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The real rainmaker

Psalm 68.1-10, 32-35 (https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
One of the fascinating things about this psalm is that it repurposes language originally used to describe God’s ancient rival in Israel’s affections, the Canaanite storm god Baal. The Greek version of the Old Testament changed the description of God in verse 4. He becomes instead ‘the one who rides on the West’. The West? Does this mean ‘the West wind?’ In verse 33 the Greek version says ‘God... rides on the heaven of heaven.’ I’m not sure what that is, either. Presumably it means ‘the highest heaven’.
The confusion is understandable because the Hebrew is unclear. Does verse 4 mean that God ‘rides upon the clouds’ or ‘through the deserts’? The Revised Version prefers one interpretation, the New Revised Standard Version the other. There is similar confusion about verse 33. Does it mean God is the ‘rider in the heavens’ or does he ‘ride upon the heavens of heavens’ as in the Greek version of the psalm?
For me the context makes this conundrum plain. The storm god Baal ‘rides upon the clouds’. When he goes forth ‘the heavens pour down rain… in abundance’ (verse 8 & 9). He is the ‘rider in the heavens… whose power is in the skies’ (verses 32 & 34). Even the Greek version - which steers away from any obvious identification of God’s power with Baal’s, translates verse 34 to mean ‘his power is in the clouds’.
The psalmist knows these are all titles of the god Baal, and he or she cheekily appropriates them to describe what the true God of Israel is like. He is the real rainmaker. In the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), it is Israel’s God who sends lightning and rain, while Baal’s prophets prance around, slashing themselves with knives, to no good purpose. The psalmist echoes that idea. It is ‘the rebellious’, those who stand by the false god Baal, who will ‘live in a parched land’.
Not Baal, but Israel’s God, is the God who, from his ‘holy habitation’ is the ‘father of orphans and protector of widows’, ‘gives the desolate a home to live in’, ‘leads out the prisoners to prosperity’, and ‘provides for the needy’.
The cloud terminology makes the tenuous link with Jesus’ Ascension which allows the compilers of our lectionary to make this last Sunday's psalm. But the psalm is really about the true God of the heavens, not the fertility god Baal but Israel’s God.

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