Ps. 77.17-18 (waters above and below)

The clouds / poured out water;
the heavens / rumbled with the voice of thunder;
your arrows / darted everywhere.
The voice / of your thunder / was in the storm
lightning flashes / lit up the world,
while the earth / trembled and shook.   

From the ‘waters below’ (the deep) we now ascend to the ‘waters above’ (the clouds and the heavens). It seems clear that the psalmist is emphasizing the total scope of the ‘water’s’ response to God’s coming. Below, they tremble and roil. Above, they ‘pour forth’. It is an interesting image as I’m not aware of this ‘pouring forth’ of rain in the exodus account. It would seem as if the psalmist is portraying God’s coming-deliverance of his people in the form of a massive and overpowering storm. It would seem then that these ‘waters above’ carry forth the presence of God. It is the vehicle of his descent in other words. We see this by the fact that the ‘voice of thunder’ and ‘lightning’ are forms of God’s attack. The ‘waters below’ on the other hand represented the force to be conquered.  They are responsive to God’s coming, while the ‘waters above’ are employed by God’s coming. This above/below dichotomy is further emphasized by the ‘earth’s’ response. Like the ‘waters below’ they respond with ‘trembling and shaking’. It would seem that the earth is not as antagonistic as ‘the deep’. Its response is more out of a deep reverential fear of the approaching Yhwh. All of the created order is convulsing with the approach of God. One final thing to note is that this response is not simply the response at the appearance of God; it is, rather, the response to the coming act of the delivering-God. In other words, it is the response to his militaristic glory and power. This is not so much the ‘God-of-blessing’ as the ‘God-of-deliverance’, the divine-kinsman come to redeem his people. All of this said, the deep and resounding silence of the present is all the more so in light of this earlier ‘shock-and-awe’ of God’s coming. The psalmist has, in a literary manner, shown how he is now the only one ‘speaking’. God’s ‘voice-of-thunder’ has fallen silent. When God acts with such seemingly utter finality, his silence engenders the same question of finality: has this come to an end, forever to be forgotten?  Were we lifted up so high into covenant with Yhwh only to now be abandoned in this valley of silence?