The Flood in Psalm 29

The Flood

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^{Ps 29:10} YHWH reigned before the Flood יְ֭׳הוָה לַמַּבּ֣וּל יָשָׁ֑ב

Yes, today we’re continuing our exploration of the word מַבּוּל mabbul ‘Flood’ by starting with the one place it occurs in the Bible outside Genesis. That’s in the second-to-last verse of Psalm 29. You see its first half above; here are both halves of this line, so you can see the poetic parallelism it demonstrates. That will be important for our understanding of the verse.

YHWH reigned before the Flood                         יְ֭׳הוָה לַמַּבּ֣וּל יָשָׁ֑ב

YHWH will reign as king forever                 וַיֵּ֥שֶׁב יְ֝׳הוָ֗ה מֶ֣לֶךְ לְעוֹלָֽם׃

To set the parallels in front of you schematically:

• YHWH appears in both lines.

• He is the subject of the verb ישׁב y-sh-b ‘sit’ in both lines.

• By adding the word מֶ֣לֶךְ mélekh ‘king’, line 2 clarifies that he is “sitting” on a throne.

• The one contrast between the lines is לְעוֹלָֽם l’olam ‘forever’ in line 2 corresponding to לַמַּבּ֣וּל la-mabbul ‘to the Flood’ in Line 1.

I’ll add that if we were reading prose, both verbs would be pointing (in different ways) to the past tense “he reigned.” Biblical poetry often uses different verb forms without regard to what “tense” they would indicate if the text was telling a story, perhaps for the sake of variety or perhaps just so the lines will sound a certain way.

One more thing that I think is important to note. This is from the introduction to the psalm in the Jewish Study Bible, edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler, who are also responsible for the notes to the book of Psalms:

A number of themes and linguistic usages that are also found in Ugaritic literature, as well as the mention of northern locations (Lebanon and Sirion, v. 6), have led modern scholars to see this psalm as an adaptation of a Ugaritic hymn to Baal (or to Hadad, the storm-god).

Fun fact: Though I didn’t mention it when I previously discussed the enclitic mem, there’s one in v. 6 of Psalm 29 as well. The Masoretes who punctuated it did not realize that, like mashḥitam of Gen 6:13, va-yarqidem of Ps 29:6 does not have a “them” suffix. “Lebanon and Sirion” are actually parallel to each other in the two halves of v. 6 of this psalm.

I hope to have the chance to write about this psalm at greater length one day. (In the meantime, I can come and teach it to your group!) For now, let me share with you a bit more about the ancient Near Eastern background to the psalm, from H.-J. Kraus in the Continental Commentary series: