Psalm 48:7

The psalm opens by praising the LORD as great and his holy city as beautiful and secure (Psalm 48:1–3). Verse 4 begins the account that shows why. “For, lo,” calls us to look, and what we see is an alliance of kings. The Hebrew melek is the ordinary word for a king, and several kings together stand for the greatest human power that could be brought against Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, the city God had chosen and the site of his temple, so an attack on it was an attack on the God who dwelt there.

The kings “were assembled”. The verb yâʻad means to appoint or fix a time or place, and in the form used here it means to meet by appointment. Their gathering was planned. They agreed where and when to meet, and they came with one city in view.

“They passed by together.” The verb ʻâbar means to cross over or pass, and it is used of almost any movement from one place to another. The word yachad means together or alike, and it marks people caught up jointly in the same event. They came together, and together they passed by. Read with verse 5, where they see the city and hurry away, their passing by leaves Jerusalem untouched. The psalm tells it in a few plain words, and the plainness is part of the point. A great gathering of kings comes to nothing, and God keeps his city with his presence alone.

Scripture speaks often of this kind of opposition. In Psalm 2:4–5 the rulers of the earth set themselves against the LORD, and he laughs at them from heaven and speaks to them in his anger. Fear fell on the Philistine camp in the same sudden way (1 Samuel 14:15), and the prophet Zechariah sees the peoples gathered against Jerusalem made to tremble before it (Zechariah 12:2–4).

“They saw it.” The verb râʼâh is the common word for seeing, with the eyes or with the mind. The psalm leaves “it” unnamed, and the weight falls on what the sight did to them. It may have been a sign, a sound, or some act of God that made his presence plain. It may have been the city itself, standing under his protection, for the kings’ reaction to the city was a reaction to the God who dwelt in it. Whatever they saw, they knew they faced a power far beyond their own.

Three verbs follow in quick succession. “They marvelled” translates tâmahh, to be astonished or in consternation, amazed at something beyond their understanding. “They were troubled” is bâhal, to tremble inwardly, to be suddenly alarmed or shaken. “Hasted away” is châphaz, which properly means to start up suddenly, and so to hurry away in fear. The kings who had planned their meeting so carefully left in disorder, their courage gone and their plans broken before a single blow was struck.

This is the comfort the psalms give to God’s people: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1), and “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever” (Psalm 125:2).

The same verb râʼâh stands behind “seen” in verse 8. The kings saw, and they fled. God’s people saw, and they praised him.

Verse 6 describes what came over the kings. “Fear” is raʻad, a shudder or trembling, the body shaking with dread. It “took hold upon them”, from ʼâchaz, to grasp or seize, often with the idea of holding on to what is seized. The fear gripped them and kept its grip. “There” fixes it to the very place where they had gathered in sight of the city. Their terror came from God’s presence in Jerusalem.

“And pain, as of a woman in travail.” The word chîyl means a throe or pang, especially the pangs of childbirth, and “a woman in travail” comes from yâlad, to bear young. Everyone knew this pain. It comes suddenly, it is intense, and once it begins the woman can only go through it. Kings who arrived as masters of the situation found themselves as helpless as a woman in labour.

The prophets use the same picture for the anguish that falls on people under God’s judgment (Isaiah 13:8, Jeremiah 4:31), and in Exodus 15:16 fear and dread fall upon the enemies of God’s people. Here we see God’s power to save and his power to judge at the same moment. The city is safe, and those who came to destroy it are undone.

In verse 7 the psalmist turns from telling about the kings to speaking to God himself: “Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.” He sets a second picture beside the first, a fleet shattered at sea, to praise the same power that scattered the kings. Whether ships were wrecked at the time of the attack on Jerusalem, the psalm leaves unsaid.

To break, shâbar, means to burst or shatter. The ships, ʼŏnîyâh, are ships of Tarshîysh, Tarshish, a place on the Mediterranean whose exact location is uncertain, perhaps in what is now Spain. “Ships of Tarshish” came to mean the large, sturdy vessels built for long voyages to distant lands, the greatest ships of their day. Solomon’s fleet brought home gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks (1 Kings 10:22). So these ships stood for wealth, trade, far reach and human pride, and Isaiah names them among the proud things the LORD will bring low (Isaiah 2:16).

The word for east, qâdîym, properly means what lies in front, and so the east, and it can name the east wind itself. The word for wind, rûwach, means wind or breath. In Israel the east wind was strong and hot. It withers the ears of grain in Pharaoh’s dream (Genesis 41:6), it brought Jonah great discomfort (Jonah 4:8), and it could wreck ships at sea.

The ships were among the strongest things people could build, and God breaks them with a wind, a part of the creation he made and rules (Job 9:8). The kings and their armies were just as frail in his hands. What protects his city is God himself, in the midst of her (Psalm 46:5).

Verse 8 is the people’s answer. The psalm is a song of the sons of Korah, and here the singers speak together as “we”. “As we have heard” is shâmaʻ, to hear with attention, a word that often carries the idea of heeding and obeying. They had heard from those before them of God’s mighty acts and of his promises to keep his city. “So have we seen” uses râʼâh again: what they had received by report and by faith they have now watched God do. His word and his deeds agree. “The word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8), and Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).

The phrase “in the city” comes twice in verse 8, and both times the city is named by its owner. It is the city of the LORD of hosts. Yᵉhôvâh is God’s own name, written “the LORD” in the KJV, and tsâbâʼ, “hosts”, means a great company organized for war, an army. The LORD of hosts commands every army in heaven and on earth, and the kings fled before him. It is also “the city of our God”, ʼĕlôhîym, and “our” speaks of the covenant bond between God and the people who belong to him.

“God will establish it for ever.” The verb kûwn properly means to stand upright, and so to set up and make firm. “Ever” is ʻôwlâm, time out of mind, reaching to the vanishing point beyond anyone’s sight. The people take the deliverance they have just seen as a pledge of what God will go on doing. The city’s security rests on his will and power.

The New Testament shows where this psalm’s promise comes to rest. Jerusalem was where God’s presence dwelt among his people, and in Christ God came to dwell with us in person: “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Jesus spoke of his own body as the temple (John 2:19–21). Believers have come to the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22–24), and the church is a holy temple where God lives by his Spirit (Ephesians 2:21–22). Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18).

The kings who gathered against Zion picture every power that sets itself against Christ and his people. Through his cross Christ triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), and after he rose he declared that all power in heaven and in earth was given to him (Matthew 28:18). The God who breaks ships with an east wind is seen in Jesus rebuking the wind and calming the sea (Mark 4:39).

What Israel heard in the promises of a coming King is seen in Jesus, who mediates a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6) and has delivered us from darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son (Colossians 1:13). At the end every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). For those who stand against him, the terror that seized the kings points ahead to “the wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16–17), when Christ comes to rule the nations with a rod of iron (Revelation 19:11–21). In the city to come the throne of God and of the Lamb stands for ever (Revelation 22:3–5).

The kings in these verses had numbers, planning and agreement on their side, and they left in fear before a city whose defence was God himself. The psalm gives us a God who guards his own with his presence alone, whose power over wind and sea is the same power that keeps his people, and whose word is proved by what he does. The security of his people rests on him.

The singers of verse 8 heard of God, then saw him act, and turned what they saw into praise and into confidence about the future. The promises we have heard in Scripture are the promises God keeps, and the city he establishes in Christ will stand for ever. The Selah at the end of the verse leaves room to take that in.