A final verse, of double the length of the others, stands somewhat apart from the preceding strophe both in rhythm and in thought. It crowns the whole. The invitations to the nations are conceived of as having been welcomed and obeyed. And there rises before the poet's eye a fair picture of a great convocation, such as might wait before a world-ruling monarch's throne on the day of his coronation. The princes of the nations, like tributary kings, come flocking to do homage, "as if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by."
The obliteration of distinction between Israel and the nations, by the incorporation of the latter, so that "the peoples" become part of the "people of the God of Abraham," floats before the singer's prophetic eye, as the end of God's great manifestation of Himself. The two parts of that double choir, which the preceding strophes summon to song, coalesce at last, and in grand unison send up one full-throated, universal melodious shout of praise. "The shields of the earth" are best understood as a figurative expression for the princes just spoken of, who now at last recognise to whom they belong. Thus God has exalted Himself by His deeds; and the result of these deeds is that He is greatly exalted by the praise of a world, in which Israel and the "peoples" dwell as one beneath His sceptre and celebrate His name.
The psalmist looked far ahead. His immediate experience was as "a little window through which he saw great matters." The prophecy of the universal spread of God's kingdom and the inclusion in it of the Gentiles is Messianic; and whether the singer knew that he spoke of a fair hope which should not be a fact for weary centuries, or anticipated wider and permanent results from that triumph which inspired his song, he spake of the Christ, and his strains are true prophecies of His dominion. There is no intentional reference in the psalm to the Ascension; but the thoughts underlying its picture of God's going up with a shout are the same which that Ascension sets forth as facts,—the merciful coming down into humanity of the Divine Helper; the completeness of His victory as attested by His return thither where He was before; His session in heaven, not as idle nor wearied, but as having done what He meant to do; His continuous working as King in the world; and the widening recognition of His authority by loving hearts. The psalmist summons us all to swell with our voices that great chorus of praise which, like a sea, rolls and breaks in music round His royal seat.
[PSALM XLVIII.]
1 Great is Jehovah, and much to be praised,
In the city of our God, His holy mountain.
2 Lovely in loftiness, a joy of all the earth,
Is Mount Zion, the recesses of the north, the city of the great King.
3 God in her palaces
Has made Himself known as a high tower.
4 For, lo, the kings assembled themselves,
They marched onwards together.
5 They saw, then they were amazed;
They were terror-struck, they fled.
6 Trembling seized them there;
Pain, as [of] a woman in travail.
7 With an east wind
Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish.
8 According as we have heard, so have we seen
In the city of Jehovah of hosts, in the city of our God:
God will establish her for ever. Selah.
9 We have thought, O God, of Thy loving-kindness
In the midst of Thy Temple.
10 According to Thy name, O God,
So is Thy praise to the ends of the earth:
Thy right hand is full of righteousness.
11 Let Mount Zion rejoice,
Let the daughters of Judah exult,
Because of Thy judgments.
12 Compass Zion, and walk round her:
Reckon her towers.
13 Give heed to her bulwark,
Pass through her palaces;
That ye may tell it to the generation after.
14 That such is God, our God:
For ever and aye He will guide us.
Al-Muth.
The situation seems the same as in Psalm xlvi., with which this psalm has many points of contact. In both we have the same triumph, the same proud affection for the holy city and sanctuary, the same confidence in God's dwelling there, the same vivid picturing of the mustering of enemies and their rapid dispersion, the same swift movement of style in describing that overthrow, the same thought of the diffusion of God's praise in the world as its consequence, the same closing summons to look upon the tokens of deliverance, with the difference that, in the former psalm, these are the shattered weapons of the defeated foe, and in this the unharmed battlements and palaces of the delivered city. The emphatic word of the refrain in Psalm xlvi. also reappears here in ver. 3. The psalm falls into three parts, of which the first (vv. 1, 2) is introductory, celebrating the glory of Zion as the city of God; the second (vv. 3-8) recounts in glowing words the deliverance of Zion; and the third tells of the consequent praise and trust of the inhabitants of Zion (vv. 9-14).
The general sense of the first part is plain, but ver. 2 is difficult. "Mount Zion" is obviously subject, and "lovely in loftiness" and "joy of all the earth" predicates; but the grammatical connection of the two last clauses is obscure. Further, the meaning of "the sides of the north" has not been satisfactorily ascertained. The supposition that there is an allusion in the phrase to the mythological mountain of the gods, with which Zion is compared, is surely most unnatural. Would a Hebrew psalmist be likely to introduce such a parallel, even in order to assert the superiority of Zion? Nor is the grammatical objection to the supposition less serious. It requires a good deal of stretching and inserting to twist the two words "the sides of the north" into a comparison. It is more probable that the clause is topographical, describing some part of the city, but what part is far from clear. The accents make all the verse after "earth" the subject of the two preceding predicates, and place a minor division at "north," implying that "the sides of the north" is more closely connected with "Mount Zion" than with the "city of the great King," or than that last clause is.