I think it was my Old Testament lecturer from Regent that told me that the first two Psalms in the Psalter were originally written as one and later separated into their current form. He could have made it up but he seems to have written enough books about stuff to be legit so I’m going to take his assertion as truth.
What difference does it make? Well, it seems to me that the second Psalm is the flip side of the first. Here is a reply to the wicked that Psalm 1:4 touches on. Having just described the life of the blessed and righteous man who listens to God and meditates on law the psalmist (probably David or Nathan by the looks of things) considers what comes of those who don’t listen to God. The news isn’t flash.
The bottom line of Psalm 2 is that God rules. Other kings don’t rule and their very defiance against God is shown for its folly. The psalmist opens up saying ‘why would you bother conspiring against the God I know’. Essentially: if you knew God like I know God you’d know that that the God I know is not worth messing with. It’s all going to end in tears, and they’ll be yours.
Some Psalms main deal comes at the opening, others at the closing. In some particular forms of the psalm there’s a common start and finish. This is code for: everything you read in-between should be taken as validation and affirmation of what I just said and am about to say. Psalm 8 with its common ‘O Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth’ is a good example of this.
So, in our ‘once upon time joined at the hip’ version of these Psalms, our opening/closing is again common: blessed is the man is depends/delights/takes refuge in God. All that goes in between reminds us why true wisdom is manifest in a life of obedience and faithfulness to Jesus.
The smartest thing for us, for kings, indeed, for enemies of God, is to ‘serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling’. If that sounds familiar it’s because Paul talks to the church at Philippi with similar words: ‘to continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling’ P2:12
Fear and trembling aren’t reserved for those in enmity with God, it’s an appropriate posture for each of us as we seek to discover what the salvation gift means in the presence of a Holy God.
God rules. Blessed is the man who figures that out and lives in response to that revelation.
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PS. I’ve always wrestled a little with Philippians 2:12. And I think I’d made sense of it theologically in the past. When I woke early this morning my second last paragraph started to bother me. If God’s perfect love casts out all fear, how can those who have come under his authority and are happy recipients of that love continue to take on a posture of fear. So I dug a bit deeper. Amidst a bunch of people talking about the verse in Philippians were a number saying a similar thing: the rending of the phrase ‘fear and trembling’ is a poor translation first emerging in the King James Version (arguably to support a doctrine of works) and replicated in the NIV translation.
If God is in me to work out His will in me, why should I fear? If the Lord is my light and my salvation, who should I fear?
JB Phillips, author of the the eponymous translation wrote:
“I had for some time been worried about the expression “fear and trembling.” It did not seem likely to me that Paul in writing to the Philippians could have meant literally that they were to work out their salvation in a condition of anxiety and nervousness. We all know that fear destroys love and spoils relationships, and a great deal of the New Testament is taken up with getting rid of the old ideas of fear and substituting the new ideas of love and trust. I realized that the Greek word translated ‘fear’ can equally well mean ‘reverence’ or ‘awe’ or even ‘respect,’ but I was bothered about the ‘trembling.’ Surely the same Spirit who inspired Paul to write to Timothy that ‘God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a sound mind’ could not also have meant us to live our entire lives in a state of nervous terror. I came to the conclusion, a little reluctantly, that the expression ‘in fear and trembling’ had become a bit of a cliche’, even as it has in some circles today. As I went on translating I found that this must be the case. For when Paul wrote to the Corinthians and reported that Titus had been encouraged and refreshed by their reception of him, he then went on to say that the Corinthian Christians received him with ‘fear and trembling’! (2 Cor. 7:15) Now this makes nonsense, unless it is a purely conventional verbal form implying proper respect. For, little as we know of Titus, we cannot imagine any real Christian minister being encouraged and refreshed by a display of nervous anxiety.”
Based upon the above information, J.B. Phillips translated the verse as follows:
“…so now that I am far away be keener than ever to work out the salvation that God has given you with a proper awe and responsibility. For it is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and power to achieve his purpose.” (Phil 2:12, 13, New Testament in Modern English)
The New Living Translation:
Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.
Eugene Peterson’s Message supports this:
Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God.
None of these carry with them any sense of taking our salvation lightly. What I do think they do is highlight a difference in the posture of one at enmity with God compared to one who God calls ‘friend’. Psalm 2 speaks of the former, Philippians 2 the latter.
By the way, for a “You’re more fundy than I am” take on things, try this!