At the Hathern Baptist Church prayer meeting Jane and I went to last night, it opened with a short reading from Psalm 68 (about vv. 4-10). Most people were reading from the pew Bible, which is the NIV translation but I had my NASB edition and I spotted an odd translation discrepancy between the two. What was read out from v.4 was, “Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds…”. By contrast, the NASB says, “Sing to God, sing praises to His name; exalt Him who rides through the deserts…”. What is up with that?
As far as I can piece together, English translations typically go for one of those two options and they appear fairly evenly split, allowing for the fact that I’ve neither carefully counted nor made any allowance for the fact that not all translations should be weighted evenly. Commentaries on ‘cloud’ translations tend to make something of the idea that Israel’s God is being declared as greater than Ba’al, who was sometimes characterised as a storm god. However, aware of the uncertainty, they often include a note about the desert alternative. The NIV, for example, gives “prepare the way for him who rides through the deserts” as an alternative.
It was interesting to check on a range of commentaries via the BibleHub site. Most of those lean towards the desert option. For example, the comprehensive Barnes notes on the Bible, says:
The word used here – ערבה ‛ărābâh – never means either heaven, or the clouds. It properly denotes an arid tract, a sterile region, a desert; and then, a plain. It is rendered desert in Isaiah 35:1, Isaiah 35:6; Isaiah 40:3; Isaiah 41:19; Isaiah 51:3; Jeremiah 2:6; Jeremiah 17:6; Jeremiah 50:12; Ezekiel 47:8; and should have been so rendered here.
I’m nowhere near competent enough in Hebrew to cast a deciding vote but, personally, I’m inclined much more towards the desert angle. Even apart from the question of whether heaven or clouds could be an appropriate translation, it seems to make more sense that the psalmist would have in mind a reference to the story of Israel’s rescue from Egypt through the Sinai wilderness than feel the need to ape a reference to a god followed by other nations. I note that the King James Version picked ‘heavens’ and so I wonder if this is one of those places where later translators have been influenced by the poetry of the translations they knew well over and above the best choice for the text? The KJV team did an amazing job but would probably be the first to admit that their resources were meagre compared to what their modern successors have available.