Psalms 45

To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, for the sons of Korah, Maschil, A Song of loves.

The first verse is a dedication of the ode to the king. From Psalms 45:2-9, the king is praised; 1.) for his person, Psalms 45:2; Psalms 2:0.) for his conquests, Psalms 45:3-5; Psalms 45:3.) for his righteous government, Psalms 45:6-7; Psalms 4:0.) for the magnificence of his palace and the renown of his family, Psalms 45:8-9. Psalms 45:10-15 are an address to the queen, while Psalms 45:16-17 are an anticipation of their illustrious progeny and the perpetuation of the royal dynasty. The psalm is evidently a marriage song, though not wholly restricted to that limit. It is prophetic, also, though, in conformity to the common law of typical Messianic prophecy, it retains a historic basis. It may not be always easy to discover, as Dean Milman has said, “what are the irrepealable truths of the Bible, and what the imaginative (poetic) vesture, or frame work, in which truths are set;” and yet by the spiritually minded Bible student the line of distinction is always traceable. The order of procedure is obvious. The historic and literal sense should be first ascertained, and through this the prophetic and spiritual. The literal, as in parables, is always the step of ascent to the spiritual. So in the psalm before us. The question arises, Was it a Hebrew or a Persian monarch to whom the psalm is dedicated? The highly oriental style would assign it to one of these. Plausible considerations plead for the latter, but, contrary to a former opinion, (my “Psalms Chronologically Arranged,” etc.,) upon mature thought, I give the former precedence. The king is in the line of theocratic monarchs, and it is this feature of the psalm (Psalms 45:6-7) which is quoted by the author of the Hebrews in chapter Hebrews 1:8-9. This is decisive of a Hebrew sovereign; and the current of critical opinion is in this direction. The strong resemblance of the style to that of the Song of Solomon, of which poem it is “a concise model,” (Hale,) seems sufficient to decide him to be the author as well as the subject; and as Stanley says of the Song, we may say of the psalm: “The scene is such as could have been laid in Solomon’s court, and in no other period of the Hebrew monarchy.” If, as has been supposed, the beautiful “Abishag the Shunammite,” (1 Kings 2:21-22,) was the same as the “Shulamite” (Song of Solomon 6:13) who was the heroine of that incomparable pastoral, it is different in the case before us. Here the bride, or queen consort, is of foreign extraction, as appears from Psalms 45:10, the favourite of the king, which corresponds with the daughter of Pharaoh, 1 Kings 3:1. The psalm, as above stated, is not wholly an epithalamium, though in that strain, but fits better Solomon’s maturer years, when he had acquired fame for wisdom, for government, and for war, Psalms 45:3-5. It was not till the twentieth year of his reign, according to Hale, (twenty second year according to Calmet and Usher,) that his own palace and that for his Egyptian wife were finished. 1 Kings 7:8; 1 Kings 9:24; 2 Chronicles 8:11. His marriage with that princess occurred early in his reign; too early for the display of those wonderful qualities which are celebrated in this psalm. 1 Kings 3:1. It was after the twentieth year of his reign, and after he had finished his great buildings within and about Jerusalem, that God appeared to him in a dream and renewed to him his covenant with David. 1 Kings 9:1-5. Solomon was now in the zenith of his power and fame, and at this time his kingdom was modelled after that of his father’s. His great offence and defection occurred later, “when he was old,” about the thirty-fourth year of his reign and the fifty-fifth of his age. 1 Kings 11:1, et seq. It seems most suitable, therefore, to date this psalm at the removal of his Egyptian wife from Zion to her new palace, and her formal occupancy of the same.

TITLE:

Upon Shoshannim The plural of Shooshan. See note on title of Psalms 60:0.

Sons of Korah See on title of Psalms 42:0.

Maschil See on title of Psalms 32:0.

A song of loves Or, a song of loveliness, the plural feminine being used in the abstract; or, a song of the dearly beloved, as in Jeremiah 12:7, where the same word occurs. This phraseology allies the psalm to the Song of Solomon.