Psalm 89 is theologically rich. Its main ideas are God’s covenant with David and his lovingkindness and faithfulness as revealed in it, but there are many other ideas as well: the glory, power and righteousness of God (vv. 6–14), the fear of God (v. 7), the blessedness of God’s people (vv. 15–18), election (v. 19), the anointed (also Christ, v. 20), the antithesis (vv. 21–23), the wrath of God (vv. 38–45), and others. But all of these ideas tie in with the main theme, God’s unbreakable covenant with David.
Most of the psalm is a celebration of the richness of the promises of that covenant and of God’s wonders and faithfulness in making and keeping it Faithfulness gets special attention in verses 28–37. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven. If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven.
These are the words of God himself. He swore by himself that even if David’s children forsook his law, he would not permit his covenant to fail. He would be faithful in spite of their unfaithfulness.
Yet, in the verses immediately following, it appears that God did, after all, renounce his covenant with David. But thou hast cast off and abhorred, thou hast been wroth with thine anointed. Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground. Thou hast broken down all his hedges; thou hast brought his strong holds to ruin. All that pass by the way spoil him: he is a reproach to his neighbours. Thou hast set up the right hand of his adversaries; thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice. Thou hast also turned the edge of his sword, and hast not made him to stand in the battle. Thou hast made his glory to cease, and cast his throne down to the ground. The days of his youth hast thou shortened: thou hast covered him with shame.
Ethan, the author of the psalm, was probably writing at the time of the Babylonian captivity. There was no longer a king in Israel or Judah. The line of David had faded into obscurity. The royal crown, so richly blessed in past years, was thrown down. Though Zerubbabel, a descendant of David, was a significant figure among the people of God after the exile, there was never again a king in David’s line. The people came to depend on the priests for their leadership, and by the time of Christ the heir of David’s throne was so obscure that no one paid any attention to him.
The psalm seems to demonstrate a failure at the very heart of the covenant. God had said he would be faithful even when David’s children sinned, yet he renounced the covenant when they did. How are we to understand it?
- We must recognize the severity of God’s judgment on the kings and people of Israel. That God is faithful to his covenant does not mean that he will never be angry with our sins. The appalling judgments pronounced throughout the prophets are proof enough of that. We may never blithely assume that God’s faithfulness implies a right to sin with impunity. We transgress his covenant at our peril.
- God was making the old covenant obsolete (Heb. 8:13). He had never intended that the old covenant stand forever. The old covenant was not faultless (Heb. 8:7), especially in that it could never make those who approached the altar perfect (Heb. 10:1). God’s people needed something better, a covenant in which the Lord would put his law in their minds and write it on their hearts, and in which he could truly, not just by foreshadowings, forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more (Jer. 31:33–34). The old had to make way for the new. The types had to give way to the realities. The promises proclaimed by the ceremonies of the law had to be fulfilled in Christ. The decline of David’s line was part of this making the old obsolete.
- God wanted to demonstrate yet again that salvation is of the Lord. He made the fulfillment of the promises impossible so that he could show that he is the God of the impossible. The line of David, to all intents and purposes, no longer existed at the time of Christ, but the Holy Spirit came upon the virgin Mary so that the holy one born of her was called the Son of God (Lk. 1:35).
- Therefore, also God was faithful to his covenant. He did not renounce it, though it appeared so to the people of Ethan’s time. Through all the bitter years from Zerubbabel to Joseph he kept the line of David alive (Matt. 1:12–16) so that Joseph, the true descendant of David, could become the husband of Mary of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.
But there is more. Psalm 89 and the circumstances surrounding it also foreshadow the humiliation of Christ on the cross. He was cast off and abhorred, suffering under the wrath of his God, his crown cast to the ground, his hedges broken down, his strongholds brought to ruin, he plundered and reproached, his enemies exalted and rejoicing, crying, If He is the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him (Matt. 27:42), and over his head the mocking title This is Jesus the King of the Jews. God had again renounced his covenant.
But the title was true, and the king who suffered rose again and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the majesty on high. The cross was not really a renunciation of the covenant, but the means to its fulfillment. By it Jesus, our king, defeated sin, scattered his enemies, crushed the head of the serpent and triumphed gloriously. He earned victory for us, so that now indeed the law may be written on our hearts and our sins blotted out once and forever. What the law foreshadowed Christ has done. What the merely human kings of David’s line could not do, Christ has accomplished and established to eternity. He is the king who will sit on David’s throne forever, and of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end (Isa. 9:7).
Ethan prayed at the end of Psalm 89, Remember, LORD… The Lord has remembered. Therefore Blessed be the LORD forevermore! Amen and Amen (Ps. 89:52).