Adam was the first messiah-of-God, the king in the Garden-Temple. He was assigned to, like any king, protect the realm and its boundaries from impurity and, likewise, to spread the Garden-Temple outward, participating with Yhwh in this conquering of the chaotic environment—a perpetuating of Yhwh’s act of shaping-into-creation. Adam failed. He allowed the invasion and then he, instead of participating in Yhwh’s acts, joined with the serpent. In effect, he assigned creation over to the serpent, and his mission became fractured.
Yhwh began to mold the pieces back together—creating, and re-creating the Adamic image through the covenants. And the covenant partner perpetuated Adam’s primal and immediate failure—whether Noah or the people at the base of Sinai. Once they received their new creation or their new command, they immediately tainted it and disobeyed it. And the pattern continued.
But in David something new emerges (and something old). Yhwh’s covenant with David was wed to the building of the Temple. They were both caught up in the same moment and momentum. Yhwh would covenant and promise to “build David’s house” and David would, in turn, build Yhwh’s house. Kingship and Temple—Adam and the Garden. And, importantly, this covenant was made after David had, for the most part, brought peace to the land by driving out the enemies. He was doing what Adam was commanded to do—establishing a protected realm and borders and, thereby, creating the possibility of a sacred place for the Temple. It cannot be emphasized enough that the Temple and the Kingship rise and fall together, the Temple-Builder and the Temple.
An important insight here is that the Temple, for the King in particular, is a type of ‘home’. It is, as Psalm 2 emphasize, his “father’s house”. He draws the source of his authority and his blessing from the Temple—quite literally because the covenant power that maintains him and in line in the Forever of Yhwh is the same covenant power that undergirds the Temple. These are the “human” and the “divine” realms, a type of earth and heaven, coming together. When the King is in the Temple, we see the Adam in the Garden. The Cosmos is (re)obtaining its goal.
But more deeply still is the fact that when the King is in the Temple he is there in liturgy. He is there to offer to Yhwh—to either petition or to praise. It is an iconic image—and explosive one—of this Adam standing in the Presence. This Adam-becoming-Adam because he is Adam-with-his-Father giving his Father glory.
In this psalm we enter into one of the more important aspects of the King relationship with his Father—that of his Father giving him the Adam victory of maintaining the integrity of the Land and the safety of His house, the Temple. The king is surrounded. He is pressed in, hemmed in, and confined by his enemies. There is no way to break through and no escape. The nations, as agents of chaos, are swarming him, like bees, bent not simply on his destruction but on his and his nation’s defilement.
From within this sphere of confinement, though, the king calls upon the Name. In this situation—when the son-King, the Adam-of-God—is near defeat and the nation in him and represented by him is about to be overtaken, in that situation the Name is a weapon. It comes into the sphere of confinement, the Father stands next to his son, and within his Father’s presence he is given “spacious freedom”. The Name “wards off” the agents of chaos. He begins to create a boundary, an ever expanding boundary, around the King. For the forces of chaos and entropy, that were beginning to overcome his Image-son, are pushed back and creation begins to reassert itself. But it is not simply the creation of space and warding. It is also a flame—from the king, the Name-Presence consumes the nations around him. The swarm of bees are like thorns-bushes, instantly consumed. The sense here is not so much of battle as a type of atomic explosion beginning with the King, but an explosion of creation against the forces of death.
And as this explosion spreads, the king’s camps are made righteous. They are brought within this ever-expanding sphere of the Father. The victory makes them the righteous ones. From the king to the camps, righteousness spreads.
After the Victory, the king turns his face toward the Father’s home and heads to Jerusalem. He knows that his help ultimately came from the Temple. That is where help always comes from. The Temple is, in a very real sense, the Help and the Victory of Yhwh. It is the Place that makes every other place creation and cosmos. If Eden was to expand outward, edenizing the cosmos, the Temple is the same. And so the king makes his way there, to offer thanksgiving, to offer the todah sacrifice of thanks.
And as he approaches the Temple gates, as is always the case, only the righteous can enter. Here, the Victory has made the king, and his entourage, righteous. They are allowed in, allowed into the Presence that was present to them on the battlefield.
What happens within the Temple, though, is startling. The Adam-king recounts to Yhwh that he was a stone, rejected by the builders, but that Yhwh selected him and made him the cornerstone. From there, he moves into imagery of a “day” made by Yhwh and then speaks of Yhwh giving them “light.” Recall, the King is the Temple builder, but here Yhwh takes the ‘rejected’ king and builds him into a building. This ‘new building’ is then wed to the image of a new “day” and “light”. It is deeply significant: the Cosmos is beginning again, from the King’s rejection and “rebuilding”. Eden is being ‘rebuilt’, the primal “light” of the new and first day is again dawning—and it begins in and from the Victory. And it is being built in and through the Adam-son of Yhwh. (It is perhaps significant here that Yhwh “built” Eve from Adam’s side, in a way analogous to this new building being built from the King.) But we have to see the profound point here—unlike the first creation which originated from Yhwh’s will alone, without any sign of struggle, this new creation, temple and day comes from the King’s rejection. In other words, the King’s near defeat becomes the vehicle for the new creation, it’s engine.
The explosion of the Victory that emanates out from the King is therefore also understood as the explosion of a new Creation—it is a new building, a new day and a new light. And it is this newness that spreads the righteousness necessary to enter the Temple itself. The entire dynamic is profound—the same explosion that gives victory is the same one that makes righteous—the Presence makes righteous those who can then come to the Temple-Presence.
At this it is almost impossible to fully see Christ’s face shining through the psalm. Christ is the Second Adam, the one who gathers into himself all of the previous messiah’s Yhwh victories and unleashes them throughout his lifetime, culminating in his death, resurrection and ascension to the heavenly temple. He is the one rejected by the builders and yet given victory through his death—is given spacious freedom—and then made into the cornerstone of the rebuilt Temple. He is the one from whom the Father’s victory explodes outward, covering the Cosmos and making all righteous such that they can, after him, enter the heavenly Temple where he resides offering todah, thanksgiving sacrifices. He is the one from whom the new creation explodes outward—his rejection being used as the engine for its recreation. He is the one who begins the new, eighth day, the one that both completes the old creation in a Sabbath fulfillment and becomes the first day of the new creation. He is the one that the primal creation light now shines out from such that in the new creation there will be no need for lamps because he will be the radiant glory-face of God.
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