Psalms 18:13

_THE LORD ALSO THUNDERED IN THE HEAVENS, AND THE HIGHEST GAVE HIS VOICE; HAIL STONES AND COALS OF FIRE._ The Lord also thundered ... and the Highest gave his voice - drawn from Exodus 9:23; Hebrew, 'the Lord gave voices and hail, and the fire ran upon the earth.'...

13._Jehovah thundered. _David here repeats the same thing in different words, declaring that God thundered from heaven; and he calls the thunder _the yoke of God, _that we may not suppose it is produced merely by chance or by natural causes, independent of the appointment and will of God. Philosophers, it is true, are well acquainted with the intermediate or secondary causes, from which the thunder proceeds, namely, that when the cold and humid vapours obstruct the dry and hot exhalations in their course upwards, a collision takes place, and by this, together with the noise of the clouds rushing against each other, is produced the rumbling thunder-peal. (405) But David, in describing the phenomena of the atmosphere, rises, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, above the mere phenomena themselves, and represents God to us as the supreme governor of the whole, who, at his will, penetrates...

1-19 The first words, "I will love thee, O Lord, my strength," are the scope and contents of the psalm. Those that truly love God, may triumph in him as their Rock and Refuge, and may with confidence call upon him. It is good for us to observe all the circumstances of a mercy which magnify the power of God and his goodness to us in it. David was a praying man, and God was found a prayer-hearing God. If we pray as he did, we shall speed as he did. God's manifestation of his presence is very fully described, ver. Psalms 18:7. Little appeared of man, but much of God, in these deliverances. It is not possible to apply to the history of the son of Jesse those awful, majestic, and stupendous words which are used through this description of the Divine manifestation. Every part of so solemn a scene of terrors tells us, a greater than David is here. God will not only deliver his people out of th...

Verse Psalms 18:13. _THE LORD ALSO THUNDERED IN THE HEAVENS, AND THE_ _HIGHEST GAVE HIS VOICE_] And then followed the _hail and coals of_ _fire_. The former verse mentioned the _lightning_, with its effects; this gives us the report of the _thunder_, and the increasing _storm_ _of hail and fire_ that attended it. Some think the words _hail-stones and coals of fire_ are entered here by some careless transcribers from the preceding verse; and it is true that they are wanting in the Septuagint and the Arabic, in the parallel place in 2 Samuel, and in _five_ of _Kennicott's_ and _De Rossi's_ MSS. I should rather, with Bishop _Horsley_, suppose them to be an interpolation in the preceding verse: or in that to have been borrowed from this; for this most certainly is their true place....

THE LORD ALSO THUNDERED IN THE HEAVENS - Thunder is often in the Scriptures described as the voice of God. See the magnificent description in Psalms 29:1; compare Job 40:9, “Canst thou thunder with a voice like him?” So 1 Samuel 7:10; 1 Samuel 12:18; Psalms 77:18; Job 37:4. AND THE HIGHEST GAVE HIS VOICE - God, the most exalted Being in the universe, uttered his voice in the thunder; or, the thunder was his voic

EXPOSITION THIS psalm has many characteristics which distinguish it, not only from all that have preceded it in the collection, but from all those which are assigned to David by their titles. In the first pace, it is the longest of such psalms, extending, as it does, to fifty distinguish it, not only from all that have verses, or a hundred and fourteen lines, but from all Hebrew poetry. Next, it is continuous, not broken into strophes (Hengstenberg). Thirdly, it appears, not only in the Psalter, but also in one of the historical books the Second Book of Samuel, in what seems to be a second edition. Further, it is in itself a very remarkable composition, being distinguished alike by "vigour and grace; full of archaic grandeur, and yet free from abrupt transitions and thoughts labouring for utterance, such as make some of the earlier psalms difficult to understand" ('Speaker's Commentary')...

THE LORD ALSO THUNDERED IN THE HEAVENS,.... By his apostles and ministers, some of which were Boanergeses, sons of thunder, whose ministry was useful to shake the consciences of men, and bring them to a sense of themselves, Mark 3:17; AND THE HIGHEST GAVE HIS VOICE; the same with thunder; for thunder is often called the voice of the Lord, Job 37:5; compare with this Psalms 68:11; the Targum interprets it, "he lifted up his word"; the same effects as before follow, HAIL [STONES] AND COALS OF FIRE; Psalms 18:12....

Psalms 18:1. _I will love thee, O Lord, my strength._ «I do love thee, and I will love thee yet more and more. I bind myself to thee for the future as well as the present.» Psalms 18:2. _The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower._ Note how David delights to heap up poetic imagery to describe his God. They who glory in the Lord would fain speak worthily of him; and because there is no one object in nature that can fully set him forth, they mention many, as David does here. Like him, if we would convey even a faint idea of what God is to us, we must think of all things that are strong, and worthy of our confidence, and putting them all together,

Psalms 18 The Story of God's Power in Behalf of Christ _ 1. In the jaws of death (Psalms 18:1)_ 2. God appearing and delivering (Psalms 18:7) 3. God gave Him glory (Psalms 18:19) 4. His enemies subdued (Psalms 18:28) 5. The head of the nations (Psalms 18:43) Psalms 18:1. This is another remarkable Psalm. Though David wrote it not everyt

XVIII. See p. 367 for the reasons which make it impossible to ascribe this Ps. to David. Even scholars who hold traditional views admit that he cannot have written it as it stands, and that additional matter has been interpolated by later scribes. The language, which is Aramaic in its colouring, confirms the view that it is late, and so does the theophany in Psalms 18:3 when compared with Deuteronomy 32. Possibly a later writer composed it and put it by a very permissible license in David's mouth. If so, he paints David not as he was, but as a later age conceived him to be, a warrior on the one hand, a strict observer of the Law upon the other. The portrait would then agree with that given in Chronicles. It is, however, quite as likely that the Ps. is intended to glorify the success of a hero in the Maccabean age, the first time known in which legal piety was united with leadership in ba...