Psalms 87:4–6

Psalms 87:4 — "I will record Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me."

The speaker shifts dramatically here: it is now God himself who speaks, in the first person. This divine self-declaration is crucial. The word translated "record" (Hebrew אַזְכִּיר, azkir, from zakar, "to remember, to mention, to register") carries the sense of formal inscription — the calling of a name in an official register. In the ancient Near East, city-states kept citizen rolls; Yahweh here presents himself as the registrar of a cosmic city.

"Rahab" (רַהַב) is a poetic name for Egypt (see also Ps 89:10; Isa 30:7; 51:9), derived from a mythological sea-dragon representing chaos and pride. Its inclusion here is theologically stunning: the nation that enslaved Israel, the house of bondage, is now listed as a citizen of Zion. "Babylon," the empire that destroyed the Temple and carried Israel into exile, likewise appears not as enemy but as enrolée. That these two arch-antagonists of Israel's history — Empire of the South and Empire of the North — bracket the other nations signals that no nation is excluded from this divine invitation.

The phrase "those who acknowledge me" (יֹדְעָי, yod'ai) is a relational term in Hebrew. Yada' (to know) in the covenantal sense implies intimate recognition, loyalty, and relationship — not merely intellectual assent. These nations are not registered as subjugated peoples; they are registered as knowers of Yahweh.

Psalms 87:5 — "Yes, of Zion it will be said, 'This one and that one was born in her.'"

The formula "this one and that one" (אִישׁ וְאִישׁ, ish ve-ish, literally "a man and a man") is an idiom of totality and universality in Biblical Hebrew — every single person, regardless of origin. The text says that of Zion — not of Egypt, not of Babylon — it will be said that these people were born. This is the key theological claim: Zion is not merely a destination these nations visit, but a mother in whom they have their second birth. The Psalmist envisions a spiritual nativity, a re-origination of identity.

The grammatical construction in the Hebrew implies that the "saying" is ongoing — a continuous testimony about Zion's generative power. The Elyon (עֶלְיוֹן, "Most High") in the second half of the verse establishes that it is God's sovereign will, not historical accident or military conquest, that makes Zion the birthplace of all peoples.

Psalms 87:6 — "Yahweh will count, when he writes up the peoples."

The verb "count" (יִסְפֹּר, yispor) and "writes up" (בִּכְתוֹב, bi-khtov, "in the writing/enrolling") return to the legal-administrative imagery of verse 4. This is the divine census — an eschatological register in which the Most High personally records each person's place of birth as Zion. The Septuagint renders this vividly: "The Lord will tell, in the writing of peoples and of rulers, of those who have been born in her." The "book of life" tradition (see Ex 32:32; Dan 12:1; Rev 21:27) echoes here: to be written in Yahweh's register is to be numbered among the living, the saved, the city's true inhabitants.

The Typological and Spiritual Senses:

The Fathers read this passage as a prophecy of the Church. Typologically, Zion is the Church (ecclesia), the spiritual Jerusalem, and being "born in her" is baptism — the new birth by water and the Spirit (cf. John 3:5). The nations "acknowledged" are those who enter the faith; the divine "writing up" is the eternal Book of Life. The specific naming of former enemies — Rahab/Egypt, Babylon — prefigures the universality of redemption: no background, no history of sin or enmity, places anyone beyond the reach of Zion's motherhood.

Catholic tradition reads Psalm 87:4–6 as a prophetic blueprint of the Church's universal motherhood and the theology of baptismal rebirth. St. Augustine, in Enarrationes in Psalmos, identifies Zion unambiguously with the Church: "Of the Church it is said: 'A man and a man was born in her.' Who is born in the Church? He who is born of God, who is born of water and the Spirit." The "nations" enrolled — including former enemies of Israel — represent for Augustine the Gentile world brought into the Body of Christ.

This insight is directly codified in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches that "the Church is the mother of all believers" (CCC 169, 757) and that through Baptism one undergoes a true new birth, becoming "a new creature" (CCC 1265). The "registration" imagery of these verses aligns precisely with the Church's teaching on the Book of Life — the eschatological register of those predestined for glory (CCC 1021, referencing Rev 20:12).

The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (§13) echoes this Psalm when it declares that all peoples are called to the new People of God: "All men are called to belong to the new people of God… catholicity is that property by which the Church, in the fulfillment of the Lord's command, is spread to all peoples." The naming of Rahab and Babylon — empires of pride and persecution — anticipates LG's teaching that entry into the Church transcends ethnic, cultural, and historical divisions.

St. John Paul II, in Redemptoris Missio (§10), also draws on the universal vocation of the nations to Zion: the missionary mandate is rooted precisely in this divine desire to enroll all peoples. The Mother of the Church, the Virgin Mary, is herself identified in patristic tradition as the personal embodiment of Zion — the one who gives birth to the Head, so that all members might be born in her.

For a Catholic today, these verses pose a quietly radical challenge to any tendency to treat the Church as a private club or cultural inheritance. The same God who names Egypt and Babylon — the oppressors, the exiles' tormentors — as citizens of Zion calls us to see every human being, regardless of past or origin, as a potential "born in her." This has concrete implications: how we welcome the recently baptized at the Easter Vigil, how we regard immigrants and refugees (many from nations the West has long treated as adversaries), and how we resist the temptation to treat our faith as ethnic patrimony rather than universal gift.

There is also a personal application: the divine writing of verse 6 is not an abstraction. In baptism, your name was formally enrolled. You were "registered" by God himself as a citizen of Zion — not by merit of ancestry or virtue, but by grace. When doubt or unworthiness press upon you, return to this image: Yahweh himself wrote your name in the register of the Holy City. To live from that dignity, and to help others discover they too can be written there, is the missionary vocation of every Catholic.