Discovery BoxPsalms 57:5 
Context57:5 Rise up 1 above the sky, O God!
May your splendor cover the whole earth! 2
Psalms 57:11
Context57:11 Rise up 3 above the sky, O God!
May your splendor cover the whole earth! 4
Psalms 78:23
Context78:23 He gave a command to the clouds above,
and opened the doors in the sky.
Psalms 99:1
Context99:1 The Lord reigns!
The nations tremble. 6
He sits enthroned above the winged angels; 7
the earth shakes. 8
Psalms 104:6
Context104:6 The watery deep covered it 9 like a garment;
the waters reached 10 above the mountains. 11
Psalms 108:5
Context108:5 Rise up 12 above the sky, O God!
May your splendor cover the whole earth! 13
Psalms 148:4
Context148:4 Praise him, O highest heaven,
and you waters above the sky! 14
1 tn Or “be exalted.”
2 tn Heb “over all the earth [be] your splendor.” Though no verb appears, the tone of the statement is a prayer or wish. (Note the imperative form in the preceding line.)
3 tn Or “be exalted.”
4 tn Heb “over all the earth [be] your splendor.” Though no verb appears, the tone of the statement is a prayer or wish. (Note the imperative form in the preceding line.)
5 sn Psalm 99. The psalmist celebrates the Lord’s just rule and recalls how he revealed himself to Israel’s leaders.
6 tn The prefixed verbal forms in v. 1 are understood here as indicating the nations’ characteristic response to the reality of the
7 sn Winged angels (Heb “cherubs”). Cherubs, as depicted in the OT, possess both human and animal (lion, ox, and eagle) characteristics (see Ezek 1:10; 10:14, 21; 41:18). They are pictured as winged creatures (Exod 25:20; 37:9; 1 Kgs 6:24-27; Ezek 10:8, 19) and serve as the very throne of God when the ark of the covenant is in view (Ps 99:1; see Num 7:89; 1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2; 2 Kgs 19:15). The picture of the Lord seated on the cherubs suggests they might be used by him as a vehicle, a function they carry out in Ezek 1:22-28 (the “living creatures” mentioned here are identified as cherubs in Ezek 10:20). In Ps 18:10 the image of a cherub serves to personify the wind.
8 tn The Hebrew verb נוּט (nut) occurs only here in the OT, but the meaning can be determined on the basis of the parallelism with רָגַז (ragaz, “tremble”) and evidence from the cognate languages (see H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena [SBLDS], 121).
9 tc Heb “you covered it.” The masculine suffix is problematic if the grammatically feminine noun “earth” is the antecedent. For this reason some emend the form to a feminine verb with feminine suffix, כִּסַּתָּה (kisattah, “[the watery deep] covered it [i.e., the earth]”), a reading assumed by the present translation.
10 tn Heb “stood.”
11 sn Verse 6 refers to the condition described in Gen 1:2 (note the use of the Hebrew term תְּהוֹם [tÿhom, “watery deep”] in both texts).
12 tn Or “be exalted.”
13 tn Heb “over all the earth [be] your splendor.” Though no verb appears, the tone of the statement is a prayer or wish. (Note the imperative form in the preceding line.)
14 sn The “water” mentioned here corresponds to the “waters above” mentioned in Gen 1:7. See also Ps 104:3. For a discussion of the picture envisioned by the psalmist, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World, 47.
