Psalm 48:1
<< Psalm 48:1 >>
New International Version (©1984)
A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. Great is the LORD, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain.

New Living Translation (©2007)
A song. A psalm of the descendants of Korah. How great is the LORD, how deserving of praise, in the city of our God, which sits on his holy mountain!

English Standard Version (©2001)
A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain,

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
A Song; a Psalm of the sons of Korah. Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, In the city of our God, His holy mountain.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
<and Psalm for the sons of Korah.>> Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English (©2010)
Great is our Lord and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God and in his holy mountain.

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
[A song; a psalm by Korah's descendants.] The LORD is great. He should be highly praised. His holy mountain is in the city of our God.

King James 2000 Bible (©2003)
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

American King James Version
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

American Standard Version
Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised, In the city of our God, in his holy mountain.

Douay-Rheims Bible
A psalm of a canticle, for the sons of Core, on the second day of the week. Great is the Lord, and exceedingly to be praised in the city of our God, in his holy mountain.

Darby Bible Translation
{A Song; a Psalm. Of the sons of Korah.} Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the hill of his holiness.

English Revised Version
A Song; a Psalm of the sons of Korah. Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised, in the city of our God, in his holy mountain.

Webster's Bible Translation
A Song and Psalm for the sons of Korah. Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

World English Bible
Great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God, in his holy mountain.

Young's Literal Translation
A Song, a Psalm, by sons of Korah. Great is Jehovah, and praised greatly, In the city of our God -- His holy hill.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Great is the Lord - That is, he is high and exalted; he is a Being of great power and glory. He is not weak and feeble, like the idols worshipped by other nations. He is able to defend his people; he has shown his great power in overthrowing the mighty forces that were gathered together against the city where he dwells.

And greatly to be praised - Worthy to be praised. In his own nature, he is worthy of adoration; in interposing to save the city from its foes, he has shown that he is worthy of exalted praise.

In the city of our God - Jerusalem. In the city which he has chosen for his abode, and where his worship is celebrated. See the notes at Psalm 46:4. This praise was especially appropriate there:

(a) because it was a place set apart for his worship;

(b) because he had now interposed to save it from threatened ruin.

In the mountain of his holiness - His holy mountain; either Mount Zion, if the psalm was composed before the building of the temple - or more probably here Mount Moriah, on which the temple was reared. The names Zion, and Mount Zion, however, were sometimes given to the entire city. Compare the notes at Isaiah 2:2-3.


Clarke's Commentary on the Bible

Great is the Lord - This verse should be joined to the last verse of the preceding Psalm, as it is a continuation of the same subject; and indeed in some of Kennicott's MSS. it is written as a part of the foregoing. That concluded with He is greatly exalted; this begins with Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; i.e., He should be praised according to his greatness; no common praise is suited to the nature and dignity of the Supreme God.

In the city of our God - That is, in the temple; or in Jerusalem, where the temple was situated.

The mountain of his holiness - Mount Moriah, on which the temple was built. The ancient city of Jerusalem, which David took from the Jebusites, was on the south of Mount Zion, on which the temple was built, though it might be said to be more properly on Mount Moriah, which is one of the hills of which Mount Zion is composed. The temple therefore was to the north of the city, as the psalmist here states, Psalm 48:2 : "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King." But some think that it is the city that is said to be on the north, and Reland contends that the temple was on the south of the city.


Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Great is the Lord,.... The same that in the foregoing psalm is said to be gone, up to heaven with a shout, to sit on the throne of his holiness, to reign over the Heathen, and to be King over all the earth; who is great, and the Son of the Highest; the great God and our Saviour; great in his person as God-man, God manifest in the flesh, his Father's fellow and equal; and in the perfections of his nature, being of great power, and of great wisdom, and of great faithfulness, and of strict holiness and justice, and of wonderful grace and goodness; great in his works of creation and providence; in his miraculous operations when on earth, and in the work of man's redemption and salvation; great is he in all his offices, a great Prophet risen in Israel, a great High Priest over thee house of God, a Saviour, and a great one, and the great Shepherd of the sheep;

