Note from Andy
This marks 18 of 150 poems, a humble 12%. It has been an illuminating journey working on these psalms since this Summer. Psalm 74 (the one about the leviathan), 139 (the one about God’s omnipresence), and 69 (one of the crucifixion Psalms) are coming up next.
If you are just joining us or someone has shared this piece with you, the Darkling Psalter is a project to translate all 150 Psalms and write a poem and brief commentary for each one.
Here are the links for Psalms 1, 8, 14, 19, 22, 32, 34, 46, 51, 53, 73, 84, 86, 88, 130 (translation), 130 (poem), 137, and 142.
Rendition of Psalm 29
Come, sons of God.
God is glory and abundance and weight,
Give him the honor due his name.
Wrap yourselves in his holiness as a garment
And bow before him.
The voice of God hovers over the waters;
The glory of God thunders over the sea.
The voice of the Lord is power itself;
The voice of the Lord bears its own honor.
The voice of the Lord shatters trees,
God breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip and dance like a calf
And Sirion shake like a wild ox.
The voice of the Lord gouges out flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
And makes the wilderness of Kadesh twist and tremble.
The voice of God makes the deer writhe in birth,
And fells the forests,
And all in his temple cry, “Glory!”
The Lord dwells in the flood.
He is enthroned as king forever.
May the Lord give strength as a gift to his people.
May he bless them with peace and flourishing.
Notes on the Translation
Note #1: Psalm 29 and Genesis 1
This psalm is in dialogue with Genesis 1. You can see the obvious parallel between the repetition of the actions of the voice of God in creation and the actions of the voice of God in Psalm 29.
God’s voice creates. Theologians call them “speech-acts” for with God to speak is to make, to cause to be, to take action.
I drew out this connection a bit further by rendering verse 3 as:
“The voice of God hovers over the waters”
I inserted the word “hovers” here even though the word is not present in the Hebrew text of Psalm 29 in order to underscore the connection I see between this verse and Genesis 1:2, which reads:
“And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
When we get into some of the things the psalm says the voice of the Lord does (see note #2), we’ll see that Genesis 1 and Psalm 29 have even more in common. Genesis 1 is a paean to God’s absolute supremacy in creation. His voice orders all things and brooks no rivals. In many ways, Psalm 29 is a rumination on those very traits of God and ends with a prayer that that same strength and order-making peace would flow to his people.
Note #2: What does God have against the cedars of Lebanon?
“The voice of the Lord shatters trees,
God breaks the cedars of Lebanon.”
At one level, this is a poetic image that the power of God’s voice—which the psalmist has just declared the be vast and strong—is so great that something that is also vast and strong, the renowned cedars of Lebanon, can be made to shatter like glass by something of greater power and permanence, the voice of God.
But the meaning of this image goes even deeper than that. If we look more closely into the meaning of the cedars of Lebanon, we can find echoes of other interesting meanings created by juxtaposing God’s voice with the cedars.
In particular, look at Ezekiel 31, where the cedars of Lebanon is compared to the might of the Assyrian empire.
“Behold Assyria was like a cedar in Lebanon,
with beautiful branches and forest shade,
and of towering height,
its top among the clouds…
All the birds of the heavens
made their nests in its boughs…”
So, at least in Ezekiel, the cedars of Lebanon can also be used to refer to empires in rebellion against God. The “this is not just about trees” connection is made deeper by the next line in the psalm:
“He makes Lebanon skip and dance like a calf
And Sirion shake like a wild ox.”
Deuteronomy 3:9 tells us that “the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir…” So when the psalmist is talking about “Sirion,” he is actually talking about Mount Hermon (which is just inland from the cities of ancient Lebanon).
If you remember the notes on Psalm 22, you’ll remember that Mount Hermon (and its bulls) are symbolically connected to the forces arrayed against God. And if we are talking about mountains and nation-states bouncing, skipping, and dancing, we aren’t really talking about skipping for joy.
That is earthquake language.
So these verses are really saying that God can make the forces who oppose him topple and fall with only his voice. Which is not much of a challenge for God.
[And just one further note on this. The ESV inserts a paragraph break between verse 6 (“and Sirion like a wild ox”) and verse 7 (“the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire,”) but I think they belong together so I have removed the paragraph break in my translation. The verb the ESV translates as “flashes” is chatsav and it appears 29 times in the Bible. It means to “hew, dig out, or cleave” as one might dig a hole. Every other time that word appears, the ESV translates it using digging words. However, here they render it as “flashing.” I suppose the reason for that is that “flashing” is a word we might use to describe a burst of fire. But if verses 6 and 7 are really talking about mountains and earthquakes, then continuing to translate chatsav with digging words makes sense because it taps into the image of a volcano, an image that is associated with God elsewhere in the Bible too (see Psalm 18). I translated it as “The voice of the Lord gouges out flames of fire.”]
Notes on the Poem
Partly, this poem is about what it means to be called to something. What does it mean when you hear the voice of God that breaks the cedars and you believe it tells you to go and do something, gives you a mission, a calling?
The poem approaches this topic through the lens of the life of John Calvin.
The Calling of John Calvin
John Calvin (1509-1564) is a much-misunderstood figure in church history. The brief summaries of his work in popular history textbooks are laughable. They leave out his greatest contributions to church history and distort his most notorious ones.
