But the Lord remaineth for ever. He hath prepared his throne in judgment: (Psalm 9:8 DR)
Having just described the destruction of the enemies of God—which in the spiritual sense are the temptations and vices of the devil—the Psalmist now abruptly transitions to juxtapose this passing reality with an eternal one, that of the judgment of the Lord.
The verse division here creates a bit of an unnatural break in the poetics of this passage, as the phrase “but the Lord remaineth for ever” is a poetic expansion by means of contrast with the memory of the enemy that perishes; that is, unlike the enemies of God who will come to nothing, God endures forever and cannot be overcome. This idea is then to be taken up and completed by describing the throne of justice in the following passage which poetically comes together in the second half of this passage and the entirety of the next.
St. Robert Bellarmine remarks that the eternality of Christ and His memory—as opposed to that of sin which He conquered—is alluded to here:
Christ’s memory, on the contrary, will never fade after his death and resurrection. “All power in heaven and on earth was given to him,” which David alludes to here… (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 9, 7.)
These words of our Lord at the conclusion of the Gospel are expounded upon by St. Paul in his epistle to the Philippians:
He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:8-10 DR)
Our Lord Jesus Christ being “given” all authority and power refers to two distinct realities that coalesce in His person. As God and being equal with God (cf. Philippians 2:6), the Son did not “receive” power as if it was something He did not always possess, for God is simple in being and all Persons of the Trinity are fully divine and thus “possess”—so to speak—the one divine power. However, as the Son is eternally generated by the Father, all that the Son has He eternally receives from the Father.
In the Incarnation the Son—the Second Person of the Trinity—took upon Himself a human nature complete and entire, meaning that all that properly belongs to a human nature was possessed by the Son as the Subject of that nature. He thus had a human mind and human soul which were not merged or hybridized into the divine nature but hypostatically united so as to remain distinct yet still have the Son as the one Person of Christ.
It is this Incarnational reality of which St. Paul speaks, for our Lord in His humility took upon Himself this human nature and was made subject to death, but it was this very subjugation that became the cause of His glorification.
To be given the name above all names is thus directly synonymous with what the Psalmist speaks of here, of the Lord preparing His throne in judgment, for to have the highest name with the highest authority denotes the ability and right to judge; hence St. Paul speaks of how all beings—yes, even the infernal ones—will confess this in the end. Thus, this preparation would be both a prophetic reference to the Incarnation and to our Lord’s salvific work on the Cross:
“He has prepared His seat in judgment, and He shall judge the world in equity.” He prepared His seat when He was judged. For by that patience Man purchased heaven, and God in Man profited believers. And this is the Son's hidden judgment. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 9, 9.)
The notion of throne is also significant in two senses. Firstly, a throne denotes a place or seat of authority; the one who occupies it has the authority to govern and judge. That it is a seat is significant in that to sit has an allusion to rest and stability in that the one who possesses the authority has it by right and is not attempting to grasp on to it or take hold of it. This is why St. Paul opens the passage in Philippians 2 by stressing that our Lord thought it not robbery to be equal with God; that is, He didn’t have to grasp after divinity precisely because He was by nature equal to God.
The second sense is eschatological in that since this Psalm is directed unto the End, which is Christ, this throne which is prepared is that of God Himself. And since this seat of judgment and authority was understood as being a proxy for the Divine Being Itself, this is why our Lord was immediately accused of blasphemy for this:
[Y]ou shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven. (Matthew 26:64 DR)
If He were not Who He said He was, He certainly would have been guilty of blasphemy, for such a statement is tantamount to claiming one is equal to God in that He would be taking upon Himself the throne which the Lord hath prepared in judgment. He thus took upon Himself by right the authority to judge the world which only God alone possesses and this was an unmistakable claim to his enemies and detractors, while also being the fulfillment of the Psalmist’s words.
For this animation I was more or less playing around with some 3D models in Trapcode Mir for fun, and decided to go with this glossy Sphere, which I suppose I didn’t need Mir for, but I was already well into it. I brought in some various textures to add in reflections and diffusion maps and then animated the background texture using loopFlow.
The .gif compression kind of murdered this one, but what can you do?
Enjoy.
But the Lord remaineth for ever. He hath prepared his throne in judgment:
(Psalm 9:8 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: