Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 29:5

"The voice of Jehovah breaketh the cedars; Yea, Jehovah breaketh in pieces the cedars of Lebanon." — Psalms 29:5 (ASV)

Breaketh the cedars - The thunder prostrates the lofty trees of the forest. The psalmist speaks as things appeared, attributing, as was natural and commonly done, to the thunder what was really produced by lightning. It is now fully known that the effect referred to here is not produced by thunder, but by the rapid passage of the electric fluid as it passes from the cloud to the earth. That power is so great as to split the oak or the cedar, to twist off their limbs, and to prostrate their lofty trunks to the ground.

The psalmist speaks of thunder as accomplishing this in the same way that the sacred writers and all people, even scientific individuals, commonly speak—for example, when we say, the sun rises and sets, the stars rise and set, etc. People who would try to always speak with scientific accuracy, or in the strict language of science, would be unintelligible to the majority of humankind. Perhaps on most subjects they would soon stop speaking altogether, since they themselves would be utterly unsure about what constitutes scientific accuracy.

People who require that a revelation from God should always use language of strict scientific precision are really requiring that a revelation anticipate by hundreds or thousands of years the discoveries of science. They are also requiring it to use language that, when the revelation was given, would have been unintelligible to the majority of humankind.

Indeed, such language would always be unintelligible to a large portion of the human race, since people ordinarily, however much the exact truths of science may be spread, do not learn to speak with such exactness. As long as people speak on the subject at all, they will probably continue to say that the sun rises and sets, that the grass grows, and that water runs.

Breaketh the cedars of Lebanon - “Cedars are mentioned as the loftiest forest trees, and those of Lebanon as the loftiest of their species.” — “Professor Alexander.” The cedars of Lebanon are often referred to in the Scriptures as remarkable for their size and grandeur: 1 Kings 4:33; 1 Kings 5:6; Psalms 92:12; Ezra 3:7.