Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
king and the people wickedly rejected this singular blessing of God, the kingdom was often shaken through their own default, afterwards impaired, and finally ruined. Yet God, to confirm his oracle concerning the perpetuity of this kingdom, ceased not all along to cherish and preserve some hope, by contending against their ingratitude. Besides, when mention is made of David's haters and oppressors, it is intimated, that this throne will not be privileged with exemption from annoyances and troubles, inasmuch as there will be always some who will rise up in hostility against it, unless God set himself in opposition to them.
Psalm 89:24-29
24. My truth and my mercy shall be with him: and in my name shall his horn be exalted. 25. And I will set his hand in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers. 1022 26. He shall cry to me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation. 27. I will also make him my first-born, 1023 higher than the kings of the earth. 28. And I will keep my mercy for him for ever, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. 29. And I will establish his seed for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.
24 My truth and my mercy shall be with him. God shows that he will continue to exercise without intermission that grace which he had manifested towards David at first. These words are as if he had said, that to prove himself faithful to his word, he would be always gracious and bountiful. Thus We see that God, not only at the outset, furnished David with testimonies of his goodness, but that he always continued to deal with him in the same merciful way. This has a reference to the whole Church of Christ, so that the divine goodness is manifested in the whole course of our salvation, and not only at our first entrance upon it, as these shufflers and sophists the Sorbonists foolishly talk. 1024 The horn of David denotes here, as it often does in other places, his glory, dignity, and power. The meaning therefore is, that by the grace of God, this kingdom shall always flourish and prosper.
"The allusion appears to us to be made to a cruel and unjust creditor, who exacts not only his just debts, but some exaggerated demand, with usurious interest, which was not permitted." — Williams.
This means, that David's power should extend from the Mediterranean, or Great Sea, to the river Euphrates. Gejerus and Le Clerc have illustrated this passage from a speech addressed to Alexander by the Scythian ambassadors, in Q. Curtius, 50, 7." Si Dii habitum corporis tui aviditati animi parem esse voluissent, orbis te non caperet; altera manu orientem, altera occidentem contingeres." "If the gods had given thee a body proportionable to thy insatiable mind, the world would not be able to contain thee. Thou wouldst stretch forth one hand to the furthest extremities of the east, and the other to the utmost west."