Psalm 45 is headed as a psalm of the sons of Korah, a family of Levites who served as gatekeepers and, judging by the eleven psalms bearing their name, as composers too. It is also a psalm that speaks directly to a king on his wedding day, and its own heading calls it a love song. Royal wedding poetry was common in the ancient world, court poets composing verse for a king's marriage. What makes this song remarkable is where its language ends up.
1"My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe." The poet knows what he is doing. What follows joins beauty and speech: 2"You are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips." Whatever makes this king beautiful is inseparable from what comes out of his mouth.
Then, in the middle of praise written for a human bridegroom, comes the line that addresses the king as God. Interpreters have argued for centuries over what it first meant, whether the king himself is addressed in the loose sense in which Israel's judges were sometimes called gods, or whether the line turns to speak to God about the Davidic throne. What is not in dispute is what happened to the verse later. An old Aramaic paraphrase of the Psalms, used in Jewish circles, read a nearby line as being about King Messiah. The church inherited the messianic reading from a Jewish hand.
Hebrews 1 makes it explicit. Arguing that the Son is greater than any angel, the author quotes this line as God's own address to Christ (Hebrews 1:8). No merely human king's throne has lasted forever, not David's, not Solomon's, not any dynasty the psalm might first have celebrated. Only one king's throne has. Whatever wedding this psalm was written for, its language, once written down, was too large for any bridegroom but one to fill.
The second half turns to the bride: 10"Forget your people and your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty." It asks for a total transfer of loyalty, one household exchanged for another. The church has long read it toward the soul's union with Christ. 13"All glorious is the princess in her chamber." The glory is the king's gift, received as a gift.
The psalm closes by stretching its own "forever" into the future. 16"In place of your fathers shall be your sons; you will make them princes in all the earth." 17"I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations; therefore nations will praise you forever and ever." Every human dynasty this psalm might once have celebrated ran out of sons and of memory. Only the kingdom the psalm points to beyond its own occasion keeps the promise, a King whose name is remembered in every generation and whose bride, the church, is still being led toward him.
Ask what borrowed beauty you have been leaning on, reputation or competence or a house you have kept up. The psalm offers a beauty that is given from the King himself.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you are fairer than the sons of men, and grace is poured upon your lips. Your throne, unlike every merely human throne, is forever and ever. Forgive us for clinging to the borrowed beauty of our own house and our own name. Make us glorious within by your gift, given in union with you. Let your name be remembered in every generation, and let us, your bride, praise you forever. Amen.