Vain Rage

Looking at Psalm 2:1 this morning, and noticing a few things I hadn’t before.

Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?

Psalm 2:1

First, this verse is a question. David is not telling us that the nations rage, he’s asking why? There is no obvious reason for this rage, no just cause, no apparent motivation. The Lord makes it rain on the just and the unjust, and the nations enjoy the Lord’s bounty. This rage is irrational.

Second, I’m reminded of Dr Schulz, who taught me that “rage” is the first written word of Western culture, the first word in Homer’s Iliad. (I confirmed this a few months ago, but you’ll have to check your own translation. The first three or four versions I looked at had a different beginning.)

The world is seething with unjust anger. World history is the story of rage.

Third, note how King David puts “rage” in parallel with “vain”. The raging of the world and the devil (and I suppose even our own sinful flesh) is intimidating to our eyes, but the eyes opened by the word of God see that all this rage is in vain. It cannot come near to us.

And then we realize, in verse 2, that all of this rage and plotting is against the Lord’s Messiah, and now we understand why. The world’s rage falls on Jesus so that God’s love would fall on us. And that was the plot from the very beginning.

God be praised! PrBW