1 O God, give Thy judgments to the king, And Thy righteousness to the king's son. 2 May he judge Thy people with righteousness, And Thine afflicted with judgment! 3 May the mountains bring forth peace to the people, And the hills, through righteousness! 4 May he judge the afflicted of the people, Save the children of the needy, And crush the oppressor!
5 May they fear Thee as long as the sun shines, And as long as the moon shows her face, generation after generation! 6 May he come down like rain upon mown pasture, Like showers--a heavy downpour on the earth! 7 May the righteous flourish in his days, And abundance of peace, till there be no more a moon!
8 May he have dominion from sea to sea, And from the River to the ends of the earth! 9 Before him shall the desert peoples bow; And his enemies shall lick the dust. 10 The kings of Tarshish and the isles shall bring tribute: The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. 11 And all kings shall fall down before him: All nations shall serve him.
12 For he shall deliver the needy when he cries, And the afflicted, and him who has no helper. 13 He shall spare the weak and needy, And the souls of the needy shall he save. 14 From oppression and from violence he shall ransom their soul; And precious shall their blood be in his eyes. 15 So that he lives and gives to him of the gold of Sheba, And prays for him continually, Blesses him all the day.
16 May there be abundance of corn in the earth on the top of the mountains! May its fruit rustle like Lebanon! And may [men] spring from the city like grass of the earth! 17 May his name last for ever! May his name send forth shoots as long as the sun shines, And may men bless themselves in him, May all nations pronounce him blessed!
18 Blessed be Jehovah, God, the God of Israel, Who only doeth wondrous works, 19 And blessed be His glorious name for ever, And let the whole earth be filled with His glory! Amen, and Amen.
20 The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.
Rightly or wrongly, the superscription ascribes this psalm to Solomon. Its contents have led several commentators to take the superscription in a meaning for which there is no warrant, as designating the subject, not the author. Clearly, the whole is a prayer for the king; but why should not he be both suppliant and object of supplication? Modern critics reject this as incompatible with the "phraseological evidence," and adduce the difference between the historical Solomon and the ideal of the psalm as negativing reference to him. Ver. 8 is said by them to be quoted from Zech. ix. 10, though Cheyne doubts whether there is borrowing. Ver. 17 _b_ is said to be dependent on Gen. xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, which are assumed to be later than the seventh century. Ver. 12 is taken to be a reminiscence of Job xxix. 12, and ver. 16 _b_ of Job v. 25. But these are too uncertain criteria to use as conclusive,--partly because coincidence does not necessarily imply quotation; partly because, quotation being admitted, the delicate question of priority remains, which can rarely be settled by comparison of the passages in question; and partly because, quotation and priority being admitted, the date of the original is still under discussion. The impossibility of Solomon's praying thus for himself does not seem to the present writer so completely established that the hypothesis must be abandoned, especially if the alternative is to be, as Hitzig, followed by Olshausen and Cheyne, proposes, that the king in the psalm is Ptolemy Philadelphus, to whom Psalm xlv. is fitted by the same authorities. Baethgen puts the objections which most will feel to such a theory with studied moderation when he says "that the promises given to the patriarchs in Gen. xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, should be transferred by a pious Israelite to a foreign king appears to me improbable." But another course is open--namely, to admit that the psalm gives no materials for defining its date, beyond the fact that a king of Davidic descent was reigning when it was composed. The authorship may be left uncertain, as may the name of the king for whom such far-reaching blessings were invoked; for he was but a partial embodiment of the kingly idea, and the very disproportion between the reality seen in any Jewish monarch and the lofty idealisms of the psalm compels us to regard the earthly ruler as but a shadow, and the true theme of the singer as being the Messianic King. We are not justified, however, in attempting to transfer every point of the psalmist's prayer to the Messiah. The historical occasion of the psalm is to be kept in mind. A human monarch stands in the foreground; but the aspirations expressed are so far beyond anything that he is or can be, that they are either extravagant flattery, or reach out beyond their immediate occasion to the King Messiah.