Psalm 102 -- Divine Conversation between Father and Son continued, Part 3 of 4 -- The Dilemma

--continuing from where we left off--

[author's note: I apologize for the seeming complexity of this post. What I see is clear in my mind, but it is hard to explain what I see simply. If you want to skip this one, please do, and just go to the next post, which has the main idea of all four posts in it.]

Explanation of Psalm 102 Part 3, The Dilemma 

Psalm 102:25 "Of old You founded the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
26 "Even they will perish, but You endure; And all of them will wear out like a garment; Like clothing You will change them and they will be changed.
27 "But You are the same, And Your years will not come to an end.

Hebrews 1:10 And, "You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands;
11 they will perish, but You remain; and they all will become old like a garment,
12 and like a mantle you will roll them up; like a garment they will also be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will not come to an end."

The verses in Hebrews above apply this passage to Christ. But Hebrews tells us that it was not the psalmist as a human in the psalm who was addressing Christ in this passage, "Of old, You founded the earth,..." but, it was God who was addressing Christ. The entire context in Hebrews 1, in which the closing verses of Psalm 102 (minus its very last verse) are embedded, is about words of God addressed to Christ in Old Testament scripture. For example-- 

Hebrews 1:5 For to which of the angels did He ever say, "You are my Son, today I have begotten You"? And again, "I will be a Father to Him and He shall be a Son to me"? (Psalm 2:7, 2 Samuel 7:14)

Going back to the quotation from Psalm 102, Hebrews tell us that the psalmist--the individual in the lament, the one praying to God--it was not his persona as a human who was addressing Christ, but God was addressing Christ. How did the psalmist know to speak this way, from God to Christ? And, how did the writer to the Hebrews know to apply this passage, almost completely out of context, as it were, as being spoken by God to Christ?

In other words, my question is this, if the whole of Psalm 102 represents a single speaker--who in some of the verses laments his own pitiable condition and in other verses praises the eternity and greatness of God--how did the writer to the Hebrews know to apply verses 25 through 27 to Christ? What is there in these verses that would cause us to think that the psalmist, who appears to be addressing God, in actual fact is really God addressing Christ?  

Hebrews 1:8 But of the Son He [God] says, ...Hebrews 1:10 And, "You, Lord, in the beginning..."

Or, if we say that the psalmist didn't know that he was speaking in the voice of God to Christ, we are still left with wondering how the writer to the Hebrews did know that there was a switch in these particular words, that these particular words are indeed to be seen as the words of God the Father to Christ the Son. How did he know this? There are many, many prayers of humans to God in the Old Testament. The vast majority of these prayers are nowhere seen in the New Testament as being God speaking to Christ.

Notice that the writer to the Hebrews does not say, "I am applying this passage as though God were speaking to His Son." Nor does he say, "This passage represents God speaking to His Son." No, the writer to the Hebrews is making a very strong case to struggling Jewish believers. He is working very hard to show them beyond a shadow of doubt that Jesus is indeed the long awaited Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God. And so he says to them quite definitely, This IS God speaking to His Son, and this is what He says.

But, I myself cannot find anything in the text of Psalm 102 that would cause me to see a shift from the psalmist addressing God to God addressing Christ. Well, we say that the writer to the Hebrews had a divine revelation which told him that this passage in the Old Testament applied to Christ. Yes, I wholeheartedly believe that the writer to the Hebrews was under divine inspiration in interpreting this passage to be God addressing Christ His Son.

But wait, are we to understand then, that divine volition planned, in the writing of scripture, to use this particular moment--in the psalmist's ardent plea for extended life--to switch persona from the psalmist addressing God to God addressing Christ? That God chose to employ these verses as the best moment and the exactly correct spot in scripture in which He God would address His Son? And that the writer to the Hebrews, without the aid of a New Testament interpretation as guide, was able to see this switch out of the myriad of other prayers to God in the Psalms? That is what we are saying, if we read the psalm as the voice of a single speaker throughout.

This passage, as Hebrews explicitly tells us, is actually the voice of God addressing Christ. That is not arguable. The Bible says it. But if we follow the usual interpretations, this would mean that God is addressing Christ through the voice of the lonely, beleaguered, dying psalmist, who for his part thinks that he is addressing God. This is what commentators tell us, if only indirectly through omission. We are being asked to understand that suddenly, the dying psalmist, whom we understood previously to be addressing God, is no longer addressing God, but that his voice is actually God addressing Christ. Way too complicated for me.

It's a dilemma. And it goes against the grain of how we normally read literature. There are not normally sudden changes of personae without warning. Even in prophecy; even in divinely revealed scripture. Generally, the rule is that we should read scripture as we read other literature. The words must make plain sense as written. As generally interpreted, this reading of Psalm 102 in light of Hebrews does not make sense to me.

to be continued