One of the greatest things about the Bible is its unexpected character, for often just when we think things are coming to an end we suddenly come to something that is quite fresh and that stretches our thinking a bit further than we had expected to go. That is the case with verse 5, which is the final stanza of the psalm.
When he was introducing the idea of God's immutability in verses 1 and 2, the psalmist said that "the world is firmly established" because the throne of God is established. But is it really the case that the world is established? It does not seem to be. In fact, when I wrote about God's immutability, I pointed out that everything changes but God. That thought must have occurred to the psalmist, too. For immediately after writing about the immutability of God's throne in verse 2, he writes a stanza about the surging, pounding, changing character of this world.
As we saw in yesterday's study, the first two verses of the psalm speak of the nature of God's reign. We began our look at four characteristics of God's kingly rule with the majesty of God and the power of God. In today's study we look at two more characteristics of God.
The first two verses of the psalm speak of the nature of God's reign, introducing four characteristics of God's kingly rule which are at the same time four important attributes of God. These are stated in strong poetic language, involving blatant repetitions in nearly every case, a particularly bold form of Hebrew parallelism.
Psalm 93 is the first of a group of eight psalms dealing with the kingly reign of God, that is, with a theocracy. So let me begin our study with two questions about the word "theocracy." First, where does the word come from, and who was the first person in history to use the term? Second, what does “theocracy” mean?
