Psalm 2:9
Zelda taught me that life is all about breaking pots
Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. (Psalm 2:9 DR)
We often flatter ourselves with our own estimations of our virtues and abilities, which we generally (and conveniently) evaluate as above-average. After all, when I’m driving a car I’m perfect at it, unlike all the other idiots on the road.
But life does have an inconvenient manner of exposing our weaknesses and over-estimation, usually by means of breaking us through tragedy and pain. Whether it is failure (which is never our own fault…) or sickness or any host of other maladies, these setbacks afford us the opportunity to take actual stock of our lives, to perhaps step outside of ourselves and see reality through something other than our own eyes. This rather foreign and unnatural frame of mind called humility is like being in traffic; we want everyone else to have it but rarely see the need for it ourselves.
The Psalmist continues to prophetically view the Incarnation of the Word of God, setting up a juxtaposition between the strength of His reign (iron) and the fragility of the nations and kings which set themselves against Him (clay). The Psalmist alludes to man’s origins from the dust of the ground, being formed from the clay of the earth into a living being. God’s molding and shaping of man is here reframed in the ability to break them in pieces, which provides further confirmation that the Psalmist is not speaking of merely an earthly king but is prophetically anticipating God in flesh in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The imagery of “breaking” the nations and kings as a potter’s vessel has further significance. In the garden God formed man from the clay of the earth according to His will; humanity was pliable in his spirit and will towards God, as it were, and was thus fashioned in God’s image and likeness. But sin brings a hardening, so to speak, of man’s will against God. It provides the illusion of strength and freedom, in that pursuing one’s own desires and following one’s own will seems to betoken fortitude and resilience. One might think of Milton’s disastrous portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost in which the infernal demon is portrayed in an almost sympathetic light, resolving against all odds to pursue his will and purpose.
By his sin man forms himself into a certain shape, as it were, and the continual pursual of his own will hardens that shape like clay which dries into the form of a vessel. And while there is a certain “strength” to that form, it now also becomes liable to be broken by something stronger than it. And unlike pliable clay which can reformed and molded into something else, a hardened vessel once broken can never be reformed.
There is thus a double significance to this passage. The nations and kings which set themselves against God have the outward trappings of power and strength, but God will break them by means of His appointed King, the very Son of God in flesh who will rule over the nations. They are broken by His kingdom, by the Rock which smashes them and grows to fill the whole world (cf. Daniel 2:34, 44).
But within the soul the vessel of sin is also broken, so that the heart hardened by sin can be replaced with a heart open to God’s will and desiring to follow His commandments. The prophet Ezekiel prophesies:
And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in the midst of you: and I will cause you to walk in my commandments, and to keep my judgments, and do them. (Ezekiel 36:26-27 DR)
St. Paul applies this prophecy of the New Covenant to Jesus’ Incarnation:
For this is the testament which I will make to the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will give my laws into their mind, and in their heart will I write them: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Hebrews 8:10 DR)
The rule of the nations is always transitory, for their rulers rule according to the pattern of the sinful mind of man. The laws they create are always imperfect and unable to effect righteousness in a nation. But the rule of Christ does not bring the outward transformation of nations by means of uprisings and political machinations, but through the transformation of the heart:
“You shall rule them with a rod of iron,” with inflexible justice, and “You shall break them like a potter's vessel” [Psalm 2:9]; that is, You shall break in them earthly lusts, and the filthy doings of the old man, and whatsoever has been derived and inured from the sinful clay. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 2, 8.)
For this animation I wanted to create a juxtaposition between the imagery of the rod of iron and the means by which our Lord accomplished this; that is, not by earthly assertions of power by by his Passion and death on the cross.
In a lot of classical artwork our Lord is depicted in His Passion as holding a reed. This is due to the Gospel accounts which narrate that He was given this reed as a way of mocking Him as King of the Jews; that is, it was intended as an ironic scepter. The fragility of the reed was meant to symbolize the Roman soldiers’ contempt for His claim to kingly rule.
However, it is in the very weakness of Christ that his power was manifested and through which redemption was accomplished, and it was this itself that eventually brought the rule of the empire which crucified Him to an end.
I found this great image and cut out the figure in Photoshop and then brought it into After Effects and precomped it as I knew I wanted to use Stretch on it, and the plugin is based on the pixel area of the layer it is applied to. I constrained the masks to the edges of the figure and then extended them out past the edge of the frame so as to have the pixels extend all the way. I modified the offset and other parameters until I found a look I liked.
Enjoy.
Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
(Psalm 2:9 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: