1Song, a psalm for the Korahites.
2Great is the LORD and highly praised
in our God’s town, His holy mountain.
3Lovely in heights, all the earth’s joy,
Mount Zion, far end of Zaphon,
4God in its bastions
is famed as a fortress.
5For, look, the kings have conspired,
passed onward one and all.
6It is they who have seen and so been astounded,
7Shuddering seized them there,
pangs like a woman in labor.
8With the east wind
You smashed the ships of Tarshish.
9As we heard, so we see
in the town of the LORD of Armies, in the town of our God.
May God make it stand firm forever!
selah
10We witnessed, O God, Your kindness
in the midst of Your temple.
11Like Your name, O God, so Your praise—
With justice Your right hand is full.
12Let Mount Zion rejoice,
13Go around Zion, encircle it.
Count its towers.
14Set your mind to its ramparts,
to recount to the last generation.
15For this is God, our God, forevermore.
PSALM 48 NOTES
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2. Great is the LORD and highly praised / in our God’s town. This is a psalm celebrating Zion as God’s city, which He protects. Although the first half of the poem, until the division marked by the selah at the end of verse 9, appears to reflect a particular military victory over an invading force from the sea, scholarly attempts to anchor the text in a specific historical event have been unavailing.
3. all the earth’s joy, / . . . far end of Zaphon. Although Jerusalem, as some archaeologists have argued, may have actually been a small backwater capital (hence the translation here of ʿir as “town” rather than “city”) among the great cities of the ancient Near East, the poet imagines it in cosmic terms. On its heights, it is a delight to all the inhabited earth, and he calls it “Zaphon” (elsewhere, a term that means “north”), the mountain that is the abode of Baal in Canaanite mythology.
the great King’s city. Given the context, it seems more likely that “King” refers to God than to the Davidic ruler.
5. conspired. The Hebrew noʿadu puns on nodʿa, “is famed” (the same three consonants with the order of the dalet and ʿayin reversed) in the previous line.
6–7. were panicked, dismayed. / Shuddering seized them. These words are a pointed allusion to the Song of the Sea, Exodus 15:14–15, which records a different kind of victory at sea over a ruthless enemy through divine intervention.
8. With the east wind / You smashed the ships of Tarshish. The east wind, blowing from the desert, proverbially brings trouble. Tarshish, which has been located by different scholars at various places from Asia Minor to Iberia, is somewhere to the west on the Mediterranean, though the phrase could conceivably refer not to the port of embarkation but to the design of the ships.
10. We witnessed, O God, Your kindness / in the midst of Your temple. The “witnessing” (or, perhaps, “envisaging,” the meaning of the Hebrew verb in this context being somewhat uncertain) is an overlap with the “seeing” of the previous verse. But this line begins a new movement in the poem, an exhortation to pilgrims ascending Mount Zion to behold the town’s mighty bastions that manifest God’s protecting presence.
11. to the ends of the earth. This phrase picks up the global reach of “all the earth’s joy” at the beginning of the psalm.
With justice. The Hebrew tsedeq can also mean “victory” or “bountiful act.”
12. Judah’s townlets. The literal sense of the phrase is “Judah’s daughters,” but in urban contexts, “daughters” (banot) refers to the outlying townlets, and the city itself is sometimes called “mother.”
judgments. This Hebrew term, mishpat, is often paired with “justice,” which appears just above in this poem.
14. scale its bastions. The verb occurs only here, so its meaning is disputed. This translation is based on the fact that the verb appears to reflect the same root as pisgah, “mountaintop,” although others, relating it to a verb from this root in rabbinic Hebrew, think it may mean “pass through.”
to the last generation. Some prefer to construe this as “next generation,” but the emphasis at the end on “forever” suggests that it rather means from one generation to another, to the end of time, or at least to the distant future.
15. He will lead us forever. The very last word of the poem, ʿal-mut, is obscure. It might mean “over death,” but the preposition and the vocalization of the noun would be anomalous. Some scholars read it as ʿalamot, a musical term (see 46:1), but it would be odd to have such a term at the end of a psalm rather than at the beginning. The translation follows the suggestion of Mitchell Dahood and others that it has the same sense as leʿolam, “forever.”