And *I* have anointed my king upon Zion, the hill of my holiness.
God answers a world in revolt with one sentence. It is not an argument but an announcement: the throne is already given. Three questions follow. Who is this King? Why Zion? And how can God call a thing done that no one can yet see?
Verses 1–3 describe nations and rulers plotting to throw off God's authority. This verse is the reply, and its force is that the plotting changes nothing.
The rage, the plotting, and the plans that kings and rulers make all come to nothing, and God's counsel stands. His purposes are not delayed one hour, and He sets His King exactly as intended on Zion, His holy hill... The rulers and the kings will depart in judgment. The shouting and the uproar will die away. And Jehovah will anoint His King, just as the decree said.
The word "set" really means "anointed," and man's opposition to God cannot defeat His purpose. How puny man is — all his efforts to dethrone God will come to nothing. The rightful king of Israel will reign in Zion.
The word "my" is deliberate. It sets God's choice against the king the people chose for themselves.
Jehovah loves to say "My King." He is the true David, the man after God's own heart, whom He chose to feed His people. Saul was the opposite. Saul was the people's own choice, made when they had rejected Jehovah as their king. God has a king in store, and He will show Him at the right time. He will take everything out of the usurper's hand and give it to the One whose right it is.
Zion was not a neutral address. God chose this hill at the lowest point in Israel's history.
No mountain in the Old Testament stood in such formal contrast with Sinai as Zion. Sinai was the unforgettable scene where the nation was put under responsibility to the law. Zion was where Jehovah stepped in with grace for His king, at a time when everything lay in ruins. People and priests alike were wicked. The Philistines had taken the ark. Ichabod was confessed. Israel's king and his sons were killed. And the Jebusite was not only in the centre and stronghold of Jerusalem but defiant and insulting. Then it was that Jehovah, as He chose David, so also chose the mount Zion which He loved. And there He will set His king, on Zion, His holy hill.
So what does that hill hold? Another writer lists it plainly.
"You have come to Mount Zion." What do you get there? What is said of Mount Zion is that it is the hill of grace. It is where God finds His rest. It says, God will dwell there forevermore. He loves it. Blessing is there; there God commands blessing, life forevermore. It is the hill on which He places His king. And why do you think He has set His king there? It is for blessing. If God raises up a king, it is for blessing, not for the destruction of man... No doubt the rebellious must suffer judgment, but God's thought in a kingdom is salvation.
Zion is one hill, but the psalm does not stop there. It goes on to give this King the nations, and it describes a rule unlike the gospel that goes out now.
Two things are set forth here. First, God anoints the Son as King on Zion, His holy hill. Then He gives Him the nations as His inheritance. Zion is His throne; the nations, His inheritance. Second, His way of dealing with the nations is the opposite of the gospel — "You shall break them with a rod of iron." In the gospel, the rod of Christ is a rod of goodness and love. It is everything that is sweetest and strongest in His love. It is not a rod of iron.
Commentators read the past tense as certainty, not as something already visible. The world rejected this King, and His throne is still ahead.
In Psalm 2 you find Christ spoken of as come to this world, and rejected... In that character as King in Zion, and Son of God, as born into this world, He was utterly rejected; yet God will set Him on His holy hill in Zion.
Why then can God speak of it as finished?
God's counsels will prevail so surely that He can speak of them as already done — "I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill." Divine power carries out divine counsels.
- As for me. God speaks for Himself: kings plot, and His counsel is not delayed one hour.
- Set. The word means "anointed" — the King men reject is the King God commissions.
- My. God's own choice, the true David, over against the king people choose for themselves.
- Zion. The hill of grace, chosen when everything else had collapsed, where God sets a king for blessing.
- Done. Spoken in the past tense because divine power always accomplishes divine counsels.
I will declare the decree Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; *I* this day have begotten thee.
The kings of the earth plot against the LORD and against His Anointed, and God answers by setting His King on Zion. Now the King speaks for Himself, and the words He repeats raise the psalm's deepest question: who is this King, and when was He begotten?
One writer asks why this King can stand against all opposition, and ties the answer to the courage of the first believers who prayed this psalm back to God:
Why is it that the King in Zion can stand against all the hatred and opposition of the enemy? Think of the day of His rejection. His followers were only a few weak Jews. Yet soon after Pentecost they could take up this second psalm and quote it back to God. They used it as an argument for why He should give them all boldness to speak the Word without fear. It was because that King in Zion was His Son. "I will declare the decree," says the Son; and then He declares it. "You are My Son," God had said to Him; "today I have begotten You." He is in His kingly place as Son of God, and who dares stand against the Son of God and succeed?
One writer reads the Son title as belonging to Christ come into the world as Israel's promised King:
The New Testament quotes Psalm 2:7 for Christ as Son of God in this world. It is not His eternal Sonship, as some early Christian writers thought. It is not His resurrection either, which others taught by misreading Acts 13:33. His birth in time as Messiah is the point: "You are My Son: today I have begotten You."
The same writer notes that this changes nothing about what He always was:
Becoming man in no way lowered His Sonship. He is Son of God eternally. He was still, and no less, Son of God when born of the virgin, just as He is Son of God in resurrection and forever in glory.
The verse has two clauses, and writers read them as covering two different spans:
In the next sentence we pass from eternity to time. "Day" is a measure of time, not of eternity: "today I have begotten You." Now we undoubtedly have the incarnation of the Son. It is the Old Testament description that matches the New Testament ones. "The Word became flesh." The "Son born of a woman." "That holy child who will be born of you will be called the Son of God."
Another writer calls the first of the two expressions timeless:
There are two important expressions in this verse. One is a timeless expression, "You are my Son" — what the Messiah is to God who is His Father. We can carry this expression back into eternity. It expresses the divine intimacy and pleasure resting in the Father's heart towards this blessed Man.
Commentators differ over whether "today" points to the birth of Christ or to His resurrection. One writer traces where the New Testament takes up the psalm's Son title, and where it does not:
Here Messiah speaks, and we learn more about Him. He is not only King but Son. This is one of the Scriptures quoted in Hebrews 1 to establish the deity of Christ. Some have thought this verse refers to resurrection because of the way Acts 13:33 uses the passage, but this is a mistake. Look at Acts 13 carefully and you will see that it deals with resurrection in verse 34, not 33. The word "again" should be left out.
The decree does not stop at a name. It hands the King the nations, and calls the kings of the earth to submit:
The decree of God is that His Son shall be anointed — that is, declared King over all the earth — and He invites the kings of the earth to submit to Him. He says to them, "I am about to speak in my wrath. I give the inheritance of the nations to Christ. He will bruise you with a rod of iron; He will break you in pieces. Now then, submit yourselves to Him, to my Son, King in Zion." These kings follow their own ways. Yet God has decreed His reign surely and beyond recall, and He will bring it to pass despite the kings of the earth.
- Decree — the King does not argue with the world's plotting. He publishes a decree. His right rests on God's word, not on man's consent.
- Son — the decree names Him: the King in Zion is God's Son, and that is why no opposition can stand against Him.
- Today — "today" is a time word. Most writers here read it of His birth in time as Messiah. Others tie it to resurrection through Acts 13:33.
- Unchanged — becoming man never lessened His Sonship. He is Son eternally, Son born of the virgin, Son in resurrection and in glory.
- Inheritance — the same decree grants Him the nations. God warns the kings to submit before the rod of iron falls.