and greatly to be praised in the city of our God; the city of Jerusalem, the city of solemnities, where was the worship of God, and where the tribes went up to worship, and God was present with his people; and where the great Lord of all showed himself to be great; here Christ the great Saviour appeared, even in the temple, when a child, where Simeon and Anna saw him, and spoke great things of him; where he at twelve years of age disputed with the doctors, and showed his great wisdom; here when grown up he wrought many of his great miracles, and taught his doctrines; here he entered in great triumph, attended with the shouts, acclamations, and hosannas of the people; here he ate his last passover with his disciples; and in a garden near it was he taken and brought before the sanhedrim, assembled at the high priest's palace at Jerusalem; and then tried and condemned at the bar of Pilate; when being led a little way out of the city he was crucified on Mount Calvary; and on another mount, the mount of Olives, about a mile from it, he ascended to heaven; and here in this city he poured forth the Spirit in an extraordinary manner on his disciples at the day of Pentecost, as an evidence of his ascension; and from hence his Gospel went forth into all the world; and therefore was greatly to be praised here, as he was by his disciples, church, and people, Acts 2:46. Jerusalem is a figure of the Gospel church, which is often compared to a city, Isaiah 26:1; of which saints are citizens and fellow citizens of each other; this is a city built on Christ the foundation; is full of inhabitants, when together and considered by themselves; is governed by wholesome laws, enacted by Christ its King, who has appointed officers under him to explain and enforce them, and see that they are put in execution; and has many privileges and immunities belonging to it; and this is the city of God, of his building and of his defending, and where he dwells; it is, as in Psalm 48:2; "the city of the great King", the King Messiah, and where he displays his greatness; here he appears great and glorious, shows his power and his glory; is seen in the galleries and through the lattices of ordinances, in his beauty and splendour; here he grants his gracious presence, and bestows his favours and blessings; and is therefore greatly to be praised here, as he is by all his people on the above accounts, Even

in the mountain of his holiness; as Mount Zion is called on account of the temple built upon it, and the worship of God in it; and a fit emblem it was of the church of Christ, which, as that is, is chosen and, loved of God, and is his habitation, is impregnable and immovable, and consists of persons sanctified by God the Father, in the Son, and through the Spirit.


The Treasury of David

1 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

3 God is known in her palaces for a refuge.

Psalm 48:1

"Great is the Lord." How great Jehovah is essentially none can conceive; but we can all see that he is great in the deliverance of his people, great in their esteem who are delivered, and great in the hearts of those enemies whom he scatters by their own fears. Instead of the mad cry of Ephesus, "Great is Diana." we hear the reasonable, demonstrable, self-evident testimony, "Great is Jehovah." There is none great in the church but the Lord. Jesus is "the great Shepherd," he is "a Saviour, and a great one," our great God and Saviour, our great High Priest; his Father has divided him a portion with the great, and his name shall be great unto the ends of the earth. "And greatly to be praised." According to his nature should his worship be; it cannot be too constant, too laudatory, too earnest, too reverential, too sublime. There is none like the Lord, and there should be no praises like his praises. "In the city of our God." He is great there, and should be greatly praised there. If all the world beside renounced Jehovah's worship, the chosen people in his favoured city should continue to adore him, for in their midst and on their behalf his glorious power has been so manifestly revealed. In the church the Lord is to be extolled though all the nations rage against him. Jerusalem was the peculiar abode of the God of Israel, the seat of the theocratic government, and the centre of prescribed worship, and even thus is the church the place of divine manifestation. "In the mountain of his holiness." Where his holy temple, his holy priests, and his holy sacrifices might continually be seen. Zion was a mount, and as it was the most renowned part of the city, it is mentioned as a synonym for the city itself. The church of God is a mount for elevation and for conspicuousness, and it should be adorned with holiness, her sons being partakers of the holiness of God. Only by holy men can the Lord be fittingly praised, and they should be incessantly occupied with his worship.

