Psalm 72

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The reign of the righteous king

¹ Give the king Your judgments, O Elohim, and Your righteousness to the king's son. ² May he judge Your people with righteousness, and Your afflicted with justice. ³ Let the mountains bring peace to the people, and the hills, in righteousness. ⁴ May he judge the afflicted of the people, save the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor.

⁵ May they fear You while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. ⁶ May he come down like rain on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth. ⁷ In his days may the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace, till the moon is no more.

⁸ May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. ⁹ May those who dwell in the desert bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust. ¹⁰ May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands bring tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba offer gifts. ¹¹ May all kings bow down before him, all nations serve him.

¹² For he will deliver the needy when he cries for help, the afflicted also, and him who has no helper. ¹³ He will have pity on the poor and needy, and will save the lives of the needy. ¹⁴ From fraud and violence he will redeem their life, and precious will their blood be in his sight.

¹⁵ Long may he live! May gold of Sheba be given to him; may prayer be made for him continually, and may they bless him all the day. ¹⁶ May there be abundance of grain in the land, on the tops of the mountains; may its fruit wave like Lebanon, and may those of the city blossom like the grass of the earth. ¹⁷ May his name endure forever; may his name increase as long as the sun; may all nations be blessed in him and call him blessed.

The close of Book Two

¹⁸ Blessed be Yahweh Elohim, the Elohim of Israel, who alone does wondrous works! ¹⁹ And blessed be His glorious name forever; and may the whole earth be filled with His glory! Amen and amen.

²⁰ The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.

Notes

• 72:1 Title: "Of Solomon" (lishlomo) stands at the start of verse 1 in the Hebrew. The le- can mean "by," "for" or "concerning," as in "of David" (see the note at 3:1); the ancient Greek reads "for Solomon." Because verse 20 closes "the prayers of David," many have read it as David's prayer for his son, as he prayed, "And give to Solomon my son a whole heart" (1 Chronicles 29:19); others take it as Solomon's own. "The king" and "the king's son" are one person, the heir of David's line. The prayer asks first for justice for the afflicted (verses 2, 4, 12-14), what Solomon himself asked: "give Your servant a hearing heart to judge Your people" (1 Kings 3:9). The verbs that follow can be read as wishes ("may he") or as promises ("he will"); the TRB reads them as prayer, as the psalm begins.
• 72:10 The kings come from the ends of the known world: Tarshish, far to the west across the sea, whose ships brought Solomon "gold, silver, ivory" (1 Kings 10:22); the coastlands; Sheba in southern Arabia, whose queen came to Solomon "with camels carrying spices and very much gold" (1 Kings 10:2; compare "the gold of Sheba," verse 15); and Seba, named among the sons of Cush (Genesis 10:7), probably in Africa. Many Christian readers have heard an echo of these gifts in the gold, frankincense and myrrh the wise men brought to the child Yeshua (Matthew 2:11; compare Isaiah 60:6).
• 72:17 "Be blessed in him" (yitbarkhu vo) takes up the promise to Abraham: "And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 22:18, with the same verb). The prayer reaches beyond any one king of Israel: a reign as lasting as sun and moon (verses 5, 7, 17), over all kings and all nations (verses 8-11, 17). So Jewish and Christian readers came to read the psalm of the Messiah. The Aramaic Targum, a later Jewish rendering, names the king of verse 1 "the King Messiah," and the Talmud (Sanhedrin 98b, also later) takes "increase" (yinnon) in this verse as one of the Messiah's names; many Christian readers see in the king Yeshua, the Son of David.
• 72:18 Verses 18-19 are not part of Psalm 72 alone; they close the second book of the Psalms (42-72), as 41:13 closed the first (see the note at 1:1). The wish "may the whole earth be filled with His glory" echoes Yahweh's oath, "as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of Yahweh" (Numbers 14:21). Verse 20, "The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended," is like the line that ends Job's speeches, "The words of Job are ended" (Job 31:40). Since psalms of David appear again later in the book (for example 86, 101, 103, 108-110, 138-145), many think the line once closed an earlier collection of David's prayers.

Psalm 71 · Psalm 73

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