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Psalm 48

The Glory and Strength of Zion

A Song. A Psalm of the Korahites.

1

Great is the L ord and greatly to be praised

in the city of our God.

His holy mountain, 2beautiful in elevation,

is the joy of all the earth,

Mount Zion, in the far north,

the city of the great King.

3

Within its citadels God

has shown himself a sure defense.

 

4

Then the kings assembled,

they came on together.

5

As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;

they were in panic, they took to flight;

6

trembling took hold of them there,

pains as of a woman in labor,

7

as when an east wind shatters

the ships of Tarshish.

8

As we have heard, so have we seen

in the city of the L ord of hosts,

in the city of our God,

which God establishes forever. Selah

 

9

We ponder your steadfast love, O God,

in the midst of your temple.

10

Your name, O God, like your praise,

reaches to the ends of the earth.

Your right hand is filled with victory.

11

Let Mount Zion be glad,

let the towns of Judah rejoice

because of your judgments.

 

12

Walk about Zion, go all around it,

count its towers,

13

consider well its ramparts;

go through its citadels,

that you may tell the next generation

14

that this is God,

our God forever and ever.

He will be our guide forever.


7. By the east wind 194194     The east wind in Judea and in the Mediterranean is very tempestuous and destructive. It is also very dry and parching, as well as sudden and terrible in its action. Genesis 41:6; Exodus 14:21; Ezekiel 19:12; and 27:26; Job 27:21; Isaiah 27:8; Jeremiah 18:17; Jonah 4:8. Hence the LXX. translate the original words, “Εν πνευματι βιαίω,” “With a violent wind;” and the Chaldee reads, “A strong east wind as a fire from before the Lord.” “Such a wind,” says Bishop Mant, “is well known to the modern mariner by the name of Levanter, and is of the same kind as that spoken of in the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, under the name of Euroclydon.” thou breakest in pieces the ships of Tarshish Commentators are divided in their view of this passage. 195195     It is supposed by some that there is in it an implied similitude; the particle of similitude used in the preceding verse being understood. Thus French and Skinner translate the 6th and 7th verses — “Then did trembling seize upon them — Pangs as of a woman in travail — As when with a stormy wind, Thou breakest in pieces the ships of Tarshish.” According to this translation, “the ships of Tarshish” do not refer to an invading army, nor “the breaking in pieces of them” to an actual storm which had this effect; but the sacred writer employs another figure, the more vividly to describe the terror which seized upon these confederate powers. He had in the preceding verse compared it with the pangs of a woman in travail; and here he compares it to the trembling which seized upon mariners when the fury of the east wind, which shattered in pieces the largest and strongest vessels, as the ships of Tarshish probably then were, was let loose upon them. But let us rest contented with the natural sense, which is simply this, that the enemies of the Church were overthrown and plunged into destruction, just as God by suddenly raising storms sinks the ships of Cilicia to the bottom of the sea. The Psalmist celebrates the power which God is accustomed to display in great and violent storms; and his language implies that it is not to be wondered at if God, who breaks by the violence of the winds the strongest ships, had also overthrown his enemies, who were inflated with the presumptuous confidence which they reposed in their own strength. By the sea of Tarshish the Hebrews mean the Mediterranean Sea, because of the country of Cilicia, which in ancient times was called Tarshish, as Josephus informs us, although in process of time this name came to be restricted to one city of the country. But as the chief part of the naval traffic of the Jews was with Cilicia, there is here attributed to that country by synecdoche what was common to other countries which were at a greater distance and less known.


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