Psalm 48:2

"Beautiful for situation." Jerusalem was so naturally, she was styled the Queen of the East; the church is so spiritually, being placed near God's heart, within the mountains of his power, upon the hills of his faithfulness, in the centre of providential operations. The elevation of the church is her beauty. The more she is above the world the fairer she is. "The joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion." Jerusalem was the world's star; whatever light lingered on earth was borrowed from the oracles preserved by Israel. An ardent Israelite would esteem the holy city as the eye of the nations, the most precious pearl of all lands. Certainly the church of God, though despised of men, is the true joy and hope of the world. "On the sides of the north, the city of the great King." Either meaning that Jerusalem was in the northern extremity of Judah, or it may denote that part of the city which lay to the north of Mount Zion. It was the glory of Jerusalem to be God's city, the place of his regal dwelling, and it is the joy of the church that God is in her midst. The great God is the great King of the church, and for her sake he rules all the nations. The people among whom the Lord deigns to dwell are privileged above all others; the lines have fallen unto them ill pleasant places, and they have a goodly heritage. We who dwell in Great Britain in the sides of the north, have this for our chief glory, that the Lord is known in our land, and the abode of his love is among us.

Psalm 48:3

"God is known in her palaces for a refuge." We worship no unknown god. We know him as our refuge in distress, we delight in him as such, and run to him in every time of need. We know nothing else as our refuge. Though we are made kings, and our houses are palaces, yet we have no confidence in ourselves, but trust in the Lord Protector, whose well-known power is our bulwark.


Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

(Heb.: 48:2-9) Viewed as to the nature of its subject-matter, the Psalm divides itself into three parts. We begin by considering the three strophes of the first part. The middle strophe presents an instance of the rising and falling caesural schema. Because Jahve has most marvellously delivered Jerusalem, the poet begins with the praise of the great King and of His Holy City. Great and praised according to His due (מהלּל as in Psalm 18:4) is He in her, is He upon His holy mountain, which there is His habitation. Next follow, in Psalm 48:3, two predicates of a threefold, or fundamentally only twofold, subject; for ירכּתי צפון, in whatever way it may be understood, is in apposition to הר־ציּון. The predicates consequently refer to Zion-Jerusalem; for קרית מלך רב is not a name for Zion, but, inasmuch as the transition is from the holy mountain to the Holy City (just as the reverse is the case in Psalm 48:2), Jerusalem; ὅτι πόλις ἐστὶ τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως, Matthew 5:35. Of Zion-Jerusalem it is therefore said, it is יפה נוף, beautiful in prominence or elevation (נוף from נוּף, Arabic nâfa, nauf, root נף, the stronger force of נב, Arab. nb, to raise one's self, to mount, to come sensibly forward; just as יפה also goes back to a root יף, Arab. yf, wf, which signifies "to rise, to be high," and is transferred in the Hebrew to eminence, perfection, beauty of form), a beautifully rising terrace-like height;

(Note: Luther with Jerome (departing from the lxx and Vulgate) renders it: "Mount Zion is like a beautiful branch," after the Mishna-Talmudic נוף, a branch, Maccoth 12a, which is compared also by Saadia and Dunash. The latter renders it "beautiful in branches," and refers it to the Mount of Olives.)

and, in the second place, it is the joy (משׂושׂ) of the whole earth. It is deserving of being such, as the people who dwell there are themselves convinced (Lamentations 2:15); and it is appointed to become such, it is indeed such even now in hope, - hope which is, as it were, being anticipatorily verified. but in what sense does the appositional ירכּתי צפון follow immediately upon הר־ציּון? Hitzig, Ewald, Hengstenberg, Caspari (Micha, p. 359), and others, are of opinion that the hill of Zion is called the extreme north with reference to the old Asiatic conception of the mountain of the gods - old Persic Ar-bur'g (Al-bur'g), and also called absolutely hara or haraiti,

(Note: Vid., Spiegel, Erân, S. 287f.)

old Indian Kailâsa and Mêru

(Note: Vide Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, ii.847.)

- forming the connecting link between heaven and earth, which lay in the inaccessible, holy distance and concealment of the extreme north. But the poet in no way betrays the idea that he applies this designation to Zion in an ideal sense only, as being not inferior to the extreme north (Bertheau, Lage des Paradieses, S. 50, and so also S. D. Luzzatto on Isaiah 14:13), or as having taken the place of it (Hitzig). That notion is found, it is true, in Isaiah 14:13, in the mouth of the king of the Chaldeans; but, with the exception of the passage before us, we have no trace of the Israelitish mind having blended this foreign mythological style of speech with its own. We therefore take the expression "sides of the north" to be a topographical designation, and intended literally. Mount Zion is thereby more definitely designated as the Temple-hill; for the Temple-hill, or Zion in the narrower sense, formed in reality the north-eastern angle or corner of ancient Jerusalem. It is not necessarily the extreme north (Ezekiel 38:6; Ezekiel 39:2), which is called ירכתי צפון; for ירכּתים are the two sides, then the angle in which the two side lines meet, and just such a northern angle was Mount Moriah by its position in relation to the city of David and the lower city.


