Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 2:3
Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
3. The words of the kings and rulers exhorting one another to cast off the yoke of subjection. Bands are the fastenings by which the yoke was secured upon the neck (Jer 27:2; Jer 30:8; Nah 1:13; &c.): cords are perhaps merely synonymous with bands: but as the language of the previous clause is derived from the figure of an ox yoked for ploughing, cords may naturally be understood to mean the reins by which the animal was guided and kept under control. Cp. Job 39:10; Hos 11:4.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Let us break their bands asunder – The bands of Yahweh and of his Anointed. They who are engaged in this combination or conspiracy regard Yahweh and his Anointed as one, and as having one object – to set up a dominion over the world. Hence, they take counsel against both; and, with the same purpose and design, endeavor to cast off the authority of each. The word bands here refers to the restraints imposed by their authority. The figure is probably taken from fastening a yoke on oxen, or the bands or cords which were used in plowing – the bands of the yoke being significant of their subjection to the authority or will of another. The same figure is used by the Saviour in Mat 11:29 : Take my yoke upon you. The idea here is, that it was the purpose of Yahweh and his Anointed to establish a dominion over men, and that it was equally the purpose of the kings and rulers here referred to that it should not be done.
And cast away their cords from us – The same idea under another form – the cords referring not to that which would bind them as prisoners, but to the ropes or thongs which bound oxen to the plow; and, hence, to that which would bind men to the service of God. The word translated cords is a stronger word than that which is rendered bands. It means properly what is twisted or interlaced, and refers to the usual manner in which ropes are made. Perhaps, also, in the words let us cast away there is the expression of an idea that it could be easily done: that they had only to will it, and it would be done. Together, the expressions refer to the purpose among men to cast off the government of God, and especially that part of his administration which refers to his purpose to establish a kingdom under the Messiah. It thus indicates a prevalent state of the human mind as being impatient of the restraints and authority of God, and especially of the dominion of his Son, anointed as King.
The passage Psa 2:1-3 proves:
(1) that the government of Yahweh, the true God, and the Messiah or Christ, is the same;
(2) that opposition to the Messiah, or to Christ, is in fact opposition to the purposes of the true God;
(3) that it may be expected that men will oppose that government, and there will be agitation and commotion in endeavoring to throw it off.
The passage, considered as referring to the Messiah, had an ample fulfillment
(a) in the purposes of the high priests, of Herod, and of Pilate, to put him to death, and in the general rejection of him by his own countrymen;
(b) in the general conduct of mankind – in their impatience of the restraints of the law of God, and especially of that law as promulgated by the Saviour, demanding submission and obedience to him; and
(c) in the conduct of individual sinners – in the opposition of the human heart to the authority of the Lord Jesus.
The passage before us is just as applicable to the world now as it was to the time when the Saviour personally appeared on the earth.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 2:3
Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
Sinners vainly attempt to dissolve their obligations
I. The obligations sinners are under to God.
1. Natural obligations. Their nature, as dependent creatures, forms an intimate connection between them and their Maker. They cannot exist a moment without the immediate exertion of Divine power. Their dependence is absolute and universal. It respects all their natural powers and faculties, whether corporeal or mental. They are not sufficient to think, or speak, or act of themselves, independently of the presence and efficiency of God.
2. Moral obligations. God is a Being possessed of every natural and moral excellence. He will never do anything contrary to the perfect benevolence of His heart. Every sinner is capable of knowing that God is perfectly good, so he is under moral obligation to love Him for His goodness.
3. Legal obligation. Gods absolute supremacy gives Him an independent right to assume the character of a lawgiver. It properly belongs to Him to give law to all His intelligent creatures.
II. Sinners endeavour to free themselves from all the obligations which they are under to God. They wish and endeavour to break His bands, and cast away His cords.
1. This appears by their mode of speaking upon this subject.
2. By their mode of reasoning as well as speaking. They endeavour to reason away all their obligations to God.
3. It appears from their mode of acting, also, that they desire and endeavour to free themselves from all obligations to become reconciled and obedient to God.
