Psalms

Psalms 72

20 verses · Wisdom · Old Testament

1God, give the king your justice; your righteousness to the royal son. 2He will judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. 3The mountains shall bring prosperity to the people. The hills bring the fruit of righteousness. 4He will judge the poor of the people. He will save the children of the needy, and will break the oppressor in pieces. 5They shall fear you while the sun endures; and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. 6He will come down like rain on the mown grass, as showers that water the earth. 7In his days, the righteous shall flourish, and abundance of peace, until the moon is no more. 8He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, from the River to the ends of the earth. 9Those who dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him. His enemies shall lick the dust. 10The kings of Tarshish and of the islands will bring tribute. The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. 11Yes, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him. 12For he will deliver the needy when he cries; the poor, who has no helper. 13He will have pity on the poor and needy. He will save the souls of the needy. 14He will redeem their soul from oppression and violence. Their blood will be precious in his sight. 15They shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba. Men shall pray for him continually. They shall bless him all day long. 16Abundance of grain shall be throughout the land. Its fruit sways like Lebanon. Let it flourish, thriving like the grass of the field. 17His name endures forever. His name continues as long as the sun. Men shall be blessed by him. All nations will call him blessed.
18Praise be to Yahweh God, the God of Israel, who alone does marvelous deeds. 19Blessed be his glorious name forever! Let the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and amen.

20This ends the prayers by David, the son of Jesse.

Commentary

No commentary on this chapter yet.

What others are saying

2 commentators · 27 notes on this chapter

John GillParticular Baptist / High Calvinist · 1746–176320

The most exhaustive and the most doctrinally committed here. Expect high — even supralapsarian — Calvinism applied consistently, and unusually heavy use of rabbinic and Talmudic sources for Jewish context. Where a passage bears on election or the will, Gill will read it in one direction, and knowing that in advance is the point.

Why this voice is here: The strongest Calvinist reading available in the public domain, and the best on Jewish background. Read alongside Clarke, not instead of him — between them you get both sides of the argument.

v. 1

Give the King thy judgments, O God,.... A prayer of David, or of the church he represents, to God the Father concerning Christ; for he is "the King" meant; which is the sense of the old Jewish synagogue: the Targum is, "give the constitutions of thy judgments…

v. 2

He shall judge thy people with righteousness,.... Or, "so shall he judge"; or, "that he may judge" (n), as the Syriac and Arabic versions; having the judgments and righteousness of God given him, he will be thereby qualified to judge the people of God; such…

v. 3

The mountains shall bring peace to the people,.... The people of God, as before. Kimchi and Ben Melech interpret this of the nations, and kings of the nations, comparable to mountains and hills, as in Micah 6:1; that should make peace with Israel in the days…

Keil & DelitzschGerman Lutheran, conservative-critical · 1861–18757

The technical one, and Old Testament only. Expect Hebrew grammar, textual argument, and direct engagement with nineteenth-century critical scholarship — closer to a scholarly apparatus than a devotional read. Where a modern critic claims a text is late or composite, this is where the conservative counter-argument was made.

Why this voice is here: Old Testament only, and heavy going — but the place to look when someone asserts a passage cannot mean what it appears to.

v. 1–4

The name of God, occurring only once, is Elohim; and this is sufficient to stamp the Psalm as an Elohimic Psalm. מלך (cf. Psa 21:2) and בּן־מלך are only used without the article according to a poetical usage of the language. The petition itself, and even the…

v. 5–8

The invocation of Psa 72:1 is continued in the form of a wish: may they fear Thee, Elohim, עם־שׁמשׁ, with the sun, i.e., during its whole duration (עם in the sense of contemporary existence, as in Dan. 3:33). לפני־ירח, in the moonlight (cf. Job 8:16…

v. 9–11

This third strophe contains prospects, the ground of which is laid down in the fourth. The position of the futures here becomes a different one. The contemplation passes from the home relations of the new government to its foreign relations, and at the same…

World English Bible — Public domain