There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured coals burned forth from it.
David has just cried out to God from the grip of death. What comes next is a storm. Smoke, fire and burning coals pour out of God Himself. The picture raises two questions. What does such violent language say about God? And what event is large enough to match it?
The fire does not come out of nowhere. It answers a cry.
Psalm 18 is of the deepest interest for its interpretation. It presents the sufferings of Christ as the centre of all the deliverance of Israel. His cry there called out upon Israel all the favour of God in power... The great principle developed — and it is a precious one — is the cry to a trusted God in distress, which He surely hears.
One writer reads the shaking and the fire from God's mouth as God's answer to Christ's cry, and as the way He avenges His people.
This is Messiah's praise for deliverance or resurrection... His deliverance is God's answer to His cry. The earth then shakes. As the place of assembly shook at the voice of the church in Jerusalem. (Acts 4) For the judge of all the earth will avenge His own elect that cry to Him. The Spirit of His mouth and the brightness of His coming will do this. (verses 8, 12; 2 Thessalonians 2:8)
The same smoke once covered Sinai and shut people out of God's sanctuary.
"The sanctuary was filled with smoke." Wrath fills that sanctuary, so man is shut out and cannot get in. Sinai too was all smoke. "Smoke went up from his nostrils." Scripture uses this again and again as a figure of consuming fire, the opposite of grace that clears transgressions away.
Another writer traces the same fire to God's holiness, and hears it carried into the world by preaching:
These verses remind us how God stepped in for Israel when they came out of Egypt, and how He will one day step in to judge the world. But they bear directly on what He did after the death of the Lord Jesus, when He raised Him from among the dead. This is the fire of God's holiness, expressed by His word — the word His disciples preached with zeal after His resurrection. "He bowed the heavens and came down" in great compassion and power, though a veil really did hide His presence, so that unbelievers did not see it.
The storm has already had visible instalments — the earth shaking at the cross, and again at the tomb. The full shaking is still ahead.
This is a magnificent celebration of the glory and almighty majesty of the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, shown when He raised Him from the dead in answer to His cry (Ephesians 1:17, 19, 20)... God gave a first instalment and sample of what is described here. The angel of Jehovah came down, the earth quaked, and the guards of the grave that had held the body of the now awakened Christ shook and became like dead men from fear (Matthew 28). An earlier sign of the same mighty power came when the rocks split and the graves opened, as Jesus gave up His spirit after His last loud cry (Matthew 27)... But beyond these, nature's eye has yet seen no further display of the terrible majesty of Messiah's God. The shaking of both earth and heaven that this passage speaks of has not yet happened (Hebrews 12:26-27). When it comes, judgment on the enemies of Jehovah's Christ will follow, and none will resist or escape it (verse 14).
Read that way, the empty tomb itself serves notice on the world:
Smoke and devouring fire belong above all to the judgment, yet the resurrection of Christ is itself a warning of coming judgment (John 16:9-11).
The verse sits inside a family of passages that all sing of God coming out to save.
We find the same in Psalm 18:8-20, but there it deals with the enemies of the last days... So all these passages, like Habakkuk's prayer, sing of how God stepped in to save His people in the past. That past rescue is a pledge of the deliverance in the last days.
That is why the psalm tells David's own escape in language far larger than his life:
David's rescue from Saul is told here in a style that shows another and far greater deliverance in view through it.
- Cry — The smoke and fire answer a cry from distress. A trusted God hears.
- Fire — Smoke from the nostrils is a fixed picture of consuming judgment. It is the opposite of grace, which clears wrongdoing away.
- Mouth — Fire from His mouth means He destroys by a word (2 Thessalonians 2:8).
- Sample — The earth quaking at the cross and at the empty tomb is a first instalment of this majesty, already given.
- Pledge — Every past rescue, David's included, comes in oversized language. Each one guarantees the final deliverance still ahead.
And he bowed the heavens, and came down; and darkness was under his feet.
God leaves heaven itself and stoops to earth, with cloud and gloom beneath His feet. Commentators read this descent as far larger than the rescue of one man, and they differ over which coming of God it describes.
This coming down is an answer. One writer traces the whole scene back to a voice raised in trouble.
Psalm 18 is of the deepest interest for what it means. It presents the sufferings of Christ as the centre of all the deliverance of Israel. His cry there called out upon Israel all the favour of God in power. The great principle it develops — and it is a precious one — is the cry to a trusted God in distress, which He surely hears. Of this Christ is the example, as elsewhere.
To bow the heavens is to bend them low. The picture belongs to a group of three verses where earth and sky both react to God.
The first three show us God as the Almighty, the earth and the heavens bearing witness to His power alike. The earth trembles before Him down to the foundations of the hills. His wrath is a consuming fire. The heavens bow under Him as He comes down. Nature's witness to His presence is easy to grasp and simple in itself, yet it still has lessons for us that would serve us well if we learned them better. Creation is not only a mirror of divine perfections: His power runs all through it, and it is sensitive to His slightest movement.
One writer hears two very different arrivals in this stooping down, and fills in what the second one will look like.
Bowing the heavens and coming down is perfectly true of the Son of God who once came in gracious childhood. But this is prophetic too of His coming down to Israel in the time of their deepest need. He comes in judgment against their enemies. He touches the mountains (a picture of higher authorities) and makes them smoke. He flashes like lightning to scatter them, and brings destruction by the arrows of His swift judgment.
The One who comes is not seen. Another writer takes the gloom beneath His feet as a statement about who can and cannot recognise God at work.
"He bowed the heavens and came down." Bowing the heavens speaks of the great voluntary humbling of the Lord of glory. He came to earth in lowly grace at His first coming, but He will also come in solemn judgment at the end of the tribulation. "Thick darkness was under His feet" tells us the character of His judgment: the eyes of the ungodly do not see it.
Why would God cover Himself when He acts in judgment?
Yet in judgment God is hidden more than displayed: it is His "strange work." So He makes the darkness His hiding place. Darkness is His opposite, since He is love and light. Yet He uses it as His tent, and He is in it without being it. Judgment, where it comes, is at its most awful a separation from Him, from the Light — though it is not only that. From these thick clouds the light flashes out, hailstones and coals of fire; for God is displayed even in the judgment that separates from Him.
Writers do not settle on one event. Some tie the descent to the empty tomb, and see only a sample of it so far.
Verses 7-19 are a sublime celebration of the glory and almighty majesty of the God of the Lord Jesus Christ. He showed that majesty when He raised Jesus from the dead in answer to His cry. A first instalment and sample of what is described here came at the tomb. The angel of the Lord came down, the earth quaked, and the guards of the grave that had held the body of the now awakened Christ shook and became like dead men with fear. But beyond this there has still been no further display, visible to the eye of nature, of the terrible majesty of Messiah's God.
Others point the passage forward, and read the past rescue as a guarantee of a later one.
We find the same coming of the Lord in Psalm 18:8-20, but there it concerns the enemies of the last days in particular. All these passages sing of God's past intervention to save His people as a pledge of the deliverance in the last days.
- Cry. The descent is an answer, not an accident. A cry of distress trusted God, and God moved.
- Came down. Bowing the heavens shows a God who bends His own dwelling to reach the earth. Creation is sensitive to His slightest movement.
- Concealed. Thick darkness under His feet means the ungodly do not see the judgment they are living through. Hiding is His "strange work."
- Contrary. He is light, yet uses darkness as His tent — and even out of those clouds the light flashes and He is displayed.
- Coming. Commentators differ on the event. Some read the resurrection of Christ, some His first coming in lowly grace, some the rescue of Israel still to come. What has happened so far is only a sample.
And he rode upon a cherub and did fly; yea, he flew fast upon the wings of the wind.
David's song celebrates a rescue. At its centre God Himself moves — He comes down riding a cherub, carried on the wind. The picture raises questions. What is a cherub? Why does God appear this way? Whose rescue is finally in view?
The psalm opens with David hemmed in by enemies and crying to God.
In Psalm 18 David celebrates his rescue from all his enemies, especially from Saul. God heard his prayer and appeared from His holy temple to deliver him. The earth trembled as its Maker came out to rescue the one He loved. David here pictures the true King, who bore all the hatred of ungodly men. "He rode on a cherub and flew; He came swiftly on the wings of the wind." It is as though the King eternal left His place in His sanctuary for a time, and appeared to judge His enemies. Riding on a cherub and flying seems to explain a phrase used of the mercy seat: 1 Chronicles 28:18 speaks of the chariot of the cherubim, spreading their wings over the ark. Here the throne suggests the chariot on which the Lord rides, the cherubim bearing Him on in unstoppable power throughout His creation.
The cherub is not decoration. It runs from the first book of the Bible to the last with a settled meaning.
The cherub appears first in Eden and last in the closing book of the New Testament. All the way through it is tied to divine government — the throne of God ruling over the earth. The ark and mercy seat are still this throne in relation to Israel. The cherubim there are made of one piece with the mercy seat, and their faces look to the place where the atoning blood is sprinkled before God. God was said to dwell between the cherubim, and they express the righteousness of the throne in action. Their fourfold character — lion, ox, the face of a man, and flying eagle — represents power, patient service, intelligence, and yet a way of working no one can trace. So riding on the cherub here shows judicial action, and "the wings of the wind" combine the speed and power of the storm blast.
The cherubim that carry God out in judgment are the same ones that bend over the ark's golden lid, the place of sprinkled blood.
In Ezekiel they form part of the chariot-throne where the glory of the Lord sat when He came to judge Jerusalem. So in Psalm 18:10 "He rode on a cherub and flew," when He executed judgments on behalf of His anointed. Here too we see the responsibility of man in the tablets of stone that were in the ark. That responsibility is upheld according to the judicial estimate of God's righteousness in the holiest place. We can say it has been perfectly met in Christ — the mercy seat on which the glory of God now rests.
Commentators read this storm scene as reaching back to Israel's escape from Egypt and forward to Christ.
These verses take us back to the deliverance God worked at the Red Sea. There we learn the first great result of Christ entering into the sufferings of God's people. The psalm describes the judgment on Pharaoh and his army with magnificent figures drawn from nature in upheaval — earthquakes, fire, wind, thick clouds, hail and lightning.
The forward look ties the shaking earth to a specific morning.
Here the psalm celebrates the glory and almighty majesty of the God of the Lord Jesus Christ. He showed that majesty when He raised Jesus from the dead in answer to His cry. A sample and pledge of this came when the angel of the Lord came down. The earth quaked, and the guards of the grave shook and became like dead men with fear. Until that moment the grave had held the body of the now awakened Christ. But beyond these, nature's eye has so far seen no further display of the terrible majesty of Messiah's God.
Speed and concealment stand side by side in this scene.
These verses point to the way God will yet intervene in judging the world. But they bear directly on His intervention after the death of the Lord Jesus, when He raised Him from among the dead… Verse 10 is figurative. Cherubim are connected with the government of God, swift in action, as "the wings of the wind" shows. Darkness is made His secret place, with His canopy of dark waters and thick clouds. This stresses that no one can trace His dealings.
- Throne. The cherub always belongs to God's government — His throne ruling over the earth. Riding one means judicial action, not travel.
- Throne answered. The same cherubim look down on the mercy seat and the sprinkled blood. What God's righteousness needs has been perfectly met in Christ.
- Throne in motion. The King leaves His sanctuary and comes out for the one He loves. The wings of the wind add the speed and power of a storm blast.
- Throne veiled. Darkness is His secret place — His dealings stay unsearchable even as He acts.
- Throne coming. The Red Sea and the earthquake at the tomb are only samples. The full display of that majesty is still ahead.
He made darkness his secret place, his tent round about him darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
Psalm 18 is David's song of rescue, and at its heart is a storm: God comes down to save, yet He hides Himself as He comes. Why would a God who comes to deliver wrap Himself in cloud and dark water?
The picture is of God moving from His throne toward a servant in distress. What sets Him moving is a cry.
On the cry of His people, He rides. He comes in the same majesty, intolerant of evil, and in the sovereign power of judgment. But that is deliverance... He draws out of many waters, and so the very foundations of the earth are uncovered. And so He hears out of His holy temple, the place of His awe-inspiring, royal majesty — even though this is Israel's deliverance. What a wonderful thing that He should ride forth in majesty! No wonder redemption is such a thing!
Older translations call this canopy God's "pavilion." The word behind it is plain:
A booth or tent, used poetically for a dwelling. 2 Sam. 22:12; 1 Kings 20:12, 16; Ps. 18:11; Ps. 27:5; Ps. 31:20.
So the storm clouds are His tent — the place He dwells while He works.
One writer ties the darkness to the work God is doing here: judgment.
Yet judgment hides God rather than displays Him: it is His "strange work." So He makes the darkness His hiding place. Darkness is His contrary, since He is love and light; and yet He uses it as His pavilion, and, while He is not it, He is in it. Judgment, where it comes, is at its most awful a separation from Him — from the Light. Yet it is not only that. From these thick clouds the light flashes out — hailstones and coals of fire; for God is displayed even in the judgment that separates from Him.
The same cloud works two ways, depending on who is looking at it.
"He made darkness canopies around Him" (v.12). God is clearly working behind the scenes, yet He Himself is not seen, so the darkness blinds people who have no faith. But the "dark waters and thick clouds" are still witnesses to the fact that it is the God of creation who is speaking. In fact there is brightness as well as darkness. Think of a violent storm: flashes of bright shining may break between the clouds. Brilliant lightning may flash suddenly, often kindling "coals of fire."
