Psalm 29:10, ‘YHWH sits enthroned over the flood; YHWH is enthroned as King forever.’
Psalm 29 poetically describes the onset of a violent storm that shakes the earth and splinters the trees and leaves humanity humbled in awe; at every point, the Psalmist is clear that it is YHWH Himself who stands behind and orders this awesome display. This becomes clear in v.10 where YHWH is depicted as enthroned over the ‘flood,’ that is to say, over all the tumults and upheavals of this world (as these are pictured in the image of a storm).
We may extrapolate from this Psalm—and ‘flood’ language in the rest of Scripture—to see here an affirmation that YHWH is enthroned in immovable, inviolable, and unthwartable peace over all the chaos of human experience…Yet He is enthroned *not* as a distant spectator, but as one whose reign ensures that the chaos-flood itself serves, in the end, His sovereign and merciful designs.
But there is more to see here. YHWH is not merely enthroned over the flood of worldly chaos as one who directs its raging waters toward His purposed ends…He is also—and supremely—enthroned as King *precisely* in that He is the One who descends to the depths of those very waters in Jesus Christ and endures the shattering power of their waves and breakers in His own experience on the cross, such that—by His resurrection—the cross itself becomes the throne of Sovereign Love from which YHWH reigns over the conquered cosmos and the wounds of His agony are transfigured to the crown of His everlasting glory (Heb.2:9; Rev.5:9-14).
From the celestial height of the resurrection-illumined cross, YHWH reigns over the cosmos, trampling the waves of worldly chaos beneath His love-crushed heel, and so turning the temporal flood of His people’s sin, sorrow, death and hell into a crystalline sea of glass, the eschatological mirror from which the radiance of the glory of the Triune God will reflect with ever increasing clarity, world without end (Rev.4:6, 5:13-14).