III. All their endeavours to get loose from their obligations to God will be in vain.
1. They cannot destroy the existence of God.
2. Or their own existence. Improvement.
(1) We may see what is the great subject of controversy between them and their Creator.
(2) Though sinners are naturally disposed to free themselves from their obligations to God, yet they are not always sensible of it. They commonly think that they have no such disposition to complain of the bands and cords by which they are bound to God, and to desire and endeavour to break and cast them away.
(3) We see why sinners are the most opposed to the most essential and important doctrines of the gospel.
(4) If they endeavour to free themselves from their obligations, then they always endeavour to stifle convictions.
(5) If sinners are under such natural, moral, and legal obligations to God as have been mentioned, then He can awaken and convince them at any time He pleases.
(6) Sinners are extremely averse from prayer.
(7) All sinners, without exception, are bound to be religious or to fulfil their obligations to their Maker, who has made them rational, immortal, and accountable creatures.
(8) If sinners are bound to God by bands and cords which they cannot break nor cast away, then it is their immediate and imperious duty to cease from contending with their Maker, and to become cordially reconciled to the bands and cords by which He has bound them to Himself. (W. Emmons, D. D.)
Tendency of the young to infidelity
1. From their limited views. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as it too often encourages self-conceit and lays the foundation for many a hasty conclusion. A slight and imperfect view of the subject is taken as the whole. Judgment is rendered without even hearing the evidence. A few second-hand objections are suffered to cover the whole ground. Bacon says, It is true that a little philosophy inclineth mans mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth mens minds back to religion;–for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
2. From their defective training. In the religious education of youth the principal things have not always been made prominent. The youth perhaps knows no other Christianity than that which belongs to his own denomination, or some idle ceremony or some doubtful tenet has been inculcated with all the solemnity of religion and all the sanctions of eternity. The result is a narrow-minded, bitter bigotry. When the charm is broken, and its influence destroyed, the mind, left loose, too often swings at once to infidelity. The training is often defective in another way. That the mind may be free from unfounded prejudice and sectarian predilections, nothing is taught. To escape one evil they run into another and more fatal one. The native soft brings forth thorns and briars.
3. Another source of infidelity is the conduct of too many called Christians.
4. Another is an uneasiness of restraint. The spirit of wildness and wilfulness is manifest in the first dawn of intellect. The earliest period of childhood shows restlessness and hatred of restraint. Thousands are infidels because they dread the inspection of God and hate the restraints of religion. Their lives require such an opiate to their fears.
5. A love of distinction–an ambition to appear above the vulgar. Young men and boys affect infidelity for the same reason that they learn to swear or to chew tobacco. It gives an air of spirit and independence that spurns old traditions and vulgar prejudices.
6. Some are infidels in self-defence. They were once, perhaps, not far from the kingdom of God–it may be, deemed themselves citizens of that kingdom. But the world spread its charms before them. And they have found shelter from scorn and reproach in blank infidelity. Combine all these causes which are continually at work and is it wonderful that in the face of all the light of truth there should still be infidels? (D. Merrill.)
Bands that cannot be broken
The yoke that our Saviour would lay on this world is not a galling and exasperating code of laws, but a yoke in which humanity would be renewed, transformed, uplifted to the highest and eternal joy. It is of that yoke and burden that the worlds proud captains say, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. Bands and cords! It is an invidious description of the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light. What can be the issue of the effort to break the bands and cords of the Almighty? What can come of it? He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. The Psalmist is very bold: the laughter of God! the derision of the Most High! What a figure to use! It is a poets phrase, but it is a prophets truth. There is a spendthrift who is resenting the bands of economics and arithmetic; who says in regard to a plain and accurate cash statement, I will break these bands asunder, and in his foolishness he makes the attempt; but he cannot divert from their inflexible proportions the laws of parts and quantities, of plus and minus considerations. He may wish that ten amid ten should make twenty-five, but they will not. He that sitteth in the heavens! Great fixed proportions!–they wont bend to amuse a prodigal; they wont break to gratify a spendthrift. They claim their value and issue their writ, and the man who has lived and spent as though two and two made fifty is the object of the laughter of arithmetical law, and is by it had in derision. (F. W. Macdonald.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 3. Let us break their bands] These are the words of the confederate heathen powers; and here, as Bishop Horne well remarks, “we may see the ground of opposition; namely, the unwillingness of rebellious nature to submit to the obligations of Divine laws, which cross the interests, and lay a restraint on the desires of men. Corrupt affections are the most inveterate enemies of Christ, and their language is, We will not have this man to reign over us. Doctrines would be readily believed if they involved in them no precepts; and the Church may be tolerated in the world if she will only give up her discipline.”
