Ps. 48.2 (covenant, city and mountain)

“In the city / of our God – is his / holy mountain.” Spatial references are perhaps the most important aspect to this psalm. There may be a cultic reason for this as the psalm was likely used during a ceremony wherein pilgrims journeyed to Zion, entered the Temple precincts and then walked around the outside of the Temple. Here, the psalm begins its geographical journey by drawing our attention inside the “city of our God” to “his holy mountain.” There is the sense here of concentric circles—the city is owned by God (“city of our God”) and, within its ambit, is “his holy mountain.” Furthermore, not only does God have a claim on the city, but the people have a claim on him—“city of our God”. As we know, this is a covenantal term (“you will be my people, and I will be your God.”). These twin ideas are crucial: covenant and city/mountain. The city, as a social body, is created by covenant; the covenant is enacted with the city/mountain in mind. Just as creation is to be the stage on which the covenant will be performed, it is also a manifestation of that covenantal bond (in the Sabbath). They mutually interpenetrate and shed light on each other (i.e., the more one contemplates the city, the more one comes to understand the covenant, and the more one contemplates the covenant, the more one comes to perceive the ‘city of God’). This dynamic will be detected in this psalm: the closer one moves to the center of the city and into its temple, the closer one moves into the contemplation of God covenant. The dynamism of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ will inform this mutual interpenetration. 

Ps. 48.1 (Yhwh and his city)

“Yhwh / is great – and most worthy / of praise!” Several translations incorporate this line with the following making it, “…most worthy of praise in the city…”. That, however, I think is a mistake for two reasons. First, by placing Yhwh’s name as the very first word spoken the psalmist is drawing our attention to the fact that Yhwh is the one who makes city into Zion, the building into a Temple. It is his name/presence that enlivens and leavens these realities. It is crucial that this is understood as it is Yhwh’s indwelling that, as we will see, imbues Zion with its ‘forever’ reality and stability and will come to make it a physical manifestation of his covenantal endurance with Israel. Furthermore, it is because of his indwelling presence that Zion will take on the characteristics of these opening lines: “great” and “worthy of praise”. As we will see, for the psalmist, by emphasizing Yhwh here, he is not assuring us that Zion is ‘only a symbol’; rather, it is precisely in his recognition of Yhwh’s greatness and of his supremacy as an object of praise that Zion will be more fully revealed in all of its splendor. In other words, there is no ‘competition’ between Yhwh and his ‘mountain’. Yhwh can give as much of himself to Zion as possible without ever being in danger of being lost in the exchange. The second reason for seeing this as the opening is a formal one: if one brackets this section off then the remaining operates very smoothly as a description of Zion as it participates within Yhwh’s beauty and glory.

Ps. 47.8-9 (Abraham's promise)

“God / has ruled / over nations; - God / has sat upon / his holy throne. – The princely ones / of the peoples / are assembled – with the people / of Abraham’s God; - for the earth’s rulers / belong to God, - who has been / greatly exalted!” There may be something like a liturgical drama at work here. In verse 5, God is described as having “gone up with a great shout”. There, we saw that his ‘going up’ possibly referred to the arc of the covenant returning to the camp (or, tabernacle), as God mounts his throne. The psalm then shifts to acclamations and praise at the enthronement and now moves into the ‘gathering of the nations’ around that throne. The importance of seeing this drama is in how it may shed light on the first verse above: “God has ruled over nations; God has sat upon his holy throne.” If, in fact, God’s sitting upon his throne is his enthronement within the camp of Israel, then one realizes that his ‘worldwide dominion’ (his ‘ruling over nations’) is actually performed in and through his enthronement in Israel. This point was made yesterday but is seen again here: that God’s particular enthronement in Israel is not necessarily grounded in some prior, more expansive enthronement ‘over the nations’. In an odd way, the closer and more intimate Yhwh moves within Israel, the more expansive is his reign ‘over the nations’. Perhaps it can be said like this: the more concentrated he becomes in Israel, the more sovereign is his rule over ‘all the earth’ (Christian theology could say it thus: the more God empties himself in kenosis, the more is his power actually made manifest.) This would, it seems, reverse a tendency in our thinking that the more remote and abstract one becomes the more one perceives the expanse of the king’s authority. This dynamic is made clear in the following verses: “The princely ones of the peoples, are assembled with the people of Abraham’s God.” The power inherent within the nations (the “princely ones of the peoples”) finds their sovereign only with “the people of Abraham’s God”. This is a startling and seemingly massive insight: that the particularly of Israel’s relationship with Yhwh in no way limits their perception of his sovereign rule over every other nation. Quite the reverse—the more Israel came to perceive the nature of Yhwh ruling over them, the more they came to see this as the initiation of his rule over all the nations. This can, I think, be seen in the structure of the concluding verse: “the princely ones of the people, are assembled – with the people of Abraham’s God.”. This verse is almost acrostic:

