Endnote 15 – Bah, Humbug!

The king’s sonship is stated most explicitly in Psalms 2:7, a text which also appears in Messiah: “Thou [the king] art my son, this day have I [God] begotten thee.” That is, upon investiture the king became God’s son (cf. also Psalm 89:27–28 [English 89:26–27]). But elsewhere the “sons of God” are lesser deities (Genesis 6:2, 4; Deuteronomy 32:8 [Greek, Qumran]; Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7). Was the king of Judah the nation’s patron deity ex officio? Psalm 45:7 (English 45:6), by the most natural reading, explicitly calls the king “God.” At any rate, in Isaiah 9:5 the born child might be either a royal child or an adult king upon his anointment. For a recent discussion of divine kingship, see Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 157–163.