“Then / may your right hand / show you / wondrous
deeds – your arrows / sharpened – peoples fall / beneath you – in the midst /
of the king’s enemies.” In an almost mythic manner (Achilles-like) the king is
here portrayed with superhuman strength and ability. The fact that the king
displays “wondrous deeds” by his “right hand” is to strike us as like those
deeds accomplished by God in exodus: as being able in their sheer force and
power to evoke dread and awe in the king’s enemies. The ‘arrows’ are now to be
understood as in tandem with the ‘sword’: from a long range the king can now,
with fearful accuracy, fell his opponents. The point, of course, is not the war
per se but the glory inherent to the king as a warrior that heightens the noble
beauty displayed in the wedding ceremony. It is, in other words, his authority
and ability to enact, precisely and without hesitation, the kingly role: first,
through his “lips” of justice, here, through his purity in battle. In none of
these does one taste a residue of fault or imperfection. Again, it is as if
Adam within the garden were commanding the forces of Israel and judging it, the
“most beautiful of all human beings”.
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