Psalms 87
Psalm 87 carries the heading A Psalm or Song for the sons of Korah - the guild of temple singers descended from the Korah of Numbers 16, whose family line was preserved and given a place leading Israel's worship. It is one of the shortest psalms in the book, just seven verses, and at first glance it seems to be a simple hymn in praise of Jerusalem. It is far more than that. In these few lines the city of God turns out to have a doorway wide enough for the whole world.
The psalm opens by grounding Zion's glory not in her architecture but in her Architect: His foundation is in the holy mountains. The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God (vv. 1-3). What makes the city great is not what human hands built but Who laid the foundation and Who dwells there.
Then comes the turn. God begins to call a roll of citizens - and the names He reads are the names of the nations: Rahab (a poetic name for Egypt) and Babylon… Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia (v. 4). These were not Israel's allies. Several were her oppressors and rivals. And against each, astonishingly, God records the same line: this man was born there - born, that is, in Zion.
That single repeated phrase - born there, sounding in verses 4, 5, and 6 - is the heartbeat of the psalm. Zion is not pictured conquering the nations; she is pictured as their birthplace. The outsiders are not merely admitted as guests; they are written into the citizens' register as native-born. The LORD shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there (v. 6).
And the psalm ends with the whole city breaking into music - as well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there: all my springs are in thee (v. 7) - every fountain of their life found in the city of God. The apostles will hear in this song the gospel itself: a heavenly Jerusalem that is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26), former strangers made fellowcitizens with the saints (Eph. 2:19), and the new birth that writes a person's name into the city of the living God.
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Psalm 87:1-3 · A Psalm or Song for the sons of KorahThe City of God
1His foundation is in the holy mountains. 2The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. 3Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah.
The psalm begins, quite literally, at the ground floor: His foundation is in the holy mountains. Before a single word is said about Zion's beauty or her people, the song fixes our eyes on what the city rests upon - and it is not the bedrock of Mount Zion but the act of God. His foundation: God laid it. This is the whole secret of the city's glory, and the reason the rest of the psalm can make such enormous claims.
Cities rise and fall on the strength of their walls and the wealth of their builders; this one rests on something no army can undermine, because the One who founded it is God Himself. Notice, too, the plural - the holy mountains. The psalm is not measuring acreage; it is naming a holy place, a dwelling set apart, the spot on earth where heaven has touched down.
Everything that follows - the love of God for her gates, the glory spoken of her, the nations written into her register - grows from this first short line. The city is glorious because of its foundation, and its foundation is the living God.
The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob (v. 2). It is a tender, almost surprising line. Zion is not loved because it is grander than every other place - the dwellings of Jacob means all the other homes and settlements of God's own people, scattered across the land, each of them dear. And yet the gates of Zion are loved more.
Why the gates in particular? In the ancient world the gate was the heart of a city's public life: the place of welcome and of judgment, where the elders sat, where the stranger was received or turned away, where the life of the community flowed in and out. To say God loves Zion's gates is to say He loves the city precisely at the point where it opens to the world - the threshold over which people come in.
Hold that thought, because the psalm is about to fling those gates open to the most unexpected guests imaginable. The love that settles on the gates is a love that is preparing to welcome.
The same letter says that Abraham himself was looking for this all along - a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Heb. 11:10) - the very note Psalm 87 strikes in its first line. And Paul names the city as a mother: Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26).
The glorious things spoken of the city of God are, in the end, the glory of the One who founded her, who fills her with His presence, and who gathers His people into her from every nation. To belong to Christ is to be a citizen of this city - not a stranger at its gate, but written into its rolls. The earthly Zion was a sign on the page; the heavenly Jerusalem, gathered around the Lamb, is the thing the sign was always pointing at.
Psalm 87:4-7This Man Was Born There
4I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there. 5And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her. 6The LORD shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there. Selah. 7As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there: all my springs are in thee.
Now the psalm does the thing that sets it apart from every other song of Zion. God begins to speak, and He calls a roll of names - but not the names of Israel's tribes. He names the nations: I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia (v. 4).
Rahab here is not the woman of Jericho; it is a poetic name for Egypt, the old house of bondage, the proud sea-monster of the south. Babylon is the empire of exile, the city that would one day burn the temple - the great imperial mother-city of the ancient world, whose pride this psalm quietly overturns. Philistia and Tyre were Israel's long-standing rivals on the coast; Ethiopia (Cush) the distant land at the edge of the known world.