Geneva Study Bible

<<{a} A Song and Psalm for the sons of Korah.>> Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the {b} city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

(a) Some put this difference between a song and psalm, saying that it is called a song when there is no instrument but the voice, and the song of the psalm is when the instruments begin and the voice follows.

(b) Even though God shows his wonders through all the world, yet he will be chiefly praised in his Church.


Wesley's Notes

48:1 The city - In Jerusalem. Mountain - In his holy mountain.


King James Translators' Notes

for: or, of


Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

PSALM 48

Ps 48:1-14. This is a spirited Psalm and song (compare Ps 30:1), having probably been suggested by the same occasion as the foregoing. It sets forth the privileges and blessings of God's spiritual dominion as the terror of the wicked and joy of the righteous.

1. to be praised-always: it is an epithet, as in Ps 18:3.

mountain of his holiness-His Church (compare Isa 2:2, 3; 25:6, 7, 10); the sanctuary was erected first on Mount Zion, then (as the temple) on Moriah; hence the figure.


Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

48:1-7 Jerusalem is the city of our God: none on earth render him due honour except the citizens of the spiritual Jerusalem. Happy the kingdom, the city, the family, the heart, in which God is great, in which he is all. There God is known. The clearer discoveries are made to us of the Lord and his greatness, the more it is expected that we should abound in his praises. The earth is, by sin, covered with deformity, therefore justly might that spot of ground, which was beautified with holiness, be called the joy of the whole earth; that which the whole earth has reason to rejoice in, that God would thus in very deed dwell with man upon the earth. The kings of the earth were afraid of it. Nothing in nature can more fitly represent the overthrow of heathenism by the Spirit of the gospel, than the wreck of a fleet in a storm. Both are by the mighty power of the Lord.


2 Samuel 22:4 I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.
1 Chronicles 16:25 For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods.
Psalm 2:6 "I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill."
Psalm 18:3 I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.
Psalm 46:4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
Psalm 87:1 Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm. A song. He has set his foundation on the holy mountain;
Psalm 95:3 For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods.
Psalm 96:4 For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods.
Psalm 99:2 Great is the LORD in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations.
Psalm 113:3 From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised.
Psalm 132:13 For the LORD has chosen Zion, he has desired it for his dwelling:
Psalm 135:5 I know that the LORD is great, that our Lord is greater than all gods.
Psalm 145:3 Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.
Psalm 147:5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.
Isaiah 2:3 Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 10:6 No one is like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is mighty in power.
Jeremiah 31:23 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: "When I bring them back from captivity, the people in the land of Judah and in its towns will once again use these words: 'The LORD bless you, O righteous dwelling, O sacred mountain.'
Ezekiel 35:10 "'Because you have said, "These two nations and countries will be ours and we will take possession of them," even though I the LORD was there,
Daniel 2:45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands--a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. "The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy."
Micah 4:1 In the last days the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and peoples will stream to it.

City Great Greatly Hill Holiness Holy Korah Korah&Gt Mountain Praise Praised Psalm Song Worthy


Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

The ornaments and privileges of the church
A.M. 3489 B.C. 515 (Title.) Song. This Psalm is supposed to have been sung at the dedication of the second temple; though some think it was composed on the victory obtained by Jehoshaphat 2Ch 20:1-37 Ps 30:1

for. or, of Ps 46:1

Great Ps 86:10 99:3,4 145:3 147:5

greatly Ps 89:1-7 Ne 9:5 Re 15:3,4 19:5

city Ps 46:4 65:1 78:68 87:3 Heb 12:22 Re 21:2,10-22

mountain Ps 47:8 99:9 Isa 2:2,3 27:13 Jer 31:23 Ob 1:17 Mic 4:1 Zec 8:3 Mt 24:15

Psalms Chapter 48 Verse 1

Alphabetical: A and be city God Great greatly his holy in is Korah LORD most mountain of our praise praised psalm song Sons the to worthy

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