Mazmur 2:6-9

2:6 “I myself ¹  have installed ²  my king

on Zion, my holy hill.”

2:7 The king says, ³  “I will announce the Lord’s decree. He said to me: ⁴ 

‘You are my son! ⁵  This very day I have become your father!

2:8 Ask me,

and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, ⁶ 

the ends of the earth as your personal property.

2:9 You will break them ⁷  with an iron scepter; ⁸ 

you will smash them like a potter’s jar!’” ⁹ 

Mazmur 10:16

10:16 The Lord rules forever! ¹⁰ 

The nations are driven out of his land. ¹¹ 

Mazmur 93:1

Psalm 93 ¹² 

93:1 The Lord reigns!

He is robed in majesty,

the Lord is robed,

he wears strength around his waist. ¹³ 

Indeed, the world is established, it cannot be moved.

Mazmur 99:1

Psalm 99 ¹⁴ 

99:1 The Lord reigns!

The nations tremble. ¹⁵ 

He sits enthroned above the winged angels; ¹⁶ 

the earth shakes. ¹⁷ 

[2:6]  ¹ tn The first person pronoun appears before the first person verbal form for emphasis, reflected in the translation by “myself.”

[2:6]  ² tn Or perhaps “consecrated.”

[2:7]  ³ tn The words “the king says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The speaker is the Lord’s chosen king.

[2:7]  ⁴ tn Or “I will relate the decree. The Lord said to me” (in accordance with the Masoretic accentuation).

[2:7]  ⁵ sn ‘You are my son!’ The Davidic king was viewed as God’s “son” (see 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 89:26-27). The idiom reflects ancient Near Eastern adoption language associated with covenants of grant, by which a lord would reward a faithful subject by elevating him to special status, referred to as “sonship.” Like a son, the faithful subject received an “inheritance,” viewed as an unconditional, eternal gift. Such gifts usually took the form of land and/or an enduring dynasty. See M. Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970): 184-203, for general discussion and some striking extra-biblical parallels.

[2:8]  ⁶ sn I will give you the nations. The Lord promises the Davidic king universal dominion.

[2:9]  ⁷ tc The LXX reads “you will shepherd them.” This reading, quoted in the Greek text of the NT in Rev 2:27; 12:5; 19:15, assumes a different vocalization of the consonantal Hebrew text and understands the verb as רָעָה (ra’ah, “to shepherd”) rather than רָעָע (ra’a’, “to break”). But the presence of נָפַץ (nafats, “to smash”) in the next line strongly favors the MT vocalization.

[2:9]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew term שֵׁבֶט (shevet) can refer to a “staff” or “rod,” but here it probably refers to the Davidic king’s royal scepter, symbolizing his sovereignty.

[2:9]  ⁹ sn Like a potter’s jar. Before the Davidic king’s awesome power, the rebellious nations are like fragile pottery.

[10:16]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Lord is king forever and ever.”

[10:16]  ¹¹ tn Or “the nations perish from his land.” The perfect verb form may express what is typical or it may express rhetorically the psalmist’s certitude that God’s deliverance is “as good as done.”

[10:16]  sn The nations may be the underlying reality behind the psalmist’s references to the “wicked” in the earlier verses. This reference to the nations may have motivated the combining of Ps 10 with Ps 9 (see Ps 9:5, 15, 19).

[93:1]  ¹² sn Psalm 93. The psalmist affirms that the Lord is the king of the universe who preserves order and suppresses the destructive forces in the world.

[93:1]  ¹³ sn Strength is compared here to a belt that one wears for support. The Lord’s power undergirds his rule.

[99:1]  ¹⁴ sn Psalm 99. The psalmist celebrates the Lord’s just rule and recalls how he revealed himself to Israel’s leaders.

[99:1]  ¹⁵ tn The prefixed verbal forms in v. 1 are understood here as indicating the nations’ characteristic response to the reality of the Lord’s kingship. Another option is to take them as jussives: “let the nations tremble…let the earth shake!”

[99:1]  ¹⁶ sn Winged angels (Heb “cherubs”). Cherubs, as depicted in the OT, possess both human and animal (lion, ox, and eagle) characteristics (see Ezek 1:10; 10:14, 21; 41:18). They are pictured as winged creatures (Exod 25:20; 37:9; 1 Kgs 6:24-27; Ezek 10:8, 19) and serve as the very throne of God when the ark of the covenant is in view (Ps 99:1; see Num 7:89; 1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2; 2 Kgs 19:15). The picture of the Lord seated on the cherubs suggests they might be used by him as a vehicle, a function they carry out in Ezek 1:22-28 (the “living creatures” mentioned here are identified as cherubs in Ezek 10:20). In Ps 18:10 the image of a cherub serves to personify the wind.

[99:1]  ¹⁷ tn The Hebrew verb נוּט (nut) occurs only here in the OT, but the meaning can be determined on the basis of the parallelism with רָגַז (ragaz, “tremble”) and evidence from the cognate languages (see H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena [SBLDS], 121).