There is a short but beautiful psalm about Zion in Psalm 48. Mount Zion is what I like to call capital hill in Jerusalem. On it was the temple of the Lord, and the palaces of the kings. Today it is where the Mohammedan “Dome of the Rock” sits. It is the city of the Great King in verse 2.

A psalm of a great victory.

The authors do talk about the lovingkindness of the Lord in verse 9. They say the praise of the God is to the ends of the earth in verse 10, and they say the daughters of Judah should rejoice because of God’s judgments.

And it speaks of strange reactions by some kings.

Some kings have assembled and passed by Jerusalem “together,” verse 4. It seems they have gathered together to destroy Zion, Then,

“5 They saw it, then they were amazed.
They were dismayed,
They hurried away.
6 Trembling took hold of them there,
Pain, as of a woman in travail.
7 With the east wind, you break the ships of Tarshish.”
Psa 48:5-7 WEB

This is evidently a psalm of thanks for a great victory from God. Their enemies have come in “ships of Tarshish,” which God has broken apart by a great east wind in verse 7. Mount Zion can be magnificent in many ways, and many in ancient times were impressed with strength of her fortifications. But merely seeing the city and being “amazed,” “dismayed,” and fleeing away? Since when has just seeing Zion caused coalitions of kings to run in panic?

Then look at this description of “Zion,” Psa 48:2

The KJV says it “is mount Zion, on the sides of the north.” What?? Sides of what?

The New American Standard 95 edition and others say it is Mount Zion in “the far north.” These are good translations, but physical Zion is NOT in the “far” north. The WEB says Zion is on “the north sides,” but it isn’t. It is on the east side of Jerusalem, facing the mount of Olives. It doesn’t make sense of physical Zion on earth. It contradicts reality. Further, no victory like this for “Zion” has ever happened, so far!

But we have come to heavenly Zion and Jerusalem, Heb 12:22. We have “not come to a mountain that might be touched,” Heb 12:17 WEB, at least physically

But the earthly are mere copies of the heavenly things,
Heb 9:24.

The kings of the earth will be gathered against God’s people at a final time in Rev 20:7-10 and many Old Testament passages. The heavenly Jerusalem will come down out of heaven for all to see, Revelation 21, and the kings of the earth and all opposition will flee away.

“ … from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. There was found no place for them.”
Rev 20:11 WEB

Psalm 48 then is a parallel to those passages in Revelation 20, and Zechariah and Ezekiel, and others. Physical Zion is symbolic, a type, of the heavenly throne where Jesus now sits Heb 8:1, etc.

But if you try to make Psalm 48 fit mere physical geography and history past, it makes no sense. The seeming “contradictions” are clues to a type.

KJV is the King James Version, 1611

WEB is the World English Bible, a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901