A Song for the King's Wedding
1 For the Chief Musician. Set to “The Lilies.” A contemplation by the sons of Korah. A wedding song. My heart overflows with a noble theme. I recite my verses for the king. My tongue is like the pen of a skillful writer. 2 You are the most excellent of the sons of men. Grace has anointed your lips, therefore God has blessed you forever. 3 Strap your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and your majesty. 4 In your majesty ride on victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness. Let your right hand display awesome deeds. 5 Your arrows are sharp. The nations fall under you, with arrows in the heart of the king’s enemies. 6 Your throne, God, is forever and ever. A scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom. 7 You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. 8 All your garments smell like myrrh, aloes, and cassia. Out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made you glad. 9 Kings’ daughters are among your honorable women. At your right hand the queen stands in gold of Ophir. 10 Listen, daughter, consider, and turn your ear. Forget your own people, and also your father’s house. 11 So the king will desire your beauty, honor him, for he is your lord. 12 The daughter of Tyre comes with a gift. The rich among the people entreat your favor. 13 The princess inside is all glorious. Her clothing is interwoven with gold. 14 She shall be led to the king in embroidered work. The virgins, her companions who follow her, shall be brought to you. 15 With gladness and rejoicing they shall be led. They shall enter into the king’s palace. 16 Your sons will take the place of your fathers. You shall make them princes in all the earth. 17 I will make your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore the peoples shall give you thanks forever and ever.
A royal wedding song addresses the bridegroom as God, and the letter to the Hebrews takes it at its word.
For the Chief Musician. Set to “The Lilies.” A contemplation by the sons of Korah. A wedding song. My heart overflows with a noble theme. I recite my verses for the king. My tongue is like the pen of a skillful writer.
A wedding song, written for a royal marriage, and the poet says so. He is excited, he knows he is writing well, and he is not pretending to be anything other than a court poet at a celebration.
You are the most excellent of the sons of men. Grace has anointed your lips, therefore God has blessed you forever.
The praise of the bridegroom begins conventionally enough, and the next verses arm him: a sword on the thigh, arrows, nations falling. It is the standard vocabulary of royal flattery in that world.
Except that the direction is unusual. In your majesty ride on victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness Psalms 45:4. Humility is not on any other king's list of causes worth fighting for.
Your throne, God, is forever and ever. A scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom.
The verse a wedding song has no business containing. The bridegroom is addressed as God, and his throne is called eternal. Attempts to read the Hebrew another way are possible and strained; the letter to the Hebrews quotes it as it stands, in the argument that the Son is greater than the angels: of the Son he says, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever" Hebrews 1:8.
You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.
And immediately the same figure has a God of his own. The two verses together are the difficulty and the doctrine: he is addressed as God and he worships God, and the letter to the Hebrews quotes both without treating the pair as a problem.
Listen, daughter, consider, and turn your ear. Forget your own people, and also your father’s house.
The bride is a foreign princess, and what is asked of her is total. She is to leave a nation behind. The instruction is hard and it is the standard condition of this marriage in the rest of Scripture, where the church is the bride and the leaving is the same Ephesians 5:31–32.
The princess inside is all glorious. Her clothing is interwoven with gold.
The English translations divide over whether the glory is inward or whether she is glorious within the palace, and the Hebrew supports either. Nothing turns on it here.
I will make your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore the peoples shall give you thanks forever and ever.
The court poet promises the king immortality of a kind poets can supply, and the psalm has outlived every dynasty it might have been written for.
held with reason What this mark means