Psalm 29: More than a Weather-Report

by koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

1 October 2009

Psalm 29 is one of the oldest Psalms in the corpus of Psalms. The psalm was studied by many scholars over many centuries. The scholars looked at the Psalm from the angle of dating, structure, rhythm, grammar in all its aspects, poetry and all the vehicles of language that can be used, content.

Scholars like Delitzsch, Duhm, Kittel, Gunkel, Briggs, Ridderbos, Fensham, Dahood, Albright, Geller, Cross, Freedman and Hyland, Weiser, Botma were extensively consulted by this writer. A caleidoscope of ideas were presented by these men trying to explain various aspects of the Psalm. The following items attract their attention due to their pre-occupation with some ideological school of interpretation for the Old Testament or due to other interests.

Dating

Gunkel is of the Religion-Geschichtliche school or Form Criticism and would not be interested in certain aspects due to his attachment to this school. Despite problems that such a leniency create in hermeneutics, Gunkel suggested the Psalm to be very early and also to have originated out of Deuteronomy 32. Our comment is that to connect a book of Moses written before 1411 BCE, to this psalm is very relevant. It is relevant since other scholars also felt after their investigation that this Psalm is very early. Gunkel does not accept that Moses could have written it, as we do in this writing, since FormCriticism's task is to deny any mosaic origin of the Pentateuch and to allocate the section later than is claimed by the text itself.

Other scholars also felt that the Psalm is rather early. They felt uncomfortable in their methodology with the tenets of Form Criticism or any Criticism suggested by the German school and especially Albright and his students like Fensham (my teacher) were always vocal on the falacies and artificial Hegelianism of the methodology of the German critics. Fensham wrote his own grammar for Ugaritic and this corpus of texts from the Late Bronze had many syntactical and semantical correlations so that Fensham felt convinced that there was something ancient that could not be overlooked. Fensham was wondering if there was not an early Psalm, that was reused and accommodated for later circumstances.

Albright made connections with the mosaic corpus that are also relevant to an early dating. When Albright commented on the bene elohim in Psalm 29:1, he concluded that they refer to stars. Dahood (176), (also an Albright student) connected the phrase to similar expressions in the Ugarit corpus (UT, 76:I:3-4, which is the corpus from the Late Bronze period [13th century BCE]) but also in Job 38:7 (which we also allocate with Judaism as the epic poem by Moses, but uniquely by us to have been written in Midian before 1450 BCE and probably in ca. 1460 BCE). Dahood (175) wanted to connect the phrase with UT, 51:III:14 which mentions bn ilim interpreted by him as the small gods of the pantheon of gods with El as chief. He preferred to see it as a demythologizing Hebraic restatement for angels. Dahood's method of saying that writers of the Old Testament books "plagiarized" Canaanite literature and adapt or adopt it in a reshaped form for Hebrew literature, is postulations that is closer at home with hermeneutics of suspicion and the German school behind it, than with a proper analysis of the text. It will become clearer as we proceed through the Psalm. We do not want to discuss individual aspects here, since we reserve it for our discussion below. Ugaritic citation and comparison cannot but help to suggest an earlier date, and that is the main point here. No wonder Albright, Dahood and Fensham thought the Psalm had early elements in it.    

Dahood, also looked at the Psalm through the glasses from Ugarit. For this reason, he is connected and mocked by scholars as pan-Ugaritic. As such, most scholars try to avoid his suggestions in modern times, but, just because someone overemphasized Ugaritic texts and their comparison with Psalms, does not mean that we can now overlook the reality of strong links at times. He may not be correct in everything but that would not mean that he is not correct in everything. M. Dahood was aware of the work of Ginsberg and he cited his earlier work on the Psalm. Dahood felt that Ginsberg was correct since "virtually every word in the psalm can now be duplicated in older Canaanite texts" (M. Dahood, Psalm I 1-50 [New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc.], 175). One can see Dahood's optimism in this statement. The earliest connection of Psalm 29 with Ugarit was done in 1936 by G. L. Ginsberg, six years after the publication of the texts of Ugarit started (see Fensham 1963: 84; H. L. Ginsberg, "A Phoenician Hymn in the Psalter" in Atti del XIX Congresso Internazionale degli Orientalisti [Roma, 1935], 472-476). Also Gaster and Cross (a student of Albright with an article in 1950 [F. Cross, "Notes on a Canaanite Psalm in the Old Testament" BASOR 117 (1950): 19-21) made connections between Psalm 29 and Ugarit.

