 |  |
pieces like a potter's vessel." The time for the fulfillment of this passage is the day of the
Lord (Rev. 2: 27, 12: 5, 19: 15), when the Lord's Anointed shall ride forth from
heaven as King of kings and Lord of lords. Psa. 2:, then, must be included in our survey
of the O.T. witness to the second coming.
A whole set of Psalms may be said to assume the fact of the second coming of the
Lord. This applies to Psalms that speak of the Lord reigning as king in their midst, or
over all the earth, as Psa. 45:, 46:, 47:, and also Psa. 48: where Jerusalem is seen
as the city of the great King.
Psa. 50: is more positive in its references to the second coming:--
"The mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of
the sun unto the going down thereof. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath
shined. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before Him,
and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him. He shall call to the heavens from
above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people. Gather My saints together unto
Me."
There are many features here that underlie statements in the N.T. The world-wide
address reminds us of Matt. 24: 27, the fire and the tempest at His coming reminds us
of Matt. 24: 29, 30, while the call to the heavens seems to refer to "angels" who gather
"together His elect from the four winds" (Matt. 24: 31). "His saints" are evidently
"Israel" (Psa. 50: 7).
In his Psalms David looks forward to the coming of the Lord as the great goal of his
desire. At the end of Psa. 72: he says: "The prayers (or praises) of David the son of
Jesse are ended", and this climax is the Psalm of the King's Son. There we read of this
great King as the Judge and Deliverer of the poor and needy. Peace and prosperity are
the result of His reign. His dominion is from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends
of the earth. All kings fall down before Him, all nations serve Him, and bless Him. The
whole earth is full of His glory.
The figure used in verse 6 is apt to be misunderstood: "He shall come down like rain
upon the mown grass." There is no word for "grass" in this verse, the word translated
"mown grass" being gez, which is also rendered by the word "fleece" and "mowings".
To the farmer it is a disaster, not a blessing, for rain to fall upon his new mown grass.
What the passage really refers to is the fall of the rain upon the parched earth after the
grass has been cut and removed, as expressed in Amos 7: 1: "The beginning of the
shooting up of the latter growth: and lo, it was the latter growth after the king's
mowings." The figure of Psa. 72: is that the coming of the Lord will be like the latter
rain. Israel shall grow and flourish a second time, there shall be a blessed aftermath, they
shall revive and their end shall be glorious.
II Sam. 23: 1-5 should be read in conjunction with Psa. 72:: "Now these be the
last words of David . . . . . this is all my desire." These words are in much the same spirit
as Psa. 72: 20. Both passages look forward to "The Kings' Son"; "He that ruleth over