1 His foundation on the holy mountains,
2 The gates of Zion Jehovah loves
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
3 Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah.
4 I will proclaim Rahab and Babylon as those who know Me:
"Behold Philistia and Tyre, with Cush;
This one was born there."
5 And of Zion it shall be said,
"Man after man was born in her,"
And He, the Most High, shall establish her.
6 Jehovah shall reckon when He writes down the peoples,
"This one was born there." Selah.
7 And singers and dancers [shall chant],
"All my fountains are in Thee."
One clear note sounds in this remarkable psalm. Its single theme
is the incorporation of ancestral foes and distant nations with
the people of God. Aliens are to be enrolled as home-born citizens
of Jerusalem. In modern words, the vision of a universal Church,
a brotherhood of humanity, shines radiant before the seer. Other
psalmists and prophets have like insight into the future expansion
of the nation, but this psalm stands alone in the emphasis which it
places upon the idea of birth into the rights of citizenship. This
singer has had granted to him a glimpse of two great truths--the
universality of the Church, and the mode of entrance into it by
reception of a new life. To what age of Israel he belonged is
uncertain. The mention of Babylon as among the enemies who have become
fellow-citizens favours the supposition of a post-exilic date, which
is also supported by resemblances to Isa. xl.-lxvi.
The structure is simple. The psalm is divided by Selah into two
strophes, to which a closing verse is appended. The first strophe
bursts abruptly into rapturous praise of Zion, the beloved of God. The
second predicts the gathering of all nations into her citizenship, and
the closing verse apparently paints the exuberant joy of the festal
crowds, who shall then throng her streets.
The abrupt beginning of the first strophe offends some commentators,
who have tried to smooth ver. 1 into propriety and tameness, by
suggesting possible preliminary clauses, which they suppose to have
dropped out. But there is no canon which forbids a singer, with the
rush of inspiration, either poetic or other, on him, to plunge into
the heart of his theme. Ver. 1 may be construed, as in the A.V. and
R.V. (text), as a complete sentence, but is then somewhat feeble. It
is better to connect it with ver. 2, and to regard "His foundation
upon the holy mountains" as parallel with "the gates of Zion," and
as, like that phrase, dependent on the verb "loves." Hupfeld, indeed,
proposes to transfer "Jehovah loves" from the beginning of ver. 2,
where it now stands, to the end of ver. 1, supplying the verb mentally
in the second clause. He thus gets a complete parallelism:--
His foundation upon the holy mountains Jehovah loves,
The gates of Zion before all the dwellings of Jacob.
But this is not necessary; for the verb may as well be supplied to the
first as to the second clause. The harshness of saying "His foundation,"
without designating the person to whom the pronoun refers, which is
extreme if ver. 1 is taken as a separate sentence, is diminished when it
is regarded as connected with ver. 2, in which the mention of Jehovah
leaves no doubt as to whose the "foundation" is. The psalmist's fervent
love for Jerusalem is something more than national pride. It is the
apotheosis of that emotion, clarified and hallowed into religion. Zion
is founded by God Himself. The mountains on which it stands are made
holy by the Divine dwelling. On their heads shines a glory before which
the light that lies on the rock crowned by the Parthenon or on the seven
hills of Rome pales. Not only the Temple mountain is meant, but the city
is the psalmist's theme. The hills, on which it stands, are emblems
of the firmness of its foundation in the Divine purpose, on which it
reposes. It is beloved of God, and that, as the form of the word "loves"
shows, with an abiding affection. The "glorious things" which are spoken
of Zion may be either the immediately following Divine oracle, or,
more probably, prophetic utterances such as many of those in Isaiah,
which predict its future glory. The Divine utterance which follows
expresses the substance of these. So far, the psalm is not unlike other
outpourings in praise of Zion, such as Psalm xlviii. But, in the second
strophe, to which the first is introductory, the singer strikes a note
all his own.
There can be no doubt as to who is the speaker in ver. 4. The abrupt
introduction of a Divine Oracle accords with a not infrequent usage in
the Psalter, which adds much to the solemnity of the words. If we regard
the "glorious things" mentioned in ver. 3 as being the utterances of
earlier prophets, the psalmist has had his ears purged to hear God's
voice, by meditation on and sympathy with these. The faithful use of
what God has said prepares for hearing further disclosures of His lips.
The enumeration of nations in ver. 4 carries a great lesson. First
comes the ancient enemy, Egypt, designated by the old name of contempt
(Rahab, _i.e._ pride), but from which the contempt has faded; then
follows Babylon, the more recent inflicter of many miseries, once so
detested, but towards whom animosity has died down. These two, as the
chief oppressors, between whom, like a piece of metal between hammer and
anvil, Israel's territory lay, are named first, with the astonishing
declaration that God will proclaim them as among those who know Him.
