Ps. 68.13-14 (beauty and snow)

Although you rest / between the saddlebags
the wings of the dove / are covered with silk
and their pinions / with green gold.
When Shaddai / scattered kings on it
it snowed / on Zalmon. 

These are difficult verses to interpret. On the one hand the ‘gold and silken doves’ could be spoil left by the fleeing kings that are now descending upon the women, the ‘beauty of the house’. On the other hand, they could be the messenger doves that were sent out as the messengers of God’s victory. Whichever they refer to what is clear is that they are objects of beauty and, with God’s victory, this moment of beauty is allowed to emerge in a way that it had not been able before. Just as the joy of victory is allowed to proceed and begin upon the announcement of victory, so too does this beauty represent the joy of victory (whether they are messengers or spoil). There is, in this beauty, the freedom, security and joy of prosperous and secure victory. Importantly, this beauty now emerges even though the people did nothing for its accomplishment; they ‘rested between the saddlebags’. Again, not only is the initiative Gods, but its abundant and exuberant accomplishment is his. The point of focusing on the inability of the people to participate in the victory is in order to greater highlight the magnitude of God’s incredible care and provision for them; it is not, in other words, to draw attention to their own passivity as much as to give all the glory to God for his glorious mastery on their behalf. Even when they point to their lowliness, they highlight that this is all being done for them; God has gone before them to prepare this place for them. The final image of snow is, likewise, difficult to understand although I take it to mean that God ‘scattered kings’ through the act of a snowstorm. It is, perhaps instructive in this regard, that God in the opening lines is portrayed as associated with fire: he blows away his enemies like smoke, and they melt before him like wax. Here, the opposing force of snow is employed but it accomplishes the same result: the scattering of kings. The whole panoply of the created order in its extremes is employed by God as his weapons of mastery: for the wicked, they are of destruction; for the righteous, they are of life and abundance. Or, tracking the words of the psalm more closely, for the enemies of God, when they stand ‘before God’ they must suffer through fire and snow; for the righteous, God moves ‘before them’ and they are blessed with ‘a good rain’ (vs. 9).