Bible Commentaries

Psalms 47:1-5. O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet. He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah. God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.

One of our sacred poets has written, “All his work and warfare done, He into his heaven is gone, And beside his Father’s throne, Now is pleading for his own;” but, not merely is he “beside his Father’s throne,” he is with him sitting upon the throne, and waiting until his foes be made his footstool.

Psalms 47:6-9. Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises. For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God: he is greatly exalted.

There are some, in these days, who have, according to their own confession, cast off the God of Abraham. They do not believe in the Jehovah who is revealed in the Old Testament; they are like those of whom Moses said, “They sacrificed to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not; “ but as for us, we still delight to sing,”

“The God of Abraham praise

Who reigns enthroned above,

Ancient of everlasting days,

And God of love!

Jehovah, great I AM!

By earth and heaven confest;

I bow, and bless the sacred name

For ever blest!”

“But the God of Abraham is very stern,” says someone. Assuredly he is; he is terrible in the majesty of his justice; yet we worship and adore him for that very reason. No effeminate deity, such as modern thought has invented, has even an atom of our admiration, much less of our adoration;

but the glorious God of the Sinai thunders, who is equally terrible as the God of justice on Calvary, this God, who, nevertheless, is love, our hearts adore and worship.