Office Hours
This psalm is a popular one! In the 4-week cycle it appears in the Office of Readings for Sunday of Week 1, but it is also used in the same Office for Christmas Day, the Presentation of the Lord, Christ the King, the Exaltation of the Cross, and for feasts celebrating martyrs. The antiphons used are:
Sunday, Week 1: It is I who have set up my king on Sion.
Sunday, Week 1 (Advent): Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king is coming to you. Sion, do not be afraid, your salvation is at hand.
Christmas Day: The Lord said to me, 'You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you this day.'
The Presentation of the Lord: This child is destined to bring ruin and also resurrection to many in Israel.
Christ the King: I have been set up as king on Sion, his holy mountain, to announce his decree.
The Exaltation of the Cross: Behold the cross of the Lord; let his enemies flee before him; the lion of Judah, of the stock of David, is victorious, alleluia.
Common of Several Martyrs: The blood of the holy martyrs was shed for Christ on this earth; therefore they have received their reward in heaven.
Common of One Martyr: You will be hated by all men for my name's sake; but he who endures to the end will be saved.
Opening thoughts
St Thomas notes first that this psalm is, mostly, not a prayer but a complaint directed against the king's enemies. Kingship plays an important role in the psalm, but as Christians (especially in light of the antiphons above) we might ask what kingdom we should have in mind when reading this. The Davidic kingdom of Israel, or the heavenly kingdom of Jesus? Aquinas answers with a firm "yes". The psalm "treats of [David's] kingdom as a figure of Christ’s. For Christ is fittingly signified through David..." (emphasis mine).
St Thomas' understanding of typology, expressed in the Summa Theologiae, is in the background here. His key insight was that it is not just the words of the Bible that have a deeper meaning relating to Christ. Rather, the realities themselves have a deeper meaning, as God is not only the author of Scripture, but the Creator of the world. The historical David's military strength and glory had a meaning greater than anything David brought about - they were given by God in part as a foreshadowing of Christ's saving strength and heavenly glory. The Davidic kingdom itself, not just the descriptions of it in Scripture, existed as a signpost to the kingdom of God. [1]
Psalm 2:1-3: Rebels with a cause
RSV: Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed, saying, "Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us."
St Thomas starts with a bit of Realpolitik on rebellion. He sees the psalm as reflecting the way things tend to go: first, "the people" are agitated, then more powerful forces - kings and rulers - provide support in the form of military force and advice, using popular protest as a pretext to attack their political enemies. Aquinas' translation (like the KJV and ESV) asks why the nations have raged, making for a neat contrast between those who are driven by simple anger and those who "plot" more cautiously - though "in vain", because their cleverness is nothing before God. "The nations" (lit. "Gentiles") and "the people" also represent opposition to God and His anointed from both Gentiles and Jews respectively.
These rebels are, directly, rebelling against the king of Israel, the Lord's "anointed" (lit. "Christ" in both Greek and Latin) and so by implication the Lord himself. The use of "his anointed/Christ" makes the application to Jesus obvious, and indeed the book of Acts (4:24-28) shows the Apostles making an explicit connection between this psalm and Jesus. Aquinas' summary here is essentially identical to theirs. Both Jews and Gentiles cooperated to kill Jesus, doing so "in vain" because He rose from the dead. "The kings" he interprets as the two Herods of the gospels, and "the princes" as either Pilate (following Acts) or the Jewish religious leaders, the Sanhedrin. The great powers of the world, religious and political, joined forces to kill the Lord's anointed.
But why do the people rebel? To "burst their bonds", to destroy the king's dominion over them. In the case of David, this means breaking his political power, enforced by military might. What about Jesus? St Thomas reflects on the gospel passages where Jesus speaks of his "yoke", to consider what the "cords" that bind us into Jesus' kingdom look like. He concludes that Jesus' yoke is the law of love, which unlike the dominion of an earthly king (even an anointed one like David) does not impose itself by force. Rather, Jesus binds the human conscience from within, by the inner virtues of faith, hope, and love. Those who rebel against God and his Christ are those who break these bonds of love by refusing to serve the Lord and learn of his ways (Jeremiah 2:20).
