The Song of the Storm

Psalm 29 is a forceful song of praise, and yet it’s also beautifully balanced. There’s an opening call to worship that takes place in heaven, and it ends with a blessing and announcement of God’s rule and reign over heaven and earth. In the middle verses, we follow a storm that sweeps through earth with the power of God’s voice. There’s movement of space and focus, but there’s also heightened repetitions. Throughout these eleven verses, the LORD, the covenantal name of Yahweh, appears eighteen times. Other words repeat like “ascribe,” “glory,” “waters,” “voice,” “breaks,” and “shakes.” Other poems in the Hebrew Bible have this kind of building momentum, like the Song of the Sea in the Exodus story or the Song of Deborah in Judges 5. It could be all very monotonous were it not for the evocative imagery and what one scholar called “primitive vigor.” The first verses set the scene in heaven: “Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.” The word “ascribe” isn’t very common today; it means to attribute, to regard, to associate. The parallel word is “worship.” and the first worshipers are the heavenly beings, literally the “sons of God.” The angels are called to shout out the qualities of the LORD: glory (which means his weighty, majestic presence) and holiness (which means his unique, pure perfection). An eternal chorus of praise in the skies above acknowledges that these things are true of God and that he deserves our admiration and wonder. This is the glory that is due to his name that he revealed to his people: the name of Yahweh that is holy, holy, holy.

Suddenly, just like it was in the beginning, God speaks. In verses 3-9, the voice of the LORD appears seven times (the biblical number of perfection). “The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over many waters. The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.” We’re meant to imagine a mighty thunderstorm rolling over the Mediterranean Sea: dark clouds, surging waves, peals of thunder. Is it a natural storm or is it God speaking? The verses are ambiguous, not to say that every thunderstorm is the voice of God but to say that when the LORD does speak aloud, creation responds. Things change and break and tremble. “The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.” The storm makes landfall in the northern mountains of Lebanon, where the tall cedars crash from the force of the wind like toothpicks. The storm continues moving southward to Sirion or Mount Hermon, all the way shaking the ground and spitting lightning. Moving further, it heads to the  wilderness of Kadesh, the southern edge of the kingdom where Israel wandered in the desert for forty years. The last verse of this section is startling: “The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’” Some interpreters have noted that if we rearrange some vowels in that first phrase, we get “the voice of the LORD makes the oaks shake.” That makes more sense in context, but there’s no evidence to support it, so what we have is a zoomed-in perspective from the vast storm to a mother deer giving birth in the rain. Other creation psalms will draw attention to these small natural scenes, never letting us forget that God is the Creator of whirlwinds and earthworms. But what is the human response to the LORD’s thunderous voice? As the storm passes by, echoing the heavenly angels, one word rings out from the temple in Jerusalem: “Glory!” The voice of the people sing in unison, humility, and worship.

As the rain pounds the roof of the temple and God’s people sing out to the LORD the glory due to his name, the psalm ends with a closing scene of calm and trust: “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.” The flood that is mentioned here is a Hebrew that only appears elsewhere in Genesis 6-9, the flood of Noah where God unleashed the natural forces to judge the wicked and save his people. He is the sovereign king over everything, and it’s here that the psalmist makes a subtle jab at another so-called deity in the ancient world: Baal, the storm god, is described in the poetry of the surrounding nations at the time with similar language as Psalm 29, but the psalmist brushes Baal aside. Nothing compares to the LORD whose flood covered the whole earth, who held back the waters so that his people could cross from slavery to freedom, who is strong and uses his strength to save. This is where the psalm ends: “May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!” The last word is shalom, holistic peace externally and internally, the calm that comes after the storm. We’ve moved from heaven to earth to the union of heaven and earth as the LORD blesses his people while they sing united, “Glory!” I love this summary from the German theologian Franz Delitzsch: “This closing word with peace is like a rainbow arch over the Psalm. The beginning of the Psalm shows us heaven open… while its close shows us his victorious people upon earth, blessed with peace in the midst of the terrible utterance of his wrath. Gloria in excelsis is the beginning, and in terra pax the close.” Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!