For ages this hiddenness shaped how people thought of God, and left them longing for more.
Many Scriptures give us the sense of a mystery no one could see into, which in the mind of man surrounded the being of God. Those who came within range of His activities felt this most: "He makes darkness His secret place; and His pavilion dark waters, and thick clouds of the sky" (Ps. 18:11)... Even Moses, at the giving of the law, had to say, "I tremble with fear." Later he said, "Show me Your glory," and the answer came: "No one can see My face and live." Job sought, in agony, for a Mediator. And the cry of saints of later days is: "Oh that You would tear open the heavens and come down."
Commentators do not leave the verse as the last word about God. One puts it in the past tense:
God is love. God is light. God is in the light. He is revealed. No longer does He "make darkness His secret place" (Ps. 18:11). God has been revealed. The Father has been made known. Guilty man has been brought into blessing, far beyond his bare needs. He has been brought into acceptance in the Beloved, "blessed with all spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3).
- Cry — the storm begins as an answer. God rides out of His temple in majesty because a servant in distress called. That terrifying advance is deliverance.
- Cloud — the pavilion is a tent: God's dwelling and His screen at once, the place He lives while He works.
- Contrary — He is light, so darkness is His opposite. Judgment hides Him instead of showing Him, yet He is in the cloud He is not.
- Flash — the same clouds that blind unbelief carry the lightning. God shows Himself even in the judgment that separates people from Him.
- Face — Moses trembled and Job pleaded for a Mediator. Now God is no longer behind the darkness: He is revealed, and the Father is made known.
From the brightness before him his thick clouds passed forth hail and coals of fire.
This storm is not weather but God Himself coming down, and the clouds that hide Him also carry hail and fire. So why does a God who wraps Himself in darkness blaze with brightness at the very moment He judges?
Darkness covers God, yet brightness breaks out of it. One writer holds both sides together.
Yet in judgment God is hidden rather than displayed: it is His "strange work." So He makes the darkness His covering. Darkness is His opposite, since He is love and light. Yet He uses it as His tent. He is not the darkness, but He is in it. Where judgment comes, its most awful feature is separation from Him — from the Light. Yet it is not only that. From these thick clouds the light flashes out — hailstones and coals of fire; for God shows Himself even in the judgment that separates from Him.
The brightness makes God's hand plain to see. One writer looks at how people react when it falls.
Though God made the darkness His secret place, there was "brightness before Him" — that is, anyone could tell by clear evidence that God was working in the thick clouds, with hailstones and coals of fire (v. 12). When hailstones do dreadful damage and volcanic eruptions spread terror, men at least speak of such things as "acts of God." Sadly, they still fail to respond to God in faith. They answer with bitter resentment instead.
Ice and burning coals falling together sounds like a contradiction. One writer reads each one as a symbol, and shows why they belong in the same storm.
We find hail with fire elsewhere in Scripture, and in nature too. It is one of the most solemn pictures of God's judgment that nature gives. It was one of the plagues of Egypt. Cold stands (with darkness) for the withdrawal of God, as fire (which is both heat and light) stands for the glow of His presence, which, as against sin, is wrath. And both these things can exist together, however contradictory they may seem — "hailstones and coals of fire" can be poured out together. God's forsaking must be in anger, and so what would be a ministry of refreshment turns into a storm of judgment. There is a concord of opposites against those who cast off God; while for those who love Him, all things work together for good.
Another writer stays with the hail itself and asks what it is made of.
This thought is emphasised in the hail, the frozen drops of rain. Those gentle showers that water the earth so it may bring forth its fruit, turned into death-dealing wrath! For a Christ-rejecting world there is stored up "wrath against the day of wrath," of which the hail is a figure.
Commentators differ on which deliverance the storm describes. One reads this part of the psalm as an answer to a cry, and looks back to Israel's history:
In His distress He calls upon Jehovah and cries to His God. He hears Him as in the midst of Israel; His cry comes before Him. Now come the results… From verse 7 to 16 we have the deliverance of Israel from Egypt by the mighty acts of Jehovah.
Another sees the same verses describing the power that raised Christ:
Here the psalm celebrates the glory and almighty majesty of the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, as He showed it in raising Christ from the dead in answer to His cry… A first instalment and sample of this was given when the angel of Jehovah came down. The earth quaked. The guards of the grave which had held the body of the now awakened Christ shook and became like dead men with fear.
The same clouds appear again around Christ when He comes.
The cloud of old was the well-known symbol of Jehovah's presence with His people. But notice, Christ is not only said to come in the clouds, but with them, and on them. The clouds that attend His coming are symbols of His majesty. He sits on them as on His throne.
- Hidden. God covers Himself in darkness when He judges. Judgment's worst part is being cut off from the Light.
- Displayed. Out of that same darkness the brightness flashes. God shows Himself even in the act that shuts men out.
- Mingled. Hail and coals of fire fall together. God pulls back, and His anger burns. He is never simply indifferent.
- Reversed. Rain that should have watered the earth becomes a weapon. Mercy refused turns into stored-up wrath.
- Ignored. Men call the evidence "acts of God" and still answer with resentment. Faith is the response the storm calls for.
And Jehovah thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice hail and coals of fire.
Verse 13 sits inside a storm. In verses 7-15 God comes down in earthquake, fire, wind, thick cloud, hail and lightning. Two questions follow. What does thunder mean when Scripture uses it of God? And why is one rescue told in language big enough to shake the earth?
Thunder has a settled meaning in Scripture. One writer lists this verse among the passages that fix it:
Thunder is God's voice in judgment, the expression of His authority in it (1 Sam. 7:10; Ps. 18:13; Job 26:14).
The verse does not say anyone saw God. It says they heard Him:
"The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice" (v. 13). Such a voice is surely heard, though no one sees Him. Hailstones and lightning often come with the thunder, clear evidence too of the greatness and majesty of God. Men may lift up their voices in protest against His sovereign actions. But who can thunder with a voice like His? In the end His voice will fully subdue the voices of all mankind together.
Not everyone hears more than weather. One writer applies this verse to the opening of Revelation's first seal:
The Lord's action here is not visible. Yet a voice of thunder opens the first seal, and it may signal the voice of the Almighty to the one who has "an ear to hear" (Psalm 18:13; John 12:29).
Ice and fire falling together looks like a contradiction. One writer takes the pairing seriously and reads meaning in it:
We find hail with fire in other parts of Scripture, as in nature also. It is one of the most solemn pictures of divine judgment that nature gives. It was one of the plagues of Egypt. In the eighteenth psalm it goes with the same kind of judgment… Cold stands (with darkness) for the withdrawal of God. Fire, which is both heat and light, stands for the glow of His presence, and against sin that glow is wrath. Both can hold together, however contradictory they seem — "hailstones and coals of fire" can pour down together. God's forsaking must be in anger, so what would be a ministry of refreshment turns into a storm of judgment. There is a harmony of opposites against those who cast off God, while for those who love Him all things work together for good.
Hail is rain, frozen. One writer presses what that means:
This thought is emphasised in the hail, the frozen drops of rain. Those gentle showers which water the earth so that it may bring forth its fruit, turned into death-dealing wrath!
The verse shifts names mid-line, from the LORD to the Most High. That second name has a settled force in Hebrew:
I have been looking into the force of the Hebrew words for Most High. It clearly refers, in the end, to God in the millennium as the supreme God then displayed, to the exclusion of what is false. That is the force of the word — One who, above all others and to their exclusion, holds the place of the one true God, exalted as supreme in government… Israel's enemies are completely defeated and given into his hand, and the heir of promise is blessed by Him who has heaven and earth.
Where does this storm come from? One writer hears an older rescue under it:
(vv. 7-15) These verses take us back to the deliverance God worked at the Red Sea. There we learn the first great result of Christ having entered into the sufferings of God's people. The psalm describes the judgment on Pharaoh and his army with magnificent figures drawn from the upheavals of nature — earthquakes, fire, wind, thick clouds, hail and lightning.
The same storm also looks forward, not only back:
We find the same in Psalm 18:8-20, but there it concerns the enemies of the last days more particularly… All these passages, like Habakkuk's prayer, sing of God's past intervention to save His people. That past rescue is a pledge of the deliverance in the last days.
- Voice. Thunder in Scripture is God's voice in judgment, the expression of His authority. This verse is one of the texts that fix that meaning.
- Heard. No one sees Him here. They hear Him. In the end His voice subdues every voice raised against Him.
- Opposites. Hailstones and coals of fire fall together. Cold pictures God's withdrawal; fire pictures the wrath of His presence. Showers that should water the ground come down as judgment.
- Supreme. "Most High" names God as supreme in government over all rivals, the One who has heaven and earth.
- Pledge. The Red Sea stands behind this storm. The rescue of the last days stands ahead of it. Past deliverance is God's pledge of the deliverance still to come.