Psalm 47
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Speaks with:1 Corinthians 15×2Psalms 98×1Jeremiah 31×1Psalms 106×1Psalms 99×1Psalms 95×1
Summary
Chapter summary
'Oh clap your hands, all ye peoples; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.' Jehovah Most High is terrible, a great King over all the earth, who subdueth peoples under us and chooseth our inheritance for us. 'God is gone up with a shout, Jehovah with the sound of a trumpet', the church sings it at the Ascension. Sing praises with understanding: God reigneth over the nations; the princes of the peoples are gathered together to be the people of the God of Abraham.
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 47The history
"God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet" describes a coronation. When a king was enthroned in Israel, the people blew the ram's horn and shouted — that is exactly how Solomon's crowning is reported, with such noise that the earth rent with the sound. The horn was a curved ram's horn, not a melodic instrument; it was for signaling and acclamation.
The going up is a procession up the ridge to the sanctuary. The ark had been carried up that way once with shouting and horn blasts, and the memory shaped the liturgy.
"Clap your hands, all ye people" was acclamation, the crowd's part in enthroning a ruler. Clapping and shouting at a coronation are recorded in Israel's own history — the people clapped their hands and said, God save the king, when Joash was crowned in the temple courts.
"The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God." Shields stand for rulers and their armed power; the picture is of the world's chiefs assembling not to fight but to be counted among Abraham's people.
What it meant to them
Israel sang this while being, by any measure, a minor kingdom. The psalm addresses all people, all nations, and tells them to clap for a King enthroned on a hill in Judah.
It also names what he did for them: he shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. The land they stood on was evidence, not theory.
Sources cited
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David on Psalm 47
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 47. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.