properly · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
calf
עֵ֑גֶל'E.gel
H5695
a (male) calf (as frisking round) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Lebanon
לְבָנ֥וֹןle.va.Non
H3844
Lebanon · proper noun, a place name
Sirion
וְ֝שִׂרְיֹ֗ןve.sir.Yon
H8303
Shirjon or Sirjon · conjunction + proper noun, a place name
young
בֶןven-
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine singular construct
unicorn
רְאֵמִֽיםre.'e.Mim
H7214
a wild bull (from its conspicuousness) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Numbers 23:22 God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.
Deuteronomy 3:9 (Which Hermon the Sidonians call Sirion; and the Amorites call it Shenir;)
Psalms 114:4-7 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
Psalms 92:10 But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.
Jeremiah 4:23-25 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
Habakkuk 3:6-11 He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hill…
Revelation 20:11 And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 29:1–end
In this psalm we have,
I. A demand of the homage of the great men of the earth to be paid to the great God. Every clap of thunder David interpreted as a call to himself and other princes to give glory to the great God. Observe, 1. Who they are that are called to this duty: "O you mighty (Psa 29:1), you sons of the mighty, who have power, and on whom that power is devolved by succession and inheritance, who have royal blood running in your veins!" It is much for the honour of the great God that the men of this world should pay their homage to him; and they are bound to do it, not only because, high as they are, he is infinitely above them, and therefore they must bow to him, but because they…
The tall and large cedars, especially of Lebanon, are shivered, utterly broken. The waving of the mountain forests before the wind is expressed by the figure of skipping or leaping.
John Gill on Psalms 29:6
He maketh them also to skip like a calf,.... That is, the cedars, the branches being broken off, or they torn up by the roots, and tossed about by the wind; which motion is compared to that of a calf that leaps and skips about;
Lebanon and Sirion, like a young unicorn; that is, these mountains move and skip about through the force of thunder, and the violence of an earthquake attending it; so historians report that mountains have moved from place to place, and they have met and dashed against one another (d). Sirion was a mountain in Judea near to Lebanon, and is the same with Hermon; which was called by the Sidonians Sirion, and by the Amorites Shenir, Deuteronomy 3:9. This may regard the…
Psalm 29:5-8
5. The voice of Jehovah breaketh the cedars; I say, Jehovah breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. 6. And he maketh Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young unicorn. 7. The voice of Jehovah striketh out [or heweth out] flames of fire. 8. The voice of Jehovah maketh the wilderness to quake, the voice of Jehovah maketh the wilderness of Kadesh to tremble.
5. The voice of Jehovah breaketh the cedars. We see how the prophet, in order to subdue the stubbornness of men, shows, by every word, that God is terrible. He also seems to rebuke, in passing, the madness of the proud, and of those who swell with vain presumption, because they hearken not to the voice of God in his thunde…
The Church Fathers
The people who believe, freed from that error [idolatry] and called beloved for that reason, will be invincible and unconquerable in being rid of polytheism and worshiping one Godhead.
"And shall bruise them as the calf of Libanus" [Psalm 29:6]. And when their proud exaltation has been cut off, He will lay them low after the imitation of His Own humility, who like a calf was led to slaughter [Isaiah 53:7] by the nobility of this world. "For the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers agreed together against the Lord, and against His Christ." "And the Beloved is as the young of the unicorns." For even He the Beloved, and the Only One of the Father, "emptied Himself" of His glory; and was made man, [Philippians 2:7] like a child of the Jews, that were "ignorant of God's righteousness," [Romans 10:3] and proudly boasting of their own righteousness as peculiarly theirs.
This animal is called the unicorn, but I cannot say that I have seen him. But I have seen four brazen figures of him set up in the four-towered palace of the King of Ethiopia. From these figures I have been able to draw him as you see. They speak of him as a terrible beast and quite invincible, and say that all his strength lies in his horn. When he finds himself pursued by many hunters and on the point of being caught, he springs up to the top of some precipice whence he throws himself down and in the descent turns a somersault so that the horn sustains all the shock of the fall, and he escapes unhurt. And scripture in like manner speaks concerning him, saying, Save me from the mouth of lions, and my humility from the horns of unicorns. And again: And he that is beloved as the son of unicorns; and again in the blessings of Balaam wherewith he blessed Israel, he says for the second time: God so led him out of Egypt even as the glory of the unicorn; thus bearing complete testimony to the strength, audacity, and glory of the animal.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Lebanon — White, “the white mountain of Syria,” is the loftiest and most celebrated mountain range in Syria. It is a branch running southward from the Caucasus, and at its lower end forking into two parallel…
Sirion — A breastplate, the Sidonian name of Hermon (q.v.), Deut. 3:9; Ps. 29:6.
Thunder — Often referred to in Scripture (Job 40:9; Ps. 77:18; 104:7). James and John were called by our Lord “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). In Job 39:19, instead of “thunder,” as in the Authorized Version,…
Unicorn — Described as an animal of great ferocity and strength (Num. 23:22, R.V., “wild ox,” marg., “ox-antelope;” 24:8; Isa. 34:7, R.V., “wild oxen”), and untamable (Job 39:9). It was in reality a two-horned…
Calf, The · Playfulness of, alluded to — Playfulness of, alluded to
Hermon · .SIRION — .SIRION
Meteorology And Celestial Phenomena · 9:7;26:7,8,11;27:20,21;28:24-27;29:19;36:27-33;37:6-22;38:8-11,22,24-29,31-35,37; — 9:7;26:7,8,11;27:20,21;28:24-27;29:19;36:27-33;37:6-22;38:8-11,22,24-29,31-35,37;
Sirion · Sidonian name of Mount Hermon — Sidonian name of Mount Hermon
Unicorn · The young of, remarkable for agility — The young of, remarkable for agility
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Now follows the description of the revelation of God's power, which is the ground of the summons, and is to be the subject-matter of their praise. The All-glorious One makes Himself heard in the language (Rev 10:3.) of the thunder, and reveals Himself in the storm. There are fifteen lines, which naturally arrange themselves into three five-line strophes. The chief matter with the poet, however, is the sevenfold קול ה. Although קול is sometimes used almost as an ejaculatory "Hark!" (Gen 4:10; Isa 52:8), this must not, with Ewald (286, f), be applied to the קול ה of the Psalm before us, the theme of which is the voice of God, who announced Himself from heaven - a voice which moves the world. T…
Lebanon’s mountains and Hermon are high mountains to the north of Israel. • The Lord can cause even immense mountains to shake at his command (see 114:4).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 29:6
He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.
He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn. Not only the trees, but the mountains themselves move as though they frisked and leaped like young bulls or antelopes. As our own poets would mention hills and valleys known to them, so the Psalmist hears the crash and roar among the ranges of Libanus, and depicts the tumult in graphic terms. Thus sings one of our own countrymen:—"Amid Carnavon's mountains rages loud
The repercussive roar: with mighty crash
Into the flashing deep, from the rude rocks
Of Penmaen Mawr, heaped hideous to the sky,
Tumble the smitten cliffs; and S…
