Ps. 45.11 (the queen: the beauty of and for the king)

“And the king / longs for / your beauty - for he is your lord – so give him respect.” Again, we witness the ‘containment of the queen’ within the ambit of the king. The king was also described as ‘beautiful’ when he was first addressed by the psalmist. His beauty, however, was universal in the sense that it was not applied directly to any one person (i.e., he was not beautiful to someone, but to everyone). In this regard his beauty was indicative, and flowed from, his universal power to rule, which, itself, was rooted in the divine appointment. Here, the princess/queen is beautiful but hers is the sole ‘possession’ or object of the kings. The contrast is instructive. The king is ‘beautiful’ whereas the queen is longed for by the king. It doesn’t say, for example, “you are beautiful and the king longs for your beauty.” Her beauty’s reference begins and ends within the sphere of the king’s desire. This is confirmed by the immediately following phrases: “he is your lord so give him respect.” These are very important as they cabin and give shape to the description of the queen’s beauty. Again, unlike the king’s beauty, which shows forth his lordly capacity, the queens beauty is one which ‘fills in’ or is ‘subservient to’ the king. A second important point to make, however, is that she is an object of desire to the king. Like Adam first seeing his Eve and saying “finally…”, so too does the queen, through her beauty, function as a completion to the king. Although she is contained by the king, she does provide him a necessary ingredient to his realization that he could not provide to himself; she must be ‘other’ to him in her beauty in order to complete him in his role as king. In this sense, he delights in her as other. It is significant that there are only two instances in the psalm where the king is portrayed as either passive or as not containing within himself the power of his own perfection: when he is described as being “enthroned” and here, as longing for the queen (as much as it seems to try and qualify this by the follow up phrases). In both of these we see the king as needing to be a ‘servant’, as needing a complimentary power in order to bring him to his realization. As we will se later, the queen will provide that to the king through her ability to provide him children and be the one through whom, literally, the covenant passes.