A Summons to Sing: Psalm 47 (Part Two)

by on May 17, 2025 | Comment

He subdued the peoples under us,
And the populace under our feet.
4He chose our inheritance for us,
The pride of Jacob, whom he loves.
Selah
5God has ascended with a shout,
YHWH with the sound of a horn.

“At the same time, the sacred writer, under that shadowy ceremony, doubtless intended to lead us to consider another kind of going up more triumphant—that of Christ when he ‘ascended up far above all heavens,’ (Ephesians 4:10) and obtained the empire of the whole world, and armed with his celestial power, subdued all pride and loftiness.”1

Intro

Ascension Thursday is fast approaching. This day is forty days after the resurrection, marking when Christ ascended into heaven. And, as one of my favorite puns has it, many of us today suffer from ascension deficit disorder. One of my favorite psalms to read and sing on Ascension Day to combat this disorder is Psalm 47. In the first part we looked at the universality of the praise of God that this psalm shows us, and how we are commanded to praise God with a maśkîl, a psalm of instruction. In this part we will look at how this psalm points us forward to the ascension of Christ.

Davidic Echoes

Unlike other psalms in the Psalter, this one is not attributed to David. In many ways, however, it reminds us of and points us to him. In fact, I think there are some intentional allusions to David and one of his psalms in these verses. One puzzling matter is in verse 5, where it is written that “God has ascended with a shout.” One must ask when this was supposed to have occurred. God is only ever described as “ascending” in one other place, in Genesis 17 when he leaves Abraham after giving the covenant sign of circumcision. This does not seem to be in view here in the psalm. Some commentators have suggested that this is related to a ritual procession of the ark to the temple in 2 Samuel 6.2 There, one reads that “David and all the house of Israel were bringing up the ark of YHWH with a shout and with the sound of the horn” (emphasis added). This is the exact same phrase in our verse, but with reference to the ark. Yet in this psalm, instead of the ark entering, it is YHWH himself going up, perhaps into the temple. This poetic intensification of the imagery from 2 Samuel 6 also foreshadows someone to come.

Yet it is not only this verse that reminds us of David. If you turn back to Psalm 18, you will find in the heading that David “spoke to YHWH . . . on the day YHWH delivered him from the palm of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.”3 This psalm of David’s deliverance is the only other time we see the phrase, “subdued peoples under.” In Psalm 18:47, it is subdued under David—“under me.” In Psalm 47, it is the people themselves who take up this phrase. In either case this means a martial supremacy over the peoples around them. In Psalm 47, this results in the nations coming to worship the Lord. With David and Solomon we also get a glimpse of this with the nations. The Queen of Sheba is a great example. She responds to Solomon with, “May YHWH your God be blessed, who delighted in you, to put you on the throne of Israel. When YHWH loved Israel forever, then he set you as king to work judgement and righteousness” (1 Kings 10:9).

But we can ask, did David give Israel this kind of rest? Is Psalm 47 really only about the Queen of Sheba, or the ark going into the temple? Did David and his offspring provide the sort of rest we see in Psalms 18 and 47, or is it still to come? The Epistle to the Hebrews takes up this question via Psalm 95 and declares that “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9).

This applies to the ascension and subduing themes in Psalms 18 and 47—they look forward. At the end of Psalm 18, just a few verses later, the Messianic overtones become clear. Verse 51 reads,

He makes great the salvation for his King,
And works steadfast love for his messiah
To David, and to his seed forever. (v. 51)

This psalm looks forward to the promised anointed one, David’s greater Son—greater even than Solomon. But in Psalm 47 the language of anointing is missing. Instead of the Messiah, we see the people of God. Does this mean that Psalm 47 is not about Jesus?

Israel Personified

Sometimes we might forget that Israel itself was called God’s son, not only their kings. This is what Hosea does in 11:1, a passage familiar to us all from Christmas time: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” These words Matthew applies to Christ (Matt 2:15).4 This is far from an isolated phenomenon. Take as another example Deuteronomy 14:1–2:

You are sons of YHWH your God. . . . For you are a holy people of YHWH your God, and YHWH chose you to be for himself as a possession from all the people who are on the face of the ground.

Israel was God’s son, and the king himself was a picture of this in miniature. Thus, when Psalm 47 uses very similar language as Psalm 18, we see the king representing the people in Psalm 18. David subdued people under him, but also under the feet of his people. And in Psalm 47 the people themselves recognize that it was not David who subdues enemies, but God.

Israel found itself early and late in its history with no king. There was the time before the entry into the land and the time of the Judges, and yet neither the entry into the land nor the kingship of Solomon prevented Israel from being overcome by the nations. Israel in exile would know they needed God and his anointed to subdue the enemies around them.

Christ as the Offspring

Then the heavens are torn apart and Jesus enters human history.5 The Gospel of Matthew shows us how Jesus replays the story of Israel, but this time it is a story of success. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus is baptized (3:13–17), and after he passes through the water he is tempted in the wilderness where he fasts forty days (4:1–11). I am far from the first person to call attention to how Jesus represents Israel here. Israel also passed through baptismal waters in the Red Sea (1 Cor 10:1–2) and was tempted in the wilderness, spending forty years there. Matthew points us to Jesus as fulfilling the role of the Son of God, which was the peoples’ role.

In Psalm 47 we see the people praising God for his work, his ascension, his reign. While in Israel, God ascended with the shout of a trumpet (v. 5), this pointed forward to the work of Christ. In this psalm, the ascension is followed by the gathering of nations. And this is exactly what we see in the Acts of the Apostles. Christ tells them that they will be witnesses to the very ends of the earth (1:8), he ascends (1:9), and then, beginning in chapter two, the gospel goes out to those assembled in Jerusalem for Shavuot, or the more familiar name, Pentecost. The nations gathered around after Christ’s ascension. Peter preached the gospel that day, and three thousand believed (2:41). “God ascended with a shout. . . . People of nations assemble with the sons of Abraham” (47:5, 9).

Christ ascended, and he not only sat on the throne to rule the nations; he defeated death. As the apostle Paul says ,“It is necessary for him to reign ‘until he puts all the enemies under his feet.’ The last enemy to be brought to nothing is death” (1 Cor 15:25–26). When Christ ascended, the nations gathered and he subdued his enemies. His enemies were not the nations, but sin and death. These the risen and ascended Christ overcame.

Conclusion

This psalm points us forward to the work of Christ by type and shadow. Critics of psalm singing might object that if we sing the Psalms we might not sing about Christ. But it is hard to make that case about Psalm 47. God’s anointed one ascended and subdued his enemies, placing them under our feet. Jesus defeated death, not only for himself but for you, dear Christian. So, “Sing to God, sing! Sing to our king, sing!”

Notes

  1. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948), 4:10.
  2. Hans-Joachim Kraus, “Exultation over Yahweh’s Triumphant Ascension,” in Psalms 1–59, trans. Hilton C. Oswald, Continental Commentaries (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1988), 468–69.
  3. You can find the same psalm, with the same introduction in 2 Sam. 22.
  4. Matt. 2:15. 
  5. Cf. Mark 1:10 where the Spirit comes down from the torn heavens to rest upon the Son.

©Luke Gossett. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

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    Post authored by:

  • Luke Gossett
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    Rev. Luke Gossett (MA Westminster Seminary California; MA and PhD Candidate, Catholic University of America) is the pastor of Ascension Presbyterian Church (a mission of the OPC Presbytery of the South) in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. His dissertation focuses on the linguistic functions of the Hebrew word for “now.” Luke has been married to his wife, Jennifer, since 2014, and they have three wonderful children.

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