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.
Following these indications, Stier renders "Mount Zion [and] the
northern side (_i.e._, the lower city, on the north of Zion), which
together make the city," etc. Others see here "the Holy City regarded
from three points of view"--viz., "the Mount Zion" (the city of
David), "the sides of the north" (Mount Moriah and the Temple), "the
city of the great King" (Jerusalem proper). So Perowne and others.
Delitzsch takes Zion to be the Temple hill, and "the sides of the
north" to be in apposition. "The Temple hill or Zion, in the narrower
sense, actually formed the north-eastern corner of ancient Jerusalem,"
says he, and thus regards the subject of the whole sentence as really
twofold, not threefold, as appears at first--Zion on the north, which
is the palace-temple, and Jerusalem at its feet, which is "the city of
the great King." But it must be admitted that no interpretation runs
quite smoothly, though the summary ejection of the troublesome words
"the sides of the north" from the text is too violent a remedy.
But the main thought of this first part is independent of such minute
difficulties. It is that the one thing which made Zion-Jerusalem
glorious was God's presence in it. It was beautiful in its elevation;
it was safely isolated from invaders by precipitous ravines, inclosing
the angle of the plateau on which it stood. But it was because God
dwelt there and manifested Himself there that it was "a joy for all
the earth." The name by which even the earthly Zion is called is
"Jehovah-Shammah, The Lord is there." We are not forcing New Testament
ideas into Old Testament words when we see in the psalm an eternal
truth. An idea is one thing; the fact which more or less perfectly
embodies it is another. The idea of God's dwelling with men had its less
perfect embodiment in the presence of the Shechinah in the Temple, its
more perfect in the dwelling of God in the Church, and will have its
complete when the city "having the glory of God" shall appear, and He
will dwell with men and be their God. God in her, not anything of her
own, makes Zion lovely and gladdening. "Thy beauty was perfect through
My comeliness which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord."
The second part pictures Zion's deliverance with picturesque vigour
(vv. 3-8). Ver. 3 sums up the whole as the act of God, by which He has
made Himself known as that which the refrain of Psalm xlvi. declared
Him to be--a refuge, or, literally, a high tower. Then follows the
muster of the hosts. "The kings were assembled." That phrase need
not be called exaggeration, nor throw doubt on the reference to
Sennacherib's army, if we remember the policy of Eastern conquerors in
raising their armies from their conquests, and the boast which Isaiah
puts into the mouth of the Assyrian: "Are not my princes altogether
kings?" They advance against the city. "They saw,"--no need to say
what. Immediately they "were amazed." The sight of the city broke on
them from some hill-crest on their march. Basilisk-like, its beauty
was paralysing, and shot a nameless awe into their hearts. "They were
terror-struck; they fled." As in Psalm xlvi. 6, the clauses, piled up
without cement of connecting particles, convey an impression of hurry,
culminating in the rush of panic-struck fugitives. As has been often
noticed, they recall Cæsar's _Veni, vidi, vici_; but these kings came,
saw, _were_ conquered. No cause for the rout is named. No weapons were
drawn in the city. An unseen hand "smites once, and smites no more";
for once is enough. The process of deliverance is not told; for a
hymn of victory is not a chronicle. One image explains it all, and
signalises the Divine breath as the sole agent. "Thou breakest the
ships of Tarshish with an east wind" is not history, but metaphor. The
unwieldy, huge vessel, however strong for fight, is unfit for storms,
and, caught in a gale, rolls heavily in the trough of the sea, and is
driven on a lee shore and ground to pieces on its rocks. "God blew
upon them, and they were scattered," as the medal struck on the defeat
of the Armada had it. In the companion psalm God's uttered voice did
all. Here the breath of the tempest, which is the breath of His lips,
is the sole agent.
The past, of which the nation had heard from its fathers, lives again
in their own history; and that verification of traditional belief by
experience is to a devout soul the chief blessing of its deliverances.
