The psalmist thanks God for delivering him from mortal danger accompanied by spiritual decline and perhaps depression. Is this not a very real situation for us in our own days too? We also tend to call our experiences of troubles hell and to compare coming out of them with returning to life.

But a psalm is not simply poetry, an imaginative expression of one's feelings. It is prayer, and such prayer that many generations of believers learned to pray from it. And true prayer is not self-expression but communion, dialogue with God. It remains dialogue even when only the human person speaks the words. The apostle Paul says of such prayer that it is the Holy Spirit praying in us with "inexpressible groanings," and the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. So here too, in the prayer spoken by the psalmist, a truth opens that surpasses his understanding: God will truly bring souls out of hell, He will really accomplish the resurrection of the dead. And we know that the fulfillment of this prophecy has already begun.

The preceding psalm is a plea addressed to the Lord that He not remain silent. And now, giving glory to the Lord, the psalmist composes a hymn to His voice. This means that the composer of the psalms heard the voice of the Lord; He did not remain silent.

Yet the voice is so majestic that not everyone who hears it can withstand it. This voice, capable of shattering everything in creation, is compared to fearsome and untamable forces of nature. If such is the effect of God’s Voice alone, which merely hints at the Lord’s all-surpassing power, what can the effect of His power revealed in its fullness be?

It is beyond human comprehension to imagine the Lord’s might and majesty. Yet it was harder still to imagine that the Lord could reveal Himself not only in thunder and storm, but also in the whisper of a gentle breeze.

And days will come when His power will be manifested not only in visible might, but also in apparent weakness.