Psalm 104

Psalms 104:1-4

Bless the Lord, O my soul opens the psalm and will close it at verse 35, the whole hymn framed as the soul addressing itself rather than speaking straight to God. Light as a garment and the heavens stretched like a curtain follow the order of Genesis 1, light itself named before the sun and moon arrive on the fourth day. Hebrews 1:7 quotes verse 4, who maketh his angels spirits, to argue that the Son ranks above the angels, an application the psalm itself does not make but the New Testament draws from it.

Psalms 104:5-9

The foundations set so the earth should not be removed answer Genesis 1's dry land, and the waters that fled at God's rebuke and were given a bound they may not pass over read like the flood's own recession as much as creation's third day. Gill and the older commentators note the same restraint language used of the flood waters in Genesis 8, the earth's stability guaranteed against a second such covering. The picture runs double on purpose, the ordering of the seas at creation and their limit after the flood told in the same breath.

Psalms 104:10-13

The springs sent into the valleys give drink to the wild asses and habitation to birds that sing among the branches, the psalm slowing down to describe provision no human hand arranges. Henry marks the picture as evidence of a providence that reaches beyond man's own labor, God watering the hills from his own chambers before any farmer plants a field. The wild ass, an animal that serves no one, is named on purpose, provision given where nothing is owed.

Psalms 104:14-15

Grass for the cattle and herb for man's service lead into three gifts named together, wine that maketh glad the heart, oil for the face, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart, ordinary food described as festival provision rather than bare survival. Adam Clarke notes that bread keeps a man alive while wine and oil belong to gladness rather than necessity, so the verse moves from what sustains life to what makes it good. Spurgeon reads the same three as mercies raised to the psalm's language of praise, care running past what a creature needs into what makes him glad.

Psalms 104:16-18

The trees of the Lord, full of sap, are the cedars of Lebanon he planted himself, named as belonging to him rather than to any king who might fell them. The stork nesting in the fir trees and the wild goats and conies keeping to the high hills and rocks round out a picture in which every creature has its own ground, none competing with man for his field. Barnes notes the stork's care for its young was proverbial in the ancient Near East, the bird itself an illustration set inside the larger illustration.

Psalms 104:19-23

The moon appointed for seasons and the sun that knows its going down put the fourth day's two lights back to work, now governing the shift between the beasts that hunt in darkness and the man who goes out to labor in daylight. The young lions roaring after their prey and seeking their meat from God are named as fed by the same hand that feeds the wild ass and the stork, predator and man drawing on one providence at their own appointed hour. Henry observes the courtesy built into the schedule, the lions retire to their dens before man ever leaves his house, so the two never contend for the same ground at the same time.

Psalms 104:24-26

O Lord, how manifold are thy works stands as the psalm's own summary line, wisdom named as the means by which they were made and the earth's riches as the result. The great wide sea gets its own verse for its creeping things innumerable, both small and great beasts, before leviathan is named as made to play there, not a thing to be feared but a thing sporting in water that would drown a man. Delitzsch reads the leviathan of this verse apart from the leviathan of Job, this one simply a great sea creature at ease in its element, power shown in making a thing so large a plaything of the deep.

Psalms 104:27-30

These wait all upon thee gathers every creature named so far into one dependence, fed when God opens his hand and troubled when he hides his face, the same hand behind both the springs of verse 10 and the daily bread of verse 14. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created renews Genesis 1's own language, the Spirit that moved upon the waters now credited with every fresh generation of life, and thou renewest the face of the earth answers the flood imagery of verse 9 with continual renewal rather than a single past event. Spurgeon calls this the psalm's account of providence as creation repeated, not a machine wound once but a hand still open.

Psalms 104:31-32

The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever turns the psalm from the creatures back to their maker, the Lord's own rejoicing in his works answering the six-fold satisfaction of Genesis 1, that it was good. He looketh on the earth and it trembleth, he toucheth the hills and they smoke, reads like Sinai's fire carried into ordinary providence, the same power that shook the mountain at the law's giving still resting under creation's daily order.

Psalms 104:33-34

I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live answers the whole preceding catalogue with a vow rather than a doctrine, the psalmist placing his own praise inside the same order that feeds the lion and waters the hills. My meditation of him shall be sweet, I will be glad in the Lord ties the singer's own gladness to the very word used of the wine at verse 15, the gladness God gives through bread and wine now returned to him in song.

Psalms 104:35

Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more turns the hymn briefly toward judgment before it closes, the one jarring note in a psalm otherwise given to providence and praise. Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah in the Hebrew, enters the Psalter for the first time on this exact verse, a placement the concordance confirms and the older commentators do not soften: the word that will close the whole book first appears beside a prayer that evil be ended. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul repeats verse 1 to frame the psalm as one complete address from the soul to itself, now answered by the shout the rest of the Psalter will take up twenty-one more times.