The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the LORD shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.
The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth ... exalt the horn of his anointed. This is the first place in Scripture where the word "anointed," or Messiah, occurs; and as there was no king in Israel at the time, it seems the best interpretation to refer it as pointing prophetically to Christ. There is, indeed, a remarkable resemblance between the song of Hannah and that of Mary (Luke 1:46); and the language of Hannah, pointing evidently to the same great and ardently-expected event, was as if she had said, 'God shall make the Messiah great and honourable, and cause Him to triumph over all His enemies.' This Song, independently of, and apart from, its highly poetical character, contains expressions which, it has been justly remarked, 'savour richly of spiritual religion. Though much earlier than the Psalms, it betokens an advance in such exercises beyond what we should have looked for at such an ancient stage of a dispensation confessedly ruder and grosser than that under which we now live. Joy in the Lord; joy in His salvation; the ascription to Him of unrivaled holiness, of creative power and greatness, of His guardianship over those who fear Him, of such strength as will bear down all opposition, and of a judgment that reaches over the whole earth;-these are the conceptions, couched, too, in adequate language, of a pure and high theology, and might be adopted in the loftiest strains of the most enlightened devotion' (Chalmers, 'Daily Scripture Readings').