Journal

Psalm 2 - Is nationalism ever anything else?

Posted on November 11th, 2005, in the evening

I've been reading and meditating on Psalm 2 this week as part of my series on Worshipping with the Psalms.

Just two psalms in and the question of nationalism in the Old Testament raises its head. There are different ways to read this psalm (as I will get to), but I didn’t want to rush on to other interpretations without pausing to take in the meaning of its use in Israel’s worship.

If we read the text the way I think we have to assume it was originally heard, this psalm basically just advises all the other nations to submit to Israel's king or face God's wrath.

Reading the Psalm this way, as I did for the first part of the week, certainly feels unnatural for me as a Christian. It begs question: "Is this psalm worship of God or just jingoism?"

It's an important question, but don't want to tackle it now. I’ll return to the theme as it recurs through the Psalms, but another light entirely is shed on Psalm 2 through its quotation in the New Testament.

Verses 1 and 2 are quoted in Acts 4:

Why do the nations rebel
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers conspire together
against the Lord and His Anointed One

Psalm 2.1-2 quoted in Acts 4.25-26

And are applied directly to Jesus:

For, in fact, in this city both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, assembled together against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed.

Acts 4.27

Hebrews also quotes Psalm 2, again applying verse 7 directly to Christ:

You are My Son;
today I have become Your Father.

Psalm 2.7 quoted in Hebrews 1.5

On this basis, for the second part of this week I have been reading Psalm 2 as about Christ. This reading is (perhaps unsurprisingly) immeasurably more fruitful for Christian worship.

Now we have glimpses of Christ as God's anointed King; of the Son begotten (Roger Forster understands this as being the 'begotten' from the earth in resurrection); that "the kingdoms of the world will become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ" (Revelation 11.15); of Christ as the final judge of the nations; and of his everlasting reign.

It still seems slightly strange reading Christ into verses that then present a Christ who is quick to anger (rather than "slow to anger and rich in love"), but the psalm is much more recognisable as the kind of things I think of as the content of Christian worship.

In summary, I was distracted by the question of nationalism for the first few days this week. Regardless of the interpretation the New Testament puts on Psalm 2, the fact remains the Israel worshipped with it as a nationalistic hymn for centuries before it was ever applied to Christ, and I don't want to explain that away by imagining a significant disjunction between the God of the Old Testament and that of the New.

These last few days, reading the psalm Christologically has relieved much of that tension, and hearing its echoes in the New Testament - particularly in the book of Revelation - has deepened my worship of Christ presented there.

I'm left with many questions along with some profound glimpses of Christ through my engagement with Psalm 2. I think the call is both to pursue the questions and to ponder the revelation with the faithfulness to God's word commended in Psalm 1.