Ps. 72.15 (Epiphany)

May he live!
Let gold of Sheba / be given to him
let the peoples pray / for him continually
let them bless him / through the day. 

From the king’s outward movement toward the poor and the needy, the psalm now shifts back again to the king becoming the object—of life, gold, prayer and blessing. It largely summarizes what we have already reflected upon. However, the condensing of these themes offers us a way of seeing how intimately tied together these realities are. The perpetuity of the king, is matched by his world wide acknowledgment, which is met by prayer and blessing of “all the peoples”. The importance of this must be highlighted: that the king’s being endowed with God’s ‘righteousness and justice’ lifts him up into the sphere of God’s eternal forever (“May he live!”). The covenant with the king is his entrance into this realm and it is his guarantee by oath that God will maintain him there. It is, within that realm of God’s covenantal presence, that the king’s perpetuity establishes him as the world-king. Only a king who has, through God’s covenantal power, moved beyond death, can be a world-king. Only this king can become the object of the world’s gifts and tribute. The contours of the king’s perpetuity now take on the contours of world-wide kingdom (“Let gold of Sheba be given him!”).
He becomes the vessel of the world’s honor and beauty. This ‘gift-giving’ is obviously more than mere ‘respect’. It is the ‘wealth of the nations’. It is the handing over, by the kings of this world (all the powers summed up), of the honor that, in this king, reflects the uniqueness of God himself. In this way, the varied wealth of the world finds its home. As is also clear, they are the physical ‘prayers’ of the kings, for now, from the ‘high’ of the king the psalms shifts to the ‘low’ of “the peoples” who have no gold but do have ‘prayers and blessing’. This ‘perpetuity’ of the king, although one granted by entering into the realm of God, is also something that is held up ‘from below’. The king’s ‘perpetuity’ is buttressed by the ‘continuous’ prayers “of the peoples”. And, “through the day” they bless him. They solidify him in his reign through their concern for him. God’s concern for the king is met by the perfect concern of the people for the king. In this way the king becomes the ‘hinge’ between heaven and earth (very similar to the Temple itself). He becomes the vessel of God’s righteousness and justice and the vessel of the people’s prayers and blessing—these two aspects are the ‘ingredients’ of the king as in him peace between heaven and earth is found in their twin blessings. When the gold of the nations are delivered to the king, the kingdom has arrived and begun.