A.    The princely ones

a.       Of the peoples

                                                              i.      Are assembled

b.      With the people

B.     Of Abraham’s God.

This structure is important—Abraham was promised two things: that he would be a blessing to all nations and that he would father many nations, and, eventually, the royal dynasty of God. By not referring to these other rulers as ‘kings’ but only as “princely ones”, we come to see that their authority to rule is subordinated. Their authority is “of the peoples”. However, those with whom they are assembled, are “of Abraham’s God”. The only power they are subordinated to is God. By referring to them as “of Abraham’s God” we see that they are the seed of Abraham and are those through whom the “blessing to the nations flow”. This is, in other words, the manifestation of Yhwh promise to Abraham that he would be both the source of nations and the blessing to all nations. Finally, in their ‘assembly’ they are now understood as not owned by their previous overseers (Deuteronomy 28) but, as with Israel, by God. In assembling with Israel they have been ransomed (as Israel was ransomed from Egypt) and are now ‘owned’ by God.

Ps. 47.6-7 ('kingdom-praise')

“Sing praises / to God / sing praises! – sing praises / to our king / sing praises! – For / God is king / of the whole earth; - sing a maskil.” It is perhaps a statement of the obvious, within the context of this psalm, but it deserves noting: for our psalmist, this liturgical act is one that sees ‘God’ and ‘king’ as interchangeable, indeed, parallel. These verses show this, first, by dividing and paralleling the two terms God and King: ‘sing praises to God…’; ‘sing praises to our king…’. And then combining them together in a single verse: ‘for God is king…’. In other words, ‘God’ does not sit behind, in a more powerful eternal way, the image of ‘king’. Rather, God is King. Perhaps more significantly, the first call is to sing praises to “God”, the second to “our king” and the last for “God is king”. The seemingly more expansive “God” flows into the more seemingly limited “our King” (not “the king”) until both terms emerge as joined together in “God is king”. While initially a seemingly mundane observation, it does strike me as of rather large importance. As we have said, the impetus of the praise issuing (indeed, overflowing) in this psalm is one that originates from the idea of Yhwh-Elyon’s, not simply ‘authority’ over the earth, but his regal authority, his kingly authority. It is one that erupts in praise precisely because of the fact that the earth has become ordered, like a kingdom, underneath its king. This praise is, therefore, kingdom-praise. It would be tempting to say it this way: creation moves to its apogee of praise not in its contemplation of God, but in its praise of “God is king”. The force of the directive in these verses seems to indicate that the psalmist is directing us toward this vision with his continual and repeated call to “praise”—indeed, four times in two lines!  In Israel, God as “our King” (Yhwh) makes his first step down the ladder to creation, with the final step being “God is king of the whole earth!” His personal election of Israel will fill the entire earth, in the same way that Yhwh will fill out and complete Elyon. This, it could be argued, is why Israel ‘comes first’: if the goal is to provide the world with the intimacy of Israel’s king (Yhwh), rather than with a more abstract relationship, then the particular election of Israel is understood to be the ‘model’; it is not merely a beginning but, in a real way, the end and goal.

Ps. 47.5 (enthronement: more than mirroring)

“God / has gone up / with a great shout, - Yhwh / with the sound / of a trumpet.” It is probable that the background to this verse is the procession of the arc of the covenant into the sanctuary, the arc being, often, a type of throne of Yhwh. Hence, for the arc to ‘go up’ would signal the enthronement of Yhwh within the midst of Israel. It is understandable, then, that jubilation would accompany such a procession (as it accompanied David when he brought the arc to Jerusalem). We must hold together in our minds, though, that Yhwh’s “going up” is here tied directly to his ‘subduing’ of the peoples underneath Israel. The geographical contrast (the people’s going ‘down’; Yhwh ‘going up’) is no accident. For Yhwh to “rise” is for him to assume his regal authority, and necessitates the ‘lowering’ of all powers opposed to him. One often reads that this ‘enthronement’ does not imply that Yhwh has not been king all along. As true as that statement may be, it would seem to potentially rob the force of verses such as this one. Rather, it seems to me that in any procession of this type the great congregation gathered would have seen themselves as participating within a royal banquet and ascension, that they would have seen themselves as participants within a joyous reality of Yhwh’s establishing of his reign. The idea that “in the background” was the ‘eternal reign of Yhwh’ simply feels foreign to this. That vision does emerge in other texts, certainly, but here what is central is the “becoming King” of Yhwh. Yhwh was as much a Warrior King as he was an eternal King. In other words, when Yhwh’s eternal reign is heavily emphasized, processions such as this become seen more as symbolic than sacramental (and, the sacramental reality is what seems present here). It would seem to me of great import that when one is lifted up and given a vision of the heavenly liturgy, the same instruments are employed by angels as well as the same shouts of acclimation. The earthly liturgy, then, would be seen as a participation within the heavenly one, more than merely a ‘mirroring’ of it.