“Ascribe to Yahweh, you heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due His name;
worship Yahweh
in the splendor of His holiness.
The voice of the Lord is above the waters.
The God of glory thunders—
the Lord, above vast waters,
the voice of the Lord in power,
the voice of the Lord in splendor.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
and Sirion, like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord flashes flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth
and strips the woodlands bare.
In His temple all cry, “Glory!”
The Lord sat enthroned at the flood;
the Lord sits enthroned, King forever.
The Lord gives His people strength;
the Lord blesses His people with peace.”
// King David, ca. 1000 BC
The psalm above is more commonly known today as Psalm 29. No doubt, David wrote this psalm as he was observing and reflecting upon the landscape of Lebanon as he traveled about the range of Mt. Hermon.
Nimrod’s Fortress at the base of the Anti-Lebanon Mountain Range, named as such because it lies against the Lebanon border. Mt. Hermon (referred to as Sirion in Psalm 29:6), is in this mountain range. Strewn about the ruins of the fortress are dozens of mighty cedar trees, gigantic and thick-trunked, yet helpless to lightning strikes.
It might have been that David was traveling during a great storm; but even in the absence of a storm, the splintered cedar trees, rocky ground, and uneven landscape in the region lend evidence to the natural phenomena that occur in Lebanon. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary has this to say of the landscape:
“The tall and large cedars, especially of Lebanon, are shivered, utterly broken. The waving of the mountain forests before the wind is expressed by the figure of skipping or leaping. … The lightning, like flakes and splinters hewed from stone or wood, flies through the air. … especially Kadesh, south of Judea, is selected as another scene of the display of divine power, as a vast and desolate region impresses the mind, like mountains, with images of grandeur.”
What does is mean to ascribe strength to God?
To “ascribe” means “to attribute,” or “to regard one thing as originating from another.” In the same way…