Run your eye down that list and you are reading the names of oppressors, enemies, and outsiders - the very peoples a song about Zion might be expected to curse. Instead, God makes mention of them - the same warm verb used elsewhere for calling someone to mind with favour - and against each He writes the unthinkable: this man was born there. Born, that is, in Zion. The enemies are being entered into the citizens' register, not as conquered subjects but as native sons.
And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her (v. 5). Two things lock together in this verse, and they are the whole logic of the psalm. First, the citizens are counted one by one - this and that man, person after person, each individually born in Zion. It is not a faceless crowd absorbed into the city; it is named persons, each with a birthright.
Second, the reason this can stand is that the highest himself shall establish her. The same God who founded the city in verse 1 now establishes her - sets her firm, makes her sure - with His own hand. A city that men established could never make such a promise good; the nations would overwhelm it, or it would crumble from within. But because the Most High Himself establishes Zion, she is large enough and secure enough to be the birthplace of the whole world.
The breadth of the welcome rests entirely on the strength of the Builder. Only a city founded and established by God could open its register to Egypt and Babylon and not be undone.
This is precisely the mystery the apostle Paul says was hidden for ages and then revealed in Christ. Writing to Gentiles - outsiders to the covenant, the very Philistia-and-Tyre of his own day - he reminds them what they once were: at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world (Eph. 2:12). And then the turn, in the same breath as Psalm 87: Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God (Eph. 2:19).
The wall that divided insider from outsider has been broken down, Paul says, so that Christ might make in himself of twain one new man and reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross (Eph. 2:15-16). That is the engine underneath Psalm 87's welcome. The former enemy is not merely tolerated at the gate; he is made a citizen, a member of the household, born into the city of God. The psalm announces it as a wonder centuries early; the cross is how it comes true.
And the last vision of Scripture shows the gates of that city standing open - the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day… and the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it (Rev. 21:24-25).
The hand that founded the city also keeps its rolls. To be counted among its people is to have your name written there by God, recorded in a book the Lamb holds.
The psalm ends not with a decree but with music: As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there: all my springs are in thee (v. 7). First the picture of the city full of song - every musician, voice and instrument alike, gathered in Zion and making one great sound. A city founded by God, established by the Most High, peopled from every nation, can only end in worship.
But it is the last phrase that lingers: all my springs are in thee. A spring is a source - the place water rises up from the ground, the fountainhead of a river, the very origin of life in a dry land. To say all my springs are in thee is to say: everything that makes me alive, every source of my joy and refreshment, every fountain I drink from, is found here, in the city of God. It is the confession of someone who has discovered where their life truly comes from.
The newly enrolled citizen, born into Zion by grace, looks at the city and says: this is my source. The same image will surface again at the end of the Bible, when out of the city of God flows a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1). The psalm that began with a foundation ends with a fountain - and both, from first to last, are God Himself.
Psalm 87 answers it another way entirely. It reads out the names of the ultimate outsiders - Egypt, Babylon, the old enemies - and against each one God writes the best line a person can hear: this man was born there. Not earned, not bought in - born there. If your life is hidden in Christ, that is your truest citizenship and your deepest belonging, and it does not depend on the room you are standing in or the family you were born into the first time.
You have been born into the city of God, and your name is written up by His own hand. So carry this into the next place you feel like the stranger: the belonging that matters most was settled by God, recorded in His book, and cannot be taken from you. And then do the thing verse 7 does - let your springs be in Him. Go to the city of God for your source, not to the approval of the room.
Where this echoes in Scripture
The City of God
- Hebrews 11:10he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.Abraham's search for the founded city of verse 1 - built and made by God, not by men.
- Hebrews 12:22But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.The “city of God” of verse 3 named as the heavenly Jerusalem believers have already come to.
- Isaiah 28:16Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation.The sure foundation God lays in Zion - the same root as “His foundation” in verse 1.
- Psalm 48:1-2Great is the LORD... in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness... the city of the great King.A companion Korahite song of Zion - the holy mountain and city loved by God.
This Man Was Born There
- Ephesians 2:19Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.The enemies of verse 4 made citizens - the former outsiders written into the city of God.
- John 3:3Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.The new birth behind the psalm's “born there” - a second birth into the city of God.
- Luke 10:20rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.The register God “writeth up” in verse 6 - names recorded in heaven.
- Revelation 21:24-27the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it... they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.The open gates and the book of life - the nations born into the city, its register kept by the Lamb.
- Isaiah 19:24-25Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.Egypt and Assyria named as God's own - the same astonishing inclusion of the nations as verse 4.