Ayub 40:9

40:9 Do you have an arm as powerful as God’s, ¹ 

and can you thunder with a voice like his?

Ayub 40:1

Job’s Reply to God’s Challenge

40:1 Then the Lord answered Job:

1 Samuel 2:10

2:10 The Lord shatters ²  his adversaries; ³ 

he thunders against them from ⁴  the heavens.

The Lord executes judgment to the ends of the earth.

He will strengthen ⁵  his king

and exalt the power ⁶  of his anointed one.” ⁷ 

Mazmur 29:3

29:3 The Lord’s shout is heard over the water; ⁸ 

the majestic God thunders, ⁹ 

the Lord appears over the surging water. ¹⁰ 

[40:9]  ¹ tn Heb “do you have an arm like God?” The words “as powerful as” have been supplied in the translation to clarify the metaphor.

[2:10]  ² tn The imperfect verbal forms in this line and in the next two lines are understood as indicating what is typically true. Another option is to translate them with the future tense. See v. 10b.

[2:10]  ³ tc The present translation follows the Qere, many medieval Hebrew manuscripts, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Vulgate in reading the plural (“his adversaries,” similarly many other English versions) rather than the singular (“his adversary”) of the Kethib.

[2:10]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew preposition here has the sense of “from within.”

[2:10]  ⁵ tn The imperfect verbal forms in this and the next line are understood as indicating what is anticipated and translated with the future tense, because at the time of Hannah’s prayer Israel did not yet have a king.

[2:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “the horn,” here a metaphor for power or strength. Cf. NCV “make his appointed king strong”; NLT “increases the might of his anointed one.”

[2:10]  ⁷ tc The LXX greatly expands v. 10 with an addition that seems to be taken from Jer 9:23-24.

[2:10]  sn The anointed one is the anticipated king of Israel, as the preceding line makes clear.

[29:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “the voice of the Lord [is] over the water.” As the next line makes clear, the “voice of the Lord” is here the thunder that accompanies a violent storm. The psalm depicts the Lord in the role of a warrior-king, so the thunder is his battle cry, as it were.

[29:3]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew perfect verbal form is probably descriptive. In dramatic fashion the psalmist portrays the Lord coming in the storm to do battle with his enemies and to vindicate his people.

[29:3]  ¹⁰ tn Traditionally “many waters.” The geographical references in the psalm (Lebanon, Sirion, Kadesh) suggest this is a reference to the Mediterranean Sea (see Ezek 26:19; 27:26). The psalmist describes a powerful storm moving in from the sea and sweeping over the mountainous areas north of Israel. The “surging waters” may symbolize the hostile enemies of God who seek to destroy his people (see Pss 18:17; 32:6; 77:20; 93:4; 144:7; Isa 17:13; Jer 51:55; Ezek 26:19; Hab 3:15). In this case the Lord is depicted as elevated above and sovereign over the raging waters.