EXPOSITION
HERE we have another psalm of thanksgiving for a deliverance, but not apparently for the same deliverance as gave occasion for either of the two preceding psalms. Israel had now been delivered from a confederacy of kings (Psalms 48:4), who had come within sight of the city, but had then been seized with panic, and retreated, without making an attack (Psalms 48:5). After this, pain had come upon them, and they had been "broken," like "ships of Tarshish with an east wind" (Psalms 48:6, Psalms 48:7). The deliverance had been celebrated by a thanksgiving service held in the temple (Psalms 48:9). These details accord remarkably with the account given in 2 Chronicles 20:1-28 of an expedition against Jerusalem, made by the Moabites, Ammonites, and children of Seir, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, who advanced as far as Tekoa, whence Jerusalem is visible (Delitzsch), but there quarrelled among themselves, and began a retreat, in the course of which they came to blows, and destroyed one another. The imagery of "ships of Tarshish broken by the east wind" is naturally used at this period, when Jehoshaphat's fleet of "ships of Tarshish" (2 Kings 22:1-20:48) was, by a Divine judgment, "broken at Ezion-geber."
The psalm consists of two strophes, nearly of equal length, divided at the end of 2 Chronicles 20:8 by the pause-mark, "Selah."