Psalms 48: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm praises God in Jerusalem, called Mount Zion, the city where God is worshiped. It recalls a moment when enemy kings gathered against the city, saw it, and fled in terror, and it says God shattered the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. The people say that what they had heard about the city they have now seen for themselves, and they call on one another to walk around the walls and towers and count them, so they can describe them to the next generation.

Claim by Claim

1. 48:1
   • The LORD is great.
   • The LORD is greatly to be praised.
   • This praise takes place in the city of our God.
   • The city of our God is on his holy mountain.
2. 48:2
   • Mount Zion is beautiful in its elevation.
   • Mount Zion is the joy of the whole earth.
   • Mount Zion is on the far north side, which may mean the northern heights of the city or the mountain of the north known as Zaphon.
   • Mount Zion is the city of the great King.
3. 48:3
   • God is present in the fortified towers of the city.
   • God has made himself known there as a stronghold.
4. 48:4
   • The kings joined together.
   • The kings advanced together.
5. 48:5
   • The kings saw it.
   • The kings were astounded.
   • The kings were terrified.
   • The kings fled in haste.
6. 48:6
   • Trembling seized them there.
   • Anguish seized them like that of a woman giving birth.
7. 48:7
   • You shatter the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.
8. 48:8
   • What we had heard, we have now seen.
   • We saw it in the city of the LORD of hosts.
   • We saw it in the city of our God.
   • God will establish the city forever.
   • Selah.
9. 48:9
   • We have pondered your steadfast love, O God.
   • We pondered it inside your temple.
10. 48:10
    • Your praise, O God, reaches to the ends of the earth, matching your name.
    • Your right hand is full of righteousness.
11. 48:11
    • Mount Zion rejoices, or is called to rejoice.
    • The daughters of Judah are glad, or are called to be glad.
    • This gladness is because of your judgments.
12. 48:12
    • Walk around Zion.
    • Go around her.
    • Count her towers.
13. 48:13
    • Set your heart on her ramparts.
    • Go through her fortified towers.
    • Do this so that you may tell the next generation.
14. 48:14
    • This God is our God forever and ever.
    • He will guide us until death, or guide us forever.

Words Worth Explaining

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

48:1

LORD in small capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers avoided pronouncing it and said "the Lord" instead, and English translations follow that custom. "The city of our God" and "his holy mountain" both mean Jerusalem, built on a ridge in the Judean hills, with the temple at its highest point.

48:2

Zion was originally the name of the fortified hill David captured, and came to stand for the whole of Jerusalem. "On the sides of the north" translates a phrase that can simply mean the northern part of the ridge, but the Hebrew word for north is *zaphon*, also the name of the mountain that Canaanite poetry made the home of the gods. The line may therefore be claiming for Zion the status other peoples gave to Zaphon. The rendering keeps the plainer sense; the other reading cannot be ruled out.

48:3

"Palaces" in 1611 English meant fortified strongholds or citadels, not luxurious residences. The picture is of defensive towers inside the city walls.

48:4

The kings are attacking. "Lo" means look, and "passed by together" describes an allied army marching up against the city, not travelers going past it. The psalm is remembering a siege that failed.

48:5

The scene is a coalition of enemy kings marching on the city, seeing something that stops them, and breaking off the attack. The psalm never says what they saw.

48:6

"Travail" is labor in childbirth. Comparing an army's terror to labor pains was a standard image in Hebrew poetry for pain that seizes you suddenly, that you cannot escape, and that leaves you helpless while it lasts.

48:7

Tarshish was a distant port, probably in the western Mediterranean, reached only by long sea voyages. "Ships of Tarshish" became a stock phrase for the largest ocean-going merchant vessels of the day, so the image is of the strongest ships afloat being smashed. The east wind off the desert was the wind Israelites associated with scorching heat and destructive storms.

48:8

"The LORD of hosts" means the LORD commanding armies, either heavenly armies or Israel's, the Hebrew does not specify. "Selah" is a term that appears throughout the Psalms, most likely a musical or performance direction; its exact meaning was already lost in antiquity, and translators leave it untranslated.

48:9

The Hebrew word behind "faithful love" is *hesed*, the loyalty owed within a binding relationship, steady commitment that keeps its obligations rather than warm feeling.

48:10

In Hebrew usage a name stands for the whole reputation and character of the one who bears it. The right hand is the standard image for active power, the hand that wields a weapon or hands down a verdict.

48:11

"Daughters of Judah" is a Hebrew idiom for the smaller towns and villages that clustered around a main city and depended on it, much as we might say outlying settlements; it can also be read as the women of Judah, and the two senses were probably both available to the original hearers. "Judgments" here means verdicts actually carried out, decisions God has made and acted on, in this case against the attacking kings.

48:12

"Tell" in the King James Version keeps its older sense of "count," as in a bank teller. The invitation is to make a circuit of the walls and take an inventory of the defenses.

48:13

"Bulwarks" means ramparts: the earthworks and outer defensive walls of a fortified city.

48:14

The final Hebrew phrase, *al-muth*, is obscure. It is usually read as "unto death," but the same consonants can be divided to give "forever" or "beyond death," and some scholars think the words are a stray musical notation that belongs to the heading of the next psalm. The rendering takes the most common reading.