47:2 For the sovereign Lord 1 is awe-inspiring; 2
he is the great king who rules the whole earth! 3
48:2 It is lofty and pleasing to look at, 4
a source of joy to the whole earth. 5
Mount Zion resembles the peaks of Zaphon; 6
it is the city of the great king.
10:10 The Lord is the only true God.
He is the living God and the everlasting King.
When he shows his anger the earth shakes.
None of the nations can stand up to his fury.
46:18 I the King, whose name is the Lord who rules over all, 7 swear this:
I swear as surely as I live that 8 a conqueror is coming.
He will be as imposing as Mount Tabor is among the mountains,
as Mount Carmel is against the backdrop of the sea. 9
48:15 Moab will be destroyed. Its towns will be invaded.
Its finest young men will be slaughtered. 10
I, the King, the Lord who rules over all, 11 affirm it! 12
1 tn Heb “the
2 tn Or “awesome.” The Niphal participle נוֹרָא (nora’), when used of God in the psalms, focuses on the effect that his royal splendor and powerful deeds have on those witnessing his acts (Pss 66:3, 5; 68:35; 76:7, 12; 89:7; 96:4; 99:3; 111:9). Here it refers to his capacity to fill his defeated foes with terror and his people with fearful respect.
3 tn Heb “a great king over all the earth.”
4 tn Heb “beautiful of height.” The Hebrew term נוֹף (nof, “height”) is a genitive of specification after the qualitative noun “beautiful.” The idea seems to be that Mount Zion, because of its lofty appearance, is pleasing to the sight.
5 sn A source of joy to the whole earth. The language is hyperbolic. Zion, as the dwelling place of the universal king, is pictured as the world’s capital. The prophets anticipated this idealized picture becoming a reality in the eschaton (see Isa 2:1-4).
6 tn Heb “Mount Zion, the peaks of Zaphon.” Like all the preceding phrases in v. 2, both phrases are appositional to “city of our God, his holy hill” in v. 1, suggesting an identification in the poet’s mind between Mount Zion and Zaphon. “Zaphon” usually refers to the “north” in a general sense (see Pss 89:12; 107:3), but here, where it is collocated with “peaks,” it refers specifically to Mount Zaphon, located in the vicinity of ancient Ugarit and viewed as the mountain where the gods assembled (see Isa 14:13). By alluding to West Semitic mythology in this way, the psalm affirms that Mount Zion is the real divine mountain, for it is here that the
7 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” For the significance of this title see the note at 2:19.
8 tn Heb “As I live, oracle of the King, whose….” The indirect quote has been chosen to create a smoother English sentence and avoid embedding a quote within a quote.
9 tn Heb “Like Tabor among the mountains and like Carmel by the sea he will come.” The addition of “conqueror” and “imposing” are implicit from the context and from the metaphor. They have been supplied in the translation to give the reader some idea of the meaning of the verse.
10 tn Heb “will go down to the slaughter.”
11 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” For an explanation of the translation and meaning of this title see the study note on 2:19.
12 tn Heb “Oracle of the King whose name is Yahweh of armies.” The first person form has again been adopted because the
13 tn Aram “walk.”
14 sn My name will be great among the nations. In what is clearly a strongly ironic shift of thought, the
15 sn The epithet great king was used to describe the Hittite rulers on their covenant documents and so, in the covenant ideology of Malachi, is an apt description of the
16 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.