Catholic Commentary
God's Triumphant Ascent and Kingship over All the Earth
5God has gone up with a shout, Yahweh with the sound of a trumpet.6Sing praises to God! Sing praises! Sing praises to our King! Sing praises!7For God is the King of all the earth. Sing praises with understanding.
Psalms 47:5–7 proclaims God's ascent in triumph with shouts and trumpets, calling all creation to sing praises because God reigns as King over all the earth. The passage combines liturgical celebration of God's universal kingship with a call for intelligent, theologically engaged worship from both Israel and all nations.
Christ's Ascension is not a quiet withdrawal from earth—it is a trumpet-blast coronation, and the Church's entire response must match that royal fury.
Psalms 47:5 — "God has gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet"
The Hebrew verb ʿālāh ("gone up / ascended") carries immense weight in the Old Testament. Here it likely evokes the procession of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem (cf. 2 Sam 6), where the visible symbol of God's presence was carried upward in triumph to the city of David. The "shout" (terûʿāh) is the battle cry or acclamation used when the Ark set out (Num 10:35) and when Israel acclaimed a new king. The trumpet (šôpār), the ram's horn, was the instrument of covenant assemblies, royal coronations, and the great Day of the LORD (cf. Zeph 1:16). Together, these two sounds — the human shout and the divine instrument — paint a scene of royal processional triumph. God is not quietly withdrawing; He ascends visibly, audibly, in majesty before the watching nations.
The tense is the Hebrew perfect of prophetic certainty: what is proclaimed has either just happened or is so sure to happen that it is announced as accomplished fact. This double horizon — historical event and prophetic pledge — is characteristic of the Enthronement Psalms (Pss 47, 93, 96–99), which celebrate the LORD's kingship in a way that is both present reality and future consummation.
Psalms 47:6 — "Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!"
The fourfold repetition of zammərû ("sing praises," from the root zmr, to make music, to pluck strings) is not mere poetic redundancy. It is an insistent liturgical summons — each repetition widening the circle of praise. First, praise to Elohim (the universal God of all creation); then to our King (malkênû), the intimate covenant Lord of Israel. This movement from universal to particular, and back again, mirrors the psalm's overall arc: a God who is simultaneously the LORD of Israel and the sovereign of every nation. The verse functions as a refrain calling the entire congregation — and, by extension, all of humanity — to participate in the liturgical acclamation of the ascended King. St. Augustine, commenting on this verse, noted that the repetition compels the soul not to offer a lazy or half-hearted praise, but one that engages every faculty repeatedly and without reserve.
Psalms 47:7 — "For God is the King of all the earth; sing a skillful psalm!"
Verse 7 provides the theological rationale (kî, "for") undergirding the call to praise: God's kingship is not tribal or regional — it is universal. The phrase "King of all the earth" (melek kol-hāʾāreṣ) is a radical claim in the ancient Near Eastern world, where gods were understood as patrons of particular peoples and territories. Israel's LORD shatters this limitation. He reigns over every square inch of creation and over every human society.
The closing phrase, "sing a maskil" (a skillful, contemplative, or instructional psalm), is striking. The Psalmist is not merely calling for emotional enthusiasm but for intelligent, formed praise — music that is thoughtful, theologically rich, and spiritually engaged. This anticipates the Catholic tradition of ars celebrandi: liturgical worship that is both fervent and beautiful, heart and mind fully engaged.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Fathers of the Church, almost unanimously, read verse 5 as a prophecy of the Ascension of Christ. St. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, 37) and St. Athanasius (On the Incarnation, 33) both cite Psalm 47 as among the clearest Messianic prophecies of the Ascension. The "shout" becomes the acclamation of the angelic hosts; the "trumpet" resonates with Paul's eschatological trumpet of 1 Thessalonians 4:16. Christ, the new Ark of the Covenant — the true dwelling of God's presence — ascends to the Father, carrying human nature itself into the heavenly sanctuary. The call to sing praises is then the Church's response to that event, made perpetually present in the Eucharistic liturgy.
Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage at three interlocking levels: Christological, ecclesiological, and liturgical.
Christological: The Ascension of Christ is the event to which Psalm 47:5 points with prophetic precision. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Christ's Ascension marks His entry "once and for all into divine glory" and His enthronement as Lord of the cosmos (CCC 659–661). The "shout" and "trumpet" of verse 5 find their New Testament echo in Acts 1:9–11, where the cloud — the shekinah glory — receives Jesus upward, and angels announce His future return "in the same way." Pope St. Leo the Great, in his Sermons on the Ascension, wrote that on this day "our frail and lowly human nature was raised, in Christ, above all the hosts of heaven, above all the angelic powers." The ascended Christ, King of all the earth, reigns not as an absent monarch but as the living Lord who pours out the Spirit upon His Church.
Ecclesiological: The fourfold call to praise in verse 6 is addressed to all peoples, foreshadowing the universality of the Church. The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (§13) speaks of the Church as gathering all nations under the kingship of Christ — a gathering that Psalm 47 anticipates. The "King of all the earth" (v. 7) is the foundation for the Church's missionary mandate: every nation belongs, in principle, to the reign of Christ.
Liturgical: St. Augustine (Enarrationes in Psalmos, Ps. 47) interpreted the maskil of verse 7 as a call to intelligens laus — understanding praise — which became foundational for the Catholic theology of liturgy. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, §14) echoes this in calling for "full, conscious, and active participation" in worship. In many Catholic and liturgical traditions, Psalm 47 is specifically assigned to the Feast of the Ascension — making the exegetical and liturgical traditions perfectly convergent.
For the contemporary Catholic, Psalm 47:5–7 issues a direct challenge to spiritual mediocrity in worship. At a time when Mass attendance is declining and liturgical participation can feel routine or performative, the fourfold sing praises of verse 6 is a rebuke and an invitation. The Psalmist insists that the King of the universe has actually ascended — this is not mythology but the hinge-point of history — and the only proportionate response is lavish, intelligent, repeated praise.
Practically, these verses invite Catholics to approach the Ascension not as an awkward ending to the Easter season but as its triumphant climax. Christ's enthronement means that no corner of your work, family, politics, or suffering lies outside His reign. The "King of all the earth" is Lord over your Monday morning, not just your Sunday liturgy.
Additionally, the call to a maskil — skilled, thoughtful praise — challenges Catholics to invest in their liturgical formation: to learn what they are singing and why, to pray the Psalms with understanding, and to let the beauty of the Church's worship genuinely form their imagination and desires. Psalm 47 is an invitation to mean it.
Commentary