There is rapture in the thought that "As we have heard, so have we
seen." The present ever seems commonplace. The sky is farthest from
earth right overhead, but touches the ground on the horizon behind
and before. Miracles were in the past; God will be manifestly in the
far-off future, but the present is apt to seem empty of Him. But if
we rightly mark His dealings with us, we shall learn that nothing in
His past has so passed that it is not present. As the companion psalm
says, "The God of Jacob is _our_ refuge," this exclaims, "As we have
heard, so have we seen."
But not only does the deliverance link the present with the past, but
it flings a steady light into the future. "God shall establish her for
ever." The city is truly "the eternal city," because God dwells in it.
The psalmist was thinking of the duration of the actual Jerusalem, the
imperfect embodiment of a great idea. But whatever may be its fate,
the heart of his confidence is no false vision; for God's city will
outlast the world. Like the "maiden fortresses," of which there is
one in almost every land, fondly believed never to have been taken by
enemies, that city is inexpugnable, and the confident answer to every
threatening assailant is, "The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath
despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem
hath shaken her head at thee." "God will establish her for ever." The
pledges of that stability are the deliverances of the past and present.
The third part (vv. 9-14) deals with the praise and trust of the
inhabitants of Zion. Deliverance leads to thankful meditation on the
loving-kindness which it so signally displayed, and the ransomed
people first gather in the Temple, which was the scene of God's
manifestation of His grace, and therefore is the fitting place for
them to ponder it. The world-wide consequences of the great act of
loving-kindness almost shut out of sight for the moment its bearing
on the worshippers. It is a lofty height to which the song climbs,
when it regards national deliverance chiefly as an occasion for wider
diffusion of God's praise. His "name" is the manifestation of His
character in act. The psalmist is sure that wherever that character is
declared praise will follow, because he is sure that that character
is perfectly and purely good, and that God cannot act but in such
a way as to magnify Himself. That great sea will cast up nothing
but pearls. The words carry also a lesson for recipients of Divine
loving-kindness, teaching them that they misapprehend the purpose of
their blessings, if they confine these to their own well-being and
lose sight of the higher object--that men may learn to know and love
Him. But the deliverance not only produces grateful meditation and
widespread praise; it sets the mother city and her daughter villages
astir, like Miriam and her maidens, with timbrel and dance, and
ringing songs which celebrate "Thy judgments," terrible as they were.
That dead host was an awful sight, and hymns of praise seem heartless
for its dirge. But it is not savage glee nor fierce hatred which
underlies the psalmist's summons, and still less is it selfish joy.
"Thy judgments" are to be hymned when they smite some giant evil; and
when systems and their upholders that array themselves against God are
drowned in some Red Sea, it is fitting that on its banks should echo,
"Sing ye to Jehovah, for He hath triumphed gloriously."
The close of this part may be slightly separated from vv. 9-11. The
citizens who have been cooped up by the siege are bidden to come
forth, and, free from fear, to compass the city without, and pass
between its palaces within, and so see how untouched they are. The
towers and bulwark or rampart remain unharmed, with not a stone
smitten from its place. Within, the palaces stand without a trace
of damage to their beauty. Whatever perishes in any assaults, that
which is of God will abide; and, after all musterings of the enemy,
the uncaptured walls will rise in undiminished strength, and the
fair palaces which they guard glitter in untarnished splendour. And
this complete exemption from harm is to be told to the generation
following, that they may learn what a God this God is, and how safely
and well He will guide all generations.
The last word in the Hebrew text, which the A.V. and R.V. render
"even unto death," can scarcely have that meaning. Many attempts have
been made to find a signification appropriate to the close of such
a triumphal hymn as this, but the simplest and most probable course
is to regard the words as a musical note, which is either attached
abnormally to the close of the psalm, or has strayed hither from
the superscription of Psalm xlix. It is found in the superscription
of Psalm ix. ("Al-Muth") as a musical direction, and has in all
likelihood the same meaning here. If it is removed, the psalm ends
abruptly, but a slight transposition of words and change of the main
division of the verse remove that difficulty by bringing "for ever
and aye" from the first half. The change improves both halves, laying
the stress of the first exclusively on the thought that this God is
such a God (or, by another rendering, "is here," _i.e._, in the city),
without bringing in reference to the eternity of His protection, and
completing the second half worthily, with the thought of His eternal
guidance of the people among whom He dwells.