By: The Rev. Prof. Stephen Noll
“Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrHI3ATW9Co&feature=related).
Most hymns are addressed to God. Psalm 48, however, is offered to a place, to Zion. Zion is the central hill on which the city of Jerusalem was built. In particular, David desired to build a Temple, and his son Solomon completed it with great fanfare (2 Samuel 7; 1 Kings 8). The Temple on Zion was considered “the Lord’s house” and the seat of the Messiah, from which He reigned over the nations (Psalm 2:6).
While Zion is hardly the most noticeable feature of the world’s topography, Scripture portrays it as uniquely “beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth” (verse 2). Jerusalem and its kings were hardly the most powerful of their day. Indeed Sennacherib, the “Great King” of Assyria, mocked them, only to be routed by a plague (1 Kings 18:19-28). The Psalm describes all the kings of the earth drawn to Zion, “the city of the Great King,” only to be terrified and scattered to the winds (verses 4-7).
After the Temple mount was destroyed in 586 BC, Jews in exile mourned its loss, and in their imaginations they walked the streets of Zion and measured her dimensions. On the first Palm Sunday, the people of Jerusalem welcomed Jesus of Nazareth as their King, only to cry “Crucify Him” five days later. The city and its Temple were razed to the ground a generation later, and the central place of Zion is today occupied by a golden mosque.
Jews (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH8gtdDA5x0&feature=related) and Christians (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBOvNZJz4r0&feature=related) pray for the peace of Jerusalem and look forward to a new Jerusalem the Golden where we shall experience the ultimate fulfillment of the psalm: “This is our God forever, He will guide us unto death.”