Psalms 89

The poem moves from a high, doxological affirmation of God's sovereignty and eternal faithfulness to a harrowing experience of divine abandonment, forcing the reader to resolve the tension between the promises of God and the realities of human history.

• God will build up the throne of David for all generations (vv 3-4).
• God's mercy will be kept for David forever, and his covenant shall stand fast (v 28).
• God will not suffer his faithfulness to fail, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his lips (vv 33-34).

• The assembly is implicitly called to revere/fear (יָרֵא [H3372]) God in the council of the holy ones (v 7).

• If the children of David forsake God's law and walk not in His judgments, He will visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes (vv 30-32).

• Ethan the Ezrahite is mentioned as a wise man in 1 Kings 4:31, placing this psalm in the era of Solomon or shortly after, potentially reflecting the internal strife that plagued the Davidic house.

• The concept of the 'covenant' (בְּרִית [H1285]) involving the 'cutting' of flesh was a standard ANE legal formula for establishing a binding, often life-or-death, treaty.

• This is the final psalm of Book III of the Psalter (Psalms 73-89), which generally deals with the problem of theodicy and the suffering of God's people.

• The passage rests heavily upon the foundational Davidic Covenant of 2 Samuel 7. It explores the tension inherent in that covenant: God promises permanence, yet the historical kings often suffered judgment.
• Matthew Henry observes that the promises of this covenant are established in the heavens (v 2), meaning they are out of the reach of earthly or demonic opposition, even if they appear frustrated in time.

• The promise of the Davidic throne (vv 3-4, 28-29) directly references 2 Samuel 7:12-16.
• The language of 'firstborn' and 'higher than the kings of the earth' (v 27) finds ultimate fulfillment in the messianic declarations of the New Testament (e.g., Colossians 1:15, Revelation 1:5).

• Maskil (מַשְׂכִּיל [H4905]): Often defined as a 'didactic' or 'instructive' poem; it signals that the reader should look for a deeper teaching beyond the narrative lament.
• Hesed (חֵסֵד [H2617]): A term denoting covenant loyalty or lovingkindness; it is the bedrock of the psalmist's argument for why God must not abandon the Davidic line.
• Shaba (שָׁבַע [H7650]): Literally to 'seven oneself' (to swear, repeating a declaration seven times), emphasizing the absolute gravity and inviolability of the oath God made to David.

• Readers often miss that the psalm does not reject God in its lament; rather, it uses God's own covenant promises as the very grounds for its complaint (v 49).

• There is ongoing historical debate regarding whether this psalm was written during the fall of Jerusalem (586 BC) or earlier. If earlier, it refers to a specific, severe crisis for a Davidic king; if later, it serves as a reflection on the cessation of the monarchy.
• Regarding the 'seed' of David, historic Reformed interpreters (including Matthew Henry) often view the historical Davidic line as a type, arguing that the psalm's promises are only fully realized in the Messiah, while some critical scholars argue the psalm is strictly concerned with the historical impossibility of the monarchy's survival.