Psalm 89 is a marvelous psalm. Simultaneously it praises God for his greatness and wonder and it sings in praise of what God does for Israel’s king. 
Ultimately, after singing the wonder of both, it pleads for a restoration of the kingship.
The psalm provides a host of imagery for understanding what it means to be the person anointed to rule the world on God’s behalf.
After praising God for his power in and above the heavens (vv. 5-7), the psalm moves to praise YHWH for his rule over the earth, including the raging sea and its primeval monsters (vv. 8-10). YHWH’s reign is righteous, and his people exalt his righteousness.
But the shift from YHWH to YHWH’s agent comes in vv. 17-18. The glory of YHWH is the strength of his people, he exalts their horn–because Israel’s king and shield belongs to YHWH.
The exposition of kingship begins with David’s election and anointing. And in this there is an identification between YHWH and his king. The story-bound God binds himself to the story of Israel’s king: “my hand shall be established with him; my arm also shall strengthen him.”
The story of YHWH andh is king is to be a story of victory over enemies (vv. 22-24). Because YHWH is the one who strengthens this king, it is YHWH’s name that exalts “the horn” of his anointed.
Then, things get a bit weird.
Apparently, ruling the people of the world isn’t enough. The God who “rules the raging of the sea” (v. 9) is going to set Israel’s king over this part of the world as well: “I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers” (v. 25). To reign over the waters of the earth is either to be God or to be God’s anointed representative, the human Davidic king who does what the first people were created to do in Genesis 1: rule the world on God’s behalf.
This king will call God father and will be “the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth”–again, a human who fulfills the creation-vocation of humanity in Genesis 1. To bear the image of God is to be the child of God (compare Gen 5:1ff) who rules the world on God’s behalf.
I know, I know, I’m so predictable. You know exactly where I’m going with this.
When we turn to the pages of the New Testament, and see Jesus doing things that make us think he’s acting like God, we need to give adequate space for the possibility that, in keeping with the OT expectations of Israel’s king, Jesus is acting like God because he is, in fact, Israel’s king, the fulfillment of God’s purposes for humanity. The point of the nature miracles such as stilling the storm have a perfectly plausible interpretive framework given to us in the OT: the Messiah will be one who rules the world on God’s behalf, and this means all the world. Jesus stilling a storm or walking on water is not an indication that he is divine, but an indication that he is the Messiah.
Daniel, have you come across Sean McDonough’s “Christ as Creator” yet? I’m reading a courtesy copy from Oxford University Press to review on my blog, and in it he makes many of the same connections you do with the miracles and Jesus’ messiahship, but at the same time also comes at it from more of a Bauckham-type trajectory on Jesus’ divine identity being retrospectively understood by the NT writers and early Christians from the actual historical deeds and sayings of Jesus, as refracted through the memories of the original disciples. I’m enjoying it immensely so far.
BTW, a clarifying question for you that is becoming more clear in my mind as I meditate on these matters: given that you hold to the inspiration of Scripture, I don’t think you would be willing to actually conclude this (I definitely wouldn’t either), but on your construction of the Synoptics and their almost entirely human/davidic king construal of Jesus’ miracles and sayings, etc., and given that on just about any reading John and Paul and other NT writers are reflecting on these early Christian memories of Jesus in their theological portrayals (John) and expositions (Paul) of Jesus, wouldn’t it seem quite likely–if you are right–that John and Paul simply misread entirely the nature of the evidence from their removed vantage point many years later?
If Jesus didn’t walk around claiming to be God or announcing his pre-existent presence at the creation of the world (as I think on any reading he clearly didn’t), and yet if within the NT itself there are unambiguously those exact claims being made within a generation by guys like Paul and John–well, then, HOW exactly did they arrive at THAT conclusion?
If the Synoptics and Jesus’ actual real-life ministry are as devoid of divine identity allusions as you argue, my initial reaction is to see Paul and John as simply making one giant interpretative miscalculation. Given how Jewish and saturated in the OT both of them were–not to mention inspired by the Spirit in their canonical writings!–that seems a priori implausible to the nth degree to me.
One of the things McDonough is doing for me–and I think this really started for me with Bauckham, though he created as many questions for me (in a good way, to be sure) as he answered–is making me realize that the leap between Jewish carpenter to cosmic creator and eschatological judge is, irreducibly, a detective mystery for us. It requires us to follow the clues, put together the pieces of the puzzle, and connect the dots. Clearly these conclusions were reached retrospectively and deductively, not during Jesus’ own ministry (at least not in large part) and not mainly because of direct claims that he himself made. Even John, as suspicious as modern scholars are of his historical integrity, has enough wherewithal to only put the affirmations of Jesus’ deity in his own narrative prologue, editorial comments on Jesus’ own actual words within the gospel, and on the lips of others like Thomas–but never on Jesus’ own lips, at least not in any straightforward way. It seems the thrust is: this is who Jesus was the whole time, but we didn’t realize it until later.
I think that actually sums up much of the NT’s christological reflection, the more I ponder the matter. Which leads me to think the Synoptics are a bit more loaded than with theological import than you give them credit for, even if not nearly as much as most Christians on the popular level import through the lenses of the creeds. It’d be another matter if the whole NT sounded like the synoptics (at least how you are inclined to read them), and only with the creeds did outrageous claims about Jesus’ creating and preexistence and eschatological judging of the entire world on the basis of one’s response to him come into play. But in one form or another, it’s all already there within the pages of the NT itself. That seems to cry out for an explanation. Any thoughts? Thanks as always for stirring up these good discussions, by the way.
You’re good.