What Does Psalm 47:9 Mean in the King James?
The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God: he is greatly exalted.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The peoples and the earth’s defenses converge in one claim of belonging: they are God’s, and God alone is exalted.
THE MEANING
The peoples are gathered with the people of the God of Abraham, and the earth’s shields belong to God. Human assembly and earthly protection sit within one belonging, while God is exalted over the gathered whole.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a people’s security ultimately rests in its own power: the shields of the earth belong to God.
THE ROOT
נֶאֱסָפוּ
ne’esafu
GROWS FROM
אסף
To gather, collect, or bring together.
The word for the peoples being gathered shares its root with the language of ingathering. The verse presents the nations as a collected whole brought together with the people of Abraham’s God.
ALSO GROWS
asaph: To gather or collect.
אָסַף
This is the verb’s root form, making the people’s gathering the central action of the verse.
asif: Ingathering or harvest.
אָסִיף
The harvest branch gives gathering the sense of bringing many things into one collected whole.
מָגִנֵּי
maginnei
GROWS FROM
מגן
To shield or protect; the root also appears in a verb meaning to hand over or deliver.
The shields of the earth are not presented as independent powers: they belong to God. The root’s use for handing over or delivering also links protection with the transfer of power.
ALSO GROWS
magen: Shield or protection.
מָגֵן
This is the noun used for the earth’s shields, placing the world’s defenses within God’s ownership.
migen: Handed over or delivered, as in Genesis 14:20.
מִגֵּן
This verbal use of the same root echoes the verse’s claim that even the powers people rely on remain subject to God.
נַעֲלָה
na’alah
GROWS FROM
עלה
To go up or ascend.
The word rendered “exalted” carries the image of rising upward. After gathering peoples and naming the earth’s shields as God’s, the verse places God above the whole.
ALSO GROWS
alah: To go up or ascend.
עָלָה
This verb shows the upward movement inside the word translated “exalted.”
olah: A burnt offering, named as something that goes up.
עֹלָה
This related noun preserves the root’s image of rising, giving “exalted” a concrete upward dimension.
THE PATTERN
Peoples gather under God, and the powers they depend on belong to God.
All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;THE THREAD
Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.“Gather” here comes from the same Hebrew root אסף as “gathered” in Psalm 47:9. The shared root connects the peoples gathered with Abraham’s God to those gathered to God in covenant.
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