My Lonely City

Psalm 2 is … confusing. My first and overwhelming impression is the attempt to balance the psalmist’s utter terror of God’s wrath with his equally strong belief in and need of God’s fatherly love. In fact, this text could perhaps be seen as an exploration of the implications of considering God a father; on the one hand, he provides “refuge” in the form of his “Son,” an “inheritance” to his chosen one(s), etc., but on the other, his “wrath can flare up in a moment” (vs. 8 & 12). Is God, then, an abusive father? Or is the text perhaps suggesting that the way in which God loves, or interacts with, his creation is both so passionate and so holy that knowing him can be at times phenomenally destructive? ¶ He, that is, God, could therefore be seen as an ambiguous figure in the context of the pre-Messianic world. In that case, the position of the psalmist, with his/her ministry of singing praises to God and telling of the things he has done is more fraught with difficulty than is at first apparent. If the psalmist is in some ways making God intellectually or emotionally accessible to man, then he or she may be in a somewhat precarious position, both blessed & cursed by their own human perspectives & positions.