That knowledge, of course, is not merely intellectual, but the deeper
knowledge of personal acquaintance or friendship--a knowledge of which
love is an element, and which is vital and transforming. Philistia is
the old neighbour and foe, which from the beginning had hung on the
skirts of Israel, and been ever ready to utilise her disasters and
add to them. Tyre is the type of godless luxury and inflated material
prosperity, and, though often in friendly alliance with Israel, as being
exposed to the same foes which harassed her, she was as far from knowing
God as the other nations were. Cush, or Ethiopia, seems mentioned as
a type of distant peoples, rather than because of its hostility to
Israel. God points to these nations--some of them near, some remote,
some powerful and some feeble, some hereditarily hostile and some more
or less amicable with Israel--and gives forth the declaration concerning
them, "This one was born there."
God's voice ceases, and in ver. 5 the psalmist takes up the
wonderful promise which he has just heard. He slightly shifts his
point of view: for while the nations that were to be gathered into
Zion were the foremost figures in the Divine utterance, the Zion
into which they are gathered is foremost in the psalmist's, in ver.
5. Its glory, when thus enriched by a multitude of new citizens,
bulks in his eyes more largely than their blessedness. Another shade
of difference between the two verses is that, in the former, the
ingathering of the peoples is set forth as collective or national
incorporation, and, in me latter,--as the expression "man after (or
_by_) man" suggests,--individual accession is more clearly foretold.
The establishment of Zion, which the psalmist prophesies, is the
result of her reinforcement by these new citizens. The grand figure
of ver. 6 pictures God as taking a census of the whole world; for it
is "the peoples" whom He numbers. As he writes down each name, He
says concerning it, "This one was born there." That list of citizens
is "the Book of the Living." So "the end of all history is that Zion
becomes the metropolis of all people" (Delitzsch).
Three great truths had dawned on this psalmist, though their full
light was reserved for the Christian era. He had been led to apprehend
that the Jewish Church would expand into a world-wide community. If
one thinks of the gulfs of hatred and incompatibility which parted
the peoples in his day, his clear utterance of that great truth, the
apprehension of which so far transcended his time, and the realisation
of which so far transcends ours, will surely be seen to be due to a
Divine breath. The broadest New Testament expression of Universalism
does not surpass the psalmist's confident certainty, "There is neither
Greek nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian," says no more than he said. More
remarkable still is his conception of the method by which the nations
should be gathered in to Zion. They are to be "born there." Surely
there shines before the speaker some glimmering ray of the truth that
incorporation with the people of God is effected by the communication
of a new life, a transformation of the natural, which will set men in
new affinities, and make them all brethren, because all participant
of the same wondrous birth. It would be anachronism to read into the
psalm the clear Christian truth "Ye must be born again," but it would
be as false a weakening of its words to refuse to see in them the
germ of that truth. The third discovery which the psalmist has made,
or rather the third revelation which he has received, is that of the
individual accession of the members of the outlying nations. The
Divine voice, in ver. 4, seems to speak of birth into citizenship as
national; but the psalmist, in ver. 6, represents Jehovah as writing
the names of individuals in the burgess-roll, and of saying in regard
to each, as He writes, "This one was born there." In like manner, in
ver. 5, the form of expression is "Man after man," which brings out the
same thought, with the addition that there is an unbroken series of
new citizens. It is by accession of single souls that the population
of Zion is increased. God's register resolves the community into its
component units. Men are born one by one, and one by one they enter
the true kingdom. In the ancient world the community was more than the
individual. But in Christ the individual acquires new worth, while the
bands of social order are not thereby weakened, but made more stringent
and sacred. The city, whose inhabitants have one by one been won by its
King, and have been knit to Him in the sacred depths of personal being,
is more closely "compact together" than the mechanical aggregations
which call themselves civil societies. The unity of Christ's kingdom
does not destroy national characteristics any more than it interferes
with individual idiosyncrasies. The more each constituent member is
himself, the more will he be joined to others, and contribute his
special mite to the general wealth and well-being.
Ver. 7 is, on any interpretation, extremely obscure, because so abrupt
and condensed. But probably the translation adopted above, though by
no means free from difficulty or doubt, brings out the meaning which
is most in accordance with the preceding. It may be supposed to flash
vividly before the reader's imagination the picture of a triumphal
procession of rejoicing citizens, singers as well as dancers, who
chant, as they advance, a joyous chorus in praise of the city, in
which they have found all fountains of joy and satisfaction welling up
for their refreshment and delight.