Psalm 48:1-3
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Psalm 48[a]
The Splendor of the Invincible City
1 A psalm of the Korahites.[b] A song.
I
2 Great is the Lord and highly praised
in the city of our God:(A)
His holy mountain,
3 fairest of heights,
the joy of all the earth,(B)
Mount Zion, the heights of Zaphon,[c](C)
the city of the great king.
Footnotes
- Psalm 48 A Zion hymn, praising the holy city as the invincible dwelling place of God. Unconquerable, it is an apt symbol of God who has defeated all enemies. After seven epithets describing the city (Ps 48:2–3), the Psalm describes the victory by the Divine Warrior over hostile kings (Ps 48:4–8). The second half proclaims the dominion of the God of Zion over all the earth (Ps 48:9–12) and invites pilgrims to announce that God is eternally invincible like Zion itself (Ps 48:13–14).
- 48:1 Korahites: see note on Ps 42:1.
- 48:3 The heights of Zaphon: the mountain abode of the Canaanite storm-god Baal in comparable texts. To speak of Zion as if it were Zaphon was to claim for Israel’s God what Canaanites claimed for Baal. Though topographically speaking Zion is only a hill, viewed religiously it towers over other mountains as the home of the supreme God (cf. Ps 68:16–17).
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