Why have the nations raged and the peoples are meditating vanity? The kings of the earth set themselves; yea, the rulers have plotted together against Jehovah and His Anointed One, saying, We will break their bands in two, and throw off their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall mock at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger, and He will terrify them in His wrath; Yea, I have anointed My king on Zion, My holy Mount. I will declare concerning the statute of Jehovah: He said to Me, You are My Son. Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give the nations as Your inheritance; and the uttermost parts of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall smash them like a potter’s vessel. And now be wise, O kings; be taught, O judges of the earth: Serve Jehovah with fear; yea, rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all the ones seeking refuge in Him! (Psalm 2:1-12)
“To have power,” in reference to “over the nations,” means to scatter in reference to evils; thus there is an adaptation of words to their subjects. It is said that evils will be scattered by the Lord, for the Lord scatters evils by means of truths. He first discovers them to man by means of truths, and when man acknowledges the evils, the Lord scatters them. …the Lord alone does this… “Nations and peoples” are often mentioned in the Word, and those who know nothing of the spiritual or internal sense of the Word, believe that peoples and nations are to be understood. But “peoples” mean those who are in truths, or in the contrary sense those who are in falsities, and “nations” those who are in goods, or in the contrary sense, those who are in evils. And as such are meant by “peoples” and by “nations,” so abstractly from persons “peoples” mean truths or falsities, and “nations” goods and evils; for the true spiritual sense is abstracted from persons, spaces, times, and like things, that are proper to nature. (Apocalypse Explained 175a)
The second Psalm opens with a universal question that all those in the spiritual life have asked many times…
Why have the nations raged and the peoples are meditating vanity?
This question comes from out of the struggle to live a life in keeping with what the Word teaches. For no sooner than we make an effort to have what is spiritual rule over the habitual ways of thinking and feeling that belong to the natural man – then things are stirred up within us. There are spiritual forces that have a vested interest in the false sense of self that we carry, and so seek to keep anything which supports it in place. So when we choose to not walk in the council of the ungodly, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful (Psalm 1), through walking, standing and sitting in the light of the Word instead, then all that is opposed to the Lord within the natural mind resists this. We enter then into a inner battle, to let go of the old and accept the new.
As negative emotional states begin to be stirred up within us, they bring to light the destructive patterns of thought which stand against promptings to affirmatively respond to our understanding of the Word. These thoughts fill our minds with vain reasonings that justify the native sense of self and what it values and loves. At times we can feel swamped and lost in the midst of this battle. We find that there is a part of us which seeks to change; to be rid of defensive ways of relating to others; to be freed from negative emotional states. But no sooner than we acknowledge the need to make positive changes in our life – we are caught up in all too familiar habitual responses. Unwanted feelings dominate our being and negative inner self talk fills our headspace, or as the Psalm puts it, the inner nations rage and we get dragged down into vain thoughst that populate or people our natural mind. Confronted with this we may well ask the question…
Why do the nations within us rage and the peoples within us get caught in vain meditations, when all we want is to live a life in obedience to the Word?
The difficulty of course lies in the fact that while we may want to live more fully in the Word, the identity that we have constructed for ourselves through our life in the world is not interested in spiritual things. This identity, that for much of our life we have called our ‘self‘, is really a false persona which holds that the things that present to our external senses are what are real. It’s a sense of self that places us in the world around us and keeps us identified with it. It prevents us from seeing that the real world where changes have to take place, as far as eternal spiritual things are concerned, is the world within us, the world made up of various beliefs and attitudes that we have taken ownership of as our ‘self‘.
This false persona is easily recognised for it is that within us which is concerned with getting its own way. It is constantly being offended, loves to put itself above others, spends its time in mindless inner talk that has no grounding in what’s truly important from an eternal perspective, and is obsessed with its petty likes and dislikes. This self is frequently distracted by whatever is presenting in the moment and as such has no real permanence. This can be seen in that it is constantly shifting from one opinion to the next in an effort to get the most out of the situations and circumstances that it finds itself in.
The Word is provided so that we can have built within us a new, permanent real sense of self for such a self can only develop when it is founded on spiritual truths. So when light from the truths of the Word begin to reveal the state of the native sense of self, then the evils and falsities of the natural mind that make up that self become disturbed and gather to resist any exposure that will uncover its disordered state. This false persona is what is meant here by the nations that rage and the people who meditate vanity.
In verse two we read that the…
The kings of the earth set themselves; yea, the rulers have plotted together against Jehovah and His Anointed One,
The kings of the earth that set themselves against Jehovah are the false beliefs which form arguments to keep negative attitudes in place, particularly when we are challenged by the Word to commit ourselves more fully to living a spiritual life. The rulers that have plotted together are the selfish attitudes which seek only the interests of the native self and blind us to seeing the need to persevere with the Word and use it as the guide for our daily life. These elements, we are told, conspire against Jehovah and His Anointed, against what is genuinely good and true. For the Divine Good is what is meant by the term Jehovah and the Divine Truth is what is meant by His Anointed. These together are the Word for the Word itself is the Divine Love and Wisdom in human form and as such, it alone is able to deliver us from the evils and falsities that make up the false self that we are so often identified with.