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Their, i.e. the Lords and his anointeds,
bands, which they design to put upon our necks, that they may bring us into subjection. They mean the laws of God, which the king would oblige them to observe, which though easy and pleasant in themselves and to good men, Mat 11:29,30; 1Jo 5:3, yet are very grievous and burdensome to corrupt nature, and to men of wicked lives.
Cast away their cords from us; the same thing expressed with a little more emphasis. Let us not only break off their yoke, and the cords by which it is fastened upon us; but let us cast them far away, that they may never be recovered, and we may never be brought into bondage again.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
3. The rebellious purposes ofmen are more distinctly announced by this representation of theiravowal in words, as well as actions.
bands . . . and . . .cordsdenote the restraints of government.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Let us break their bands asunder,…. These are not the words of the apostles, nor of the saints in Gospel times, encouraging one another, notwithstanding the rage and opposition of Jews and Gentiles against their Master and his interest, to break asunder the bands of wickedness, the idolatrous customs and practices of the Heathens, and to throw off the insupportable yoke of bondage, of Jewish traditions and ceremonies, see Isa 58:6; but of the Heathen, the people, and kings of the earth, and rulers who, with one voice, say this and what follows,
and cast away their cords from us; with relation to the Lord and his Anointed, whose laws, ordinances, and truths, they call “bands” and “cords”; so Arama interprets them of the law, and the commandments; or a “yoke”, as the Vulgate Latin, Septuagint, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions render the last word; and the phrases in general express their irreverence of God and the Messiah, their rejection Christ and his religion; their non-subjection to him, and their refusal to have him to rule over them; and their disesteem and contempt of his Gospel, and of the ordinances of it, and of the laws and rules of his government in his churches: and also they show the wrong notion that carnal men have of these things that whereas Christ’s yoke is easy, and his burden light, Mt 11:30; his Gospel and the truths of it make men free from the slavery of sin and Satan, and from a spirit of bondage, Ro 8:15; and true Gospel liberty consists in an observance of his commands and ordinances; yet they look upon these things as bands and cords, as fetters and shackles, as so many restraints upon their liberty, which are not to be bore: when, on the other hand, they promise themselves liberty in a disengagement from them, and in the enjoyment of their own lusts and sinful pleasures; whereas thereby they are brought into bondage, and become the servants of corruption. Some render it “cast away from him” c; either from Christ, or everyone from himself.
c “a nobis, sive ab illo”, Nebiensis.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
3. Let us break, etc. This is a prosopopoeia, (25) in which the prophet introduces his-enemies as speaking; and he employs this figure the better to express their ungodly and traitorous design. Not that they openly avowed themselves rebels against God, (for they rather covered their rebellion under every possible pretext, and presumptuously boasted of having God on their side;) but since they were fully determined, by all means, fair or foul, to drive David from the throne, whatever they professed with the mouth, the whole of their consultation amounted to this, how they might overthrow the kingdom which God himself had set up. When he describes his government under the metaphorical expressions of bonds, and a yoke, on the persons of his adversaries, he indirectly condemns their pride. For he represents them speaking scornfully of his government, as if to submit to it were a slavish and shameful subjection, just as we see it is with all the enemies of Christ who, when compelled to be subject to his authority reckon it not less degrading than if the utmost disgrace were put upon them.
