'Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our
God, in the mountain of His holiness. 2. Beautiful for situation,
the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the
north, the city of the great King. 3. God is known in her palaces
for a refuge. 4. For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by
together. 5. They saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled,
and hasted away. 6. Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of
a woman in travail. 7. Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an
east wind. 8. As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the
Lord of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it for
ever. 9. We have thought of Thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst
of Thy temple. 10. According to Thy name, O God, so is Thy praise
unto the ends of the earth: Thy right hand is full of righteousness.
11. Let mount Zion rejoice, let the daughters of Judah be glad,
because of Thy judgments. 12. Walk about Zion, and go round about
her: tell the towers thereof. 13. Mark ye well her bulwarks,
consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation
following. 14. For this God is our God for ever and ever: He will be
our guide even unto death.'--PSALM xlviii. 1-14.
The enthusiastic triumph which throbs in this psalm, and the specific
details of a great act of deliverance from a great peril which it
contains, sufficiently indicate that it must have had some historical
event as its basis. Can we identify the fact which is here embalmed?
The psalm gives these points--a formidable muster before Jerusalem of
hostile people under confederate kings, with the purpose of laying siege
to the city; some mysterious check which arrests them before a sword is
drawn, as if some panic fear had shot from its towers and shaken their
hearts; and a flight in wild confusion from the impregnable
dwelling-place of the Lord of hosts. The occasion of the terror is
vaguely hinted at, as if some solemn mystery brooded over it. All that
is clear about it is that it was purely the work of the divine
hand--'Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind'; and that
in this deliverance, in their own time, the Levite minstrels recognised
the working of the same protecting grace which, from of old, had
'commanded deliverances for Jacob.'
Now there is one event, and only one, in Jewish history, which
corresponds, point for point, to these details--the crushing destruction
of the Assyrian army under Sennacherib. There, there was the same
mustering of various nations, compelled by the conqueror to march in his
train, and headed by their tributary kings. There, there was the same
arrest before an arrow had been shot, or a mound raised against the
city. There, there was the same purely divine agency coming in to
destroy the invading army.
I think, then, that from the correspondence of the history with the
requirements of the psalm, as well as from several similarities of
expression and allusion between the latter and the prophecies of Isaiah,
who has recorded that destruction of the invader, we may, with
considerable probability, regard this psalm as the hymn of triumph over
the baffled Assyrian, and the marvellous deliverance of Israel by the
arm of God.
Whatever may be thought, however, of that allocation of it to a place in
the history, the great truths that it contains depend upon no such
identification. They are truths for all time; gladness and consolation
for all generations. Let us read it over together now, if, perchance,
some echo of the confidence and praise that is found in it may be called
forth from our hearts! If you will look at your Bibles you will find
that it falls into three portions. There is the glory of Zion, the
deliverance of Zion, and the consequent grateful praise and glad trust
of Zion.