A METEOROLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PSALMS 104, 65, AND 29

Since the flowering of scientific criticism of the Bible in the 19th century, Psalms 104, 65, and 29 have each been the subjects of dozens of interpretive studies. That none has been completely successful is made clear by the continuing, often widely divergent, attempts to find the key to the interpretation of these difficult psalms. Text criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, rhetorical criticism, and the more eclectic or individual approaches of less easily classifiable exegetes have failed to produce that key. It is time for a new approach.; Chapters One through Three treat of Psalms 104, 65, and 19 respectively. Each of these psalms is patently concerned with weather, and though it would seem obvious that any attempt to interpret these psalms ought to pay some serious attention to Syro-Palestinian meteorology, that has never been the case. Each of these psalms is in fact about the coming of the first rains to Palestine after the five months of the rainless summer. That the coming of the first rains was of immediate concern to the community that produced the OT is clear. Its economic base was agriculture, and the coming of the fall rains was a question of life and death. In addition, Psalms 104 and 65 present a form of the creation story not adequately isolated before. Creation involves not only the Lord's ordering of the static universe, but also his renewal of the agricultural cycle by sending the first rains each fall.; The prime concern of this study is to show that paying serious attention to Syro-Palestinian meteorology produces the basic insight that Psalms 104, 65, and 29 are concerned with the coming of the first fall rains to Palestine. This insight combined with a structural analysis which uses the tools of rhetorical criticism uncovers in each of these psalms a completely intelligible argument.