whom Solomon was but a type like David. But here the Christ only is described throughout. It is exclusively future. He has not yet asked the earth, but is now occupied with relations above it, of heaven and for eternity. Soon He will come in His Kingdom, and receive the world at His request, when He will rule with the rod of iron (how different from the gospel!) and shiver men as a potter's vessel. What can be more contrasted with beseeching men, and with building up His body, the church?

Here too kings and judges are before us, for it is strictly a Messianic psalm. But it is the Son about to execute vengeance on a haughty and hostile world. Yet is He a blessing beyond every other, the only blessed object of trust for any or all: the secret spring, at the end of Ps. 2, of the blessings for the righteous proclaimed at the beginning of Ps. 1. These are unquestionably a pair, and in the only place suitable, were we to search for a preface in all the hundred and fifty.

Having Christ clearly brought in as the hope of Israel, as well as distinct from the mass, the happy or blessed man, just and one of those justified by faith in Him, we have next a series (from Ps. 3) which concludes with the Lord Jesus, not merely Son of God born here below and King on Zion, but Son of Man, and so humbled but so too exalted on high over all things (Ps. 8).

Here the Spirit of Christ expresses the feelings He inspires in the righteous remnant as experiencing rejection like that which was His portion in an infinitely greater degree. Circumstances are sad in the extreme; for these bitter but blessed lessons are learnt among God's people when alas! alienated and hostile. Christ entered into it as none ever did; but His Spirit it is that works in the godly, directs their hearts, and expresses aright what ought to flow from them in the same path.