From time to time in these studies I have pointed out that there are various types of psalms—the scholars call them genres—and that it is often helpful to remember the type one is dealing with in a specific psalm. Psalm 30 is a thanksgiving psalm. However, it is related to a type of psalm known as a lament, since thanksgiving psalms are usually expressions of praise to God for having heard a lament. In this case, some of the words of the lament are preserved in verses 9 and 10. Thanksgiving psalms are also related to hymns, another genre, since the psalmist's thanksgiving usually takes the form of sung praise.
Elijah’s experience of God’s presence in the gentle whisper is what it is like as we come to the end of Psalm 29. The storm has passed by, and what remains is God himself, as peaceful and as much in control of all things as he has always been. Yet here are two more points.
In looking back over this description of the storm, we notice that its chief feature is "the voice of the LORD," a phrase that occurs seven times. This is not to be overlooked, because it indicates that, although David is describing the majesty of God as it is revealed in a storm, what he is chiefly concerned with is the power of God's voice. And not just thunder. The thunder is only a poetic image for a reality which is infinitely beyond it.
One summer, when my family was young, my wife and I and our children were privileged to spend nearly two months at a chalet partway around the southern edge of Lake Brienz, not far from Interlaken, Switzerland. We were fairly high up the mountainside, so we had a wonderful view over most of Lake Brienz and could even see the edge of Interlaken to our left. The second of the two lakes that meet at Interlaken, the Thunersee, was beyond the city further down the valley.
We might think that a poem this narrowly focused would be dull, but the psalm avoids dullness by two forms of motion. One is the passing of the storm which is described as sweeping over the entire country from north to south (vv. 3-9). The other is the movement from heaven where the psalm begins (vv. 1, 2) to earth where it ends (vv. 10, 11). The more I study it, the less surprised I am that Harry Ironside called Psalm 29 probably the finest poem in the Bible and "one of the loveliest poems I have ever seen.2
