Psalm Chapter 87 - A Psalm or Song for the sons of Korah

Psalm 87: The City Where Everyone Was Born

Here is one of the most astonishing claims in all the Psalter, tucked inside a psalm so short it is easily overlooked. God loves the gates of Zion — that much we might expect. But then the psalm does something extraordinary: it enrolls the nations. Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia — the great enemies and strangers — are each named and counted as born in Zion. It is as if the city of God has a birth register far more generous than anyone imagined, and names are being written in it that would have scandalized every gatekeeper. The psalmist sees something the prophets would later spell out: that the holy city was never meant to be a fortress against the world but a homeland for it. And the final image is pure joy — singers and musicians declaring, "All my springs are in thee." The deepest sources of life, it turns out, are not in our own soil. They are in a city we are still learning to call home.

00:00 His Foundation in the Holy Mountains
01:00 The Nations Enrolled in Zion