(1.) One class of interpreters understand these psalms simply of Christ; that is, they assume that the writer speaks wholly in the name of Christ, without reference to himself or any merely human personage.  There are psalms—­the hundred and tenth, for example—­that may be very well explained in this way.  The opening words of that psalm—­“The Lord said unto my lord”—­seem to exclude David as the subject, and it is difficult to see in what sense David could speak of himself as made by a divine oath “a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek” (ver. 4).  But in the attempt to carry this principle consistently through all the Messianic psalms, one meets with serious difficulties.  They contain, at least some of them, historic allusions of a character so marked and circumstantial that it is hard to believe that the writer had not in view his own personal situation.  In some of them, moreover, the writer makes confession to God of his sins.  Psa. 40:12; 69:5.

They who apply these psalms exclusively to Christ assume that these confessions of sin are made in a vicarious way, the Messiah assuming the character of a sinner because “the Lord hath laid on him the iniquities of us all.”  Isa. 53:6.  But the form of these confessions forbids such an interpretation.  When the psalmist says:  “Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me;” “O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee,” we cannot understand such language of any thing else than personal sinfulness.  It is true that the Messiah bore our iniquities, and that God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin;” but the Saviour nowhere speaks or can speak of “mine iniquities,” “my foolishness,” and “my sins.”

(2.) According to another class of interpreters, the subject of these psalms, particularly of those which describe the Messiah as a sufferer, is an ideal personage, namely, the congregation of the righteous considered not separately from Christ, but in Christ their head; or, which amounts to the same thing, Christ considered, not in his simple personality apart from the church, but Christ with his body the church.  The contents of these psalms are then applied, according to their nature, to Christ alone, to believers alone who are his members, or to Christ in the fullest sense and believers in a subordinate sense.  Much might be said in favor of this view; yet it labors under the difficulty already indicated, that one cannot well read the psalms in question, with their marked historic allusions, without the conviction that the author had in view—­not indirectly, but immediately—­his own personal situation.