Calvin lived during the time the Protestant reformation was spreading like wildfire through Europe. The medieval Catholic church had seen its share of revival movements, but over the centuries as its power grew, its corruptions reached a breaking point. Martin Luther was not the first to protest the corruption he saw in his day, but when he nailed his 95 points of disputation to the church door in Wittenberg on Halloween in 1517, the religious landscape of Europe—which had already become a tinderbox—caught fire. What history calls the Reformation began in earnest.
John Calvin was born in France in 1509. As young man, he was exposed to the writings of Luther and eventually declared himself for the protestant cause and fled France for his life. While on the run, he wrote the first edition of what would become a major part of his life’s work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Institutes (and its author) quickly became sought after theological commodities for the nascent Protestant movement.
From France, he sought refuge in Strasbourg, but had to detour through Geneva to avoid a war that had broken out along the northeastern border. While he was in Geneva, the reformer William Farel, a leader of the reformation in Geneva, heard that he was passing through the city, found out where he was staying, and confronted the young theologian. Farel commanded Calvin to settle in Geneva and help the cause of the Reformation there—even pronouncing a curse that God would damn Calvin if he did not stay in Geneva and nurture the fledgling Protestant movement. Farel knew Geneva was in desperate need of trained thinkers and preachers (having just exiled the Catholic clergy who were also the city’s intellectual class).
Calvin took Farel’s challenge seriously. He changed his plans and took a post as one of the city’s preachers. Calvin came into a tumultuous situation and into a city whose conversion to Protestantism was as-yet only skin deep. Calvin set about the work of the reformation, but encountered strong opposition even while his work bore fruit. Geneva was not yet ready for him. Men gave their dogs the names Luther and Calvin in order to kick them. Calvin was hated and persecuted and then after three years the city council ordered him to leave.
Calvin obeyed and continued his aborted trip to Strasbourg. His dream was to write and preach and live a retiring life in the ivory tower of scholarship, correspondence, and his own thinking.
Yet, after three years in Strasbourg, Geneva summoned him back. They realized that the reforms Calvin had initiated in the city were exactly what it needed after all and that the Protestant cause in Geneva could no longer do without him. However, Calvin did not want to return. In fact, he wrote to his friend and fellow reformer, Martin Bucer, that going back to Geneva would “be like going to the cross.” Yet, that is exactly what he did.
Calvin spent the rest of his life and ministry in Geneva and his work there made him one of the great figures in the history of the church.
When I think of painful and difficult callings, I think of John Calvin. This poem uses the events of his life as the seedbed for a meditation on calling and the voice of God and what it might look like to take up one’s cross and spend one’s life in service of others.
Poem
I.
These three years the pain hasn’t lessened
But it visits me less. In Geneva,
Men gave their dogs my name to kick them.
I was hit with a bottle,
But do not know who threw it.
When the children found me
On the way to chapel, they made small jokes
Like those a razor makes.
There were always anxieties buzzing
Like flies. I waved them away
And they returned in the wake of my hand.
I was never good at hiding what I suffered.
My head ached continually. I barely ate.
At night I dreamed I was carried to the pulpit
But could find nothing to say.
Though I never doubted your love,
And cast myself upon your word,
I moved from fear to fear to fear.
When those same people knelt
To take the bread and wine
It was my own bloodcoin I gave them.
I placed the bread in their mouths
As my own flesh.
They cursed me and thrived.
They dipped their fingers into my wounds
And mourned and hated me for it.
Repentance ran like quicksilver
From house to house those years.
Men swore themselves to Christ.
Everywhere things burst to life.
But I was cast out.
II.
In Strasbourg, you have been generous.
I live beside the baker and his bread wakes me
Through the window every morning.
The coffee is here. My books are here.
I can write. The room is quiet.
Beyond the room, Idelette is making breakfast.
Her children call me father. In the garden,
We have laid bulbs in the ground
And they will soon return, first the snowdrops,
Then daffodils, then crocuses, then all the others
Until we cut the last blooms in late Summer.
In the afternoon, I will have a glass of wine and walk.
In the evening, I will preach again
And pray with my small congregation
Of Frenchmen who have also fled here.
I do not know if this peace is a reward
Or a punishment for having suffered
And wanting it to end.
I gather it with both hands nonetheless
And wait for it to grow, like the flowers.
III.
When the letter from Geneva came,
I prayed and could not sleep.
I paced in the garden behind the house.
I raised my empty hands to you and fire fell
On the small maple I planted three years ago,
But it did not burn.
I staggered back, “My God,
My whisper of flame,” I begged.
“Send another.”
I came to myself on the ground,
Thrumming, shoeless, dazed.
The dawn was rising, but
All the birds had gone silent.
I heard a voice call my name
And turned but no one was there.
I answered, “Here I am.”
Things inside me stilled
And I thought: enough.
Read more from Andy on Still Point (reflections on deconstruction and why people leave Christianity) and Three Things (a monthly digest of worthy resources to help people connect with culture, neighbor, and God).
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There is so much power in this project! Thank you for sharing all of this with us; I'm speechless and will no doubt have to read this several times through to get all the wealth from it. Blessings!
Striking juxtaposition of the power (and potential danger) of God's voice and the one who worships Him wrapping themselves in His holiness. I really enjoyed the poem, especially the eucharistic imagery in the second stanza and the garden metaphors. Thank you for sharing!