Psalm 87: it’s all about Zion?
This is one of those psalms that can be interpreted in two ways, and only one of those ways makes it look good, biblically speaking. The psalm praises the centricity of Jerusalem with regards to all other nations. In the psalm, Jerusalem is talked about as the “city of God”, with all other cities subservient to it. One’s descent means nothing if it doesn’t originate there.
Taken literally, the psalm sounds awful. Certainly I do not share its view. Jerusalem (Zion) as a real city is not a prize, and is not where I want to originate. It’s a mess where too many churches and people and cultures live and argue and fight. Biblically speaking, it is no longer the seat of God. It stopped being the seat of God when the original temple was destroyed and the ark of the covenant lost for good. God’s shekinah is no longer there. (See Old Testament for the details on this.)
At the same time, the psalm also brings to light an ugly perversion in the dogma of some Christian churches of today, particularly the charismatic ones, which believe that restoring Jerusalem to its former glory, and rebuilding the temple, will automatically bring God’s physical presence back there. These churches waste their money on supporting this false ideology, and fuel the war and hatred that goes on in the Middle East between the Jews, Westerners and Muslims. It’s a real problem and it’s most certainly not what God would want. It has no Biblical basis. I challenge anyone to go through the Bible and show me where God gives any indication that He wants this whole ugly mess to come to the conclusion that the charismatics want to see.
On the other hand, we can treat this psalm as a prophetic one, and interpret it in the light of the prophecies of the book of Revelation, where the New Jerusalem is talked about in great detail (see Revelation chapters 21 and 22). When looked at in that light, it starts to make more sense.
From Revelation, we know the New Jerusalem will sit on the “holy mountains”, and we know that Yahweh will love His city, and that indeed “He prefers the gates of Zion” to anything else. We know the new Zion will be a glorious city, and we know it will be the supreme and the largest city on the new earth.
Furthermore, we know that “every one” will be “born there”, in the sense that they will receive eternal life (at Jesus’ second coming) as they are taken up to the New Jerusalem. The mention of God’s “register of peoples” (aka the Book of Life) in verse 6 drives home the point that this is a prophetic psalm. And the fact that the saved are all called “princes” in Revelation, and that it is said repeatedly there that they will live in the New Jerusalem, clarifies beyond any doubts the prophetic interpretation of this psalm.
