hip to God has this significancy here also,
as is shown by what immediately follows, where, in explanation of it,
the promise of indestructible love is connected with it. But this
relationship, in its highest and closest form, cannot exist betwixt God
and a mere man. It is only when the Davidic family is viewed as
centring in Christ, that the words can acquire their full truth. To
this, the quotation in Heb. i. 5 points: [Greek: Tini gar eipe pote ton
angelon, hUios mou ei su, ego semeron gegenneka se; Kai palin. Ego
esomai auto eis patera, kai autos estai moi eis huion]; The depth of
meaning which is contained in these words appears plainly from their
expansion in Ps. lxxxix. 26: "And I place his hand on the sea, and his
right hand on the rivers. He shall call Me thus: Thou art my Father, my
God, and the rock of my salvation. And I will also make him My
first-born, the highest of the kings of the earth." The sonship
accordingly implies the dominion over the world, which in Ps. ii. 7-9
appears, indeed, as inseparably connected with it.--If the race of
David commit sin, it shall be chastened with the rods of men, and with
the stripes of the children of men. Ps. xvii. 4 distinctly and
unambiguously designates corrupt actions--walking in the ways of
transgressors--as "the works of men." (Compare 1 Sam. xxiv. 10; Hos.
vi. 7; Job xxxi. 33, xxiii. 12.) Hence, the rods of men, and the
stripes of the children of men, are punishments to which all men are
subject, because they are sinners, and at which no man needs to be
surprised. Grace is not to free the Davidic family from this common lot
of mankind, is not to afford to them the privilege of sinning. The
mitigation only follows in ver. 15, in which the close resumes the
beginning: "I will be a father to him." But this mitigation must not be
misunderstood by being conceived of as referring to the individuals.
Such a conception of it would be opposed to the nature of the thing
itself, would be in opposition to 1 Chron. xxviii. 9, where David says
to Solomon, "If thou seek Him, He will be found of thee; and if thou
forsake Him, He will cast thee off _for ever_:" and would be against
history, which shows that the rebellious members of the Davidic dynasty
were visited with destroying [Pg 142] judgments. The contrast is rather
thus to be understood: sin is to be visited upon the individuals, while
the grace abides continually upon the race,--so that the divine promise
is raised to an