Psalm 2:6

“Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” Psalm 2:6 KJV

“God’s Anointed is appointed and shall not be disappointed.” – Charles Spurgeon

God the Father is here speaking in response to the kings of earth and their opposition to His Son Jesus Christ. In the third verse they say, concerning the LORD and His Anointed, “let us break their bands asunder and cast away their chords from us” (vs2-3). God replies, “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion”. He is saying, in effect, you have your plans and I have mine. He is saying, I will have my Son to be King, my counsel shall stand, I will do my good pleasure (Isaiah 46:10).

The word “set” is translated from a Hebrew word which refers to the installment or coronation of kings. The word is translated as “princes” in Psalm 83:11 and other places. Jehovah is saying, “I have crowned my King”. He calls Christ “my King” not in the sense that He is under His rule but in the sense that He has given Him dominion, glory and a kingdom (Dan. 7:13-14; John 5:22; Ps. 110:1; Acts 2:36). When the end comes Christ will deliver up that kingdom again to His Father that God may be all in all (1Cor. 15:24-28). Notice also that this installing of Christ as King is in the past tense. It was already done. God willed this in His eternal decree from eternity past just as He pre-determined the cross and redemption (Acts 2:23; Rev. 13:8). What God wills is done in eternity before it is done in time.  Jesus Christ has been made King of Kings by His Father and no man can undo what God has done. That is the message of this verse and that is the message of the Church! On the Day of Pentecost Peter proclaimed, “…let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

Let’s look now at the latter half of the verse. The “holy hill of Zion” was a specific hill in Jerusalem upon which David built his royal palace after dispossessing it from the Jebusites. It probably came to be called the “holy hill” after David brought the ark of the covenant there, where it would preside until the building of the Temple (2Chron. 5:2). The title was expanded to include Mt. Moriah on which the Temple was later built and also sometimes refers to the city of Jerusalem as a whole. In Psalm 132:13-14 it says, “the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation.” The Lord says, “This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.” God’s resting and dwelling there probably referred to His presence abiding in the temple there, but now there is no temple or seat of God’s theocracy in Jerusalem. How has God chosen Zion to be his habitation forever then? The Church has become God’s Mt. Zion (1Peter 2:6), heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22, Gal. 4:26) and the holy temple of God (1Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21). Christ has been constituted King, Head and Lord over the Church! In 1Peter 2:6 Peter quotes Isaiah 28:16 where God says, “Behold I lay in Sion a chief cornerstone…” Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Peter interprets the chief cornerstone to be Christ and Sion to be the Church – not the physical hill. This is clear in the fifth verse when he says that Christians are lively stones in the spiritual house of the Church, built on the cornerstone of Christ (Eph. 2:20). So, Zion has ultimately come to be a title of the church in redemptive history, and I can’t help but think this is what is in view in Psalm 2:6.

We must always remember that Christ is as much King as He is Savior, or Shepherd. We must accept Him for all that He is. Thomas Watson writes, “Many would have Christ their Savior, but not their prince; such as will not have Christ to be their king to rule over them, shall never have his blood to save them.” We cannot have a half Christ. He must be bowed to as well as believed on.  We owe Him our allegiance, service and obedience.