Ps 2:12

Ps. 2.12

Kiss the son  /  lest  /  he be angry / and you perish in the path
For  / his anger / flares up quickly;

Happy (blessed) are all / who seek refuge in him

The progression has gone from: think carefully à serve with fear à kiss the son. “Kissing” in this context is a sign of homage and submission (see 1 Sam 10.1; 1 Kings 19.18). This is the literal act by which the nations make themselves into vassals. The previous directives (think carefully, serve with fear) did not require this ‘bodily’ act of submission and acknowledgment. One can here picture the nations approaching this anointed one (the one they previously were coming to war against) and needing to successively kiss him. The act itself is an incredibly humbling. And, for that reason, it is much more binding than the previous commands.

The act seems almost hypocritical in this context. One cannot imagine the kiss being given but grudgingly; notice how it is immediately followed with “lest he be angry.” Would it not simply create a harbored sense of shame and anger, and a desire for vengeance? Yet, like kneeling or any other act of homage, these ‘performances’ are not merely formal, nor can they be read ‘spiritually’, as if this is something that can be accomplished in a purely internal manner. It is like the difference between simply “praying for forgiveness” and being required to vocally admit one’s sins to another person; or, the difference between “praying for forgiveness” and needing to actually confront the offended person and ask. Or, it would be like someone, in the presence of the Lord saying, “I may not be kneeling on the outside, but I am on the inside.” Man is a unity, body and soul. The body’s movements affect and shape the internal make-up of the soul, and often the soul’s make up requires these physical acts. Without out them they are like a tree that bears no fruit. Anyone who has needed to ‘bodily’ accomplish these things knows of the difference between the two, and the sense that these bodily acts are the real ‘goal’ and not simply “outward manifestations” of an internal state. (Arguably certain modern dispositions have led us so far in this line of thinking—that what you are/do “on the inside” is who you really are—that we have become incapable of seeing that bodily/liturgical actions actual accomplish things.)

Anger: after the anointed, it has been perhaps the unifying theme of this Psalm. The nations began in anger. The Lord’s laughter emerged from a sense of anger and his words spoke and expressed a sense of outrage. Here, the nations are warned that unless they kiss the son of the Lord, the son’s anger could flare up and consume them. Anger here is the expression (as it was with the Lord’s laughter) of a perceived injustice. It is an entirely appropriate and called for response. It protects the proper order of the world; those suffering from injustice can only hope that their plight would cause anger to well up in those who have the power to change it. A king is supposed to be angered by injustice. He is supposed to “look after the widow and the orphan”. As a shepherd, if a lion is set to devour one of his sheep, his anger is but an expression of love for those he is charged to protect. The fact that it flares up “quickly” then simply means it doesn’t tarry or wait. It is immediate in its protection.

This final phrase may be the reason the Psalm was seen as simply the conclusion to Psalm 1. “Blessed” here makes a comeback. Now, though, a man is blessed if his “protection is in the anointed”. The Torah and the anointed meet and they both, together, become a source of happiness: the one, as a source of water, the other, as a source of protection.