A GREATER THAN SOLOMON IS HERE

The title of this psalm should read “of Solomon”, yet the events pictured in this psalm were never truly fulfilled in either Solomon or his father David.

The psalm describes an ideal Monarch who is exercising universal rule. It looks ahead to a time still future when God’s kingdom on earth will be perfect and universal. It is a perfect order which has never yet been realized. Here is the kingdom, for which the creation still waits, and for which the church still prays “Thy kingdom come”. A human monarch stands in the foreground, but the aspirations expressed go far beyond anything that he is or can be; they reach out beyond their immediate occasion to the King, “the greater than Solomon”.

There are five stanzas in the psalm, and each emphasizes a particular feature of the King’s reign. The first stanza emphasizes its righteousness, which is the foundation of His kingdom. There can be no abiding peace where a kingdom is not based on righteousness. God is the Source of all justice, v. 1; just judgment is the constant characteristic of the ideal King. “The king” and “the king’s son” in verse 1 are One and the same Person. It is not the King and His heir, but a King who is a King’s Son.

In His reign, all oppression will be put down, the destroyer and destruction will be destroyed. The King will champion the cause of the wronged and distressed, v. 2. His sceptre is a right sceptre. All events regulated by Him will bring peace and comfort to those who receive Him as their Lord and King. Peace will be associated with righteousness, v. 3, since peace is always represented in Scripture as the fruit of righteousness, the one the fruit, and the other the root.

Melchizedek was first King of righteousness, then King of peace, Heb. 7. 2. There can be no abiding peace where the kingdom is not based on righteousness. The peace promised, then, is the fruit of righteous government, Isa. 9. 7; Mic. 4. 3. The King will judge the poor, Psa. 72. 4, that is, He will do them justice, redeem their wrongs, vindicate their rights. Here is the gracious exercise of wise authority. That Blessed One, who called Himself “a greater than Solomon”, is surely here, Matt 12. 42; cf. Isa. 32. 1-3.