Psalms 47: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm calls all peoples to clap and shout in praise to God as the great King over the whole earth. It says God chose Israel's inheritance for them and brings nations under them, and it pictures God going up with shouting and horn blasts, and seated on his holy throne. It ends with the leaders of the nations gathered with the people of the God of Abraham, since the shields of the earth belong to God.

Claim by Claim

1. 47:1
   • The hearers are commanded to clap their hands.
   • The command is addressed to all peoples.
   • The hearers are commanded to shout to God.
   • The shout is to be made with a voice of ringing cry.
2. 47:2
   • The LORD Most High is to be feared.
   • The LORD is a great King.
   • His kingship is over all the earth.
3. 47:3
   • God subdues peoples under us.
   • God puts nations under our feet.
   • Whether this subduing is stated as present or as future is not fixed by the wording.
4. 47:4
   • God chooses our inheritance for us.
   • That inheritance is the pride of Jacob.
   • God loves Jacob.
   • Selah.
5. 47:5
   • God has gone up.
   • God went up amid a shout.
   • The LORD went up with the sound of a ram's horn.
6. 47:6
   • The hearers are commanded to sing praises to God.
   • The command to sing praises is repeated.
   • The hearers are commanded to sing praises to our King.
   • The command to sing praises is repeated again.
7. 47:7
   • God is King of all the earth.
   • The hearers are commanded to sing praises accordingly.
   • Whether the praise is to be sung with understanding or as a skillful composition is not fixed by the wording.
8. 47:8
   • God reigns over the nations.
   • God sits on his holy throne.
9. 47:9
   • The nobles of the peoples have gathered together.
   • Whether they gather as the people of the God of Abraham or together with that people is not fixed by the wording.
   • The shields of the earth belong to God.
   • God is greatly exalted.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

47:1

Clapping and shouting were how a crowd acclaimed a king at his coronation in the ancient Near East, a formal public act of recognition, not spontaneous applause. The Hebrew word behind "shout" is the cry raised at a coronation or a battle.

47:2

"Most High" (Hebrew *Elyon*) is a title, not a description, one of the standing names for God in the Psalms. "Awesome" translates a word meaning "to be feared, inspiring dread"; the King James "terrible" carried that older sense of something that fills you with terror, not the modern sense of "very bad."

47:3

Putting peoples "under our feet" comes from a battlefield image: a victorious king would place his foot on the neck or back of a defeated enemy, and reliefs and inscriptions from the region show exactly this. The line is claiming military supremacy in the plainest terms available.

47:4

"Inheritance" here is the land of Canaan, thought of as the family property God allotted to Israel (the same word used for a plot of land passed down within a family. "Jacob" stands for the whole nation descended from him, and "the pride of Jacob" is that allotted land, the thing Israel could boast of. "Selah" is a word of uncertain meaning that appears throughout the Psalms, probably a direction to the musicians) a pause, or a swell of instruments. No one knows for certain, so translators leave it untranslated.

47:5

"Gone up" means ascended, as in a procession climbing to a temple on high ground; many readers of this psalm would have pictured the ark of the covenant being carried uphill into Jerusalem amid shouting. The "horn" is the shofar, a ram's horn blown as a signal, used to announce a king, call an assembly, or sound an alarm, not as a melodic instrument.

47:7

"With understanding" translates the Hebrew word *maskil*, which appears in the headings of several psalms and may mean a skillful piece of music, an instructive one, or a song sung with comprehension. The instruction is genuinely ambiguous in the original.

47:8

"Heathen" in the King James Version simply renders the Hebrew word for the nations, the peoples outside Israel. In modern English the word carries an insult about being irreligious or uncivilized that the Hebrew does not have.

47:9

"Princes" here means nobles or ruling chiefs of foreign nations, not the sons of a king. "The shields of the earth" is most likely a figure for those same rulers, since a king was described as the shield or protector of his people; it may also refer to the literal shields their armies carried. Either way the point is that the military power of the world's rulers is God's to command. Abraham was the ancestor Israel traced itself back to, so "the people of the God of Abraham" means these foreign leaders are pictured joining Israel's assembly.