Psalm 2:4-7a: Man plans, God laughs
RSV: He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree of the Lord...
Anyone setting themselves against God is in for a bad time. Aquinas sees the Lord and his Christ as overcoming the rebels in distinct ways. He looks first at the four ways God himself responds to these rebels: laughter, derision, words of wrath, and terrifying fury. God laughs, St Thomas says, as a giant would laugh at a child who came to fight him. We simply do not have the power to harm God, whatever we may do, and so to make Him our enemy is laughable. Laughter is not the last word, however. If we persist in enmity of God this laughter becomes derision; God rebukes us for our foolishness. We are not able to harm God, but we may harm those who God loves, including ourselves, by our sins, and so God draws our attention to what we are doing.
Rebuke being ineffective, God moves "ad vindictam" - to punishment, or vengeance. Aquinas notes that anger, as a human passion suggesting emotional turbulence, cannot be literally ascribed to God. When we say God is angry, we do so because God in His justice causes punishments, which are like the effects of human anger. God first "speak[s]... in his wrath", declaring the just sentence on His enemies, and then He carries out this sentence, "terrify[ing] them in his fury". Aquinas sees this as exemplified by the final judgement, in which God rebukes the wicked for their actions, sentences them to everlasting fire, and carries out this sentence (Matthew 25:31-46). He connects the Lord's laughter to His setting the wicked on His left, which puzzled me. Perhaps, going back to his point that we have no power over God, the point is that by this God publicly shows his power over sinners, demonstrating their powerlessness before Him.
The Lord's anointed also gets in on the action, dealing with the three groups of rebels - the "people" [of Israel], the "nations" [Gentiles], and "kings" - in different ways. First, the Jewish people:
The Davidic king is appointed by God, not for his own sake, but for the sake of God's law, and so Aquinas reads this declaration of the king's divine appointment as connected to the next verse "I will tell of the decree of the Lord" (in Latin, it reads more like "I preach his precepts"). This allows him to again connect the psalm to Jesus as the prophesied Branch of David, the king who "shall execute justice and righteousness in the land." (Jeremiah 23:5). Jesus' kingship is universal, but like David's is "set [i.e. begun]... on Zion", as he was sent first to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:24). Sion is the "holy hill" which, as Aquinas says "recieved the rays of the sun first". Jesus is of course the preeminent preacher of the decree of the Lord, which is, again, the new law of love - the gospel, the kingdom of God.
Psalm 2:7b-8: The Only Begotten Son of God
RSV: ...He said to me, “You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession...
This passage of Psalm 2 is well known to Christians. Having established his king on Zion, God now promises to give all the nations on earth to His anointed - His Christ. This passage is directly quoted and applied to Jesus in both Acts (13:33) and the letter to the Hebrews (5:5), and Aquinas too thinks the primary meaning of this text is the incarnation and saving victory of the Son of God.
If being appointed king on Sion, calling Israel back to Himself by preaching, is how Christ deals with rebels among "the people", he also rules over the Gentiles. Aquinas believes this section primarily refers to Jesus, not David, as although David ruled some conquered nations beyond Israel, it is Jesus alone who can claim to reign over all of them. And Aquinas thinks this is appropriate because Jesus is the Son of God, eternally begotten of the father (Hebrews 1).
Daringly, Aquinas sees this eternal generation - the mystery of the Trinity - traced out here in the Psalm. The mode of generation is found in the "He [the Lord] said to me", as Jesus is the Word (John 1) begotten not biologically but "like the conception of the word proceeding from the intellect", just as the divine nature itself is not fleshy but spiritual.
The nature of Jesus' sonship Aquinas sees in the simple statement "you are my son" - not a sonship of adoption but of nature (again, the influence of the letter to the Hebrews is strong here), and therefore (as God is One) consubstantial with the Father. Aquinas also sees intimations of this in the expression "for your possession" - unlike Moses over Israel, or the apostles over the early church, Jesus rules not as a steward or minister but as the true Lord.
