holiness" is a common name
for the dress of the priests: the idea conveyed is that the army is an
army of priests, as the king himself is a priest. They are clothed, not
in mail and warlike attire, but in "fine linen clean and white," like
the armies which a later prophet saw following the Lord of lords. Their
warfare is not to be by force and cruelty, nor their conquests bloody;
but while soldiers they are to be priests, their weapons purity and
devotion, their merciful struggle to bring men to God, and to mirror God
to men. Round the one image gather all ideas of discipline, courage,
consecration to a cause, loyalty to a leader; round the other, all
thoughts of gentleness, of an atmosphere of devotion calm and still as
the holy place, of stainless character. Christ's servants must be both
soldiers and priests, like some of those knightly orders who bore the
cross on helmet and shield, and shaped the very hilts of their swords
into its likeness. And these soldier-priests are described by yet
another image, "From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy
youth," where we are to regard the last word as used in a collective
sense, and equivalent to "Thy young warriors." They are like the dew
sparkling in infinite globelets on every blade of grass, hanging gems on
every bit of dead wood, formed in secret silence, reflecting the
sunlight, and, though the single drops be small and feeble, yet together
freshening the thirsty world. So, formed by an unseen and mysterious
power, one by one insignificant, but in the whole mighty, mirroring God
and quickening and beautifying the worn world, the servants of the
priest-king are to be "in the midst of many people like the dew from the
Lord."

[U] The word translated "power" in our version, has the same double
meaning as that has in old English, or as "force" has now, sometimes
signifying "strength" and sometimes an "army." The latter is the more
appropriate here. "The day of Thine army" will then be equivalent to the
day of mustering the troops.

Another solemn word from the lips of God begins the second half of the
psalm. "Jehovah swears," gives the sanction and guarantee of His own
nature, puts in pledge His own being for the fulfilment of the promise.
And that which He swears is a new thing in the earth. The blending of
the royal and priestly offices in the Messiah, and the eternal duration
in Him of both, is a distinct advancement in the development of
Messianic prophe