Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 29:1 - 29:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The opening strophe calls upon the celestial spirits to praise Jahve; for a revelation of divine glory is in preparation, which, in its first movements, they are accounted worthy to behold, for the roots of everything that takes place in this world are in the invisible world. It is not the mighty of the earth, who are called in Psa 82:6 בְּנֵי עֶלְיֹון, but the angels, who are elsewhere called בְּנֵי אֱלֹהִים (e.g., Job 2:1), that are here, as in Psa 89:7, called בְּנֵי אֵלִים. Since אֵלִים never means God, like אלהים (so that it could be rendered sons of the deity), but gods, Exo 15:11, Dan. 9:36, the expression בְּנֵי אֵלִים must be translated as a double plural from בֶּן־אֵל, after the analogy of בָּתֵּי כְלָאִים, Isa 42:22, from בֵּית כֶּלֶא (Ges. §108, 3), “sons of God,” not “sons of gods.” They, the God-begotten, i.e., created in the image of God, who form with God their Father as it were one family (vid., Genesis S. 1212), are here called upon to give unto God glory and might (the primary passage is Deu 32:3), i.e., to render back to Him cheerfully and joyously in a laudatory recognition, as it were by an echo, His glory and might, which are revealed and to be revealed in the created world, and to give unto Him the glory of His name, i.e., to praise His glorious name (Psa 72:19) according its deserts. הָבוּ in all three instances has the accent on the ultima according to rule (cf. on the other hand, Job 6:22). הַדְרַת קֹדֶשׁ is holy vestments, splendid festal attire, 2Ch 20:21, cf. Psa 110:3.
(Note: The reading proposed in B. Berachoth 30b בְּחֶרְדַּת (with holy trembling) has never been a various reading; nor has בְּחַצְרֹת, after which the lxx renders it ἐν αὐλῇ ἁγίᾳ αὐτοῦ.)
A revelation of the power of God is near at hand. The heavenly spirits are to prepare themselves for it with all the outward display of which they are capable. If Psa 28:2 were a summons to the church on earth, or, as in Psa 96:9, to the dwellers upon the earth, then there ought to be some expression to indicate the change in the parties addressed; it is, therefore, in Psa 28:2 as in Psa 28:1, directed to the priests of the heavenly היכל. In the Apocalypse, also, the songs of praise and trumpeting of the angels precede the judgments of God.