"Counting Towers" - February 16, 2025

 

Psalm 48
February 16, 2025

 

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised
   in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation,
   is the joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, in the far north,
   the city of the great King.
Within its citadels God
   has shown himself a sure defense.

Then the kings assembled,
   they came on together.
As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
   they were in panic, they took to flight;
trembling took hold of them there,
   pains as of a woman in labor,
as when an east wind shatters
   the ships of Tarshish.
As we have heard, so have we seen
   in the city of the Lord of hosts,
in the city of our God,
   which God establishes for ever.

We ponder your steadfast love, O God,
   in the midst of your temple.
Your name, O God, like your praise,
   reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with victory.
   Let Mount Zion be glad,
let the towns of Judah rejoice
   because of your judgements.

Walk about Zion, go all around it,
   count its towers,
consider well its ramparts;
   go through its citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
   that this is God,
our God for ever and ever.
   He will be our guide for ever.

 

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            In its plainest sense, Psalm 48 expresses gratitude to God for the walls of Jerusalem and the way that their size and solidity protected the city when it came under attack.  The psalmist describes foreign armies drawing up beneath the city walls and seeing both the defenses and the mountaintop rising above them and staring down on the invaders that the menace of the sight scared them off without a battle.

“Then the kings assembled,
   they came on together.
As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
   they were in panic, they took to flight;
trembling took hold of them there,
   pains as of a woman in labor,
as when an east wind shatters
   the ships of Tarshish.”

            I think of the feeling that I get sometimes when I see an old prison.  I’m thinking about the big, stone kind that has probably outlasted its use for confining inmates but still intimidates anybody who even drives by quickly – like the old Montgomery County prison in Norristown, or Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, or maybe you’ve seen the jailhouse up in Jim Thorpe that once held the Molly Maguires.  The walls of a fortified city, in this case Jerusalem, would have induced discouragement in an invading army and provided encouragement to those who too refuge inside.

            It amazes me how a well-designed piece of construction, even something as seemingly simple in concept as a wall, can stir up a sense of admiration, even awe.  The writer of Psalm 48 looked at what would have been a version of Jerusalem’s walls – not even what they would become at their greatest extent or their tallest – and marveled not just at the walls themselves, but at the way they made him think about the even greater strength of God.

“Walk about Zion, go all around it,
   count its towers,
consider well its ramparts;
   go through its citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
   that this is God,
our God for ever and ever.
   He will be our guide for ever.”

He sounds proud of the city as an architectural achievement, and proud to be part of the people whose walls and whose God protected that people in time of war.

            A few centuries later, though, in 587 B.C., the Babylonians would complete a two-and-a-half-year siege of Jerusalem by overrunning the walls and burning the city down.  A generation or so later, Babylon got the same treatment from the Persians, who in 539 B.C. let Nehemiah take a group of exiles back to Jerusalem, where they found the walls in very bad shape and began to rebuild them again, at great risk to themselves.

            A similar cycle took place under the Romans almost six centuries later.  They, too, destroyed the city and its walls after a long siege, and on the Arch of Titus in Rome you can still see a carving of the victory parade where the legionnaires carried the furnishings of the Temple as trophies.  You might hear Psalm 48 with a little bit of cynicism, then, when it brags about  Jerusalem’s fortifications – except for one thing.

            It ultimately says that the people’s protection is not the walls around them, but the God who made them.  That is a hard lesson to learn, but every empire learns it sooner or later, and if they are wise, they keep it ever in front of them.  In 1887, on the day after Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, where fifty other monarchs came to pay their respects for her fifty years on the British throne, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that touched a lot of imperial nerves:

 

“God of our fathers, known of old,

   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

   Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

The tumult and the shouting dies;

   The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

   An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

Far-called, our navies melt away;

   On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

   Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

For heathen heart that puts her trust

   In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!”

            The psalms remain in the scriptures long after the walls that they celebrate have become obsolete, even if they still stood.  Psalm 48 remains as a testament to the blessings that come when human institutions function well and responsibly.  Look at what a good architect can do!  Appreciate the work of wise administrators!  Be thankful for skilled workers and organizers!  See what human beings and human institutions can accomplish when they understand themselves as not the be-all and end-all, but as a means to an end, aware that the true be-all and end-all,

“the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” [Revelation 22:13]

is no earthly King at all, but the one in heaven.