Psa 68:4 (68:5 in the Hebrew) reads:
Sing to God, chant hymns to His name; extol Him who rides the clouds; the LORD is His name. Exult in His presence. (1985 JPS Tanakh)
Mitchell Dahood renders this verse in his 3-volume commentary:
Sing, o gods, chant, O his heavens,
pave the highway for the Rider of the Clouds!
Delight in Yahweh,
and exult before him!
What is interesting is (1) the reference to plural (true [i.e., have ontological existence]) "gods" and (2) "heavens" instead of "name."
Commenting on this verse in his 1968 commentary on Psa 51-100, Dahood writes:
O gods. In Canaanite religion the gods were considered sons of El and forms part of the pantheon. In the Old Testament, the term often refers to angels or spiritual beings who are members of Yahweh’s court . . . O his heavens. Vocalizing šāmāw (MT: šemō) . . . attesting similar confusion between “name" and “heavens” . . . Defecting spelling can readily account for the confusion. Both the gods and the heaven are invited to prepare a highway for the Rider of the Clouds. From this vocalization, it might be noticed, emerges the association of “his heavens” with “Rider of the clouds,” an association with a Canaanite counterpart in UT, ‘it:II:39-40, [ṭ]l šmm šmn arṣ rbb rkb ‘rpt, “dew of heaven, oil of earth, showers of the Rider of the Clouds.” In vs. 34, his heaven” is expressed with the third person suffix –y, šmy. Cf. vs. 22, ba’ašāmāyw, “from his heavens.” (Mitchell Dahood, Psalms II 51-100: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 17; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968], 135-36)
Dahood's proposed vocalisation of "heavens" is important as it strongly parallels Joseph Smith's interpretation of figure 12 of facsimile 1:
Fig. 12. Raukeeyang, signifying expanse, or the firmament over our heads; but in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify Shaumau, to be high, or the heavens, answering to the Hebrew word, Shaumahyeem.
Instead of being an “invented singular” (per Louis Zucker, a Jewish scholar, in his article, Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebrew), this is another area where Joseph Smith got it right as Shaumau is an archaic singular in the Hebrew, per Dahood.
