A Commentary on the Book of Psalms: Psalm 71 — A Prophecy of the Coming of Christ, and of His Kingdom: Prefigured by Solomon and His Happy Reign
Psalm 71
A Prophecy of the Coming of Christ, and of His Kingdom: Prefigured by Solomon and His Happy Reign
Explanation Of The Psalm
1 A kind prayer of David’s, imploring the divine assistance on his son Solomon to judge with justice. The holy man does not ask for riches or power for his son, as the children of this world are wont to ask; but he asks God to give him the grace of properly discharging his duties. He knew that kings were created for the people, not the people for kings; and, therefore, that he alone could be called a good king who ruled the people with justice. Solomon himself, no doubt, instructed by his father, asked the very same thing of God, as we read in 3 Kings 3. He, therefore, says, “Give to the king thy judgment.” Give my son Solomon, just anointed king, “thy judgment;” judgment like your own, right, wise, just; or rather the grace of judgment, of judging agreeable to your wish, according to your laws; and repeating the same, he adds, “and to the king’s son thy justice.” Give it to him, that he may “judge thy people with justice;” “and thy poor;” that is, thy people, “with judgment.” A mere repetition of the first sentence. He designates God’s people as God’s poor; for all men, however rich they may appear to be, are poor in God’s sight. They need his assistance in everything, and whatever they have, they have from God, not as a gift, but as a loan; and, therefore God can demand it back, and take it away from them without offering them any injury; and though the heathens do not understand these things, God’s people should understand it, and profit by it. This seems to me to be the literal sense of this passage, still I will not say that it may not be taken to apply to Solomon’s authority as a king and a judge, so that the meaning would be, grant, O my God, to me, and to my son, the king elect, such judiciary power that he may justly judge your people; or if one choose to apply the passage to Christ, the meaning will be, O God the Father, grant to Christ your Son, the King, the grace of judgment; for according to John 5, “The Father does not judge any one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” Between judgment and justice there is a difference, justice being a virtue, and judgment is an act of justice; here, however, they are synonymous, are taken for the same thing, for the power or the grace of judging rightly, or the actual judgment. St.
Augustine remarks that in this Psalm, and throughout the Psalms, the same idea is repeated in different words, and thus not only here, but in various other parts of the Scriptures, justice and judgment are used to convey the same idea. Thus, in 2 Kings 8, “And David did justice and judgment to all his people;” and in Psalm 118, “I have done judgment and justice, give me not up to them that slander me.”
2–3 He continues to pray for his son king Solomon, begging that during his reign peace and justice may settle on the land, and on all its inhabitants; and as the country was a hilly, mountainous country, he says, “Let the mountains receive peace;” that is, may peace descend on all its hills and mountains, and may all its inhabitants receive it. “He shall judge the poor of the people;” where peace and justice reign, few are found to injure their neighbor by word or deed; and, therefore, the king of such a place will have no great trouble in protecting the poor from the few oppressors, who must, of necessity, be found in every community.
4 He now begins to pass from Solomon to Christ, this verse being quite inapplicable to Solomon, but not so to Christ, a descendant of Solomon, whose kingdom is to flourish for all eternity. And Christ, of the family of Solomon, “shall continue;” shall govern the world “with the sun;” so long as the sun shall shine, “and before the moon,” which means in presence of the moon; “throughout all generations;” to the end of time. We are to observe here, that when the prophet says, that Christ’s kingdom would continue as long as the sun would shine, he by no means implies that there would be an end to it when the sun would cease to shine, for Christ’s kingdom will endure forever, though the sun will one day cease to shine. The expression, “throughout all generations,” is to be understood in a similar sense; when all generations shall have passed away, Christ’s kingdom will not also pass away, no more than Christ meant to tell his Apostles he would desert them at a given time, when he said, “Behold, I am with you all days, to the end of the world;” which meant, that as he would be with them here, through his grace and his help, so they would be with him in the world to come, in happiness and glory.
5 As he said that Solomon’s reign was to continue to the end of the world; looking upon Solomon as the type of Christ, he now describes the coming of Christ, the propagation and the peculiarities of his kingdom; and he describes his coming, first to the Jews, and then to the gentiles, under the figures of rain, a fleece, and earth; such as the signs Gedeon got formerly of the liberation of the people; for, when he asked a sign from God, it happened that the fleece of wool, placed on the floor for the purpose, was completely saturated by dew from heaven, the whole floor around remaining perfectly dry; while, on the following night, the fleece remained quite dry, while the whole floor around was completely wet; in like manner, Christ first descended on or came to the Jews, represented by the fleece of wool; while the whole world beside was perfectly arid and dry; for Christ himself said, “I am not sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then he came to the gentiles, through the preaching of the Apostles, and then the earth all round was saturated with the rain of the truths of salvation; for the same Lord said, “Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;” and the fleece alone remained dry, in the dryness of incredulity, even to the present day. Such is the interpretation of St. Augustine, to which St. Bernard adds, that Christ came “like rain upon the fleece;” when he came silently into his mother’s womb, as rain would upon the purest wool, by virtue of his heavenly power, and that he came “as showers falling gently upon the earth,” when, through the miracles of the Apostles, and through their preaching, he made the earth resound as it would under a torrent of rain.