A Christian told me last year that in times when life is at its most difficult, she finds herself drawing closer to God. Ideally, we’d always be close to God but we are all imperfect. And the sense of comfort that I think she gets from her relationship with God is also the theme of Psalm 46.

The protection of God’s city

Written by the descendants of Korah, a first cousin of Moses, it says that God is our “refuge and strength” meaning “we won’t be afraid when the world falls apart” (CSB).

It continues:

There is a river whose streams gladden God’s city,
the holiest dwelling of the Most High.
God is in that city. It will never crumble.
God will help it when morning dawns.
Nations roar; kingdoms crumble.
God utters his voice; the earth melts.
The Lord of heavenly forces is with us!
The God of Jacob is our place of safety.

Here we are talking about “God’s city”, meaning Jerusalem, but the CSB Study Bible makes the point that it “does not appear to be a literal river in Jerusalem … it seems more likely to refer to God’s presence and blessings that fill Jerusalem and flow to other nations”. After all, the River Jordan is some way away from Jerusalem.

The New Bible Commentary says that many people have linked this psalm with the idea of an annual drama performed in the temple celebrating God’s kingship over the earth. Others see it as a celebration of an actual victory such as resulted from an attack by the Assyrian empire.

But many of us will be inclined to interpret the psalm in the light of the New Testament.

Anticipation of the New Jerusalem

Given that the style of writing – the lack of literalness – we can interpret Jerusalem as being more than just the physical Jerusalem on earth but about the heavenly Jerusalem.

In Hebrews 12, the writer compares the “physical features of the old covenant and the spiritual aspects of the new”, according to Raymond Brown in The Message of Hebrews.

Hebrews says:

…you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God (the heavenly Jerusalem), to myriads of angels, a festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to a Judge, who is God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel.

The Israelites would have viewed their covenant as protective, contientiously following temple ritual in bringing sacrifices. But God subsequently did something bigger that the symbolism of Old Testament sacrifices: he sacrificed his own son in our place.