Sunday, October 21, 2018

Michael Tait on the divinization of the bride in Psalm 45

Psa 45 is a very important text, especially in light of the fact that Heb 1:8-9, one of the rare instances of θεος being used (albeit, in a secondary/subordinationist sense) of the person of Jesus.

In a work arguing for Mark having a high Christology (a thesis I agree with), Michael Tait offered the following commentary which is rather insightful, including a concept of a "divine feminine":

Divinising Features: The Bride

We return now to vv 11-3, the ‘insert’ consisting of an address to the new queen. She is to be united to the king and so will participate in his attributes including his divinity. Thus, like the king, she is addressed directly by the Psalmist. It is said that the rich of the people ‘seek her favour’ (פָּנַ֥יִךְ יְחַלּ֗וּ), the exact expression employed in Exodus 32:11 when Moses seeks the favour of Yahweh after the incident of the Golden Calf. Moreover, she is said to be ‘all-glorious.’ ‘Glory’ (כבד) is a common attribute of Yahweh in the Old Testament. This is true also in the Psalms. However, it is of relevant here that, on one occasion, in Ps 87:3, in the second set of Korah Psalms, it is ascribed to Jerusalem, the city of God and the mother of all peoples (in the allegorical relecture of Psalm 45, thus was precisely the role of the ‘bride’).

The king and queen thus portrayed are indeed a divine couple. At the same time a certain distance from God himself is always maintained, much as in the New Testament, even in the highest Christological passages, God is always the ‘God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (eg Eph 1:3). Thus, in the two theological statements about the king’s status in vv 3 and 8, it is clear who is the source of all this bubbling-over of divinity. It is God who has blessed the king for ever (v 3) and anointed him with the oil of gladness (v 8). This state of affairs could well be reinforced if הוּצַק in v 3 and ת וּבַל in v 16 are regarded as divine passives, in which case it is God who has poured out the king’s grace and God who leads the bride on her companions to her husband. Such delegated divinization, it may be observed, is very different from the self-divinisation of the rich in Ps 49. (Michael Tait, Jesus, The Divine Bridegroom, in Mark 2:18-22: Mark’s Christology Updated [Analecta Biblica 185; Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2010], 193-94, emphasis added)



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