(25) A rhetoric figure, in which persons or things are feigned or supposed to speak; a personification.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(3) Let us break.The whispered purpose now breaks out into loud menace, and we hear their defiance pass along the ranks of the rebels.
Cords.The LXX. and Vulg. have yoke, which is in keeping with the metaphor of a restive animal. (Comp. Isa. 58:6; Isa. 10:27.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
3. Their bands their cords The plural suffix their refers to Jehovah and his Messiah. The result of these hostile deliberations is the mutual exhortation to break asunder and cast away the bands of Messiah’s government. “Bands” and “cords “are the restraints and authority of law, and its moral rebuke of sin. The enemies will neither submit to law and obligation nor accept pardon through Christ. Their language implies that they already felt the restraining and reproving power of the Law and Gospel, and were partly under that power, but were bent on freedom in sin and hostility to God. This was the course of the Pharisees and rulers against Christ. See introductory note.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 2:3. Let us break their bands This is the language of the nations and people instigating each other to this impious war. To be in bonds, and tied with cords, is to be reduced to the utmost state of vassalage: and the kings and nations counted their subjection to David the most dishonourable servitude, and therefore were determined, if they could, to break their bands, and cast away their cords; i.e. to renounce the dominion of David whom the Lord had made king, and free themselves from all subjection to him. And thus the Jews, the nations, and princes of the earth, united themselves in opposition to the kingdom of Christ, to destroy his authority, extirpate his religion, and prevent men’s obedience to, and worship of God, by Jesus Christ.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 2:3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
Ver. 3. Let us break their bands asunder, &c. ] Here these rebels are brought in proclaiming their treasonable decrees against Christ, and his adherents, who seek to promote his kingdom. Resolved they were to run riot, as lawless and aweless, and therefore they slander the sweet laws of Christ’s kingdom, as bonds and thick cords (those signs of slavery, Jer 27:2 ; Jer 27:6-7 ), as burdens and grievances. So the Popish clergy of Collen told their good Archbishop Albert (who had made use of Bucer and Melancthon to bring things into better order), that they had rather live under the Turkish government than under such a reformation (Melch. Adam in Vit. Bucer). But what saith our Saviour? “My yoke is easy, and my burden light.” No more burden it is to a regenerate person than the wings are to the bird. He delighteth in the law of God after the inward man, Rom 7:22 It is not to him now, as once, bands and cords, but as girdles and garters, which gird up his loins, and expedite his course the better. It confineth him to live in that element where he would live; as if one should be confined to paradise, where he would be, though there were no such law.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
their: i.e. Jehovah’s, and Messiah’s.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Jer 5:5, Luk 19:14, Luk 19:27, 1Pe 2:7, 1Pe 2:8
Reciprocal: Gen 37:8 – reign over us Num 16:13 – thou make Jer 44:16 – we Mar 12:7 – This
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 2:3. Let us break their bands asunder That is, the laws of the Lord and his Anointed; the bands or yokes which they design to put upon our necks, that they may bring us into subjection. The laws of God and Christ, though easy and pleasant in themselves, and to all good men, Mat 11:29-30; 1Jn 5:3; yet are very grievous and burdensome to corrupt nature, and carnal, wicked men. And cast away their cords from us The same thing expressed with more emphasis. Let us not only break off their yoke, and the cords by which it is fastened upon us, but let us cast them far away. These words, supposed to be spoken by the powers in arms against the Messiah, discover to us the true ground of opposition, namely, the unwillingness of rebellious nature to submit to the obligations of divine laws, which cross the interests, and lay a restraint upon the desires of men. Corrupt affections are the most inveterate enemies of Christ; and their language is, We will not have this man to reign over us. Doctrines would be readily believed if they involved in them no precepts; and the Church may be tolerated by the world, if she will only give up her discipline. Horne.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2:3 {b} Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
(b) Thus the wicked say that they will cast off the yoke of God and of his Christ.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The nations did not want to continue to submit to the rule of God’s vice-regent, who was originally probably David himself. They wanted to be free of the restraints that bound their freedom: the taxes and limitations on them that David had imposed.