Psalm 29: Pre-intermediate discussion

by koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

5 October 2009

In our beginners edition of Psalm 29 we spoke about some theories regarding the content of the Psalm mentioning a few scholars and also William Shea. We also talked about the dating of the Psalm by some scholars as very early and others as very late. We could not exhaust the wealth of information on this Psalm in the previous treatment and it calls for a more in depth discussion to continue.

Content

We are back to the content of the Psalm since it should be clear by now that scholars saw all kinds of things in the Psalm. Some saw it as a poem honoring fertility. Others saw it as a Baal and El poem reworked for a Jewish audience. Others saw it as a real storm in bad weather over that area. Gunkel saw the Psalm as growing out of Deuteronomy 32 (Gunkel 125). Note, to connect it to Moses and his literature is not a bad idea. Dahood connected it to Canaanite Mythology (Dahood 175). Weiser connected it to the experience of Israel at Sinai (Weiser 175).

The year 1984 was important for two reasons relevant to this psalm: Oswald Loretz published his book on this Psalm (O. Loretz, Psalm 29. Kanaanäische El- und Baaltraditionen in jüdischer Sicht (Ugaritisch - Biblische Literatur, 2) [Soest: CIS Verlag, 1984]). Secondly, on the 24th of October 1984, William Shea presented his lecture on Psalm 29 at Helderberg College. Outstanding! Will travel far to hear it again.

Oswald Loretz

The best one can say about Loretz work is that it is the largest collection of bibliography on Psalm 29 available on the market. It appears very thorough and Germans can do that since they are daily in the world's best libraries. The problem with the book is that there are lots of unsatisfactory decisions by the author. Julius Wellhaussen is used as a standard for ideal historiography and chronology of biblical books. The last paragraph reveals the real Loretz and should be read first before the book is read. He claims that the purpose of the book is to prove William F. Albright wrong [to say that it is early] and to save Wellhaussen that the poem is post-exillic. Wellhaussen said that Psalm 29 is post-exillic. Albright said that Exodus 15 (Hymn of Deborah and Miriam) is old (10th century BCE). He also said that Psalm 29 is similarly to Exodus 15 also old. In one of his footnotes Loretz reveal his real mind that he fought with others against the thesis of Albright. The book of Loretz can only be used as a data supplying tool. The conclusions of Loretz, similarly to his conclusions on the Habiru book that he also wrote, is best to be evaluated critically by looking at alternatives. And alternatives do exist if time is taken on these matters. The essential problem with Loretz is that he serves hermeneutics of suspicion and not hermeneutics of affirmation. The navigational angle is thus always skew and one has to always adjust him according to the Word of God. 

William Shea

William Shea presented the Psalm as a non-Israelite Psalm if one takes the Geography serious. He emphasized that it is not a fertility Psalm but a destructive Psalm. There is no rain, but there is shaking and destruction. The Kadesh that Shea had in mind was not the southern one that nearly all earlier scholars opted for since they wanted to end the Psalm at the Temple in Jerusalem. For him it was the Kadesh on the Orontes in the North. For the structures of the Psalm Shea accepted the ideas of Freedman and Hyland. In fact, the Psalm was originally written by Shea as an essay to Freedman, his teacher. Freedman and Hyland published in 1973 an article on the structure of Psalm 29 (D. N. Freedman and C. Franke Hyland, "Psalm 29: A Structural Analysis" HTR 66 [1973]: 273ff).

The concept by so many earlier scholars of presenting the qol "voice" as seven thunders or seven bolts, was not to strongly presented by Shea. For Shea it was not a mere storm but God in judgement. The voice of God destroys nature, is strong and majestic over the waters and moved towards the Lebanon and hit it. The Lebanon is 6000 ft high and Mount Hermon or the Phoenician Sirion is 9000 ft. Everytime God spoke He came closer. He moved over the Lebanon into the plain between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. As He made a circle in the plain it shook and move. Then God moved between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon to the north along the Orontes river to the wilderness near Kadesh on the Orontes. In my interview with Shea after the lecture, he mentioned in 1984 that he has read Charles Fensham's article on Psalm 29 (C. Fensham, Psalm 29 and Ugarit [1963]). He agreed with most of what Fensham wrote. Fensham became my teacher later in 1986 and Fensham said about the content of Psalm 29 that it is an Israelite mission psalm to convert the apostate Baal-worshippers back to God. Fensham came very close to a hermeneutics of affirmation and always in his classes felt uncomfortable with the hermeneutics of suspicion. Talking about the Germans and their hermeneutics of suspicion, Fensham said in one of his classes, "the Germans are very good in seeing the trees but they cannot see the bush". Fensham was an Albright student. 

van wyk

Delitzsch discussed the Psalm as the Psalm of the seven thunders (F. Delitzsch, Psalms in Commentary on the Old Testament in ten Volumes Vol. V by C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans], 366) but there is no indication in the Psalm of any rain (Shea) and then also the word qol means voice of God and not thunder. Thunder is too remote a meaning for qol. It is not just limited to a thunderstorm as Delitzsch is saying (Delitzsch 367). Later Judaism in the Byzantine period sources has invented a meaning for Psalm 29 to be used on the seventh day of the feast of tabernacles (Sohar section צ) and it is said that seven of the Sephiroth open the flood-gates of heaven (see Delitzsch 368 at footnote).

What is nice about Delitzsch is that he saw the opening verses of the Psalm as a scene in heaven and not on earth. The angels are called upon to give God glory in 29:1-2. For Delitzsch qol is the sound of thunder, the sound of an earthquake and the sound of the waves (Delitzsch 369). For us it is the voice of God. It is not nature but God Himself and the vision that the poet had is of similtudes to storms he experienced before, but just greater.

There is no indication that God will destroy through an army or intermediate agent the northern part of what we know as Lebanon and Syria. There is no agent, but God Himself.  In our analysis, the only time according to the eschatological passages of the Old and New Testament, or Biblical Theology, is when God will perform the executive judgement on the wicked with the righteous taken up in the air safely in heaven. Revelation 20 talkes about the Revelation destruction by fire and Revelation 19 said that the fire is after the second harvest of the weed to destroy it. Revelation 20 says between the first harvest to collect the righteous and the second harvest to collect the wicked (see 19) lies 1000 years. This means that the Psalm is applicable to this time in Revelation 20 when the wicked will be burnt by fire. The Warrior Messiah of the Old Testament is the One who will leave the Heavenly Temple, His throne and go out to fight the wicked and then return with choirs singing that the portals of the Heavenly Jerusalem should lift its Gates so that the Everlasting King, Mighty and full of Glory may enter (Psalm 24). That we do not have a historical event in mind here is clear from the conclusion of the Psalm: the word everlasting (Psalm 29:10) means without limits in time. When this judgement of the wicked is concluded there is peace (Psalm 29:11) forever. That is what is meant by the Psalm in our perspective.

This is an eschatological Psalm fitting in after the millennium when God will execute His Executive Judgement phase. The Judgement motif of biblical Theology has three phases: Investigative Judgement, Confirmative Judgement during the 1000 years and the Executive Judgement at the end of the 1000 years. Biblical prophets and poets sometimes focussed on one of the three or sometimes describe two intertwined. Daniel 7 focussed on the Investigative Judgement and Revelation 20 on the Executive Judgement. One has to be always clear in biblical theology as to what Judgement and what phase is meant in a given passage. Sometimes God carried out historical judgements on people, places or empires and that is normally clearly so understood by the context. Agents on earth is used to carry out these historical judgements. Psalm 29 is not a historical judgement.