A stormy revelation

At right, an evening sky last summer after a violent rainstorm.

The predicted thunderstorm began as I got up at 4 a.m. the other morning—not my usual rising time, but I’d popped awake. Thanks to a hall nightlight, I didn’t trip over the “guard cat” who sleeps outside our bedroom door (he doesn’t want to miss anyone who might know how to open the refrigerator door and dish out cat food). After tending to his suddenly urgent nutritional needs, I settled in my rocker and opened my Bible to my bookmark in Psalms.

A sticky note indicated I would next read Psalm 29. How appropriate for that rainy morning, because Psalm 29 is the “Storm Song.” All through it are images of a horrific storm battering the land, all representing the might and power of God. The word “voice” is prominent and used seven times—seven rightly indicating “perfection” as the “voice of the Lord.”

As I savored the various images, I paused at verse 9. Another time that I studied this verse, I learned it’s a difficult passage to translate from Hebrew idioms. “Twists the oaks”(NIV) is “makes the deer give birth” in other translations. One explanation is that violent weather steps up animal birthing. “Strips the forests bare” is “discovereth the forests” in KJV. Now, that sent me to my Bible dictionaries. How can God, who created the forests, “discover” them? I learned the original Hebrew word is chasaph, which means “to make bare.” The word is used in Psalm 29:9 for violent weather and in Jeremiah 13:20 for exposing the private parts of someone’s body.

So, bottom line, rather than “dis”-cover, it means "un"-cover, as a violent wind might do in ripping branches off trees. The more modern “strips bare” is the better translation.

This little detour to search out chasaph also reminded me how language has changed in the past four hundred years. And it doesn’t even take four centuries for a language to bend and twist. I have friends who are missionary linguists in a tribal language of South America. They began their work in the 1970s, and forty years later are having to revise some of their work because the language has changed.

As Mark Twain once quipped, the difference between an almost-right word and the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Yes, big difference.

By the time 5 a.m. came, I had about five Bible study reference aids the size of the metropolitan phone book fanned around me—and the cat was scratching at the door. He had to get out and check his territory (I guess that’s what he does as I’m sure he doesn’t wind up at MacDonald’s for coffee and apple pie). And I ended my study grateful for the affirming last verse: “The Lord gives strength to his people.” Four o’clock in the morning is not my best time, but it turned out to be a good time as I dug a little deeper into a lesser-known psalm.