Thou wilt add days to the days of the king: his years even to generation and generation. (Psalm 60:7 DR)
In the ancient world there was often a very close connection between the king and his subjects in terms of head and body, such that the virtues (and vices) of the king were reflected on the people. We can see this quite evidently in the Old Testament where the fortunes of God’s people are wholly interwoven with the fidelity or faithlessness of the king.
One notable example is when king David as head and shepherd of his people conceived the wicked notion to take a census of his people, which even his most cynical advisors warned him against (cf. 2 Samuel 24:3). What is fascinating is that the sacred writer attributes this prompting to God’s anger against the people of Israel (cf. 2 Samuel 24:1), which is ministrated through Satan’s wiles (cf. 1 Chronicles 21:1). But this anger is directed not immediately at the people but at their head, which is David, which is why he was the one who faced this temptation. Presumably if he had resisted it then good would have resulted, but instead the consequences were that David was given a choice of three different punishments:
three years of famine
three months of a devastating war
three days of plague
David ultimately chose #3 as he reasoned that this was the option which the Lord would directly bring about, and was the only one in which he could hope for mercy:
I am on every side in a great strait: but it is better for me to fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are many, than into the hands of men. (1 Chronicles 21:13 DR)
As David witnesses the destruction wrought by the plague, he speaks of the connection between king and people, desiring that God’s anger fall only on him:
And David said to God: Am not I he that commanded the people to be numbered? It is I that have sinned: it is I that have done the evil: but as for this flock, what hath it deserved? O Lord my God, let thy hand be turned, I beseech thee, upon me, and upon my father's house: and let not thy people be destroyed. (1 Chronicles 21:17 DR)
When the Psalmist speaks of adding “days to the days of the king,” he thus speaks not only of the king but of the people of whom the king is the head. For while their is a distinction between the head and the body, they are also tightly integrated and the former often stands in for the latter.
But there is a prophetic cue here, for while it might be reasonable to ask for the extension of life for the king (cf. 2 Kings 20:1-6), the expansion of the thought in the second half of this passage goes beyond mere years and into eternity, which is what the expression “generation to generation” gets at.
To be sure, it was not uncommon in the ancient world to speak hyperbolically of the king living forever as a form of honorific, such as when the prophet Daniel addresses king Darius from the lion’s den (cf. Daniel 6:21). But as the sacred writer notes at the end of the same chapter:
Now Daniel continued unto the reign of Darius, and the reign of Cyrus the Persian. (Daniel 6:28 DR)
The prophetic cue comes from the recognition that the king of Israel will certainly not live forever, and even the kingdom itself is not promised absolutely to endure forever as a temporal kingdom (cf. Psalm 131:12). The promise to David that his descendants would always sit on the throne was tied directly to their fidelity to His commandments, and their failure in this regard brought the kingdom to an end. But since the promise to David was an eternal promise, its prophetic fulfillment is not in the continuance of a temporal kingdom but in an eternal kingdom which is marked by perfect fidelity to God’s will in the true King, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who as Eternal Word and Son of God reigns forever and Whose kingdom has no end. St. Bellarmine notes:
[This] Psalm is not applicable to David as king, but to Christ as king; for David did not live more than seventy years, nor did the sovereignty remain in his family. The eternity, then, of both king and kingdom, foretold in the Scriptures, is accomplished in Christ alone, for “There will be no end of his kingdom,” [Luke 1] “And he, rising from the dead, shall die no more. Death shall have no more dominion over him.” [Romans 6] (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 60, 6.)
As King of Kings our Lord Jesus Christ is—like David for the people of Israel—Head of the Church (cf. Colossians 1:18) and thus those who are united to Him as (Mystical) Body to Head are united to that everlasting kingdom:
For everything which has an end, is short: but of this King are days upon days, so that not only while these days pass away, Christ reigns in His Church, but the Saints shall reign together with Him in those days which have no end. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 60, 7.)
The generations following David in the temporal kingdom of which he was the head were a shadow or a reflection of the reality that was to come which was greater and which fulfilled the promises that the Lord made to David. Just as the moon reflects the light of the sun but has no light of its own, so the temporal kingdom of David was mutable and temporary until it gave way to the fulness of light in our Lord Jesus Christ:
Of this generation and of the generation that shall be: of this generation which is compared to the moon, because as the moon is new, waxes, is full, wanes, and vanishes, so are these mortal generations; and of the generation wherein we are born anew by rising again, and shall abide for everlasting with God, when now no longer we are like the moon, but like that of which says the Lord, “Then the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” [Matthew 13:43] (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 60, 7.)
This animation was pretty simple but also—I think—pretty pretty. I wanted to focus on the word “generation” and found this great font to use (Fisterra) which had some nice terminals and swashes.
I started by placing the text into a precomp and making sure the precomp was cropped to bounds of the text. In the main composition I applied Motion Tile and extended it enough vertically to have enough text to fill the frame vertically. I then animated the Tile Center property to get the seamless loop.
Next I applied a gradient to the preocmp using Layer Styles. I would have used Gradient Ramp but for some reason After Effects in 2024 still doesn’t have a built-in effect to apply Gradient Ramps with more than two colors, which to be honest is a little pathetic. Layer Styles get around this, but have limitations which doesn’t make them as useful in some circumstances.
That gripe aside, I then duplicated the precomp and removed the Layer Style, placing this duplicate below the original and setting the original’s blend mode to Overlay. I applied Shadow Studio 3 to this new precomp and set the shadow to be an interior shadow. I then duplicated this new precomp and placed it below, setting the shadow to be a regular exterior shadow. The result of these three precomps was to create the stroke like effect on the edges of the text as well as the really nice coloring.
I finally added some glow and color correction.
Enjoy.
Thou wilt add days to the days of the king: his years even to generation and generation.
(Psalm 60:7 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: