Psalms 29 - Introduction

XXIX.

This is a piece of storm-music which the poetry of no country or age has surpassed, so vividly, or rather audibly, is the tempest — and an Oriental tempest — presented to us. To the Hebrew a storm, at once terrible and magnificent, was the direct manifestation of the grandeur of God, and here the poet gives the liveliest expression to that feeling by representing all the phenomena as the immediate result of the Divine utterance — consequent on, if not produced by, the thunder, the Divine voice. The very form — in the monotone of its short, incisive, strictly parallel clauses — has been rightly supposed to be intended as an echo of successive peals of thunder, always equal, and always terrible. Some commentator has suggested that this hymn was composed by David to be sung during a thunderstorm. But it wants no such inept conjecture to discern the fitness of the psalm to take its place in a religious service. The poet himself has prepared for such an adaptation by his conception. Two scenes are presented — one on earth, where we see the storm sweeping majestically along from the north to the south over the length of Palestine; the other in heaven, where the “sons of God” — i.e., all the angelic intelligences and powers — stand as spectators of the grand drama below, and at the invocation of the poet raise the cry, “Glory,” in praise of the Divine greatness and power. The versification is perfectly regular, but presents instances of that step-like progression which characterises Deborah’s song, and the psalms of Degrees. The two concluding lines are evidently a liturgic addition, and did not form part of the original ode. (See Note.)