Today’s Passage: Psalm 48
This is a song about a city, and about the God who lives in it. It opens with praise: great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God. Then it tells a small story. Enemy kings gather to take the city, but the moment they see it they lose their courage and flee. And when the danger has passed, the singers are sent out to walk the walls and count the towers, so they can tell the next generation what they saw. The point of that tour was never the stone itself. It was the One who kept the city safe. This God is our God forever and ever.
As you read, hold this: Great is the LORD in the city of our God.
Context The city of the great King
The sons of Korah, who sang in the temple, gave this psalm its title. In the second verse they set Mount Zion beside the peaks of Zaphon, and there is a quiet boldness in that. Zaphon was the mountain Israel’s neighbors honored as the high place of their storm-god, the grandest peak they could name. The psalm takes that compliment and gently moves it somewhere else. The city that truly deserves such words is the city of the true King, because God Himself is in her citadels.
Psalm 48:1-3 (BSB)
A song. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.
¹ Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, His holy mountain. ² Beautiful in loftiness, the joy of all the earth, like the peaks of Zaphon is Mount Zion, the city of the great King. ³ God is in her citadels; He has shown Himself to be a fortress.
Notice that the praise comes first, and only then the reason for it. The city is not called great because it is handsome to look at. It is great because God is in her, and because He has shown Himself, again and again, to be her fortress.
Psalm 48:4-7 (BSB)
⁴ For behold, the kings assembled; they all advanced together. ⁵ They saw and were astounded; they fled in terror. ⁶ Trembling seized them there, anguish like a woman in labor. ⁷ With a wind from the east You wrecked the ships of Tarshish.
The kings gather, and they advance together, and then they see, and then they run. There is no rousing battle speech in these verses, and no roll call of Israel’s soldiers. The psalm gives no credit to the army at all. It credits only what the kings saw when they looked at the city.
Study notes They saw and fled
The siege is over before a single sword is praised. The hostile kings simply lose their nerve at the sight of God’s own presence dwelling in the city. That fortress named back in verse 3 turns out to be no mere idea on the page. It is the very thing the kings ran away from.
Psalm 48:8 (BSB)
⁸ As we have heard, so we have seen in the city of the LORD of Hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish her forever. Selah
First they had heard of it, and now they have seen it with their own eyes. The safety of this city is not a hopeful wish spoken into the empty air. The people are saying they watched it happen.
Psalm 48:9-11 (BSB)
⁹ Within Your temple, O God, we contemplate Your loving devotion. ¹⁰ Your name, O God, like Your praise, reaches to the ends of the earth; Your right hand is full of righteousness. ¹¹ Mount Zion is glad, the daughters of Judah rejoice, on account of Your judgments.
They do not rush past this chesed, pronounced KHEH-sed. Strong's H2617, steadfast love, loyal kindness, covenant faithfulness. It is covenant loyalty, the steadfast love that keeps its word. . They sit with it, there inside the temple, turning it over. His name and His praise reach clear to the ends of the earth, and His right hand is full of righteousness. And so Zion is glad because of His judgments, not in spite of them.
Psalm 48:12-14 (BSB)
¹² March around Zion, encircle her, count her towers, ¹³ consider her ramparts, tour her citadels, that you may tell the next generation. ¹⁴ For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide even till death.
Walk around her, the psalm says, and count her towers, and look well at her ramparts, and then tell your children what you have seen. Yet the last line does not point to the masonry at all. It points to the guide. This God is our God forever and ever, and He will lead us even to the end, even till death.
"My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand." John 10:27-28 (BSB)
Jesus carries that promise of guidance right on past the grave. His sheep hear His voice and follow Him, and He gives them life that will never end, and no one can tear them out of His hand. On that point there is no debate to be had. Great is the LORD in the city of our God.