Psalm 87 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 87 (1928 BCP) (Fundamenta ejus) is appointed at Morning Prayer on the Seventeenth Day of the month in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Psalter. In only seven verses it praises Zion as God’s city and announces an astonishing enlargement: peoples associated with Israel’s former enemies are counted as born there. The Psalm therefore joins love for the particular city of God to hope for the gathering of the nations.

Prayer Book Text

HER foundations are upon the holy hills: * the LORD loveth the gates of Sion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
2 Very excellent things are spoken of thee, * thou city of God.
3 I will make mention of Egypt and Babylon, * among them that know me.

4 Behold, Philistia also; and Tyre, with Ethiopia; * lo, in Sion were they born.
5 Yea, of Sion it shall be reported, this one and that one were born in her; * and the Most High shall stablish her.
6 The LORD shall record it, when he writeth up the peoples; * lo, in Sion were they born.
7 The singers also and trumpeters shall make answer: * All my fresh springs are in thee.

The Psalm does not flatten the difference between Zion and the nations. It begins with God’s love for Zion, then describes God himself recording people from Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia as born in her. The repeated verb is crucial: belonging is received as God’s gift and reckoning, not claimed by ancestry or political power.

Zion and the Nations

Psalm 87 belongs among the Psalms of Zion, but its catalogue of nations is remarkably daring. It speaks of places that could stand for great empires and near neighbours, including enemies, as “among them that know me.” The prophetic vision supplies a useful canonical parallel:

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. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob.

Isaiah does not make Jerusalem insignificant; rather, the nations are drawn to the God of Jacob for instruction and peace. Psalm 87 makes the claim even more intimate in the imagery of birth and registration. The Psalm is not a warrant for contempt of Israel or for a vague cosmopolitanism; it celebrates the Lord’s power to make outsiders fellow members of his worshipping people.

Jamie Grant’s peer-reviewed study rightly identifies both the surprise and the scope of this language:

The song celebrates the belonging of Israel's enemies - both historic an[d] painfully recent - as part of the worshiping community gathered in Jerusalem. It presents an image of ingathering that echoes the voice of the Old Testament prophets but that is almost unheard of within the spiritual vocabulary of the Psalter.

That observation guards against reading the list merely as a map. The nations are not only mentioned; God writes them into the city’s register. In public worship this calls a congregation to pray for peoples it may instinctively regard as remote, difficult, or hostile.

Christ and the City of God

The New Testament’s language of strangers becoming fellow citizens gives Christians a disciplined way to hear the Psalm. It does not replace Israel’s own Scriptures; it confesses that Gentiles are brought near in the Messiah of Israel:

Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.

Augustine reads the Psalm through this apostolic image of a city built in Christ. His interpretation is not the historical meaning of Psalm 87 exhausted, but it witnesses to a long Christian practice of praying Zion’s promises as fulfilled in the Church’s union with Christ:

That the Gentiles, therefore, might not think they had no relation to Sion: for Sion was a certain city of this world, which bore a typical resemblance as a shadow to that Sion of which he presently speaks, that Heavenly Jerusalem, of which the Apostle says, “which is the mother of us all”; they might not be said to bear no relation to Sion, on the ground that they did not belong to the Jewish people, he addresses them thus: “Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”

The “foundation” of Psalm 87 thus becomes, in this Christian reading, neither bare geography nor a denial of the Psalm’s first sense. It points to God’s dwelling with a people formed by revelation, apostolic witness, and Christ the cornerstone.

A City Made of Worshippers

Psalm 87 ends not with borders but with singers and trumpeters: “All my fresh springs are in thee.” The image gathers joy, sustenance, and praise into the city’s life. Augustine presses the point that the city is made from living people rather than from stone alone:

In earthly cities, one thing is the structure of buildings: another thing are the citizens that dwell therein: that city is built of its own inmates, who are themselves the blocks that form the city, for the very stones are living: “You also,” says the Apostle, “as living stones, are built up a spiritual house.”

That theological reception is especially fitting in the Daily Office. The congregation is not asked to admire Zion at a distance. By singing the Psalm it confesses that life and refreshment come from God, gives thanks for the Church’s apostolic foundation, and intercedes for the inclusion of peoples from every place.

Use in the Daily Office

Psalm 87 is appointed at Morning Prayer on the Seventeenth Day, between Psalm 86 and Psalm 88. After Psalm 86’s cry for mercy, Psalm 87 gives the Office a brief vision of God’s beloved city and of the nations registered there. Its final music of singers and trumpeters makes it a fitting act of common praise: the Church asks for no private possession of grace, but for a share in the city whose springs are in God.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Morning Prayer (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 86 (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 88 (1928 BCP)