Texts in Conversation
Psalm 33:7 and Jeremiah 10:13 both use the image of storehouses to describe divine control over natural forces, a concept rooted in ancient Near Eastern cosmology where chaotic elements like the sea were imagined as being confined by the cosmos.
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Psalm 33:7
Hebrew Bible
5 He promotes equity and justice; the Lord’s faithfulness extends throughout the earth. 6 By the Lord’s decree the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all the starry hosts. 7 He piles up the water of the sea; he puts the oceans in storehouses. 8 Let the whole earth fear the Lord. Let all who live in the world stand in awe of him. 9 For he spoke, and it came into existence. He issued the decree, and it stood firm.
Date: 6th-3rd Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Jeremiah 10:13
Hebrew Bible
11 You people of Israel should tell those nations this: ‘These gods did not make heaven and earth. They will disappear from the earth and from under the heavens.’ 12 The Lord is the one who by his power made the earth. He is the one who by his wisdom established the world. And by his understanding, he spread out the skies. 13 When his voice thunders, the heavenly ocean roars. He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons. He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain. He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it. 14 All these idolaters will prove to be stupid and ignorant. Every goldsmith will be disgraced by the idol he made. For the image he forges is merely a sham. There is no breath in any of those idols. 15 They are worthless, mere objects to be mocked. When the time comes to punish them, they will be destroyed.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Psalm 33:7, likewise, uses the language of “storehouses,” now associating these with the seas and their deeps (תומוהת , ἄβυσσοι), but here, too, it is simply one of several cosmological details, brought together to describe the unique sovereignty of God in creation, exercised simply through the authority of his word. It is important to note that in Jeremiah 10:13, while the Masoretic textd describes God bringing wind from his storehouses, the LXX reads light ..."
Macaskill, Grant
Meteorology and Metrology: Evaluating Parallels in the Ethiopic Parables of Enoch and 2 (Slavonic) Enoch
(pp. 79-99) Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2019
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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