Today’s Passage: Psalm 47
Clap your hands, all you peoples, and not Israel only, for this psalm throws its doors open to the whole earth. God has gone up, and He reigns over the nations from His holy throne, where even the nobles of the nations come and assemble as the people of the God of Abraham. It is a song far too large to keep inside one border.
As you read, hold this: Clap your hands. God reigns over the nations.
Context Of the sons of Korah
“For the choirmaster. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.” That heading is part of the text, not a note pinned on later. The sons of Korah were Levites who led the singing in the house of God, and this song of theirs is loud on purpose, full of clapping and shouting and the blast of a horn. Before it has finished its very first line, it has already widened the room to take in the whole world.
Psalm 47:1-2 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.
¹ Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout unto God with a voice of triumph. ² How awesome is the LORD Most High, the great King over all the earth!
All you peoples, the song says, and it names the LORD the great King over all the earth. The command to praise Him does not wait for some later sermon about the nations to widen the circle. It starts wide, from the very first breath of the psalm.
Word study Has ascended -- alah (Psalm 47:5)
Hebrew: alah, pronounced ah-LAH. Strongs H5927.
The word means to go up, and the psalm sets it in the middle of shouts and the sound of a horn. God has gone up, and it is that ascent, that climb of the King to His throne, that the whole song is singing about.
Psalm 47:3-4 (BSB)
³ He subdues nations beneath us, and peoples under our feet. ⁴ He chooses our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, whom He loves. Selah
Here Jacob is named, and the inheritance is chosen for him, and the love of God for His own people is spoken plainly. Yet that particular, tender gift to Jacob sits inside a song that has already called every people on earth to clap their hands.
Psalm 47:5 (BSB)
⁵ God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD with the sound of the horn.
He has gone up, amid shouts of joy and the sound of the horn. The psalm is not begging God to take hold of a throne He does not yet have. It is answering a King who has already gone up and taken His seat, and the shouting is simply the fitting welcome for a King coming home in triumph.
Psalm 47:6-7 (BSB)
⁶ Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises! ⁷ For God is King of all the earth; sing to Him a psalm of praise.
Four times over these two verses the psalm says sing, and the reason it gives is not some passing mood of the heart that may lift today and sink tomorrow. The reason is plain and settled and true no matter how anyone feels: God is King of all the earth.
Psalm 47:8-9 (BSB)
⁸ God reigns over the nations; God is seated on His holy throne. ⁹ The nobles of the nations have assembled as the people of the God of Abraham; for the shields of the earth belong to God; He is highly exalted.
He reigns, He is seated, He is present on His holy throne even now. And the nobles of the nations are not swept away to make the picture; instead they gather in, assembling as the people of the God of Abraham. The shields of the earth, all its power to guard and defend, belong to Him, and above every one of them He is highly exalted.
Study notes The families of the earth
Verse 9 sings as though an old promise were already coming true before our eyes.
"I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you." Genesis 12:3 (BSB)
First Abraham, and then, through him, all the families of the earth. This house will not erase Zion to make room for the peoples, and it will not erase the peoples to protect Zion. God reigns over the nations, and that is the fixed and settled point. The timetable of every map may stay open before us, but that He reigns is not open at all.
Clap your hands. God reigns over the nations.