This presence of Jehovah, the Lord, in the Word when it is being applied to life, is the reason the inner nations rage and the people meditate vanity. But verse 3 tells us what is required if we are to live a spiritual life, we are to…
break their bands in two, and throw off their cords from us.
In some translations this reads as if it is the kings of the earth and the rulers saying they will break and throw off the things of the Lord but the word saying has been added for it is not in the original Hebrew. And so the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity make it clear that it is those who are being regenerated who are speaking, not the false beliefs and selfish attitudes. In The Inner Meaning Of the Prophet and Psalms 252 when commenting on the inner meaning of this verse it reads,
but men should separate themselves from these, because they are nothing before the Lord
Also in the prophet Isaiah we are told that a true spiritual life involves loosing the bands of wickedness (58:6).
To not be able to see that it is the Word alone which is capable of doing this for us, is to be lost in the vain plots of our ego or proprium. But those who look to the Word and see that when they are identified with their proprium this separates them from the Lord, are those who experience its power to break their bands, to disconnect with what keeps evil and falsity alive and active within them. The things of the natural man that make up the false persona are nothing but dust before the goods and truths of the Word. But for us to see this, so that it has a real impact on the quality of our life, we have to be in the Word as often as we can and be working with it in our daily life. Then we shall see that those things that seemed to have so much power over us are powerless in the face of its truths. This is the idea contained in the next verse which reads…
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall mock at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger, and He will terrify them in His wrath;
Of course, the Lord mocks no one nor is He ever angry or wrathful. The Lord is Divine Love and this love is constant and never changes. So the idea of anger or wrath in relation to the Lord is said from the perspective of what is evil and false for when love approaches, it is felt as something negative and destructive of its life. Similarly, the feeling of being mocked or laughed at is how evil and false states of mind experience goodness and truth when it enters and exposures them. Such are the warped perceptions of the native proprium in the face of the Word.
In verse 6 the Lord declares:
Yea, I have anointed My king on Zion, My holy Mount.
This king is the Divine Human of the Lord, which is the Word, for the Word is the infinite Divine presenting Itself in a form that can be received into finite human minds. It is said to be anointed on the Zion, a holy Mount because the Word is founded on, and comes forth from the Divine Love which, being the highest or most elevated form of love, is described as a holy mount, a holy mountain.
This truth is a remarkable statement. The Word has the Divine Love as its foundation and so must give expression to this. How wonderful then are the truths of the teachings for Spiritual Christianity that make this ever clearer for us. Of the Word the Lord declares in verse 7…
You are My Son. Today I have begotten you.
Today refers to the perpetual moment. This is every moment, for in every moment we are given the opportunity to draw from the Word Divine truths born of Divine Love which are called My Son. These are born in the minds of those who seek the Lord in the Word and who love it by meditating upon it day and night (Psalm 1) as they use it in their daily life.
Psalm two teaches that those who are engaged in genuine spiritual work know what to ask for. This is because this kind of work develops a person’s spiritual perception and when we are more acutely attuned to the Word, we will hear the Lord’s voice speaking through our thoughts and meditations saying….
Ask of Me, and I will give the nations as Your inheritance; and the uttermost parts of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall smash them like a potter’s vessel. And now be wise, O kings; be taught, O judges of the earth: Serve Jehovah with fear; yea, rejoice with trembling.
The Word instructs us here what we are to ask for. We are to ask for the nations as our inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for our possession. This of course speaks of things within us, not of actual nations and parts of the earth in the external, material world. Our inheritance and possession is of a spiritual quality and spiritual things are the internal things of the mind. So to ask for this is to be in the effort to have the principles of the Word rule over all the emotional and intellectual states of our minds. To break them with a rod of iron is to live in the power of natural truths of the Word understood in the light of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, for these are able to break down, false perspectives and self centred motives. The Word is able to smash and scatter (AE 175) the false vessels that have been built up in the natural mind over the course of our life.
And now be wise, O kings; be taught, O judges of the earth: Serve Jehovah with fear; yea, rejoice with trembling.
We are to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. This means that our lives are to be dedicated to what is good and to confess what is true. To serve the Lord with fear doesn’t mean to cower before Him, rather in the spiritual sense it means to pursue only what is good or loving. This state is one which holds within it a holy fear of anything that would corrupt or destroy what is of the Lord within us.
In the final verse, the very basis for a healthy spiritual life is revealed. If we seek wholeness then we must…
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. (Psalm 2:1-12)
The Son, as we have seen is the Word, Divine truths that come forth from the Divine love, and to kiss another is to be joined to them. Therefore to kiss the Son is to have our life united to the Word. That part of us that is not responsive to the Word feels truths as something opposed to it and this is described as anger. God, when viewed through the proprium, is seen as a judge who holds us guilty, who only seeks to condemn us and take away our liberty and pleasure. As we saw earlier, where anger and wrath are attributed to the Lord, what is described are not qualities of Divine Love but are instead a description of how those lower things in us see the Lord when the light of truth shines on what is opposed to the heavenly life, on what our proprium finds delightful and entices us into.
To seek the Lord then is to work to have the influence of these lower things broken in two so that the evils and falsities that bind us might be smashed and scattered like a potter’s vessels under the rod of iron power of the Word This happens for those who put their trust in the Word and lean not to their own understanding…
Blessed indeed are those who flee to the Word for refuge…
Blessed are all the ones seeking refuge in Him!