"A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. A Song.
On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
2 the Lord loves the gates of Zion
more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
3 Glorious things of you are spoken,
O city of God. Selah
4 Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon;
behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush—
“This one was born there”, they say.
5 And of Zion it shall be said,
“This one and that one were born in her”;
for the Most High himself will establish her.
6 The Lord records as he registers the peoples,
“This one was born there.” Selah
7 Singers and dancers alike say,
“All my springs are in you.”
Psalm 87
Briefly, the gist of the Psalm's message is that it is an expansion of Psalm 86:9. What it gives is a vision of Zion as a metropolis with worldwide influence and significance. The dominant thought is that of a universal and worldwide acceptance of God as Lord and King, and the incorporation of 'ancestral foes and distant nations with the people of God' (Maclaren), universal participation in the blessings of God, and the mode of entrance into these blessings by the reception of new life, by a new birth ('this man was born there', 6). The first thing we need to see in this is that it echoes, and is integral to, the calling of the Jews as the people of God to be His instrument of revelation to all nations of the earth (cf Isaiah 49:6ff). We know, as a matter of history, that the Jews never realised this their true destiny, developing as they did a wrong exclusiveness which misinterpreted and misunderstood their calling; but it is true to say that the New Testament Church of God did recognise this as their calling, having at last overcome their national prejudice and seen the real meaning of our Lord's words, 'Ye shall be witnesses unto Me...unto the uttermost parts of the earth'. This is the real fulfilment of their calling to be a light to lighten the Gentiles. Only in the Church does this vision in Psalm 87 become realised. The Psalmist, then, must be understood as looking forward into the future, as a visionary and a prophet. But it is not to 'the last days' in the sense of the 'end-time' that he looks, but rather to the future in terms of the fulfilment that the gospel of Christ brings to his vision and his prophecy. This being said, we will be able in the next note to look in some detail at the statements made in the Psalm.