The psalm began with addressing "the God of my _praise_"; it ends with the confidence and the vow that the singer will yet _praise_ Him. It painted an adversary standing at the right hand of the wicked to condemn him; it ends with the assurance that Jehovah stands at the right hand of His afflicted servant, as his advocate to protect him. The wicked man was to "go out guilty"; he whom God defends shall come forth from all that would judge his soul. "If God be for us, who can be against us? It is God that justifieth: who is he that condemneth?"
1 The oracle of Jehovah to my lord; Sit Thou [enthroned] at My right hand, Until I make Thine enemies the stool for Thy feet. 2 The sceptre of Thy might shall Jehovah stretch forth from Zion, "Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies." 3 Thy people are free-will offerings in the day of Thine army; In holy attire, From the womb of the dawn, [Comes] to Thee the dew of Thy youth[s]. 4 Jehovah has sworn and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, After the manner of Melchizedek.
5 The Lord at Thy right hand Has crushed kings in the day of His wrath. 6 He shall judge among the nations, He has filled [the land] with corpses, He has crushed the head over a wide land. 7 Of the brook shall He drink on the way, Therefore shall He lift up [His] head.
Does our Lord's attribution of this psalm to David foreclose the question of its authorship for those who accept His authority? Many, who fully recognise and reverently bow to that authority, think that it does not, and appeal for support of their view to the unquestionable limitations of His earthly knowledge. It is urged that His object in His argument with the Pharisees, in which this psalm is quoted by Him (Matt. xxii. 41-46 and parallels), is not to instruct them on the authorship of the psalm, but to argue from its contents; and though He assumes the Davidic authorship, accepted generally at the time, yet the cogency of His argument is unimpaired, so long as it is recognised that the psalm is a Messianic one, and that the august language used in it of the Messiah is not compatible with the position of One who was a mere human son of David (Driver, "Introd.," p. 363, note). So also Dr. Sanday ("Inspiration," p. 420) says that "the Pharisees were taken upon their own ground, and the fallacy of their conclusion was shown on their own premises." But our Lord's argument is not drawn from the "august language" of the psalm, but from David's relationship to the Messiah, and crumbles to pieces if he is not the singer. It may freely be admitted that there are instances in our Lord's references to the Old Testament in which He speaks from the point of view of His hearers in regard to it; but these are cases in which nothing turned on the question whether that point of view was correct or not. Here everything turns on it; and to maintain that, in so important a crisis, He based His arguments on an error comes perilously near to imputing fallibility to Him as our teacher. Most of recent writers who advocate the view in question would recoil from such a consequence; but their position is divided from it by a thin line. Whatever the limitations of our Lord's human knowledge, they did not affect His authority in regard to what He did teach; and the present writer ventures to believe that He did teach that _David_ in this psalm calls Messiah his Lord.
If so, the psalm stands alone, as not having primary reference to an earthly king. It is not, like other Messianic psalms, typical, but directly prophetic of Messiah, and of Him only. We are not warranted in denying the possibility of such direct prophecy; and the picture drawn in this psalm, so far transcending any possible original among the sons of men, has not full justice done to its majestic lines, unless it is recognised as setting forth none other than the personal Messiah. True, it is drawn with colours supplied from earthly experiences, and paints a warrior-monarch. The prophet-psalmist, no doubt, conceived of literal warfare; but a prophet did not always understand the oracles which he spoke.