Ps. 72.2 (the king and God's reconciliation)

May he judge / your people / with righteousness
and your poor / with justice. 

This is the reason for the petition—that, upon God’s righteousness and justice being handed over to the king, he immediately turns to God’s people and dispenses it to them. The transition is without pause—the king is utterly faithful and responsive to the profound power now placed at his disposal. They (God’s righteousness and justice) were given to be given. This is made in a rather profound way by the repeated use of the word “your”, now applied to “your people” and “your poor”. In the first verse, this applied to “your justice” and “your righteousness”. Now, we see that the “people and the poor” are just as much a possession to Yhwh as his very own attributes. And yet, what is clear is that God’s possessions (his people and poor) are currently in a state of extreme disunity. They are like children without a father; family members without someone to redeem them. It is into this ‘gap’ that the king now stands, as father-kinsman. The king is the single individual through whom the attributes of God and the possession of God will be reconciled and joined together. The king will be the one through whom God brings his own back to himself. The king will be the one through whom God will mediate his fatherhood, redeeming his lost kin (vs. 14). 

A second point—this verse begins the long series of “May he….”. As we said in the previous reflection, what the first verse summarizes in an incredibly compact way will now be explicated in a myriad of forms. In this we find an important insight: that God’s gifts are profusive, prodigal and explosive. Indeed, as we will see, they are generative. We might say—they are infinite storehouses of power and life and, once unleashed, continue to expand, unable to be contained. The first verse leads to, at least, fifteen forms of life-giving power in the remainder of the psalm encompassing the people, the land and their enemies, all of which are not just ‘set to right’ but extravagantly blessed and made fruitful.