Later text
Psalm 72:8BSB
May he rule from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth.
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
Psalm 72:8BSB
May he rule from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth.
Earlier text
Genesis 1:28BSB
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth."
Genesis 1:28 issues two clauses that Psalm 72 carries into the royal tradition: dominion ("rule… over every creature") and filling the earth. The Solomonic prayer echoes the dominion clause in cosmic scope — "May he rule from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth" (v. 8) — applying the Adamic mandate to the messianic Davidic king, the appointed vehicle through whom the commission is to be exercised. The psalm then closes with the fill-the-earth clause transposed into doxology: "may all the earth be filled with His glory" (v. 19). Where Adam was to fill the earth with image-bearers reflecting God's glory, the royal psalm reaches the commission's true telos — a worldwide kingdom in which creation itself is filled with the glory of God. The dominion of Gen 1:28, lost by the first Adam and entrusted to the Davidic line, is consummated in Christ the Last Adam, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth is given (Matt 28:18) and under whose feet all things are placed (1 Cor 15:25-27).