Kittel also maintained an early date for the Psalm.

A number of scholars looked for a late date for the Psalm. The Interpreter's Bible IV:158 suggested a date around 164 BCE (time of Antiochus Epiphanes). The problem with these late allocators is that they took German criticism too serious and started operating with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Thus, they doubted everything and thought of rewriting the text their own way to fit their modus operandi.

Duhm, supported by Briggs (252) suggested that the Psalm dates to the Persian period before the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. That would mean, in our terms, before 457 BCE, but later than 536 BCE. Briggs thought that the expression bene elohim, mentioned above in Psalm 29:1, was common in the Persian angelology. What the sources for Briggs were on Persian theology, is a very crucial question, since, if he relied on the works of Zoroaster or Zoroastrianism, then one may as well close his book. Source criticism of the works of Zoroaster dates all too late to be relevant even for the 3rd century CE, which is Late Roman times.

Delitzsch (368) is also interesting with his connection from the mosaic corpus of Deuteronomy 32:3 for the expression bene elohim. Why is this important? Regardless whether Delitzsch do or do not agree with the early date of Deuteronomy by the hand of Moses, we do. With the term in Job (1460 BCE) in Deuteronomy (1420 BCE) at Ugarit (1280-1220 BCE) and in Psalm 29, the connection with Moses becomes a greater option for us.  

Summary on the date of Psalm 29

There are thus two tendencies by scholars on Psalm 29 as far as dating is concerned: (1) a group that counted the Psalm to be early and a group (2) that tend to make it as late as possible, even in 164 BCE.

Early dating

The early dating is done on two sets of data important for our purposes, a) Correlation of the Psalm with Ugaritic texts dating to the Late Bronze between 1280-1220 BCE; b) Correlation of the Psalm with Mosaic texts like Job and Deuteronomy. Job was written in 1460 BCE and Deuteronomy ca. 1420 BCE. A combination of these two sets of information leads to promissing results for the early dating of the Psalm.

Late dating

The late dating is not so stable and rests firstly on the JEDP theory and its proliferations later in Form, Redaction, Literary, Genre criticism and also Relecturing analysis which is just a canonical way of looking at the JEDP theory. Make Job late and Deuteronomy late, and you end up with a late Psalm. Which they do, following critical German scholarship of the Enlightenment, Rationalism, and adherents to the hermeneutics of suspicion. Other scholars follow the tenets of Zoroastrianism in their analysis, which is based on too late sources (600-800 years later than the Persian period between 536-333 BCE) trying to say that the writer of the Psalm was influenced by Persian views of angels. Unless the same scholars can demonstrate from the Behistun inscription of Darius inscriptions or any Persian king, the Persepolis tablets etc. that angels were commonly used in their theology, no further discussion in this direction is necessary.  

The J of JEDP is the socalled late source of the Yahwist school of scribes who socalled preferred the name Yahweh instead of El in their descriptions. The methodology of earlier scholars were that of Kindergarten children with color pens, and every verse that had El they would color pink and every verse that had Yahwehh they colored yellow. In this way they could allocate some verses to an Earlier Yahwist affinity school as opposed to a bit later school choosing El. Despite the basic flaws in the methodology originally, modern scholars at many seminaries all over the world are still working with results from this methodological fallacy. Then Briggs and Gunkel from the Form Critical school, a derivative of the JEDP theories, thought that Psalm 29 is Yahwist, but arrived surprised at Psalm 29:3 speaking of the glory of God or el hakabod. The JEDP theory was in peril, so what did they do? Grabbed the scissors and cut it out of the text and threw it away as deleted. If one tries to build a theory with this kind of methodology, one is going to face tough choices when one deals with rock inscriptions and stelae that cannot be cut. Dahood presented (contra Briggs and Gunkel) the data that a thunderstorm is used to describe El and Yahweh together in Psalm 18:2, 13 and 14. There is no doubt that Briggs and Gunkel should have read more Psalms than playing around with hermeneutics of suspicion.  

What about Ugaritic connections?

Ugaritic texts are dated between 1280-1220 BCE. They can of course be a bit older but their historical period and time finally to be covered with dust is the last part of the Late Bronze period.

Are there correlations between Psalm 29 and Ugaritic expressions? Compare this excellent example by M. Dahood:

"to Lebanon and its timbers, to Shirion and its choicest cedars" llbnn w`ṣ lšyn mḥd arzh/llbnn w`sh lshryn mhmd arzh (UT, 51:vi:20-21). Compare Psalm 29:5-6 where Lebanon and Shirion is also placed in pair.

The issue of plagiarism and wholehearted poem stealing comes into play here. Scholars claim that Ugaritic literature is much earlier than Psalms, thus the strong connections can go only one way.

There is an alternative argument that may or may not be well accepted in some circles. Especially those who have already set their minds to think the Old Testament is just a human fabricated propaganda piece of literature used as a tool by Judaism to claim their territory and space in history. The alternative runs like this: Gunkel is correct to say that there is a connection with Deuteronomy 32 and other scholars to find similar connections with Job. Both books were written by Moses before 1411 BCE. That being the case, the direction of plagiarism suddenly change. The victim becomes the judge and the judge the victim. How do we know that the Habiru of the Amarna letters drove the Canaanites out of Canaan to resettle at Ugarit, with some copies of Moses' literature, including Job and Deuteronomy but due to secularization, a hymn of judgement [Psalm 29] well known in ancient Israel by Hebrews from escaping from Egypt, was mythologized to fit the heathen religions of Baal and El at Ugarit? After all, according to strict biblical chronology, Moses 1411 BCE is quite distant from Ugarit 1280-1220 BCE. It is a question suddenly of who came first: the chicken or the egg?

Ugaritic connections may confirm that the Psalm is old but they cannot confirm that the Psalmist was aware of a Baal hymn which he then re-adapt for later Hebrew literature. Although both ideas, this writer's and the scholars' idea of Ugarit and the Bible are speculative, there are more texts available for supporting the paradygm of this writer than the speculations of the scholars on plagiarism by Hebrews of Canaanite literature.

Content

The best discussion on Psalm 29 was a 1984 lecture by William Shea of Andrews University at Helderberg College Somerset West, Cape, South Africa. The presentation was balanced and included aspects of biblical theology which is not only one of the main threads throughout the Bible but is also support here forming a consistency with other texts. When I walked into the lecture-room that morning, I was convinced that I knew everything that one can know about the Psalm. I was wrong.

William Shea presented the Psalm in the context of the Judgment of God. The Judgment is from the heavenly temple (also in his book, William Shea, Selected Studies on Prophetic Interpretation in Daniel & Revelation Committee Series Vol. I [Lincoln, Nebraska: College View Printers, 1982], 6). Aspects of what Shea presented were also discussed by other scholars before. It is a Psalm of God's judgment upon the Canaanites. "The judgment is described as a storm that comes off the Mediterranean to strike Canaanite - not Israelite territory with destructive force" (vv. 3-8a) (Shea 1982: 6). The storm is ordered by God from His heavenly temple while the angels stood by. The angels were exhorted to give praise to God and they did at the end. God is presented that He sits on His throne forever and that He will give peace to His people (vv. 10-11). 

a. Mediterranean storm but to Jerusalem (Hamilton 1849)

The concept of a Mediterranean storm can be seen in the work of James Hamilton, The Literary Attractions in the Bible 1849. What is strange about Hamilton's presentation (that contrasts that of Shea), is that Hamilton let's the storm reach the Lebanon but then made it go to Jerusalem to the temple. There is nothing in the text to say that the temple is in Jerusalem. In fact, the direction to Kadesh is opposite to Jerusalem. Shea (1982 and 1984) is here more textual. The writer of The Interpreter's Bible IV: 157, thought that the Wilderness of Kadesh is the desert area between Israel and Egypt. For him the storm moved to the far south after destroying Lebanon. He thought that Numbers 34:4 Kadesh-Barnea is behind this name Kadesh, but we miss the element -Barnea in the Psalm. We are back with Kadesh on the Orontes, as Shea also interpreted.

b. Storm only (John Calvin)

