At the latter end of Psalm 45:11 the KJV renders the verse as “for he is thy Lord, worship thou him”. Since this passage is a prophecy of Christ and his church and Ephesians 5:23 tells us the husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his church – is God commanding the wives should worship their husbands?
The answer to that question is found in many passages of the Bible but Revelation 19:10 gives us an extremely clear answer where John fell at the feet of angel to worship him:
“And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
We worship God and God alone. So, we know that Psalm 45:11 is not teaching women to worship their husbands. Does that mean we dismiss the latter part of Psalm 45:11 as not applying to human marriage at all? The answer to that is no as well.
To better understand how Psalm 45:11 applies not just to the spiritual marriage of Christ and his church, but also to human marriage we will look at this same passage in the English Standard Version of the Bible:
“Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear:
forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty.
Since he is your lord, bow to him.”
Notice the big difference? In the KJV it tells the woman to worship the king who will be her husband. In the ESV it tells her to bow to him. And if you were to see the wording of this you would also notice that the KJV capitalizes the word “Lord” while the ESV uses a lower case “lord”.
