Psalm 18/Overview/Background

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  • David is in a binding relationship to YHWH (a “covenant”) whereby commandments and protection are exchanged for obedience (Exod 20:6; Deut 5:10; 6:5; 7:9; 1 Kg 3:3; Neh 1:5).
  • In the Psalms, the king was YHWH's representative on earth (cf. Psalm 2:11–12; Keel 1997, 246–247), such that The king's enemies are God's enemies: "The Israelite king's view of his enemies can be compared with that of other sacred kings. The Assyrian king, for example, considered his enemies as enemies of his gods, guilty of impious rebellion” (Eaton 1975, 141).
  • YHWH is sometimes portrayed as the Divine Warrior in battle  (see Longman and Reid 1995, 31–48) of the Ancient Near East. The Divine Warrior was a common creation myth in Syria-Palestine whereby, crucially, “a Divine Warrior goes forth to battle the chaotic monsters, variously called Sea, Death, Leviathan, Tannin; (2) the world of nature responds to the wrath of the Divine Warrior and the forces of chaos are defeated...” (see Oden 1992, 1164).
  • God's manifestation of his presence usually took the form of a thunderstorm (see Hiebert 1992, 508; Walton 2009, 333; COS I:260n.160; Josh 10:11; Job 38:22–23; Isa 30:30).
  • Due to its association with death and Sheol (cf. Yuan 2023, 127–128), water was a symbol of the wicked and of enemy armies (May 1955).
  • The winds hailed from four directions and were thought to be produced by divine wings, thus the earth is said to have “wings” (Isa 11:12; Ezek 7:2) (see Noegel 2017, 19–20). “Wings” therefore became conceptually linked with, and virtually a byword for, directions.
  • In Biblical Cosmology, the earth was perceived as a a flat disk that sat above the Chaos-waters (see Keel 1997, 40). It was upheld by its “foundations” (Isa 24:18; Jer. 31:37; Micah 6:2, etc.), which were most likely mountains (cf. Deut 32.22). Thus the “foundations” of the earth and the “foundations of the mountains” are co-referential. Heaven was perceived of as a solid vault from which the sun, moon and stars hung (Gen 1.14–17; see Bartelmus 2006, 2011). This vault (cf. Ps 19:1) kept the chaos waters from above from flooding the earth. Above the chaos-waters from above, in the highest heavens, sat the Lord (Ps 29:10).