to the king whose nobility and prowess the poet is celebrating. The words cannot, as from Hebrews 1:8 onwards has often been supposed, be an affirmation of the divinity of the Messiah, for the simple reason that the king whom the psalmist celebrates, though he is invested with ideal attributes, is not the Messiah—least of all the Christian Messiah, for he marries a queen and has children, who are spoken of in such terms that it would outrage all reasonable exegesis to understand them in any but a