Bible Browser

Psalm 48

1  Great is the Lord and highly to be praised, ♦︎
   in the city of our God.
2  His holy mountain is fair and lifted high, ♦︎
   the joy of all the earth.
3  On Mount Zion, the divine dwelling place, ♦︎
   stands the city of the great king.
4  In her palaces God has shown himself ♦︎
   to be a sure refuge.
5  For behold, the kings of the earth assembled ♦︎
   and swept forward together.
6  They saw, and were dumbfounded; ♦︎
   dismayed, they fled in terror.
7  Trembling seized them there;
      they writhed like a woman in labour, ♦︎
   as when the east wind shatters the ships of Tarshish.
8  As we had heard, so have we seen
      in the city of the Lord of hosts, the city of our God: ♦︎
   God has established her for ever.
9  We have waited on your loving-kindness, O God, ♦︎
   in the midst of your temple.
10  As with your name, O God,
      so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth; ♦︎
   your right hand is full of justice.
11  Let Mount Zion rejoice and the daughters of Judah be glad, ♦︎
   because of your judgements, O Lord.
12  Walk about Zion and go round about her;
      count all her towers; ♦︎
   consider well her bulwarks; pass through her citadels,
13  That you may tell those who come after
      that such is our God for ever and ever. ♦︎
   It is he that shall be our guide for evermore.

God Will Restore Israel

14 Then the word of the Lord came to me: ¹⁵Mortal, your kinsfolk, your own kin, your fellow exiles,^* the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘They have gone far from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession.’ ¹⁶Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: Though I removed them far away among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a little while^* in the countries where they have gone. ¹⁷Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. ¹⁸When they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. ¹⁹I will give them one^* heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, ²⁰so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God. ²¹But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations,^* I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, says the Lord God.

22 Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. ²³And the glory of the Lord ascended from the middle of the city, and stopped on the mountain east of the city. ²⁴The spirit lifted me up and brought me in a vision by the spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. Then the vision that I had seen left me. ²⁵And I told the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me.

¹²Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. ¹³And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.^*

14 Those who are unspiritual^* do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are discerned spiritually. ¹⁵Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
¹⁶ ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord
   so as to instruct him?’
But we have the mind of Christ.