All Old Testament hopes centered on the coming of One of Whom the prophets, psalmists, and seers alike spoke as Messiah, the Servant of God, the Messenger of God. These aspirations of the past are explicit in Psalm 2 and implicit in all the prophetic writings. In that psalm emerge into clear and definite statement the underlying hope and aspiration of all the singers and seers of Israel.
There are different opinions about the psalm. It is said that the reference is to David as the anointed King of Israel. It is suggested that the reference is to Hezekiah. While there may be elements of truth in these contentions, it is impossible to read the psalm and imagine that all its values were fulfilled in the case of David or of Hezekiah. If the psalm is of David, it is of David as God's messenger, His Messiah in a limited sense. If the psalm concerns Hezekiah, it concerns Hezekiah as God's messenger, God's servant, God's Messiah in a limited sense.
But there are values beyond these. In the case of either of these men, there were local, immediate, incidental applications of value, but shining through are larger meanings than the man understood who wrote the psalm, and fuller harmonies than the singers detected who sang the songs. This psalm has its fulfillment in Christ and in Him alone, so that when we read, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17), we recognize at once that the Jews would understand it to mean that all the hopes implicit in their ancient prophecies, and focused in this declaration, were fulfilled in the One of Whom this word was spoken.
Adapted from God's Thought of The King, by G. Campbell Morgan.