And finally the eternity of sonship is seen in "today I have begotten you". For Aquinas "today" indicates not only the present day, but eternity, as eternity is "what always is", and "I have begotten" (rather than "I will beget", or "I am begetting") is chosen to express the perfection, or completion, of this unique, eternal "generation without motion". [2]
Being the Son of God, then, Jesus has the ultimate right to rule. But Aquinas sees significance in the fact that Jesus, despite having the right to rule, still asks his Father for his people in prayer, especially in his high priestly prayer in John's gospel, and in his Passion (see - again - the letter to the Hebrews). "Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage": or, as Jesus tells his disciples, no one comes to him except through the Father's gift (John 6:44). Jesus' human life and kingship are woven tightly into the eternal life of the Trinity.
Psalm 2:9: Hulk Jesus Smash!
RSV: ...You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel."
What is the character of the rule of the Lord's anointed? This passage of the Psalm might make us worry that he's something of a tyrant. This is complicated by the fact that Aquinas' Latin translation translates the first half as "You shall rule with a rod of iron...", setting the line up as a contrast, rather than a reemphasis.
Returning to David, Aquinas sees the "rod of iron" as suggesting that David's rule of conquered nations was stricter, less merciful, than his rule of the citizens of Israel. We still talk about "iron justice" when we see someone apply the law rigidly, "unbending". Aquinas sees this as applying to Christ, not in terms of rigidity, but in terms of the everlasting kingdom he brings, and the perfect justice it brings about. The rod he sees both as a scepter, indicating rulership, and as a tool of punishment for wrongdoing.
If a rod of iron sounds unsettling, none of us much fancy being dashed to pieces like a potter's vessel. And this passage has sometimes been used exclusively to threaten future punishment, or even damnation. Without excluding that reading, Aquinas primarily reads this passage as promising renewal. He envisions a potter breaking a vessel which has come out deformed, so that it can be reworked into the shape he had in mind. The Gentiles, he says, had to be "broken" so they could be reformed into true faith in God.
The process of conversion and penance, which must be part of any Christian life, can be painful - as we break deep-rooted old habits of sin. But it is not a matter of punishing ourselves, but of allowing God to reform us into the people we are meant to be. Remember Psalm 1: "the people God wants us to be" are happy people, not beaten slaves!
Psalm 2:10-11: Be afraid, be very afraid...
RSV: Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, with trembling kiss his feet [3], lest he be angry, and you perish in the way; for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
So we've covered the people and the nations. Kings might feel a bit tacked on, but because those who rule others have a tendency to push back against God (witness the many horrors happening throughout the world due to evil rulers, today and in all days) they especially need to be "admonish[ed]" and brought back to God's service.
Aquinas reads the trifecta of commands: "be wise; be warned"; "serve the Lord with fear"; "kiss his feet" (see note [3]) once more through the lens of personal transformation, as three ways in which we are made true subjects of God, and citizens of Christ's kingdom.
1. "Be wise; be warned", or as Aquinas has it "understand; recieve instruction", has to do with accepting the truth of doctrine. This can be done in two ways, depending on our position - we can "be wise/understand", investigating Jewish or Christian teachings with our own intellect (though still from a position of faith) and seeking to understand the truth more deeply. Or be can just "be warned/recieve instruction", which corresponds to being taught the truth without understanding it for ourselves - either because we can't, or simply because it is not required for our vocation. While Aquinas sees wisdom as the better path here, he recognises that doing theology is not a requirement to have faith.
2. "Serve the Lord with fear": the service of God comes after instruction in the truths of faith (here he perhaps alludes to the Mass, where the worship of God in the Eucharist follows the preaching of the word and profession of faith in the creed). This service is not just doing what we are told - we must be subject to God not only externally but internally, through genuine faith, hope, and love. Why "with fear"? Aquinas reads fear as something more like caution - we serve God with fear when we take care to exclude sin. He thinks that kings especially need to make laws against serious sin, not just live justly in their own lives. Finally, Aquinas' translation says not just "trembling" but "rejoice in trembling". He thinks service of God should be joyful - but "trembling", not presuming that we are already perfectly holy and guaranteed salvation (see Philippians 2:12).
