Psalm 95:10

Say ye among the Gentiles, the Lord hath reigned. For he hath corrected the world, which shall not be moved: he will judge the people with justice. (Psalm 95:10 DR)

In contrast to the gods of the nations who are demons and who only have dominion over specific peoples and geographies, the Psalmist declares that the Lord’s reign will be proclaimed among the Gentiles. That is, this kingdom is not like that of the so-called “gods” but extends across all of the world and even all of time. After all, of the Messiah of Whom this speaks, it says that He hath reigned, which indicates a prophecy of something that is to come but that will also already be. To say that He hath reigned is to say that He was and is reigning. St. Justin explains this manner of prophecy:

But when the Spirit of prophecy speaks of things that are about to come to pass as if they had already taken place, — as may be observed even in the passages already cited by me, — that this circumstance may afford no excuse to readers [for misinterpreting them], we will make even this also quite plain. The things which He absolutely knows will take place, He predicts as if already they had taken place. And that the utterances must be thus received, you will perceive, if you give your attention to them. The words cited above, David uttered 1500 years before Christ became a man and was crucified; and no one of those who lived before Him, nor yet of His contemporaries, afforded joy to the Gentiles by being crucified. But our Jesus Christ, being crucified and dead, rose again, and having ascended to heaven, reigned; and by those things which were published in His name among all nations by the apostles, there is joy afforded to those who expect the immortality promised by Him. (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 42.)

St. Justin predicates this passage on the crucifixion of our Lord and His reign thereby, wherein he reads: “Let them rejoice among the nations. The Lord has reigned from the tree.” In Latin the phrase “reigned from the tree” is “regnavit a ligno,” which is retained in the Old Latin used by the western Fathers up to St. Jerome, but not found in any extant manuscripts of the Septuagint.

According to St. Justin, this was a phrase that some of the Jews removed, although he is not specific about which manuscripts they removed it from, but presumably from the Hebrew. He explains this in his dialogue with Trypho:

And from the ninety-fifth Psalm they have taken away this short saying of the words of David: ‘From the wood.’ For when the passage said, ‘Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned from the wood,’ they have left, ‘Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned.’ (St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter LXXIII.)

He sees in this short phrase an obvious connection to the crucifixion, and explains how the passage even without the the phrase requires a reference to the Messiah:

Now no one of your people has ever been said to have reigned as God and Lord among the nations, with the exception of Him only who was crucified, of whom also the Holy Spirit affirms in the same Psalm that He was raised again, and freed from [the grave], declaring that there is none like Him among the gods of the nations: for they are idols of demons. (St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter LXXIII.)

Presumably Trypho would have been aware if this had been an obvious Christian interpolation or gloss in the Septuagint (as modern scholars tend to assume), yet in response he hedges, asserting that he doesn’t know if anything was removed or not, thinking it would be incredible if such a thing had occurred. Justin responds that it would be incredible, and would be worse than the setting up of the golden calf.

This phrase is also alluded to in the epistle of Barnabas, wherein the author explains how the red heifer of the Old Covenant is a type of Christ:

And why was the wool [placed] upon the wood? Because by wood Jesus holds His kingdom, so that [through the cross] those believing on Him shall live forever. (Epistle of Barnabas, Chapter 8.)

Tertullian links the prophecy of the reign of Christ “from the wood” (or from the tree) with prophecies from Isaiah showing that it comports with it perfectly:

“To us is given He whose government is upon His shoulder.” [Isaiah 9:6] Now, what king is there who bears the ensign of his dominion upon his shoulder, and not rather upon his head as a diadem, or in his hand as a sceptre, or else as a mark in some royal apparel? But the one new King of the new ages, Jesus Christ, carried on His shoulder both the power and the excellence of His new glory, even His cross; so that, according to our former prophecy, He might thenceforth reign from the tree as Lord. (Tertullian, Against Marcion, Book III, Chapter 19.)

St. Paul perhaps also makes allusion to this in his first epistle to the Corinthians, wherein the Lordship of Christ is connected to the cross as expressed in prophetic utterance:

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Corinthians 2:7-8 DR)

St. Augustine connects this reigning from the wood with the house built after the captivity, which is from the superscription in the first verse of this Psalm, for the house which is being built is the Body of Christ:

Christ already possesses regions where the Roman empire has never yet reached; what is as yet closed to those who fight with the sword, is not closed to Him who fights with wood. For “the Lord has reigned from the wood.” Who is it who fights with wood? Christ. With His cross He has vanquished kings, and fixed upon their forehead, when vanquished, that very cross; and they glory in it, for in it is their salvation. This is the work which is being wrought, thus the house increases, thus it is building: and that you may know, hear the following verses of the Psalm: see them labouring upon, and constructing the house. “O sing unto the Lord all the earth.” (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 95, 2.)

