Today’s Passage: Psalm 87
This is one of the shortest psalms in the book, and one of the most surprising. It is a birth announcement, and the list of people being born is not who you would expect.
Context A guest list of old enemies
Verse 4 names Rahab (a poetic name for Egypt), Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Cush. Every name on that list belonged, at one point or another, to a nation that had oppressed, warred against, or stood opposed to Israel. Egypt enslaved them. Babylon exiled them. Philistia fought them for generations. This psalm does not erase that history. It simply announces that God intends to register citizens of His own city from among exactly these nations.
As you read, hold this: the psalm’s whole argument rests on one repeated phrase: “born in Zion.” Not visiting, not conquered, not merely tolerated. Born there, as native as anyone else.
Psalm 87:1-3 (BSB)
A Psalm of the sons of Korah. A song.
¹ He has founded His city on the holy mountains. ² The LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. ³ Glorious things are ascribed to you, O city of God. Selah
Even before naming who will belong there, the psalm establishes how much this city means to God: loved above every other dwelling in the land, including Jacob’s own.
Psalm 87:4 (BSB)
⁴ “I will mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know Me—along with Philistia, Tyre, and Cush—when I say, ‘This one was born in Zion.’”
Word study Rahab — a name, not the woman (Psalm 87:4)
The “Rahab” named here is a different word entirely from the Rahab who hid Israel’s spies in Jericho. This Rahab is רַהַב (rahab, RAH-hahv) — Strong's H7294, an ancient poetic title, sometimes tied to a sea-monster image of chaos and pride, used here simply as another name for Egypt. Two different Hebrew words happen to sound alike in English translation. This verse is not honoring the woman of Jericho; it is naming Israel’s oldest and most powerful oppressor.
Psalm 87:5-6 (BSB)
⁵ And it will be said of Zion: “This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High Himself will establish her.” ⁶ The LORD will record in the register of the peoples: “This one was born in Zion.” Selah
The image shifts to something almost bureaucratic: a register, a formal record of citizenship, kept personally by God, in which people from once-hostile nations are entered by name.
Study notes A promise Isaiah later widens even further
This psalm’s vision of former enemies claimed as God’s own finds an even more explicit companion in the prophets.
"In that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the earth. The LORD of Hosts will bless them, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.'" Isaiah 19:24-25 (BSB)
Isaiah names the very same Egypt, and adds Assyria, another historic enemy, and has God call them “My people” and “My handiwork” in the same breath as Israel, “My inheritance.” The circle this psalm opens, Isaiah draws even wider.
Psalm 87:7 (BSB)
⁷ Singers and pipers will proclaim, “All my springs of joy are in You.”
The psalm ends not with a census report but with music. Citizenship in this city, however it was gained, ends in the same place: joy, and its source named plainly.
Personal Application
- This psalm names Israel’s historic enemies as future citizens of Zion, “born” there by God’s own declaration. Is there a person or group you have written off as permanently outside God’s reach, whom this psalm’s logic would say otherwise about?
- Verse 7 ends with joy whose “springs” are found in God alone. Where do you currently look for the joy this verse locates only in Him?
Decision of the day: Name one person or group you have quietly assumed is too far from God to belong, and pray specifically today for their place in His “register,” however unlikely it currently seems.
Pray to Close
The truth to carry from this psalm: God’s city has room for people no one expected, registered by His own hand as truly born there, not merely admitted.
Praise: for the LORD who loves His city enough to widen its citizenship beyond every expectation.
Confess: any quiet certainty that some people are simply too far away, or too hostile, for God to claim as His own.
Ask: for the same joy this psalm ends with, found in God alone rather than in circumstance.
Worship for Today
Who You Say I Am · Hillsong Worship
This song’s central claim, that in God’s family the outsider becomes a child with a genuine place and a new name, echoes this psalm’s own picture of former strangers registered as citizens, “born in Zion” by God’s own declaration rather than by birthright.
Listen: