Ps. 89.26 (the son of God)

He will declare of me / “You are my Father
my God / and the Rock of my salvation.” 

In the previous reflection we pointed out how the ‘rule of Yhwh through David’ was not by way of a gift of power, but by way of the direct reign of Yhwh. Yhwh is the one who will place David’s hands ‘on the sea and river’ and, consequently, it is Yhwh who, through David, will bring order to the kingdom. On the one hand, as we saw, that marked a distinction between David and Yhwh: David is not divine but rules entirely within the realm of Yhwh’s governance. However, on the other hand, what I think is more in focus is the grandeur of this claim. What I mean is this: that the note does not fall on the ‘poverty of David’ but on the fact that Yhwh is now making himself amazingly present to his people through a direct covenantal relationship with David. It is the proximity established by the covenant, not the distance. 

That is where we find ourselves in this verse as well—the direct reign of Yhwh through David is not envisioned in one what is the most intimate of possibilities for an Israelite: the king’s adoption by Yhwh as his ‘son’ and, in the next verse, his ‘firstborn’. As with the previous verse, there is a subtle reality being affirmed here: David must be ‘adopted’; he is not inherently divine but, only through the covenant, made ‘kin’ to Yhwh. The dominate note, however, is the amazing reality being affirmed: that David is being brought into Yhwh’s family, and adopted as such in an entirely privileged manner (the ‘firstborn’). In other words, the covenant established with David will be as strong as a father’s concern for his own ‘firstborn’ son which, in the biblical stories, is by far the most solid of any human relationship, especially when it comes to ‘passing on’ the father’s presence/blessing. 


We also need to hear in these words the words of Israel’s covenant with Yhwh, but now intensified in David. In Deuteronomy the words of the covenant are, “You will be my people and I will be your God”. Here, it is made more personal. No longer is it ‘my people’, but ‘my son’, nor is it ‘my God’ but ‘my Father’. As the covenant ‘contracts’ from the nation to an individual (from Israel to David) it also intensifies in intimacy . 

It is this reality that will cast such a dark shadow over the lament portion of the psalm. What we realize is that the pain engendered by Yhwh’s abandonment of the covenant is not merely his turning away from an ‘agent’ of his, or a regent, but the abandonment of a firstborn son. This is the anguish the people experience when they witness the collapse of the Davidic house, and it is a terrible one. Again, ‘my god, my god, why have you forsaken me…?’ We might say this is Israel’s crucifixion.