(KJ version of Pslam 2): It takes one to know one, we used to say. Heathens indeed!
It helps to get some historical perspective: It's presumably about King David. (Some of the 'unlettered' believe that David wrote all the Psalms.) He was the tribal chieftan who "slew tens of thousands".
He was also the founder of the House of David, from which Jesus sprang.
So we have a contradiction here: a bloody, barbaric king, who was said to have written the most popular of the O.T. books, also founded the line from which the Messiah sprang.
This psalm is used in the N.T. to fill out the description of Jesus: "Thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."
The psalm superficially sounds like Alley Oop, but it's like a filthy mine from which one brings forth diamonds. You might say that of the entire O.T. Out of the miry clay we came.
4 comments:
gosh. me a barbaric king?!?
and after I put the pretty billy blake pic up to go with the psalm.
More seriously, the heathen raged back then -- probably the same reason as they do now. Because we insist on calling them heathens and claiming to have evolved beyond our barbaric past.
Hi Larry. I always like David (I mean King David, not the other guy :-)
It seems odd that the psalms can be both beautiful and disturbing.
"Thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."
How beautiful is that???
Let this seed sink in...take it in to your center, deeper, and deeper... Let it take root, sprout, and bloom in you.
"Thou art my beloved..."
I think Meredith has a key here to opening these Psalms. Lectio. Reading meditatively ruminating on words and letting the spirit feed rather than the analytic that just sees the violence.
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