Psalms 72:2

He shall give sentence to thy people with righteousness,

And to thine afflicted ones with Judgement.

Many commentators render the verbs throughout the Ps. as optatives, Let him give sentence, and so forth. In Psalms 72:8 ff. this rendering is required by the form of the verb; but here the form is a simple future. The administration of the king endowed with divine capacities for ruling is described (Psalms 72:2; Psalms 72:4; Psalms 72:6), together with the resultant blessings (3, 5, 7). The rendering give sentenceis adopted to indicate that the Heb. word is different from that in Psalms 72:4.

It has been argued that -thine afflicted ones" implies that the nation was at the time in a state of depression and humiliation: but the term is not necessarily coextensive with -thy people"; it denotes, as frequently in the prophets, the poorer classes, who especially needed the protection of good government. See Isaiah 3:14-15; Isaiah 10:2; Jeremiah 22:16; Amos 8:4.