He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs!
He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
Psalm 2:4–6 (ESV)
One of the most unsettling trends regarding modern movie villains is their indifference. Violence on screen is nothing new, but what makes today’s portrayals so dehumanizing is the casualness — the bad guy shoots someone and barely registers it. Murdering a person generates less than a shrug or mocking laugh.
That is not the kind of laugh that appears in Psalm 2 when the psalmist says, “He who sits in the heavens laughs.”
Let’s be clear about what kind of laugh this is and what type it is not.
It is not the laugh of someone enjoying another person’s suffering. It is not cruelty dressed up in theological language — and any theology that presents God as merely cruel has missed his core nature entirely. The Hebrew word that we translate as “laugh” carries the sense of a reaction to something absurd — the laughter of a parent watching a toddler announce that he is going to fight off a thunderstorm with a plastic sword. The parent’s laugh holds no contempt for the child, nor is it characterized by fear of the ultimate outcome. There is just a calm, complete awareness that the child’s plan is not going to work, and that no real harm is coming to the child either.
The early verses of Psalm 2 depict nations that are raging against God. The kings of the earth are in formal session, gathered to formulate and execute a plan to dismiss God. With confidence the leaders foment rebellion and seek to throw off God’s restrictions.
Like the parent and toddler, God is watching, unthreatened and concerned, but not indifferent. His reaction isn’t the result of not caring about the rebellion. In fact, he is hurt that his creation has turned against his love. Yet, he is unmoved because he has a plan, and he has already won. So, he laughs.
Notice the posture. He who sits in the heavens.
Sitting is the stance of someone who is at ease or relaxed. The psalmist provides us an image of God who has not left his throne. The rage of the nations is not a threat or a crisis to him. He doesn’t need to jump up in alarm or pace nervously in anticipation of some unknown calamity. In fact, the chaos below has not reached him at all. The nations are a drop in the bucket — the fullness of their rebellion leaves him unmoved.
God’s calm confidence matters more than it might sound. Most of us, when we look at the world — when we read about the deliberate dismantling of every structure of accountability, the organized rage, the sense that things are breaking faster than anyone can fix them — we feel it as something destabilizing. The foundations of what matters seem less certain and the future less readable. The rage of the nations is, frankly, unsettling.
That’s why the psalmist offers a different vantage point. Like Paul, he encourages us to set our eyes on things above, where Christ is, rather than on earth. He wants us to sit with him in calm confidence in the midst of turmoil — in short, his message is that we can have perfect peace in the midst of any turmoil. At this point, smart, needy people ask, “How can I get that peace?”
I was recently reading Jeremiah Burroughs’s well-known but daunting book, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. In typical Puritan fashion, he provides reason after reason after reason why we should be content, then piles on benefit after benefit after benefit of being content, then obstacle after obstacle after obstacle to finding contentment. Seriously, if you haven’t read the book, you can’t imagine how many details he piles on. In the midst of the deluge, one thought kept hitting me, over and over, and yes, over. It’s all about what you look at and what you set your heart upon. What you focus on is what will control you. In the midst of chaos, God wants you to set your eyes on the firm foundation of his throne, rather than the shifting dangers of human rage.
Psalm 2 gives you something to look at.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury.
God does not linger in laughter. He moves on, because what he has to say is already prepared. And his words land in the middle of the rage like a stone dropped in still water.
“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
Two things live in this sentence, and you need both of them. The first is sovereignty. As for me.
While the nations were organizing their rebellion, God was installing a king. The throne is occupied. The appointment is final. The carefully laid plans of the nations arrive after the conclusion is in place. The second is the word Zion — and this is the one that changes everything.
Those smart, needy people who asked how do I get that peace should stop right here. Because Zion carries more weight than a symbol of divine power. It is a specific address — a hill with a history that no other location in human experience can claim. Zion is where the temple stood. Zion is where sacrifice was offered, generation after generation, in anticipation of something the priests could name only in part. Zion, in the fullness of time, is where Jesus died.
There is something perplexing about what God says; why would this proclamation terrify the kings and leaders? Why dread the announcement that God’s king has taken his seat on the hill where redemption comes? People who do not know God work from a perspective that is either very dark or simply wrong. They picture a tyrant — a sovereign who uses his power to punish every deviation, to satisfy the demands of a justice that lands on whoever crosses him. Or they picture something like a cosmic provider who is obligated to make their lives go well, and the thought of his authority means the end of what little freedom they have managed to carve out. Either way, the arrival of God’s king feels threatening.
What they miss is what the word Zion announces. God seated his king on the hill of redemption. The king God placed there absorbed the judgment that rebels deserved, so that the rebels could find their way to salvation. His throne stands where the sacrifice was made. His reign begins where forgiveness became real. This is the light inside Psalm 2. Hold it for a moment. The nations rage. The peoples plot. And God — unhurried, seated, sovereign — places a king on the hill from which salvation flows.
