72:1–20 Psalm 72 is a royal psalm, used on behalf of the preexilic Davidic kings of Israel/Judah. The opening parallelism of the king and the royal son particularly fits the official coronation of the crown-prince designate, but this may be pushing poetic parallelism too far. The elevated court language is consistent with what we see in other ancient Near Eastern texts. This should not surprise us. By its own admission, the OT is clear that kingship was a foreign import (1 Sam. 8:5). It was an expedient quickly introduced as a rallying point to counter the military threats of Ammon and Philistia. With the ancient Near Eastern institution of monarchy came the language of the court.

Psalm 72 consists of three sections (vv. 1–3, 4–11, 12–17). This outline is confirmed by the symmetry that it…