<<{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.