“Verily, my own house has not been so with God;
    Yet hath He made with me an everlasting covenant,
    Ordered in all things and sure. 
    For this covenant is now all my comfort and all my desire,
    Although he has not yet brought it to pass.”

This seems to be the setting of those psalms of his referring to the coming One.  It was to be expected that his poetical fire would burn with such a promise and conception.  In the Second Psalm he sees this coming Heir enthroned as God’s own Son, and reigning supremely over the whole earth despite the united opposition of enemies.  In the One Hundred and Tenth Psalm this Heir is sharing rule at God’s right hand while waiting the subduing of all enemies.  He is to be divine, a king, and more, a priest-king.  Surrounded by a nation of volunteers full of youthful vigor He will gain a decisive victory over the head of the allied enemies, and yet be Himself undisturbed in the continual freshness of His vigor.  And all this rests upon the unchanging oath of Jehovah.

David’s immediate heir found his father’s pen, and in the Seventy-second Psalm repeats, with his own variations, his father’s vision of the coming greater Heir.  While there is repetition of the kingdom being world-wide and unending, with all nations in subjection, the chief emphasis is put upon the blessing to that great majority—­the poor.  They are to be freed from all oppression, to have full justice done them, with plenty of food to eat, and increased length of life.

That David’s expectation had thoroughly permeated his circle is shown in the joyous Forty-fifth Psalm, written by one of the court musicians.  It addresses the coming One as more than human, having great beauty and graciousness, reigning in righteousness, victoriously, with a queen of great beauty, and a princely posterity for unending generations.

A Full-length Picture in Colors.

These are but the beginnings.  It is in the prophetic books, the third of the groups, that the full picture with its brightest coloring is found.  The picture is not only winsome beyond all comparison and glorious, but stupendous in its conception and its sweep.  It is most notable that, as the flood-tide of the nation’s prosperity ebbs from its highest mark, the vision to the prophetic eye of a coming glory grows steadily in brightness and in distinctness.  As the great kings go, the great prophets come.  It is to them we must turn for the full-length picture.

The one continuous subject of the prophets is the coming King and kingdom and attendant events.  Immediate historical events furnish the setting, but with a continual swinging to the coming future greatness.  The yellow glory light of the coming day is never out of the prophetic sky.  Its reflection is never out of the prophetic eye.  Jeremiah is the one most absorbed in the boiling of the political pot of his own strenuous time, but even he at times lifts his head and gets such glimpses of the coming glory as make him mix some rose tincture with the jet black ink he uses.