Biblion Bible Commentary
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God Has Gone Up With a Shout
Psalms 47:1-9
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by the sons of Korah. Oh clap your hands, all you nations. Shout to God with the voice of triumph! · WEB
Every nation is told to applaud, and the psalm ends by seating foreign princes among the people of Abraham.
Oh clap your hands, all you nations. Shout to God with the voice of triumph! Psalms 47:1.
The address is to the nations, not to Israel, and it is an instruction to celebrate. Clapping in the Old Testament belongs to acclamation at a coronation 2 Kings 11:12, and the psalm is asking the surrounding peoples to applaud the enthronement of a king who is not theirs.
For Yahweh Most High is awesome. He is a great King over all the earth Psalms 47:2.
The title is the one Melchizedek used Genesis 14:19, and the scope is stated immediately: over all the earth, not over one people.
He subdues nations under us, and peoples under our feet. He chooses our inheritance for us Psalms 47:3–4.
The two verses are hard to reconcile with the invitation of verse one, and the psalm makes no attempt. Nations are being asked to applaud their own subjection. Whatever resolution there is comes at the end.
God has gone up with a shout, Yahweh with the sound of a trumpet Psalms 47:5.
The center of the psalm is an ascent. The most likely occasion is the ark being carried up into the sanctuary with shouting and trumpets 2 Samuel 6:15 — God going up to the place where he is enthroned, with the noise of a procession behind him.
Sing praises to God! Sing praises! Sing praises to our King! Sing praises! Psalms 47:6.
Four times in one verse, and then a qualification that is easy to miss: sing praises with understanding Psalms 47:7. The word suggests skill and comprehension together. Enthusiasm four times over, and then a requirement that the singers know what they are saying.
God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne Psalms 47:8.
The verb has changed. He went up; now he sits, which is what a king does when the coronation is finished and the reign has begun.
The princes of the peoples are gathered together, the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God Psalms 47:9.
The last verse resolves the tension the psalm has been carrying. The princes of the nations are gathered — and they are named as the people of the God of Abraham, which is not a description of foreign subjects but of family. The subjection of verse three turns out to be an enrollment, and the promise being fulfilled is the one made to Abraham that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed Genesis 12:3.
The shields of the earth are its rulers and its defenses; they belong to God, which is why the nations can be told to clap.
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