Reading: Psalm 47 ESV
Psalm 47 is a call to worship for
the whole world and finds its fulfillment through the Gospel in our
own day. For many years I read Psalm 47 with the emphasis on the call
to clap your hands and shout. Being raised in a religious tradition
that was very staid in its worship, what was surprising in the psalm
to me as a teenager was that call to clap my hands in worship.
However in the day it was written that was not the startling aspect
of the psalm or even the first sentence.
1Clap your
hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy! 2For the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over
all the earth.
What would have stood out
to the original audience is found in the words, “all peoples.”
In this psalm “all peoples” doesn't mean “all
Jewish people,” or “all Israeli people,” but rather,
it is “all the peoples of the earth” for the Lord is “a
great king over all the earth.” In the next verses we
see that the same word is used for the Gentile nations of the world
around us.
3He
subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet. 4He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves.
Selah
The call to all peoples
of the world to worship God with great expression is rooted in the
fact that He has subdued peoples (other nations) under the feet of
Israel as they inherited the promise land. They can see the evident
uniqueness of the Lord as not merely a local deity but as the Great
King over the whole earth. He is therefore in a unique position to
demand worship from all.
As the psalm continues,
it becomes even more clear that the theme stated in the second
verse—the Lord is “a great
king over all the earth”—is
the reason for this call to all peoples everywhere to clap and to
shout with loud songs of joy.
5God has
gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.
6Sing
praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!
7For God
is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm!
8God
reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.
Because God reigns over
the nations, the nations (not just Israel) are called to
worship Him. Then the most surprising part of the psalm comes at the
end.
9The princes of the
peoples
gather as
the people of the God of Abraham.
For the shields of the
earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!
The princes of the peoples
(these are the peoples of the whole world again) gather as the
people of the God of Abraham. Christopher J. Wright points out that
the word supplied in English, “as,” is not in the Hebrew.
"The
nobles of the nations" and "the people of the God of
Abraham" are simply set in apposition, the one being identified
with the other. That God in this context should be specifically named
as the God of Abraham is surely significant, in view of the
universality of God's promise to Abraham. So the register of the
nations will not set the other nations behind, beneath or even merely
alongside Israel, but will actually include them as Israel, as part
of the people of father Abraham.1
“The shields of the earth”
is an expression representative of the mighty warriors or leaders of
the earth who belong to God. They are either equal to or closely
connected with the “princes of the peoples.” Not just the
Jewish people but the princes and leaders of the world belong to God,
and by implication therefore, all the peoples who belong to those
leaders belong to God.
None of this is particularly
surprising to the New Testament, but it certainly was surprising in
the Old. It is a look forward in keeping with the promise to Abraham
(Genesis 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4). If the princes of the nations are
to gather as the people of Abraham, indeed all the nations are called
to gather as those people and to clap our hands, and to shout with
loud songs of joy. That is a call to be fulfilled in the New Covenant
people of God.
Psalm 47 is a call to worship for
the whole world and finds its fulfillment through the Gospel in our
own day as all peoples on earth are assembling as the people of
Israel. So clap your hands and shout with loud songs of joy. It is a
call to worship that, as we are seeing in our
current series in the book of Acts, echoes through the pages of
Acts to the nations of the world.
Love the Gospel, Live the Gospel,
Advance the Gospel,
Jerry
1Christopher
J. H. Wright. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand
Narrative (Kindle Locations 6716-6719). Kindle Edition.
