Why Do the Nations Rage
1 Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers take counsel together, against Yahweh, and against his Anointed, saying, 3 “Let’s break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us.” 4 He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision. 5 Then he will speak to them in his anger, and terrify them in his wrath: 6 “Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.” 7 I will tell of the decree: Yahweh said to me, “You are my son. Today I have become your father. 8 Ask of me, and I will give the nations for your inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession. 9 You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” 10 Now therefore be wise, you kings. Be instructed, you judges of the earth. 11 Serve Yahweh with fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Give sincere homage to the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish on the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.
Kings conspire against God and his anointed, and the response from heaven is laughter followed by an installation.
Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot a vain thing?
The second psalm opens the collection's other door. The first was about a man and a book; this is about kings and a throne, and the two are bracketed together by the word blessed at the start of one and the end of the other.
The question is rhetorical and slightly contemptuous. Rulers are shown taking counsel together in a scene of great seriousness, and the psalm calls the result a vain thing — empty, going nowhere. Their manifesto is quoted: let's break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us Psalms 2:3. It is the oldest complaint there is, that God's authority is a rope, and the psalm lets it stand without answering it directly.
He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision.
The only place in Scripture where God is said to laugh at anything, and it is not amusement. It is the response of someone watching a plan that cannot work being made with total confidence. What ends the laughter is worse than the laughter: then he will speak to them in his anger Psalms 2:5.
“Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.”
The conspiracy is answered by an accomplished fact. Not a threat and not a counter-plan — an appointment already made, announced in the perfect tense while the rebellion is still in session.
7 I will tell of the decree: Yahweh said to me, “You are my son. Today I have become your father. 8 Ask of me, and I will give the nations for your inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession.
The language is that of a coronation, and it was used at the enthronement of David's line. It also outruns anything a king of Judah ever received. No son of David was given the ends of the earth, and the New Testament reads the psalm accordingly: the words are applied to Christ at his resurrection Acts 13:33, and the letter to the Hebrews uses this verse twice to argue that he is more than an angel and did not appoint himself Hebrews 1:5 Hebrews 5:5. The apostles quote it when the authorities move against them, and identify the raging nations with the men who had just crucified him Acts 4:25–27.
Give sincere homage to the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish on the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.
The psalm ends by addressing the kings directly, and what it offers them is not surrender but refuge. The one they were plotting against is where safety is, which is the whole argument compressed into a line.
settled What this mark means