Psalms 2:6

In Zechariah: “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: just, and having salvation; meek, sitting upon an ass that hath not been tamed.” Also in Isaiah: “Who will declare to you that eternal place? He that walketh in righteousness, and holdeth back his hands from gifts; stopping his ears that he may not hear the judgment of blood; and closing his eyes, that he may not see unrighteousness: this man shall dwell in the lofty cavern of the strong rock; bread shall be given him, and his water shall be sure. …

But Heracleon declares the words, “There standeth one among you,” to be equivalent to “He is already here, and He is in the world and in men, and He is already manifest to you all.” By this He does away with the meaning which is also present in the words, that the Word had permeated the whole world. For we must say to him, When is He not present, and when is He not in the world? Does not this Gospel say, “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” And this is why those to whom the Logos is He “whom you know not,” do not know Him: they have never gone out of the world, but the world does not know Him. …

8. The matter next to be introduced, moreover, is one requiring, in order to its right apprehension and contemplation, a reader of the greatest attention and carefulness. For it has been acutely observed that Matthew, who had proposed to himself the task of commending the kingly character in Christ, named, exclusive of Christ Himself, forty men in the series of generations. Now this number denotes the period in which, in this age and on this earth, it behoves us to be ruled by Christ in accordance with that painful discipline whereby “God scourgeth,” as it is written, “every son that He receiveth;” and of which also an apostle says that “we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” This discipline is also signified by that rod of iron, concerning which we read this statement in a Psalm: “Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron;” which words occur after the saying, “Ye …

2. Hear then, ye Jews and Gentiles; hear, O circumcision; hear, O uncircumcision; hear, all ye kingdoms of the earth: I interfere not with your government in this world, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Cherish ye not the utterly vain terror that threw Herod the elder into consternation when the birth of Christ was announced, and led him to the murder of so many infants in the hope of including Christ in the fatal number, made more cruel by his fear than by his anger: “My kingdom,” He said, “is not of this world.” What would you more? Come to the kingdom that is not of this world; come, believing, and fall not into the madness of anger through fear. He says, indeed, prophetically of God the Father, “Yet have I been appointed king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion;” but that hill of Zion is not of this world. …

5. “Then said the chief priests of the Jews unto Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.” Oh the ineffable power of the working of God, even in the hearts of the ignorant! Was there not some hidden voice that sounded through Pilate’s inner man with a kind, if one may so say, of loud-toned silence, the words that had been prophesied so long before in the very letter of the Psalms, “Corrupt not the inscription of the title”? Here, then, you see, he corrupted it not; what he has written he has written. …

5. “Yet am I set by Him as King upon Sion, His holy hill, preaching His decree” ( ver. 6 ). This is clearly spoken in the Person of the very Lord our Saviour Christ. But if Sion signify, as some interpret, beholding, we must not understand it of anything rather than of the Church, where daily is the desire raised of beholding the bright glory of God, according to that of the Apostle, “but we with open face beholding the glory of the Lord.” Therefore the meaning of this is, Yet I am set by Him as King over His holy Church; which for its eminence and stability He calleth a mountain. “Yet I am set by Him as King.” I, that is, whose “bands” they were meditating “to break asunder,” and whose “yoke” to “cast away.” “Preaching His decree.” Who doth not see the meaning of this, seeing it is daily practised?

5. “For, lo, the kings of the earth are gathered together” ( ver. 3 ). Behold now those sides of the North, see how they come, see how they say, “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord: and He will teach us His way, and we will walk in it.” “And have come together in one.” In what one, but that “corner-stone”? “They saw it, and so they marvelled” ( ver. 4 ). After their marvelling at the miracles and glory of Christ, what followed? “They were troubled, they were moved” ( ver. 5 ), “trembling took hold upon them.” Whence took trembling hold upon them, but from the consciousness of sins? Let them run then, king after a king; kings, let them acknowledge the King. Therefore saith He elsewhere, “Yet have I been set by Him a King upon His holy hill of Sion.”…A King then was heard of, set up in Sion, to Him were delivered possessions even to the uttermost parts of the earth. …

His majesty as man is also shown us. For having the sovereignty of all things as God and Creator, He assumes this majesty as man, wherefore it is added “Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness, therefore God thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” And in the second psalm the anointed one himself says “Yet was I set as king by Him upon the holy hill of Sion, I will declare the decree of the Lord. The Lord hath said unto me ‘Thou art my Son this day have I begotten Thee; ask of me and I shall give Thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.’” This He said as man, for as man He receives what as God He possesses. And at the very beginning of the psalm the gift of prophecy ranks Him with God the Father in the words “Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing. …

52. See here too, He is formed, not into existence, but in order to gather together the tribes, which were in existence before He was formed. For as in the former passage stands ‘He created,’ so in this ‘He formed;’ and as there ‘for the works,’ so here ‘to gather together;’ so that in every point of view it appears that ‘He created’ and ‘He formed’ are said after ‘the Word was.’ For as before His forming the tribes existed, for whose sake He was formed, so does it appear that the works exist, for which He was created. …

These words are not mine: they are those of him who fights against the Word. For he says, in the very passage that is before us for examination, exactly thus: “The blessed Peter speaks of Him Who was in the beginning and was God, and expounds to us that it was He Who became Lord and Christ.” Eunomius, then, says that He Who was whatsoever He was became Lord and Christ, as the history of David tells us that he, being the son of Jesse, and a keeper of the flocks, was anointed to be king: not that the anointing then made him to be a man, but that he, being what he was by his own nature, was transformed from an ordinary man to a king. …

If any one gainsays this, he will show himself to be a supporter of the Jewish persuasion in not associating the Son with the deliverance of the people. For if, on the one hand, it was not an angel that went forth with the people, and if, on the other, as Eunomius would have it, He Who was manifested by the name of the Existent is not the Only-begotten, this amounts to nothing less than transferring the doctrines of the synagogue to the Church of God. Accordingly, of the two alternatives they must needs admit one, namely, either that the Only-begotten God on no occasion appeared to Moses, or that the Son is Himself the “Existent,” from Whom the word came to His servant. But he contradicts what has been said above, alleging the Scripture itself which informs us that the voice of an angel was interposed, and that it was thus that the discourse of the Existent was conveyed. …