The Nations Are Called On To Salute YHWH Most High As The Great King Over All The Earth Who Has Established His People In The Choicest Of Lands (Psalms 47:1-4). .
Oh clap your hands, all you peoples,
Shout to God with the voice of triumph.
For YHWH Most High is terrible,
He is a great King over all the earth.
The clapping of hands and the shouts of acclamation were the means by which peoples normally acknowledged their great king and overlord. Here then they are called on to acknowledge YHWH Most High, the great King over all the earth, in the same way, because of His recent triumph. For thereby He had revealed His awesome power.
The description is in direct contrast with the title that Sennacherib claimed for himself as ‘the great king' (Isaiah 35:4). YHWH had now put Sennacherib firmly in his place demonstrating Who really was the Great King (compare Psalms 46:4; Psalms 48:2), YHWH Most High. His worldwide dominion has been demonstrated.
Here then His people are to clap their hands and shout in triumph because He has come down and wrought a mighty deliverance and is now returning to His heavenly abode, having achieved the victory.
We also should clap our hands and shout in triumph as we consider how our Lord Jesus Christ came down and wrought our deliverance, and has now ascended into Heaven as the great Victor, and as our everlasting King, having commenced His rule over the earth (Matthew 28:18; Acts 2:36) even though many are still in rebellion against Him. That kingship will be even more firmly established wen He commences to reign over His people in the heavenly kingdom (on the new earth in which dwells righteousness - 2 Peter 3:13) at His second coming.
‘He subdued peoples under us,
And nations under our feet.
He chose our inheritance for us,
The glory of Jacob whom he loved.' [Selah
And that worldwide dominion that is His, and has now been demonstrated, had already been previously demonstrated by the fact that in earlier times He had subdued peoples under Israel, and had brought nations under their feet. He had done it when Israel had entered Canaan in order to take their inheritance. Indeed it was He Who had chosen that inheritance for them, that choicest of lands in which they gloried as the people (Jacob) whom He loved (compare Deuteronomy 7:6-8). And it was He Who had enabled them to possess it.
Note their recognition that it was because He had chosen to love them that they had experienced His salvation and blessing. It had not been their doing. It had been all of His goodness. And the same is true of us as the people of God today. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:9-10), and He has given us a glorious inheritance (Ephesians 1:11; Ephesians 1:14; 1 Peter 1:4), because He chose us in Christ before the world began (Ephesians 1:4).