Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews I. 13. 321
to be taken as prophetical of the Messiah, because the hope of a
personal Messiah was foreign to the time of David. This objection
needs no refution after what has been said at ver. 5. Tholuck also
(Hebraerbr. Beilage, i. p. 10) has rightly directed attention to
2 Sam. xxiii. 1, seq.—that saying of David in which he expresses
so definite a hope of a definite posterity who should fulfil Nathan's
prophecy, 2 Sam. vii. That we have, in Ps. ex., also an expression
of that hope grounded on 2 Sam. vii. should no longer be doubted.
We by no means need to appeal to the declaration of Christ, Matth.
xxii. 42, seq. ; even if we were able, without doing violence to a
sound understanding, to agree with those who regard
that ieclaiation
not as Christ's real opinion, but as intended by him half in jest
merely to lead the Pharisees into an inextricable difficulty—even if
we were at liberty to adopt such a view, the composition of the
110th Psalm by David, and its Messianic signification, would still
stand fast of itself. The remarkable representation of a sacerdotal
king like to Melchisedek, which we find in this psalm, will not at all
suit a time subsequent to that of David. The later kings stood partly
in hostile relation to the priesthood, cultus, theocracy, and worship
of Jehovah, partly, even when they stood in a peaceful and friendly
relation to these as in the case of Hezekiah and Josiah, they shewed
this precisely by not invading the rights and offices of the priests ;
the attempt of the otherwise pious Uzziah to combine the priestly
functions with the kingly was punished by God himself with the
infliction of the disease of leprosy. In such a period, such a psalm,
with the representation which it gives of a priest-king, could not
have been composed. To unite the priestly with the kingly dignity
was at that time as little to the praise of a king, as it is now to the
praise of the emperor Henry IV. as an emperor, that he invested
bishops and popes. As this, on the contrary, was a commendation
under Charles the Great, and even under Henry III., so also was
that a ground of praise in the time of David, of David the protector
of the high priesthood against Saul, the man after God's heart, in
opposition to whom the priests had no occasion for watching over
and defending their rights, because they had no reason to dread any
malicious invasion of these from the despotism of the king. We
must therefore seek for the date of the psalm in the time of David.
With respect to its contents, modern critics have held the psalm to
be a hymn upon David sung by one of his subjects. The first words
correspond with this explanation : the Lord (God) said unto my
lord (the king). But the words immediately following, in which
God is represented as having spoken, will not apply to David. It is
easy to comprehend how Solomon should receive the predicate "God"
as the theocratic ruler, especially when he is contemplated as the
ideal seed of David, and the fulfiUer of the will of God. But it
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