Psalm 45 is another song of the “sons of Korah”, and this one is quite different from the other songs we have seen so far. It is, as the title describes, a “wedding song”, and a plain reading of the text shows that it is indeed a wedding song.
Verse 1 sets the tone; this song is directly addressed to “the king”, who is getting married.
Verses 2-9 are addressed to the king, and the psalmist spends the entire time praising and glorifying the king. Of course, if I were writing a wedding song for a literal king that was sung to his face, I would praise him too, for self-preservation if nothing else. Looking more closely, we can see that much of this praise is martial in nature: verse 3 says “gird your sword on your side”; verse 5 wishes that “your sharp arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s enemies”. Verse 7 insists that the king was exalted by God because he “loves righteousness and hates wickedness”. This follows in the tradition of books like Job which emphasize God’s nature as the judge who punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous. In the case of this psalm, it is the king who is adopting God’s royal nature by acting as a righteous judge for his people, and as a consequence of following in God’s footsteps, “God, your God, has set you above your companions”. In other words, not only does God bless the righteous, but God blesses those who adhere to, and enforce, his principles of justice.
Some might suggest adhering to God’s principles of justice is simply what it means to be righteous, and therefore these are not distinct things. While I don’t disagree with that, I do think it’s worth distinguishing between the sense of personal righteousness in a man like Job, who was righteous because of his integrity, kindness to others, and honesty, and the righteousness of a king. The righteousness of Job is largely oriented around personal conduct and generosity, while the righteousness of a king is oriented around professional conduct and just administration. In both cases, righteousness emerges from an inner desire to do “right”, but the sphere of conduct and influence differs between them, because a king is acting like a judge which is a smaller, human equivalent of God’s role as the divine judge. Individual commoners like Job are considered a “subject” of God and are therefore held to a different standard of behavior. Commoners are expected to faithfully obey the LORD and show kindness towards each other. Kings are expected to mimic the LORD’s behavior, dealing with others the way the LORD would deal with them. By doing this, the king is also assured to receive the LORD’s blessing and the promise of an eternal kingdom, that his heirs would reign on his throne after him for eternity. We could perhaps view this as the king’s inheritance.
In verse 9, the focus shifts from the king to the royal bride standing next to him. In verses 10 through at least 15, and possibly as far as 17 and the end of the psalm, the psalmist turns to address the new royal bride.
In verse 10-11, the psalmist offers advice to the bride, suggesting that she forget her old people and “honor” the king, her new husband. After that, the remainder of the passage seems to drift back into the realm of praise, honoring the new bride for her “glory” (v. 13) and “joy and gladness” (v. 15) as she enters the palace of her new husband.
In v. 16, the psalmist honors their future children, and v. 17 closes it out by “perpetuating” their memory, which happened quite effectively when this psalm was included in the bible.
Now, after describing the contents of the psalm, the most obvious question I haven’t asked yet is why this psalm was included in the bible at all. Although it contains moral elements that align well with the biblical text, it doesn’t have much in the way of overt religious content and, it’s also worth pointing out, only uses the word “God” and not “LORD” (i.e. elohim instead of Jehovah). This second point suggests, but does not prove, that this song could be derived from non-Jewish sources. That is, it may have been adapted from older wedding songs in the ancient near east.
Going back to the first question, the most obvious reason it might have been included is if the king in question was one of the kings of Judah who simply ordered that this song be included in the psalter. If we stopped here, we would have a pretty neat origin narrative that would be accepted by most non-scholars and close down discussion pretty quickly. I think we would miss some evidence that suggests deeper religious undertones, however.
Consider first the authorship. This is a psalm by the sons of Korah who are most definitely a group of Levites in the temple worship service. Why would they be writing secular wedding music? Again we could imagine the king ordering it, but I’m skeptical because the history of the bible itself shows us that in many ways the priesthood operated independently from the king and generally resisted royal influence. Furthermore, there aren’t any clear reasons why the king would do that.
Secondly, the Psalter was most likely organized as part of the musical liturgy of the temple worship. That means these songs would have been performed repeatedly as part of the temple worship for possibly hundreds of years, and then as part of synagogue worship for much longer than that. Even if a king had mandated the authorship or inclusion of this song at some point in the past, it could have easily been stripped out in the proceeding decades long after that king died. The fact that it remains in the Psalter to this day all but guarantees us that no matter why it was initially composed, later generations of priests and worshippers have been able to find religious meaning in it, which itself gives us strong reason to believe that the meaning later generations have found corresponds to some degree with the meaning the initial author intended. It’s not conclusive (as so few things in biblical studies are), but it’s evidence.
Instead, I propose as an alternative that this psalm was intentionally composed by the Levites as a religious song and it was included in the Psalms because of its theological content. Let’s examine it from this perspective.
Once we start examining this psalm from a theological perspective, the first question we have to ask is who, symbolically, the king and the bride refer to. As I discussed at length earlier, the king stands in as an earthly example of God. The king is an earthly judge, while God is the heavenly judge. It’s not difficult to imagine that this psalm is symbolically discussing God’s relationship to … a bride.
Who is the bride, then? One obvious suggestion is that the bride is Israel. I don’t think there is anything in the text of the psalm itself to suggest this, but the general pattern of the bible suggests it. More specifically, the covenant between God and Israel is sometimes compared to a marriage, and Israel’s disobedience to the LORD is compared to adultery. In the original text of Deuteronomy, the covenant is framed in terms of political allegiance (lord/vassal). However, the nature of that relationship gradually tightened in future generations with it eventually adopting marital undertones, and this trend continued even stronger in the Christian era, with the church described as the “bride of Christ”.
Let’s assume for a moment that I am correct that the king refers to God, and the bride refers to Israel. If that’s the case, how should we interpret this psalm?
It is similar to how we interpreted it previously. The king is a strong, majestic figure, fighting hard to defeat his enemies and achieve “truth, humility and justice”. The king has an eternal kingdom, and will use his power to bless the righteous and destroy the wicked. I would dig into this more, but it’s highly consistent with all the descriptions of God we’ve seen so far and I don’t think it really treads new ground in that respect.
The description of Israel (as the bride) seems to emphasize loyalty and faithfulness towards her husband, as well as her beauty and glory. This certainly seems like a picture of Israel during her apex (the reigns of David and Solomon). In that time Israel was indeed very wealthy, glorious, triumphant over their neighbors (like Tyre, v. 12), and served God faithfully. In later times, Israel diminished in all of these respects, and perhaps this psalm is meant to remind and invite Israel to return to that glorious past, when faithfulness and power blended together. Chronicles was also such an invitation, describing David and Solomon in idealized terms to remind Israel of what they had once possessed. This psalm reads like a companion to Chronicles, this time describing Israel in idealized terms and inviting them to return to that glory.
Even if we read this psalm literally as describing a king and queen of Israel, that too has a great deal of idealization and longing for the past, as the Babylonian exile ended Judah’s line of kings (it was subsequently only ruled by governors on behalf of foreign powers).
Either way, I believe this psalm would have called the people of Israel and Judah to think of their history, of better times when they faithfully served the LORD and gloriously ruled themselves and their neighbors. By linking together their faithfulness and their power and independence, the psalm reminds Israel that only by returning to the LORD and serving him only can they hope to achieve their political dreams of dwelling in safety, “everyone under their own vine and their own fig tree” (1 Kings 4:25). To be free from the threat of foreign domination is only possible by clinging to “the king”, but not a natural king: Israel and Judah must remain faithfully by the side of the King of the whole earth, the LORD.
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