Ps. 72.12-14 (compassionate sovereignty)

For he will / rescue the needy / who cry for deliverance
the poor / and the one with no helper
He will / look with compassion / upon the weak and needy
and their lives he will deliver
from oppression / and violence / he will redeem their lives
and their blood / will be precious / in his eyes. 

The congregation of kings are entirely responsive to the king of God: they are either robbed of honor (and are shamed) or they bring the king gifts. All of them are unified through their recognition of his dominion; they are all ‘before his face’. As to the kings, in other words, the focus in how the king’s sovereignty interacts with their dominion. Here, by contrast, when the psalmist turns his gaze away from the highest to the lowest, he sees God’s movement, God’s interaction with their complete lack of ‘dominion’ (their powerlessness). Every person mentioned in these lines stand in complete contrast to the kings: “needy who cry for deliverance”; “poor and the one with no helper”; and “the weak and the needy”. Unlike the movement toward God by the kings, God moves toward these lowly ones. These have no individual identities like the kings of Sheba and Seba. They are the mass of the forgotten. Further to the point: when the kings of the earth ruled these people, they were covered with a need for deliverance; they had “no helper”; they were “weak and needy”; they were subjected to “oppression and violence”; and, most profoundly, their blood was deemed worthless. They were the mass of the forgotten. Now, however, with the establishment of the rightful king, who mediates God’s concern, these forgotten will be remembered. The king will step into the role that before was uninhabited (and should have been filled by the previous shepherd/kings): he will be the kinsman and father that will “redeem” them. This is an aspect of his rule “from the River to the ends of the earth” as his sovereignty over all is manifested precisely by its ability to fill in every gap with compassion and deliverance.  It is a crucial insight. ‘Before God’ the high bring gifts, while the low are deemed precious (“…every mountain made low and every valley raised up”). The king’s sovereignty is not displayed merely by his power to re-align all powers ‘before him’, but in his compassionate ‘lifting up’ of the lowly and oppressed