This Psalm is in praise of Zion. Zion is the witness of Israel set in grace and not under law. (See Psa. 78:65-72.) This is the distinctive character of the name. Accordingly its memorial is blessedly before God, as the name of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is before Him (Ex. 3). And this place is here declared to be the scene of His strength or of His enduring kingdom; (Psa. 87:1)—the scene of His delight; (Psa. 87:2)—the scene also of His glory (Psa. 87:3).
Encouraged as it were by this, she then appears to speak her own praise, as the mother of the family of God, giving the Lord Himself as a witness to this dignity of hers (Psa. 87:4-6). And this will be so when the New Covenant comes to be dispensed in and from Zion. (See Isa. 2; Ezek. 47; Joel 3.) For the New Covenant is the Sarah, or the mother. In the present dispensation, no system or place on earth can be called the mother, because the blood and the Mediator of the New Covenant are in heaven. Therefore Jerusalem the mother is still “above” (Gal. 4). But in the coming dispensation she will be in Judea, and then the Zion of this Psalm may look on the right hand and on the left, towards Egypt and Babylon, and recognize her children everywhere.
The Lord Himself appears to sanction this, closing with an expression of Zion’s joy, and of His own delight in her (Psa. 87:7).
But this suggests some blessed truth. Jerusalem has destroyed herself; but in God is her help. She is stained with blood; but the blood will be cleansed (Joel 3). She is now desolate and rejected, because she rejected Jesus; but she shall be saluted by and by, as “the habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness,” and be called “the Lord is there” (Jer. 31:23; Ezek. 48:35). Jesus has hitherto known her as the place of His tears and weeping (Luke 19); but here it has become the place of His fresh springs and of His singers. This change in the bearing and conditions of Zion is very blessed. “This is Zion whom no man careth after,” has been her reproach; “the joy of the whole earth,” shall be her praise. And in all this Zion is a sample of the earth. For as yet it has been the occasion of divine grief and repentance (Gen. 6:6-12), it shall be the scene of divine delight and glory (Psa. 8; Psa. 24; Psa. 104:31).