Earlier in his exposition St. Augustine speaks of the “woodiness” of the world and of the heart which has to be rooted out and cleared away so that the house of the Lord can be built, and this woodiness is the worship of idols and the rejection of God:

But he who builds a house, roots up the wood; and for this reason it was said, “While the house was being built, after the captivity.” For men were held captive under the devil, and served devils; but they were redeemed from captivity…

Thus because we are redeemed, the house is built after the captivity. And who are they who held us in captivity? Because they to whom it is said, “Declare His honour,” are the clearers of the wood: that they may root out the wood, free the earth from captivity, and build, and raise up, by declaring the greatness of the Lord's house. How is the wood of devils cleared away, unless He who is above them all be preached? All nations then had devils for their gods: those whom they called gods, were devils, as the Apostle more openly says, “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice unto devils, and not to God.” [1 Corinthians 10:20] Since therefore they were in captivity, because they sacrificed to devils, and on that account the whole earth had remained woody; He is declared to be great, and above all worldly praise. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 95, 5.)

This reign of Christ from the wood is thus intimately bound up with the Incarnation of our Lord, the establishment of His Church and His future coming for judgment.

There is an interesting juxtaposition between this passage and the previous one, for in the previous passage the earth is moved at the presence of the Lord, whereas here the earth shall not be moved. This distinction is borne out in the Lord’s correction of the world, which (as in the previous passage) can refer to both the Incarnation and the Second Coming.

In the Incarnation He “corrects” the world by His salvific death, triumphing over sin and death and establishing His Church, wherein is the conduit of grace to the world. The sanctification of her members, as they cooperate with God’s grace, turns men’s hearts to God—correcting them—and as the nations are brought under her rule they are likewise turned to God. The cross becomes a fixed point, as it were, for the world, so that it cannot be moved back into its errors and darkness:

The word “corrected” may also apply to correction of morals, and the wholesome reformations introduced by the Gospel, and then the meaning would be, that Christ should justly and deservedly reign upon earth, because, when it had gone astray, and fallen into the pernicious errors of the gentiles, he, by his evangelical precepts, that prohibit all manner of vices, corrected, reformed, and so established it that it can never possibly lapse into error, so long as his rules and precepts shall be observed. One precept alone, that of love, if properly observed, would correct the whole world, and keep it in profound peace. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 95, 10.)

In the Second Coming the world is judged, and this correction is the righting of all wrongs and the recompense of all good and evil. St. Paul links the resurrection of Christ from the dead to this final judgment:

Being therefore the offspring of God, we must not suppose the divinity to be like unto gold, or silver, or stone, the graving of art, and device of man. And God indeed having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declareth unto men, that all should everywhere do penance. Because he hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in equity, by the man whom he hath appointed; giving faith to all, by raising him up from the dead. (Acts 17:29-31 DR)

The gods of the nations are devils, as the Psalmist speaks and as St. Paul here alludes, and what is now required of man is penance, this clearing out of the wood by means of the Cross of our Lord who is the Lord of glory and will come as Judge. In the Church is the house built after the captivity, after we are freed from our sins by the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross and being united with Him in His mystical Body.

While some of the Old Latin versions of this Psalm retained “regnavit a ligno,” that is, “reigned from the tree,” the Vulgate does not include it, for reasons too lengthy to dwell on here. Despite this, the liturgy of the Church does retain this reading of the Psalm by means of the hymn Vexilla Regis, composed by Prudentius (A.D. 530-609) in the 6th century. This hymn is used at Vespers from Passion Sunday to Wednesday of Holy Week and at Vespers on the Feasts of the Invention and Exaltation of the Cross in the Divine Office. It is also sung as the Blessed Sacrament is being processed to the altar of repose on Good Friday, which is a truly moving experience. This beautiful hymn sublimely sets forth the mystery of the cross and our redemption, and the verse in which regnavit a ligno is found draws this profound connection between our Lord’s triumph on the cross and the prophetic announcement of the Psalmist:

Impleta sunt quæ concinit
David fideli carmine,
Dicendo nationibus:
Regnavit a ligno Deus.

That which the Prophet-King of old
Hath in mysterious verse foretold,
Is now accomplished, whilst we see
God ruling nations from a Tree.

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I wanted to focus on the judgment aspect of this passage, but I also wanted to do so in a bit of an unexpected way. So for whatever reason I thought of an energy burst hurtling bodies through the air.

I created these simple stick figures and precomped two of them into separate precomps and animated their limbs flailing about in different ways. Then in the main composition I animated them from below the frame being hurled out of frame, trying to match the velocity of the movement to the distance covered and the motion of the limbs. There was no complex math here, just eyeing it, and it no doubt shows.

I then duplicated this and just adjusted where the various figures started and ended and tried to fill out the composition as best as I could, while also not making it too overhwelming.

In the center I brought in an abstract texture and applied Stretch to it and cranked up the animation so it had the feeling of power and velocity. I also added in an abstract texture in the background and used Turbulent Displace to give it some movement.

I applied some color correction and also added in some Heat Distortion effects and camera shake for a little extra visual interest.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: