According to midrash on Exodus, the Shekinah, the most accessible of the Divine emanations, descended from Heaven and spoke with Moses from the middle of a rose-bearing thornbush. The Hebrew text of the poem is accompanied by a painting depicting the Burning Bush, the miracle through which God first revealed himself to Moses. Each of the eighteen occurrences of the divine Name are written in the sky blue associated with the special t'chailet color used in particular ancient Israelite ritual objects. Thus each naming is associated with a unique way in which God preserves, protects and heals Israel.
Since no word of the Hebrew Bible can be considered redundant, each utterance must have a unique meaning. The midrash observes that God's name is included eighteen times in the course of the psalm. The alternating lines of gold and text suggest the punctuated rhythm of the melody with which this psalm is sung. Psalm 29 has been sung during the procession of the Torah scrolls from reading table to Ark on Sabbath and Festival morning synagogue services, and is also included in the prayers that welcome the Sabbath on Friday evening, and in the daily Ma'ariv, or evening prayer service. The illuminations accompanying Psalm 29 depict the Burning Bush and the Parting of the Red Sea, the two central miracles in which the Almighty overturned the laws of nature to bring the nascent Children of Israel from slavery into freedom. This is why awe is compatible with both love and joy. Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object but, on the contrary, draws us near to it. Fear is “a surrender of the succors which reason offers” awe is the acquisition of insights which the world holds in store for us. Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery. Heschel writes:įear is the anticipation and expectation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good. Rather, he reflects, the overwhelming divine power manifest in the most fearsome phenomena of nature should encourage us to approach, to rely upon God. Witnessing that power, the Psalmist looks toward the Divine for strength and peace his awe at the divine power manifest in the natural world is not fear, in the sense of terror. The crash of a lightening storm may shock us, the ferocity of an earthquake may shake the earth under our very feet, but the power of the eternal Almighty who created the entire cosmos dominates all the forces of nature.