King and Messiah as Son of God, Chapter 1, Part 2

Psalms 2 and 110 are key to the discussion of divine kingship in the Old Testament.

Psalm 2

Psalm 2:6–7 reads “But as for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain. I will surely tell of the decrees of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my son, today I have begotten you.”

Against some who argue that this first Psalm—because of its alleged Aramaisms and its vision of universal kingship—reflects a post-exilic origin, Collins believes that it has a “far more plausible Sitz in Leben in the period of the monarchy, in the context of an enthronement ceremony.” Along with some others, he sees in the Psalm combined “Egyptian and Assyrian influences.” The language of begetting resembles that found in Egyptian texts, though this does not mean direct Egyptian influence, but perhaps suggests that pre-Israelite Jerusalem was so influenced. Later, Israelite enthronement rituals became an indirect beneficiary.

[Collins draws an interesting parallel here to Isaiah 9. He references Von Rad’s suggestion that the chapter celebrates Hezekiah’s enthronement not the birth of a baby, despite the Hebrew word generally translated as “give birth or beget.” Collins thinks that Von Rad’s argument has weight in that Psalm 2 and Psalm 45:6 (“Your throne, O God, endures forever”) demonstrate that “the king could be addressed as elohim, “god.” Collins conclusion follows:

It seems very likely that the Jerusalemite enthronement ritual was influenced, even if only indirectly, by Egyptian ideas of kingship. At least as a matter of court rhetoric, the king was declared to be the son of God, and could be called an elohim, a god.

Psalm 110

Psalm 110:1 “The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”

Psalm 110:4 “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Collins suggests that this psalm provides a link to Assyrian influence—“mediated through Canaanite traditions—in its meditation on the status of the king. “Kingship and priesthood were associated in Assyrian tradition, where the king had the title shangu, a term related to the provision and maintenance of sanctuaries.”

However, even in this psalm one finds Egyptian ideas, argues Collins. For the “invitation to the king to sit at the right hand of the deity . . . has long been recognized as an Egyptian motif, known from the iconography of the New Kingdom.”

Psalm 110:3 (109:3 in the Greek) is a notoriously corrupt verse. Collins argues it should stand as follows:

In sacred splendor, from the womb, from dawn, you have the dew wherewith I have begotten you.

In this reading “the dew is the means by which the deity has begotten the king, and it infuses him with divine vitality.” While it is not certain that “dew” does approach the same meaning here that it does in Egyptian inscriptions, the “motifs of seating at the right hand and sun-like emergence from the dawn . . . strongly suggest an Egyptian background.”

Collins offers a few important conclusions to his comparative study:

“The status of the king in Jerusalem was not as exalted as that of the pharaoh, and the testimonies to his divine sonship that have been preserved are relatively few. Nonetheless, the language of sonship does have mythical overtones, and clearly claims for the king a status greater than human.”

In “the Hebrew Bible, to say that the king was son of God was to suggest a special relationship to the Most High, but certainly not parity.”

The “main implication of the declaration that the king was son of God is the implication that he is empowered to act as God’s surrogate on earth.”

“The fact that the dominant attitude in biblical tradition insists on a sharp distinction between divinity and humanity, and is sharply critical of kingship makes the preservation of the royal psalms all the more remarkable. It requires that we take them seriously as a witness to preexilic religion, before it was chastened by the harsh historical experiences that led to the demise of the monarchy.”