3. "Kiss his feet": this is a notoriously difficult passage to translate, but Aquinas' reading ("embrace discipline") actually comes quite close in meaning to some modern Jewish translations [3]. Key for Aquinas is that following worship we must subject ourselves to God by living well: "none may live as he pleases but as he ought". Aquinas sees God as giving us different kinds of help to do this: He gives us explicit guidance in the Bible (think of the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount), the example of good moral lives (in both the Bible and the saints), and he gives us difficulties in our lives as a kind of "protecting wall" (2 Corinthians 4:7-12; James 1:2-3).
Aquinas reads the final passage of the Psalm as telling us why all this admonition is necessary. In saying "lest he be angry", we are reminded that our sins always deserve punishment, and it is God's merciful patience that keeps that punishment away - but we should not presume this patience will last forever, but treat it as an opportunity to be saved (2 Peter 3:15). We must not "perish on the way", which for Aquinas represents the possibility of falling away from the path of justice in a way we cannot easily remedy. In the final judgement, Aquinas reminds us, God's wrath will be "quickly kindled", and destroy the wicked. And none of us know the day or the hour.
But it's not all warnings! "Blessed are those who take refuge in him". Those who reach the kingdom of God will not suffer God's anger, and will achieve perfect happiness in the life of glory. And His kingdom is freely offered to all - we only have to take refuge in Him. We can almost hear Aquinas pointing us back to Psalm 1, so that we can learn the path that leads us there.
References
The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, Robert Alter
Commentary on the Psalms, St Thomas Aquinas (trans. Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski OP, Sr. Maria Veritas Marks OP, et alii)
The Divine Office Volume I: Daily Prayer for Advent, Christmastide, and Weeks 1-9, Collins (pub.)
The Divine Office Volume III: Daily Prayer for Weeks 6-34 of the Church Year, Collins (pub.)
The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition, Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler
Nostra Aetate, Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions
Footnotes
[1] I think this insight helps Christians to understand the Hebrew Bible both as an internally coherent revelation of the living God in the history of His chosen people (contra Marcion, and contemporary anti-Semitic tropes about a "vengeful God of the Old Testament") and yet still in some way obscure and incomplete, given fuller clarity and depth (not simply "superceded") by Christ. In an age when the Church has acknowledged and condemned evil done to Jewish people in the name of Christ, it is especially important that we can remain true to our faith in Jesus without implicitly "bashing" Judaism.
The same insight also helps us to respond to criticisms like those of Robert Alter, who for example (correctly) points out that "you are my son" refers principally to the Davidic king, not the messiah to come, but who seems to think that this rules out any reference to the future messiah.
[2] I.e. the Son is eternally from the Father, and does not come to be from the Father. "There was a time when the Son was not" being a famously condemned heresy. This might sound paradoxical, but we can imagine parallels. Keeping to the symbolism of "the Word", we can imagine someone eternally thinking a particular thought - while that thought is "coeternal" with the thinker, we understand what it means to say that the thought is produced by the thinker, and not vice versa.
[3] This is a famously difficult passage to translate. Aquinas' Latin translation has "embrace discipline", the RSV has "kiss his feet", the ESV has "kiss the Son", and the Jewish Study Bible has "pay homage in good faith" (coincidentally very similar to Aquinas' own reading!).
Robert Alter argues for the unusual translation "with purity be armed", which also comes close in meaning to Aquinas. His discussion in a footnote is worth copying in full:
The two Hebrew words nashqu bar are the first of a long series of textual cruces in Psalms. As they stand, they make little sense, and the most elaborate efforts have been undertaken—none very convincing—to make the text mean something by extensive reconstructive surgery. The present translation hews to the Masoretic text, merely revocalizing bar (son? wheat?) as bor, “purity.”The usual sense of the verb nashqu is “to kiss,”but it also means “to bear [or, wield] arms”(compare its use in Psalm 78:9, 1 Chronicles 12:2, 2 Chronicles 17:17). As an idiom, to arm oneself with purity is not otherwise attested to in the Bible, but it might make sense here as a counterpoint to the implied raising of arms against Zion at the beginning of the psalm.
