Beautiful in its loftiness, the joy of the whole earth, like the heights of Zaphon is Mount Zion, the city of the Great King. – Psalm 48:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (September 3, 2013): Psalm 48

In “The Game of Thrones” the characters have a fear of what lives beyond the wall – or literally on the north side of the wall. The North was a place of cold, and a place where all sorts of monsters lived. The wall had been built in the first place to keep the people of the south safe from the horrors of the north. While in the south everything was very rational, in the north it was spiritual. In the north magic lived – and magic is always to be feared. And so they had built a colossal barrier between them and the evils of the north. It was a precaution that simply made sense.

In the ancient world there was a belief that all the gods lived on a mountain to the North. Throughout all of the Middle East literature, there is this repeated refrain – the gods of the Northern Mountain. It was the dwelling place of the gods of mount Olympus. Even the Canaanites believed that their gods lived on that Northern Mountain. It was the home of Ba-al and all of the other deities that ran around in the Promised Land. The North was thought of as a strange place, similar to the way that people treated the northern space beyond the wall in the fictional “The Game of Thrones.” There was a mystery about the North. Because no matter how cold it was, no matter how strange were the things that the people confronted – there was still more north to travel. And no one had ever reached the Northern Mountain and the home of the gods – which would have been the strangest place on earth.

The translators of this Psalm have taken this Northern Mountain and have given it a name – Zaphon. The word in Hebrew is transliterated tsä·fōn' – a word that really just means “in the north.” And the actual verse in Hebrew seems to be much more of an imperative than the NIV would lead us to believe. The intent of the Psalmist is not so much that Mount Zion, the mountain location where the temple had been built, was like Zaphon. Mount Zion dwelt on the slopes of Zaphon – it was Zaphon. The Psalmist was taking aim at all of those who might believe in the gods that inhabit the mountain in the north.  The Psalmist throws all of the pagan mythology of the area out the window, and by the use of the expression tells everyone who is willing to listen that the God who calls himself “I Am” is the only true God - the only true deity that this world has ever known, and that Zion, the very mountain on which that God had placed his temple, is really the northern mountain and the place where God lives.

Of course, that was not quite true either. It took the destruction of the temple three times before God’s people began to realize that their God dwelt wherever it was that they were. He was with them, even during the tough moments of life and, indeed, to the very end of the world itself. The real truth was that every person who was brave enough to declare that “I Am” was the true God became, in and of themselves, the famed Zaphon, the mountain of the north and the place where God has decided to live.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 49