The author of the Forty-sixth Psalm is not only a student of Israel’s prophets; he stands in their ranks as one among them in his own right. What they have preached he sings, and songs have a way of lingering in the heart long after sermons are forgotten. Indeed, this one gives rise in the Sixteenth Century to Martin Luther’s marching song of the Reformation, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."

Political circumstances in Israel at the time of the poet’s writing are not clear. Some see the Psalm as associated with Jerusalem’s miraculous deliverance from Sennacherib in 701 B.C. At least one scholar thinks that the invasion of Alexander the Great accounts for the Psalm. Whatever its historic setting, however, it is a magnificent Hymn of Faith, so recognized by pundits and people alike. For the s…