Bands that Cannot be Broken
F. W. Macdonald. Psalm 2:3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. The yoke that our Saviour would lay on this world is not a galling and exasperating code of laws, but a yoke in which humanity would be renewed, transformed, uplifted to the highest and eternal joy. It is of that "yoke and burden" that the world's proud captains say, "Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us." Bands and cords! It is an invidious description of "the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light." What can be the issue of the effort to break the bands and cords of the Almighty? What can come of it? "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision." The Psalmist is very bold: the laughter of God! the derision of the Most High! What a figure to use! It is a poet's phrase, but it is a prophet's truth. There is a spendthrift who is resenting the bands of economics and arithmetic; who says in regard to a plain and accurate cash statement, "I will break these bands asunder," and in his foolishness he makes the attempt; but he cannot divert from their inflexible proportions the laws of parts and quantities, of plus and minus considerations. He may wish that ten amid ten should make twenty-five, but they will not. "He that sitteth in the heavens"! Great fixed proportions! — they won't bend to amuse a prodigal; they won't break to gratify a spendthrift. They claim their value and issue their writ, and the man who has lived and spent as though two and two made fifty is the object of the laughter of arithmetical law, and is by it had in derision. (F. W. Macdonald.) Parallel Verses KJV: Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. WEB: "Let's break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us."