Psalm 45

Psalms 45:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, names the piece A Song of loves, for the sons of Korah, and this opening verse is the poet's own preface, my heart is inditing a good matter, my tongue is the pen of a ready writer, a wedding song written for a king's marriage. Thou art fairer than the children of men opens the address to the king himself, and grace is poured into thy lips names his speech before his sword is mentioned at all. Delitzsch reads the sequence as deliberate, beauty and gracious speech given before might, so that the king's excellence is first of character and only then of arms.

Psalms 45:3-5

The song turns to the king armed for war, gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, riding out in truth and meekness and righteousness rather than in mere power. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies keeps the psalm's violence honest rather than softened, a warrior king whose victories serve the same righteousness his speech already showed. Henry notes that meekness stands beside a drawn sword in this verse without contradiction, the ideal king using strength in the service of what is right rather than for its own sake.

Psalms 45:6-7

Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever addresses the king in language beyond any earthly monarch, and Hebrews 1:8 quotes this exact verse of the Son to prove his rank above the angels, God, thy God, hath anointed thee of verse 7 following it there as well. The commentators discuss whether the psalmist's own king was addressed by a title of exalted honor reaching toward the ultimate King who would fulfill it, so Delitzsch and Calvin, or whether the words point past the earthly throne from the start; both readings hold that Hebrews is not stretching the verse but reading it as it already stood, aimed further than David's line could reach alone. The oil of gladness above thy fellows marks a king anointed beyond his equals, which the epistle applies to Christ above every companion.

Psalms 45:8-9

The scene shifts to the wedding itself, garments that smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, a court scented and adorned for the occasion. Kings' daughters were among thy honourable women, upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir sets the bride at the place of highest honor beside the throne, Ophir's gold naming wealth from the furthest known trade. Barnes reads the ivory palaces as a real feature of ancient royal building, ivory inlay used for luxury interiors, which the psalm turns into an image of festive splendor rather than mere report.

Psalms 45:10-12

The address turns to the bride, hearken, O daughter, and consider, forget also thine own people, and thy father's house, the counsel every bride entering a new household received in that world. So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy Lord, and worship thou him names the king's authority over the one now joined to him, and the daughter of Tyre with a gift pictures foreign wealth courting her favor once she is established. The older commentators, Calvin and Spurgeon among them, read the bride's forsaking of her own house as a figure of the church called out of the world to the Bridegroom, a tradition drawn from the marriage language itself rather than stated by the psalm as history.

Psalms 45:13-15

The king's daughter is all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold, sets an inward glory beside the outward splendor already described, and Augustine reads the phrase as the pattern for the bride's beauty being given rather than her own, adornment received from the bridegroom she is brought to. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework, the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee pictures the bridal procession itself, gladness and rejoicing carrying the company into the palace. The scene of a bride and her attendants entering the king's house furnished later Christian writers with the marriage of the Lamb, named here as the reading it is rather than the psalm's own claim.

Psalms 45:16-17

The psalm closes on dynasty, instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth, the marriage bearing fruit in a line that will govern widely. I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations turns from the fathers' succession to the psalmist's own promise, the king's name kept alive by the very song being sung, and the closing line, the people praise thee for ever and ever, hands that remembering to the nations themselves. Spurgeon reads the ending as the psalm's own claim answered in advance, a name that has in fact outlasted every earthly dynasty it first described.