Psalms 48:4

For ¹  look, the kings assemble; ²  they advance together.

When the kings joined forces, when they advanced together,

For, lo, the kings assembled themselves, They passed by together.

The kings of the earth joined forces and advanced against the city.

The kings got together, they united and came.

For see! the kings came together by agreement, they were joined together.

Then the kings assembled, they came on together.

For behold, the kings assembled, They passed by together.

For ¹  look, the kings assemble; ²  they advance together.

¹ tn The logical connection between vv. 3-4 seems to be this: God is the protector of Zion and reveals himself as the city’s defender – this is necessary because hostile armies threaten the city.

² tn The perfect verbal forms in vv. 4-6 are understood as descriptive. In dramatic style (note הִנֵּה, hinneh, “look”) the psalm describes an enemy attack against the city as if it were occurring at this very moment. Another option is to take the perfects as narrational (“the kings assembled, they advanced”), referring to a particular historical event, such as Sennacherib’s siege of the city in 701 b.c. (cf. NIV, NRSV). Even if one translates the verses in a dramatic-descriptive manner (as the present translation does), the Lord’s victory over the Assyrians was probably what served as the inspiration of the description (see v. 8).