(5) The voice of the Lord breaketh. — Better more literally, The voice of Jehovah breaking the cedars, and Jehovah hath shivered the cedars of Lebanon. (The verb in the second clause is an intensive of that used in the first.) The range of Lebanon receives the first fury of the storm. Its cedars, mightiest and longest-lived of Eastern trees, crash down, broken by the violence of the wind. (For cedar, see 2 Samuel 7:2.) It has been objected that the thunder should not be made the agent in the destruction; but comp. Shakespeare —
“And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once.
That make ingrateful man!” — King Lear, Acts 3, sc. 2.