Psalms 72:5

THE IMMORTAL, PRE-EXISTENT; UNIVERSAL RULER

"They shall fear thee while the sun endureth,

And so long as the moon, throughout all generations.

He will come down like rain upon the mown grass,

As showers that water the earth.

In his days shall the righteous flourish,

And abundance of peace, till the moon be no more

He shall have dominion from sea to sea,

And from the River to the ends of the earth."

It appears to us that there is precious little in this paragraph that can intelligently be applied to Solomon or to any other except the Blessed Messiah.

"They shall fear ... while the earth endureth ... so long as the moon ... throughout all generations" (Psalms 72:5). Such a time-span as this is a reference to immortality. "Clearly, his immortality is implied in Psalms 72:5."[11]

"He will come down like rain ... like showers" (Psalms 72:6). Both the rain and the showers come down from the heavens; and Solomon certainly never did anything like that. "Not only will this Great One rule all nations, but his pre-existence seems to be assumed in Psalms 72:6."[12]

"In his days the righteous shall flourish ... abundance of peace" (Psalms 72:7). In a very limited and imperfect manner these words might be applied to the reign of Solomon. However his excessive taxation to support his hundreds of wives and concubines (a full thousand of them in all), his building of temples to their gods, the extravagant magnificence of his reign, and his expensive military establishment with some 40,000 horses, resulted finally in the rebellion against his successor and the rejection of the Davidic dynasty by the vast majority of the nation, ten of the twelve tribes going with Jeroboam I. All this prevents the application of Psalms 72:7 to Solomon, except in a very limited sense.

"Dominion from sea to sea ... from the River to the ends of the earth" (Psalms 72:8). It is true that Solomon ruled over all of the Mid-East from the River (Euphrates) to the Mediterranean Sea, but not "to the ends of the earth."

Furthermore, the expression "from sea to sea," actually refers to the whole planet earth. "The ancient idea was that the earth was set in the middle of a great ocean";[13] thus "from sea to sea" meant the whole earth. Zechariah applied the exact Words of this verse to the Dominion of Messiah (Zechariah 9:10), of which dominion alone are they truly descriptive.

Delitzsch summarized this paragraph by his declaration that, "The wishes expressed here are of wider compass (than Solomon's dominion); and Zechariah repeats them predictively with reference to the King Messiah (Zechariah 9:10)."[14]

Our own viewpoint is that the words of this paragraph were not only "predictive" when Zechariah repeated them. They are predictive here, referring not to Solomon at all but to Christ. Such a truth as this lends remarkable support to the viewpoint of Calvin and of Matthew Henry that these words here are David's prayer for Solomon.