Pentecost 2020: Psalm 68---Pentecost Midrashim Providing New Testament Background

Psalm 68 is associated with Pentecost, a festival that in Jewish tradition celebrates God's revelation of the Decalogue at Mt Sinai.

Several verses in Psalm 68 have been viewed in light of the Mt Sinai theophany.  Verse 8 sets the stage for a Sinai connection:

"the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain, before God, the One of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel."

Verse 9 then says, "You restored your inheritance as it languished."  This sentence has led to a midrash suggesting that because God's appearance at Sinai was so awesome, the Israelites at the foot of the mountain actually died temporarily, and God promptly resurrected them.  Nothing in the Bible states that such a thing happened, though the dangers involved with God's appearance were stressed (Exod 19:10-15).

Verse 11 says, "The Lord gives the command; great is the company of those who bore the tidings."  In another midrash, this verse was used to explain an interesting feature of Exodus 20:18, which in the Hebrew says that the Israelites at the foot of the mountain "saw the voices and the flames."  Readers wondered why "voices" was plural, and how one could see voices.

The midrash pictured the words of the Decalogue being manifested visibly as flames, and the flames separating into smaller flames that transmitted the words in the various languages of the world.  In this midrash, the "great company" that bore the tidings were these flames.

This tradition helps explain why God sent the Holy Spirit in "divided tongues, as of fire" to Jesus' disciples on Pentecost in the year of Jesus' resurrection (Acts 2:3).  For more discussion, see this article.  

Describing some of the spoils of battle taken in victory over the Canaanites, Ps 68:13 speaks of "the wings of a dove covered with silver, its pinions with green gold," apparently referring to some item of jewelry.  A midrash reflecting on the value of the gift of God's word identifies the dove as Israel, adorned with the priceless silver of God's word revealed at Sinai.

There is a fourth Psalm 68 midrash relating verse 18 to Moses' ascending Mt Sinai, receiving God's word, and then returning to the camp of Israel with the tablets of the Decalogue.  A Targum (Aramaic paraphrase) of Ps 68:18 says, "You ascended to the firmament, prophet Moses, you learned the words of Torah, you gave them as gifts to the sons of men."

This midrash may be one of the things lying behind Paul's use of Ps 68:18 in Ephesians 4.  In Eph 4 Paul pictures Jesus ascending triumphantly in his resurrection, then descending (in the form of the Holy Spirit) to give the church the gift of the Holy Spirit and gifted individuals like apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.