Strength and Beauty
Psalm 96:6
Honor and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.


It does not admit of question that not only the Hebrew ideal embraced them both, but the creed of ancient art in its noblest era associated the perfection of beauty with the perfection of strength. The sculptor honoured magnificence and majesty in the human frame; he revealed the beauty that lay in limbs that denoted a sense of power. It is only later on that we begin to see ideals contrasting themselves. One painter worships soft loveliness, and his imagination riots in luxuriance of colouring; but another still upholds the ideal of the majestic, and about his work there is a restraint and even austerity. That is how the ideals of Raphael and Michael Angelo perpetually contrast themselves. And the pre-eminence of the latter is just this: that he never wearies of insisting that strength is inseparable from the highest beauty.

(C. S. Horne, M. A.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

WEB: Honor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.




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