Lemche/If I forget You, 6. Psalm 2: Between Past and Future

Does Ps 2 have its background in the time of King David, or does it belong to the times of the Ptolemaic Empire? Or perhaps sometime in between? We clearly find elements of the Egyptian royal ideology in Ps 2, but also of other ideas about royalty prevalent in Western Asia. In light of the present rewriting of the history of Israel the psalm is hardly from the time of a non-existent Israelite empire in the 10th century BCE. It more likely belongs to the Ptolemaic period. Then issue arises: Is the psalm messianic?