Psalm 96:9

“Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.”
Psalm 96:9

When I came across this verse, I immediately thought once again of Otto’s mysterium tremendum. Splendor of his holiness? Tremble? Before reading The Idea of the Holy, I think I would have skimmed over the above verse, thinking it was nice but not pausing to really consider the word “tremble.” Trembling is not the first verb that comes to mind when I think of God, but it is quite a powerful one. To tremble before something means you’ve encountered something to grand, so mysterious, so frightening, that you cannot control your own body but you tremble in its presence. It’s when your “creature consciousness” kicks in and you realize how absolutely profane you actually are. I like how Otto phrases it that this feeling is not based on consciousness of individual acts of sin, but on our “own very existence as creature before that which is supreme above all creatures.” THAT is how we are supposed to approach the Lord.

And in the splendor of his holiness? Rarely do we hear the word “holiness” attached to the word “splendor.” It doesn’t make sense, if you only think of holiness as being perfectly without sin, something ‘completely good.’ Unfortunately, that is pretty much the modern view of holiness. Holiness is associated with a detached, perfect, sinless being, but Otto gives us so much more to comprehend when we consider the word “holy.” When you try to imagine the wholly other, the fascinating, mysterious, and tremendous, you can BEGIN to understand how to worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

In the English Bible, the word “LORD” is capitalized in this verse, indicating the Hebrew word “YHWH” (as Dr. Redick taught in class). In the chapter “The Numinous in the Old Testament,” Otto says that the numinous is most apparent in YHWH, in contrast to the name Elohim, where the rational aspect outweighs the numinous. I thought it was really cool to see an example in the Bible that is consistent with Otto’s book, in that this verse, which represents the numinous, uses the name YHWH.

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