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For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 47 and its interpreters. In this Psalm, Israel is celebrating God on account of her inheritance (presumably the Promised Land) and God's status as ruler of the earth, and yet people of other nations are also assembling before God.
Many have interpreted this Psalm eschatologically. Many Jewish interpreters have held that this Psalm concerns the Messianic Era, in which Gentile nations will be subordinate to Israel, will worship Israel's God, and will learn of God's ways. (And I should note that Psalm 47 was used for Rosh Hoshanah during the Middle Ages.) Many Christian interpreters have maintained that we are in this sort of Messianic Era right now, through Jesus Christ, for Jews and Gentiles worship the God of Israel together, within the church; several Christian interpreters, however, have affirmed that Gentile Christians are not subordinate to ethnic Jews, per se, but rather are equal with Jewish believers in the new Israel, the body of Christ. And then there's the view that Psalm 47 was not eschatological but pertained to a historical ceremony in which Israel and her vassal states worshiped the God of Israel. Peter Craigie goes this route, even as he says that the Psalm has Christological significance.
There are at least two interesting details in this Psalm:
1. The Hebrew word maskil is in Psalm 47:8 (according to the MT's numbering of verses). Maskil pertains to having understanding. The Septuagint and the Targum on the Psalms interpret the verse to mean that people are to praise God intelligently or with understanding, and Christian commentators have cross-referenced to this verse passages about being reasonable or having understanding in our adoration of God (Romans 12:1; I Corinthians 14:15). Others maintain that the maskil is a vocative, indicating that the Psalm is exhorting the person with understanding to sing praises. A possible problem here is that the imperative in Psalm 47:8 for "sing praises", zamru, is second person plural, whereas maskil is singular. I read in the orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary on the Psalms an attempt by Otzar Nechmad to derive a lesson from this detail: that maskil is singular in this verse because each individual has his own level of comprehension. We are all to praise God, but each of us does so with his or her own degree of understanding, and so there is an individual dimension to praise. Then there is the view that maskil is simply there to signal that the Psalm is to be played according to a particular tune.
In my opinion, there is something to be said about praising God with understanding, which is what distinguishes praise from enjoying a nice song. (The fourth century Christian exegete Theodore of Mospuestia makes this point.) Unfortunately, we're often told by religionists that we cannot understand God because his ways are higher than our ways. This may be true, on some level, but I think that praise should proceed on the assumption that God is love. Since God commands us to love, that must mean that he himself loves. We can praise God for who God is because God exemplifies love, and we can thank God from our personal standpoints on account of God's love for each of us.
2. Psalm 47:10 (again, in the MT's numbering) says that to God are the shields of the earth. What does this mean? One view is that the shields of the earth are the Gentile rulers gathering before God in worship, the idea being that the leaders of nations are shields to their people, with the duty to protect them. The Jewish exegete Rashi, however, says that it means that God is a shield to those who take refuge in him, as the Gentiles are doing in v 10 when they gather before God, many of them as proselytes, like Abraham was.
I can sympathize with Jews and Israelites who desired for all nations to worship their God. Perhaps they felt that this would vindicate them, or at least mark a period of peace, in which nations are worshiping with them rather than attacking them. I have some issues with everyone on the face of the earth having the exact same religion, however, since part of what makes life interesting is diversity. At the same time, there can still be diversity even if people praise the same God, for their experiences with God have been different, and (as Otzar Nechmad says) understanding can be an individual thing.
