Page:The Archko Volume (1896).djvu/220

216 "One idea of the kingdom of the Messiah, derived from this Psalm, was that he was not only to reign over the Jews, but destroy all other nations. 'Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his Anointed, saying. Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak to them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree, the Lord hath said unto me. Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.' This Psalm was interpreted by the Jews almost universally of the Messiah, and the more readily as the title Anointed is translated in the Septuagint Christos so that it there reads, 'Against the Lord and against His Christ.' The Messiah, therefore, was to reign on Mount Zion, one of the mountains on which Jerusalem was built, and reign over the Jews and by God's assistance subdue the heathen by war and conquest, break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces as a potter's vessel. Such was the kingdom which the great majority of the Jews expected their Messiah to set up.