Psa 48:14 | NETfull | STEP | For God, our God, is our defender forever! He guides us! For the music director, a psalm by the Korahites.

Psalms 48:14

For God, our God, is our defender forever! ^{▼▼ Heb “for this is God, our God, forever and ever.” “This” might be paraphrased, “this protector described and praised in the preceding verses.”}
He guides ^{▼▼ The imperfect highlights the characteristic nature of the generalizing statement.} us! ^{▼▼ In the Hebrew text the psalm ends with the words עַל־מוּת (’al-mut, “upon [unto?] dying”), which make little, if any, sense. M. Dahood (Psalms [AB], 1:293) proposes an otherwise unattested plural form עֹלָמוֹת (’olamot; from עוֹלָם, ’olam, “eternity”). This would provide a nice parallel to עוֹלָם וָעֶד (’olam va’ed, “forever”) in the preceding line, but elsewhere the plural of עוֹלָם appears as עֹלָמִים (’olamim). It is preferable to understand the phrase as a musical direction of some sort (see עַל־מוּת [’al-mut] in the superscription of Ps 9) or to emend the text to עַל־עֲלָמוֹת (’al-’alamot, “according to the alamoth style”; see the heading of Ps 46). In either case it should be understood as belonging with the superscription of the following psalm.}

Psalm 49

^{▼▼ Psalm 49. In this so-called wisdom psalm (see v. 3) the psalmist states that he will not fear the rich enemies who threaten him, for despite their wealth, they are mere men who will die like everyone else. The psalmist is confident the Lord will vindicate the godly and protect them from the attacks of their oppressors.}