Psalms 18:11
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.
American King James Version (AKJV)
He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.
American Standard Version (ASV)
He made darkness his hiding-place, his pavilion round about him, Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
He made the dark his secret place; his tent round him was the dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.
Webster's Revision
He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion around him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.
World English Bible
He made darkness his hiding place, his pavilion around him, darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
English Revised Version (ERV)
He made darkness his hiding place, his pavilion round about him; darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
Definitions for Psalms 18:11
Clarke's Psalms 18:11 Bible Commentary
He made darkness his secret place - God is represented as dwelling in the thick darkness, Deuteronomy 4:11; Psalm 97:2. This representation in the place before us is peculiarly proper; as thick heavy clouds deeply charged, and with lowering aspects, are always the forerunners and attendants of a tempest, and greatly heighten the horrors of the appearance: and the representation of them, spread about the Almighty as a tent, is truly grand and poetic.
Dark waters - The vapors strongly condensed into clouds; which, by the stroke of the lightning, are about to be precipitated in torrents of rain. See the next verse.
Barnes's Psalms 18:11 Bible Commentary
He made darkness his secret place - Herder has beautifully rendered this verse,
"Now he wrapped himself in darkness;
Clouds on clouds enclosed him round."
The word rendered "secret place" - סתר sêther - means properly a hiding; then something hidden, private, secret. Hence, it means a covering, a veil. Compare Job 22:14; Job 24:15. In Psalm 81:7 it is applied to thunder: "I answered thee in the secret place of thunder;" that is, in the secret place or retreat - the deep, dark cloud, from where the thunder seems to come. Here the meaning seems to be, that God was encompassed with darkness. He had, as it were, wrapped himself in night, and made his abode in the gloom of the storm.
His pavilion - His tent, for so the word means. Compare Psalm 27:5; Psalm 31:20. His abode was in the midst of clouds and waters, or watery clouds.
Round about him - Perhaps a more literal translation would be, "the things round about him - his tent (shelter, or cover) - were the darkness of waters, the clouds of the skies." The idea is that he seemed to be encompassed with watery clouds.
Dark waters - Hebrew, darkness of waters. The allusion is to clouds filled with water; charged with rain.
Thick clouds of the skies - The word rendered skies in this place - שׁחקים shachaqiym - means, in the singular, dust, as being fine; then a cloud, as a cloud of dust; then, in the plural, it is used to denote clouds, Job 38:37; and hence, it is used to denote the region of the clouds; the firmament; the sky; Job 37:18. Perhaps a not-inaccurate rendering here would be, "clouds of clouds;" that is, clouds rolled in with clouds; clouds of one kind rapidly succeeding those of another kind - inrolling and piled on each other. There are four different kinds of clouds; and though we cannot suppose that the distinction was accurately marked in the time of the psalmist, yet to the slightest observation there is a distinction in the clouds, and it is possible that by the use of two terms here, both denoting clouds - one thick and dense, and the other clouds as resembling dust - the psalmist meant to intimate that clouds of all kinds rolled over the firmament, and that these constituted the "pavilion" of God.
Wesley's Psalms 18:11 Bible Commentary
18:11 Darkness - He covered himself with dark clouds.Waters - Watery vapours.