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.