What is a bit disappointing in the analysis of Calvin, is that he sees it as a real storm in the days of the poet to which he ascribes the voice of God. One can almost say that Calvin thinks it to be real thunder of a real storm in nature to which the poet placed accessories called "voice of God". The Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, Calvin would not contest that at all. None of the Reformers would. Since it is the Word of God, when the hymn or composer of the lyrics or poem says that the voice of the Lord do this or that, then it is maybe wiser to accept it to be the voice of the Lord and not thunder. We may think of thunder but it is the voice of God. Note, it is the reverse of what Calvin meant. Calvin meant that it was thunder but the poet thought it to be the voice of God. Calvin said: actually thunder and lightning but presume to be the voice of God. We are saying: actually the voice of God but presumed to be a thunder peal or lightning or both. The writer of the comments for The Interpreter's Bible IV (Abingdon, Nashville), 155, do his best to remind readers that the Psalm is not just a description of a storm in nature. 

c. Heavenly or earthly

If gods were created by humans and God did not exist, then what we have is a real thunder and storm which is poetically ascribed according to the view or creative impression of the mind of the poet, to the voice of God. The sons of God has another meaning and flood another. Humanistic scholars found inspiration in the myths of Babylon and Ugarit to suggest that sons of God means gods of the Canaanite patheon (Dahood 175) and flood means flood dragon (Cross and S. Geller 208). Where they got the word dragon from in the text of the Bible, I do not know.

Humans are living in time and what is the word "everlasting" (Psalm 29:10) suppose to mean in a pure horizontal consideration? There is no space in Scripture for such a view. If one accepts the Bible to be a vertical book trying to teach humans how to have a relationship on a vertical sphere that will result in an improved horizontal level with humans, with many anecdotes and life experiences from humans, then one needs to take the words listed above literally and with seriousness. God does not sit on the earth, except the heathen gods which is made of silver, wood or gold. This is a heavenly scene and Shea is closer to the text here. Briggs wanted to see God as sitting and rule on earth (Briggs 255). We must remember that Briggs dated the Psalm late and saw a number of Persian influences in the the poem.

d. Stormgod glorification (Botma [1980] et al)

My professor dr. Theo Botma is a Semiticist at the University of South Africa and I did Psalm 29 under him. Botma was convinced that what we have in this Psalm is the glorification of the Canaanite stormgod Ba`lu. It was a re-edition of an older poem, according to him. This concept is not new since Fensham mentioned the same before Botma, although I had Fensham as a teacher before Botma. Botma also favored the northern parts of Israel for the poem due to the geographical names. He claimed the poem to be based on an older one due to the enclitic mem which he felt is a pre-Hebraic element in Psalm 29:6 in the word wayiraqidam. The word bene elohim appears also in Ugaritic and the structure of the poem compared to Ugaritic poetry. The repetition of a verb in the same line (Psalm 29:5, 8 and 10) is also considered by him to be a old phenomenon based on correlations from Ugarit (CTA 10.ii). The question of linguistic chronology is a grey area and it is not wise (especially by Botma with his pre-Hebraic allocation) to speculate on this. Many times something is said to be absent in Hebrew and then it turns up in extra-biblical literature much older than expected. Phenomena may sometimes resurface after a period of redundancy. It is the same with orthography and pottery chronology. That the Psalm is old is welcomed.

By the time I graduated and left to the USA for my doctoral studies, in 1989, he was already at the University of Pretoria. Botma wondered in 1980-1981 whether he should try to recreate the old lost Psalm or whether he should just stick to the Masoretic text form of the Psalm. He chose to do the last mentioned. That does not mean his analysis was free from problems, since he was willing to emend, bring in mythical ideas from extra-biblical sources for meaning that is not in the form of the text analyzed, and of course worked with a German critical model known as the JEDP chronological theory of Welhaussen. When a scholar does this, and Botma is just doing what all are doing, the text lost its form and becomes fluid like clay in the hands of the analyzer and is reshaped into something else that does not compare to the original. In essence then, he did not achieve what he set out to do. Similar to Welhaussen and German scholarship which work with a hermeneutics of suspicion, he felt that the Old Testament is full of corruption as far as the form of the text is concerned. Who told him it is corrupt or where he got the correct form from to test the Masoretic text by a standard as "corrupt", is not clear, but this method has serious implications on the original form of Psalm 29 as is represented in the Masoretic Text. Here is our argument: the fact that Daniel is delivered 99.9% the same in Hebrew and Aramaic at Qumran cave 4 dating to over a millennium before the full copy of the Masoretic text, indicate that the Masoretic text actually was transmitted very accurately. A 0.1% difference is not a corruption. Botma was not dogmatic about his own reconstruction and admitted that a number of other reconstruction do exist or can be made. This was a special characteristic of Botma.