Bow thy heavens, O LORD, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
Parallel translations
- WEB Part your heavens, Yahweh, and come down. Touch the mountains, and they will smoke.
- BSB Part Your heavens, O LORD, and come down; touch the mountains, that they may smoke.
- NKJV Bow down Your heavens, O Lord, and come down; Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
- NASB ¶Bend down Your heavens, Lord, and come down; Touch the mountains, that they may smoke.
- NLT Open the heavens, Lord, and come down. Touch the mountains so they billow smoke.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
David asks God to part the heavens, come down, and make the mountains smoke. It pleads for a mighty divine intervention.
Overview
Using theophany imagery from Sinai, David calls on God to descend in power to rescue him. He longs for the Lord Himself to act visibly against his foes. This yearning for God to come down is answered surpassingly in the incarnation, when God descended to save His people in Christ (John 1:14).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 7
- Ps 18:9He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet.
- Ps 104:32He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke.
- Exod 19:18And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
- Hab 3:3–6God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.
- Isa 64:1–2Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence,
- Heb 12:18For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,
- Nah 1:3–6The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 144:5 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.