1 All ye peoples, clap [your] hands; Shout to God with joyful cry. 2 For Jehovah is most High [and] dread, A great King over all the earth. 3 He subdues peoples under us, And nations under our feet, 4 He chooses for us our inheritance, The pride of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.
5 God is gone up with a shout, Jehovah with trumpet clang. 6 Sing with the harp to God, sing with the harp: Sing with the harp to our King, sing with the harp. 7 For King of all the earth is God: Sing with the harp a skilful song. 8 God has become King over the nations: He has taken His seat on His holy throne.
9 The princes of the peoples gather themselves together [As] a people of the God of Abraham: For to God belong the shields of the earth; Greatly has He exalted Himself.
The closing thought of Psalm xlvi. is nobly expanded in this jubilant summons to all nations to praise Jehovah as their King. Both psalms have a similar, and probably the same, historical basis: a Divine act so recent that the tumult of triumph has not yet subsided, and the waves of joy still run high. Only in Psalm xlvi. the effect of that God-wrought deliverance is principally regarded as the security and peace of Israel, and in this psalm as the drawing of the nations to obey Israel's King, and so to join the chorus of Israel's praise. While the psalm has many resemblances to the Songs of the King (Psalm xciii. _seqq._), it is clearly in its right place here, as forming with the preceding and succeeding psalms a trilogy, occasioned by one great manifestation of God's care for the nation. No event is more appropriate than the usually accepted destruction of Sennacherib's army. The psalm has little of complexity in structure or thought. It is a gush of pure rapture. It rises to prophetic foresight, and, by reason of a comparatively small historical occasion, has a vision of the world-wide expansion of the kingdom of God. It falls into two strophes of four verses each, with one longer verse appended to the latter.
In the first strophe the nations are invited to welcome God as their King, not only because of His Divine exaltation and world-wide dominion, but also because of His deeds for "Jacob." The same Divine act which in Psalm xlvi. is represented as quelling wars and melting the earth, and in Psalm xlviii. as bringing dismay, pain, and flight, is here contemplated as attracting the nations to worship. The psalmist knows that destructive providences have their gracious aspect, and that God's true victory over men is not won when opposition is crushed and hearts made to quake, but when recognition of His sway and joy in it swell the heart. The quick clatter of clapping hands in sign of homage to the King (2 Kings xi. 12) blends with the shrill cries with which Easterns express joy, in "a tumult of acclaim." Hupfeld thinks that to suppose the heathen called upon to do homage because of the victory for Israel won over them is entirely mistaken. But unless that victory is the reason for the summons, the psalm offers none; and it is surely not difficult to suppose that the exhibition of God's power leads to reflection which issues in recognition of His sovereignty. Vv. 3, 4, seem to state the grounds for the summons in ver. 1. The tenses in these verses present a difficulty in the way of taking them for a historical retrospect of the conquest and partition of Canaan, which but for that objection would be the natural interpretation. It is possible to take them as "a truth of experience inferred from what had just been witnessed, the historical fact being expressed not in historical form, but generalised and idealised" (Delitzsch, _in loc._). The just accomplished deliverance repeated in essence the wonders of the first entrance on possession of the land, and revealed the continuous working of the same Divine hand, ever renewing the choice of Jacob's inheritance, and ever scattering its enemies. "The pride of Jacob" is a phrase in apposition with "our inheritance." The Holy Land was the object of "pride" to "Jacob," not in an evil sense but in that he boasted of it as a precious treasure intrusted to him by God. The root fact of all God's ancient and continued blessings is that He "loved." His own heart, not Jacob's deserts, prompted His mercies.