Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 55 · February 24
Kiss the Son
“Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”
"Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him."
On its own, that verse is hard to understand, because it is the conclusion of an argument. So go back to the start of the psalm.
"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" The scene is a meeting of kings and rulers who "take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed." Their plan is this: "Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." Nobody at that table says God does not exist. They are voting to get out from under His rule, which is a far more common thing to do.
Heaven does not answer with an army. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh." God answers by pointing to what He has already done: "Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion." Then the king himself speaks and tells what God said to him: "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee."
So by the time you reach the last verse, the Son has already been named five verses earlier, and that matters. "Kiss the Son" is one of the hardest phrases in the Hebrew Bible to translate. The word used for son here is not the usual Hebrew one, and translations handle it in different ways. Nothing in the psalm's argument depends on which one is right, though, because verse seven has already told us who the Son is, and every translation has verse seven.
The kiss is a sign of loyalty more than affection. When Samuel anointed Saul as king, he "poured it upon his head, and kissed him." That is what a subject does for a king, in public, where everyone can see.
What the psalm asks of the kings comes down to four verbs: be wise, be instructed, serve and rejoice. "Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling." The fear and the joy belong together, and neither one cancels the other. Then the psalm ends with a welcome for everyone who trusts the Son.
You have some power too, over your money, your time and your words, so the psalm is speaking to you. Name one part of your life that you have quietly voted out from under the Son's rule. Put it back today, out loud, with a witness if you can find one, and trust Him with it, because those who trust Him are blessed.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 55 is Comforted Thoughts (Psalm 94:19).