Psalm 2 and Power

Now therefore, O kings, be wise;Be warned, O rulers of the earth.Serve the LORD with fear,with trembling kiss his feet,Or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way,for his wrath is quickly kindled.Happy are all who take refuge in him.

Psalm 2 is one of the royal psalms (2, 18, 20, 21, 45, 72, 89, 93, 110, 132, 144)  and as such celebrates the partnership between God and the Davidic king. The king becomes an instrument of God's rule over the earth, not unlike the prototypical humans of Genesis 1, and is given the task of enforcing God's will among the nations, bending the rebellious forces to submission before the Lord. All of this is a reflection of the divine sanctioning of the king's power.And yet, being good poetry, the Psalms also carries a subversive note as well. It calls out to the kings of the other nations to "be warned" and to "be  wise", calling them to serve the Lord in the realization of their subordination to God's own power.Indeed, this call, though posed to the nations, is also before the king who sits in Jerusalem as well. God's own king is only blessed (or "happy"), when he has taken refuge in the Lord. The form of the beatitude ("Blessed is the man who...") helps pair the Psalm with the one before it, and Psalm 1 marks out the road that leads to blessing as sharply forked between those who take the path of the "wicked" and those whose attention is given to God's instruction. the point of all this is that even the king of Judah, who has received power from God in partnership with God, must use that power in accordance with God's own wisdom. Any power that fails to do this is doomed to "perish" as both of these first two psalms attest (Psalm 1:6, 2:11).The second psalm, then, does indeed affirm the power of the king, but places that power in a theological context, one which will take on particular ethical flavors in others Psalms as it becomes clear what God expects the king in Jerusalem to do—preserve justice and righteousness. It is this sort of context that enriches the Psalm's messianic flavor—the Psalm was read by the early church as containing the seed idea of the messiah as a Son of God who will become the true king. We should not miss though, that it also contains a word about what kind of king that messiah would be—one who is not only empowered by God, but who is attentive to God's way as well.Those who see their lives as joined to such a messiah, receive here not just an affirmation, but a call to faithfulness as people following God's way in the world.