Psalms 48:7

_THOU BREAKEST THE SHIPS OF TARSHISH WITH AN EAST WIND._ Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind - implying God's omnipotence; just as with thy blast thou breakest the largest vessels (such as sail to distant Tarshish, or Tartessus, in Spain, Isaiah 2:16), so dost thou, with equal ease and rapidity, scatter to the winds the most mighty foes. On this, see the opening remarks. "The ships of Tarshish" can hardly mean hostile ships of war, since Jerusalem is inland. [Gejer says that _ 'ªNIYOWT_ (H591) is elsewhere used of merchantmen, not war-vessels.]...

7._By the east wind _(194) _thou breakest in pieces the ships of Tarshish _Commentators are divided in their view of this passage. (195) But let us rest contented with the natural sense, which is simply this, that the enemies of the Church were overthrown and plunged into destruction, just as God by suddenly raising storms sinks the ships of Cilicia to the bottom of the sea. The Psalmist celebrates the power which God is accustomed to display in great and violent storms; and his language implies that it is not to be wondered at if God, who breaks by the violence of the winds the strongest _ships, _had also overthrown his enemies, who were inflated with the presumptuous confidence which they reposed in their own strength. By the _sea of Tarshish _the Hebrews mean the Mediterranean Sea, because of the country of Cilicia, which in ancient times was called Tars

1-7 Jerusalem is the city of our God: none on earth render him due honour except the citizens of the spiritual Jerusalem. Happy the kingdom, the city, the family, the heart, in which God is great, in which he is all. There God is known. The clearer discoveries are made to us of the Lord and his greatness, the more it is expected that we should abound in his praises. The earth is, by sin, covered with deformity, therefore justly might that spot of ground, which was beautified with holiness, be called the joy of the whole earth; that which the whole earth has reason to rejoice in, that God would thus in very deed dwell with man upon the earth. The kings of the earth were afraid of it. Nothing in nature can more fitly represent the overthrow of heathenism by the Spirit of the gospel, than the wreck of a fleet in a storm. Both are by the mighty power of the Lord....

Verse Psalms 48:7. _THOU BREAKEST THE SHIPS OF TARSHISH_] _Calmet_ thinks this may refer to the discomfiture of _Cambyses_, who came to destroy the land of Judea. "This is apparently," says he, "the same _tempest_ which struck dismay into the land-forces of Cambyses, and wrecked his fleet which was on the coasts of the Mediterranean sea, opposite to his army near the port of _Acco_, or the _Ptolemais_; for Cambyses had his quarters at _Ecbatana_, at the foot of Mount Carmel; and his army was encamped in the valley of Jezreel." _Ships_ _of Tarshish_ he conjectures to have been large stout vessels, capable of making the voyage of _Tarsus_, in Cilicia....

THOU BREAKEST THE SHIPS OF TARSHISH - On the ships of Tarshish, see the notes on Isaiah 2:16. The allusion to these ships here may have been to illustrate the power of God; the ease with which he destroys that which man has made. The ships so strong - the ships made to navigate distant seas, and to encounter waves and storms - are broken to pieces with infinite ease when God causes the wind to sweep over the ocean. With so much ease God overthrows the most mighty armies, and scatters them. His power in the one case is strikingly illustrated by the other. It is not necessary, therefore, to suppose that there was any actual occurrence of this kind particularly in the eye of the psalmist; but it is an interesting fact that such a disaster did befall the navy of Jehoshaphat himself, 1 K

EXPOSITION HERE we have another psalm of thanksgiving for a deliverance, but not apparently for the same deliverance as gave occasion for either of the two preceding psalms. Israel had now been delivered from a confederacy of kings (Psalms 48:4), who had come within sight of the city, but had then been seized with panic, and retreated, without making an attack (Psalms 48:5). After this, pain had come upon them, and they had been "broken," like "ships of Tarshish with an east wind" (Psalms 48:6, Psalms 48:7). The deliverance had been celebrated by a thanksgiving service held in the temple ...

THOU BREAKEST THE SHIPS OF TARSHISH WITH EAST WIND. This is either another simile, expressing the greatness of the dread and fear that shall now seize the kings of the earth; which will be, as Kimchi observes, as if they were smitten with a strong east wind, which breaks the ships of Tarshish; and to the same purpose is the note of Aben Ezra; who says, the psalmist compares the pain that shall take hold upon them to an east wind in the sea, which breaks the ships; for by Tarshish is meant, not Tartessus in Spain, nor Tarsus in Cilicia, or the port to which the Prophet Jonah went and took shipping; but the sea in general: or else this phrase denotes the manner in which the antichristian kings, and antichristian states, wilt be destroyed; just as ships upon the ocean are dashed to pieces with a strong east wind: or it may design the loss of all their riches and substance brought to them in...

Psalms 48:1. _Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge._ It was so with the literal Jerusalem; and it is so now with the Church of Christ, of which «the city of the great King» was a type. God still dwelleth among men; his Spirit abides with his people; and his Church stands securely upon the rock of his eternal purposes, evermore the same. Psalms 48:4. _For, lo, the kings were assembled,_ The adversaries, who boasted that they would destroy Jerusalem: «the kings were assembled,»...

Psalms 48 The Judgment of the Nations and the Millennium _ 1. Jerusalem the city of the King (Psalms 48:1)_ 2. The confederated nations scattered (Psalms 48:4) 3. The millennium (Psalms 48:8) Jerusalem is now seen as the city of the great King. His glorious throne will there be established, and Mount Zion becomes the joy of the whole earth. Psalms 48:4 show what preceded the coming of the King. The nations had come against Jerusalem (Zecharia

XLVIII. A PSALM WHICH DESCRIBES THE IMPRESSION MADE ON A PILGRIM BY HIS VISIT TO ZION. Psalms 48:1 f. Praise of Zion. SIDES OF THE NORTH is hard to comprehend. It has been explained as contrasting Zion, the true mountain of the North, with the Oriental Olympus (Isaiah 14:13). The text, however, does not even hint at any such contrast. Mount Zion did indeed occupy the NE. corner of Jerusalem, but what of that? It has been suggested that the pilgrim came from the extreme S. of Egypt. But even then he must have known that there were mountains far further N. Really the text is unintelligible and probably corrupt. PSALMS 48:3. God's protection of His own city. The poet is thinking of Sennacherib's fate (s