Day 148

Psalm 72: Read here – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2072&version=NASB

Some have regarded this as David’s psalm to and about his son Solomon and his Greater Son the Messiah. V20 in postscript refers to the collection of Book Two of Psalms, which is heavy with David’s psalms, separating Book Two from Book Three, which begins with 11 psalms authored by Asaph. 

It is possible that Solomon compiled what is now Book Two of Psalms (Ps 42-72) and composed this psalm as a fitting conclusion for the collection of mostly David’s psalms. It is a fitting conclusion, because it unexpectedly does not focus upon David himself but on the Messiah – the King of Kings and the Son of David. The New Testament nowhere quotes it as Messianic, but this picture of the king and his realm is so close to the prophecies of Isa 11:1-5 and Isa 60-62 that if those passages are Messianic, so is this. 

Solomon began this psalm asking God to bless him as the monarch of Israel, and to bless him with wise ‘judgments’ and a reign displaying God’s ‘righteousness.’ This was the same heart behind his great request to God in 1Kings 3:5-9. 

As a royal psalm, it prayed for the reigning king, and was a strong reminder of his high calling; yet it exalted this so far beyond the humanly attainable (e.g. in speaking of his reign as endless) as to suggest for its fulfillment no less a person than the Messiah. 

In vs8-11 Solomon began to lift his vision above a desire for his own reign to be blessed towards the anticipation of the reign of a greater Son of David, Messiah the King. This King would ‘have dominion’ far greater than Solomon, and would endure forever (V17.) We see on the shores of time the wrecks of the Caesars, the relics of the Czars, and the last remnants of the Ottomans, Charlemagne, Maximilian, Napoleon, Hitler; how they flit like shadows before us! They were and are not, but Jesus forever is. 

The doxology to book 2: Praise his glorious name forever! Let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen! V19 NLT.