Psalms 87 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Temple period, with a viewpoint that fits the era when foreign nations were pressing in on Judah, roughly the eighth to sixth centuries BC
Location
Mount Zion in Jerusalem, imagined as the registry office of the whole world
Audience
Israelite worshipers in Jerusalem, many of whom thought of the surrounding empires only as enemies
Situation
A short song of the sons of Korah declaring that God loves Zion above every other place in Israel, then naming foreign peoples as citizens born there. Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Cush are each recorded on Zion's birth roll.
Key Background
Rahab is a poetic nickname for Egypt, drawn from an old story of a sea monster, and Cush is the kingdom south of Egypt in what is now Sudan, so the list covers the great powers that had oppressed Israel. Ancient cities kept written registers of citizens by birth, which is the image behind God writing down who was born in Zion, and birth in a city carried legal rights that immigrants could not claim. The startling move here is that lifelong enemies are entered as native born rather than as conquered subjects, a reversal of how empires normally treated the peoples they absorbed.