Ps 2:9

Ps. 2.9

Diag.

You shall  /  break them  /  with an iron rod
Like a potter’s vessel  /  you shall  /  pulverize them

These words work as a summary of verses 1-6.
1)       As we have noted, the nations represent to the Psalmist and the reader beings without substance. They are a complete conundrum, an absurdity. One would be tempted to call them a paradox but that would give them too much weight; a paradox always represents a truth. These men and nations are nothing but a source of laughter and mockery. Here, they come to represent the fragile “potter’s vessel”. Their words betrayed their sense of strength (they thought they could tear off the fetters and shackles) but to the Psalmist and the reader their words are vapid and illusory.
a.       There may be here another image here that acts as a source for a story in the book of Jeremiah. At one point God tells Jeremiah to watch a potter molding his clay. While it is soft the ‘maker’ can form it in any way he chooses. If the clay doesn’t conform to his design he can ‘melt’ it back down and start over. The clay is, in this sense, responsive to the maker’s hands (even if not entirely ‘obedient’). However, God soon tells Jeremiah to call out the kings and princes of Israel/Jerusalem and to take with him a potter’s jar. He (Jeremiah) then tells them that Jerusalem is like the vessel and he shatters it into pieces.
                                                               i.      The idea here is that once the clay has hardened itself into a specific shape there is nothing left to do with a useless jar but to break it. Were it still clay it could be reformed, but now that it is ceramic, a useless pot serves no purpose.
b.       The nations, in this way, represent, as their words and actions testify, a hardened potter’s vessel. There is nothing left to do with them except to break them. One church father put it this way: the sun’s warmth hardens clay and softens wax. The effect of the sun is dependent on the nature of the object warmed, not on the sun itself. As verses 1-3 make clear, the nations have made themselves into obstinate and hardened clay by the heat of God’s glory in his anointed. In their jealousy and envy they are seeking to root out or pillage this glory for themselves.
c.       And yet, this has made them incredibly fragile and subject to destruction. There is in this something of which to take note:
                                                               i.      It points to the fact that any act of rebellion against God and his anointed is encompassed by an ever greater (or ‘prior’) act of power and control. What I mean this: if it is the fact that the nation’s rebellion against the Lord and his anointed is itself their hardening into a fragile (and useless) vessel, then every action bears its own consequences. It doesn’t operate independent but is always already an act accomplished within an even greater network of authority. In other words, when these nations act, their action actually controls them, puppet-like. Their rebellion ‘enacts’ them. And it ‘enacts’ them into a hardened vessel. When the nations thought to tear off their ‘fetters’ in an act of liberation and freedom, they were, in fact, only making themselves into a fragile potter’s vessel whose only use is destruction. One’s perceptions of one’s own actions are not the reality of those actions. One could picture these men, as they congregate, steadily and progressively becoming harder and harder until the fiery words of v. 6 explode upon their heads like the blast of a furnace and they become hardened vessels. It is this greater “framework” that will control.
1.       And, importantly, this Psalm is attempting to orient the reader to this ‘framework’ of the anointed. The Psalm is not attempting to show us a “truth” of life or some abstract ‘standard to live by’. It is attempting to show us the anointed one. It is attempting to implant within us the proper response to the Enthroned One and to his anointed so as to focus us, completely, on this king.
d.       Just as the laughter and booming words of vs. 4-6 leveled everything in its hearing, so too does the “rod of iron” pulverize these vessels. They are both as absolute and as complete.
e.       Crucial too is the fact that the words spoken to the nations were words spoken directly by the Enthroned One. Here, they are the words of a father addressed to his son, privately, and not in public. They are delivered to us by the anointed son, not directly by his father. The Enthroned One’s words focused, completely, on his anointed. Here, it is as if the Enthroned One now turns to his son and instructs him on how to accomplish his desired subjugation of the earth. These are fatherly words of instruction and authority. “Just ask….” “You shall….”. This cannot be stressed enough: it is this dialogue that accomplishes the establishment of justice upon the earth and not an ‘unmediated’ word of the Enthroned One/Lord. It is the anointed one, in the power granted to him in his being begotten by his father that will break the nations; yes, his authority is grounded upon his being begotten, but, simultaneously, yes, he really is the son and therefore has an identity that is not simply a mirage or mask of the father. It does not say the Enthroned One will break them. “You (the anointed) shall break them/pulverize them…”
                                                               i.      This anointed one is not simply a cipher, symbol, metaphor, mask or mirage of the Enthroned One. He is his son, begotten by him, and one who (like Abraham and Moses) is a ‘friend’ of his father. No son is simply a metaphor of his father, even though he obediently enacts his wisdom.
                                                             ii.      The reader has been delicately and consciously prepared for this revelation of the anointed. A space has been yawning since the first verse for someone to fill. The shout of the Lord only intensified this distance for the reader. Now, the space is filled, and it could not be filled out more fully than in one who is “in the image” of his father: the anointed son re-presenting his father.
f.         The “shout” of verse 6 now becomes in the hand of the son a “rod of iron”.