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Psalm 48 · a question people ask

What does "on the north sides" (48:2) mean?

In the text

The psalm doesn't explain it. In Hebrew it is yarketei tsafon. The first word is yerekah (tap sides), which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "flank, side, du. extreme parts, recesses", and the second is tsafon, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "north". The Psalms have yerekah in one other verse, where the WEB gives it as innermost parts: "Your wife will be as a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house" (Psalm 128:3). These notes don't add a place, a map or a meaning the psalm doesn't give. What the same verse does say is whose city it is: "the city of the great King" (48:2).

The verses

“Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion, on the north sides, the city of the great King.”
Psalm 48:2 · World English Bible
“Your wife will be as a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house, your children like olive shoots around your table.”
Psalm 128:3 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Psalm 48

Psalm 48: The city of the great King

Number its towers (Psalm 48:12) and tell the next generation (Psalm 48:13) are one Hebrew verb: count it, then recount it. The kings "saw" and hurried away (Psalm 48:5), and the psalm's "we" have "seen" with the same verb (Psalm 48:8). And "the city of the great King" (Psalm 48:2) comes again, word for word in the WEB, on Jesus' lips (Matthew 5:35).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions