Psalm 48

Psalms 48:1-3

Great is the Lord: The Hebrew title, not shown by this page's text, reads A Song, a Psalm, by the sons of Korah, one more contribution from the Levitical family of singers who wrote eleven psalms in this book. Great is the Lord opens a psalm about the city that houses him, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, praise of the place inseparable from praise of the God who dwells there. God is known in her palaces for a refuge closes the stanza, Zion's safety resting on who lives in it rather than on its walls.

Psalms 48:4-6

For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together sets a historical deliverance the psalm never names, and the commentators differ on which one: some point to the coalition Jehoshaphat faced in 2 Chronicles 20, others to Sennacherib's army under Hezekiah, both named as readings rather than settled. Whatever the occasion, the kings saw the city and were undone before a blow was struck, they marvelled, they were troubled, and hasted away. Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail, the psalm reaching for labor's pain, the sharpest image of helpless terror its writer knew.

Psalms 48:7-8

Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind names the largest ships known to the ancient world, the pride of a distant maritime power, broken by nothing more than a wind God sent. As we have heard, so have we seen answers a report with an eyewitness confirmation, the city's fame proven true in front of the singers themselves. Selah seals the claim that follows, God will establish it for ever, the city's permanence resting on the same God who broke the ships.

Psalms 48:9-11

We have thought of thy lovingkindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple turns from event to meditation, the worshippers rehearsing what they have just recounted inside the building built for that purpose. According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth reaches the same universal horizon Psalm 47 already opened, the fame of Zion's God not confined to Zion. Let mount Zion rejoice, let the daughters of Judah be glad, because of thy judgments grounds the city's gladness in God's righteous rule rather than in mere national pride.

Psalms 48:12-14

Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof invites a slow circuit of the city, counting its bulwarks and palaces not for military pride but so the next generation follows, that ye may tell it to the generation following. This God is our God for ever and ever closes the psalm with the covenant confession the whole city was built to keep. The last two Hebrew words behind he will be our guide even unto death are read two ways among the commentators, some taking them as the ordinary sense of death itself, others as a musical direction continuing from a title elsewhere in the Psalter, and both readings are named rather than settled here.