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Psalms 104: What the Passage Says

81 claims across 35 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Psalms 104 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm praises the LORD as the maker and keeper of the whole created world. It moves through the light he wears, the sky, the sea and the land, then through the springs, plants, trees, animals, moon and sun, and the daily round of night and work. It says every living thing waits on God for food, and that they live or die as he gives or withholds breath. It ends with the singer promising lifelong praise and asking that sinners and the wicked come to an end.

Claim by Claim

  1. 104:1
    • The speaker calls on his own soul to bless the LORD.
    • The speaker addresses the LORD as his God.
    • The speaker says that the LORD is very great.
    • The speaker says the LORD is clothed with splendor and majesty.
  2. 104:2
    • The LORD wraps himself in light as with a garment.
    • The LORD stretches out the heavens like a curtain of cloth.
  3. 104:3
    • The LORD lays the beams of his upper chambers in the waters.
    • The LORD makes the clouds his chariot.
    • The LORD travels on the wings of the wind.
  4. 104:4
    • The LORD makes his messengers winds, or makes the winds his messengers; the wording allows either.
    • The LORD makes his ministers a flaming fire, or makes flaming fire his ministers; the wording allows either.
  5. 104:5
    • The LORD set the earth on its foundations.
    • The earth will not be moved forever and ever.
  6. 104:6
    • The LORD covered the earth with the deep as with a garment.
    • The waters stood above the mountains.
  7. 104:7
    • At the LORD's rebuke the waters fled.
    • At the sound of the LORD's thunder the waters hurried away.
  8. 104:8
    • They go up the mountains and down the valleys, or the mountains rose and the valleys sank; the wording allows either.
    • They go to the place the LORD founded for them.
  9. 104:9
    • The LORD set a boundary the waters may not cross.
    • The waters will not return to cover the earth.
  10. 104:10
    • The LORD sends springs into the valleys.
    • The springs flow between the mountains.
  11. 104:11
    • The springs give drink to every beast of the field.
    • The wild donkeys quench their thirst at them.
  12. 104:12
    • The birds of the sky dwell beside the springs.
    • The birds give voice among the branches.
  13. 104:13
    • The LORD waters the mountains from his upper chambers.
    • The earth is satisfied with the fruit of the LORD's works.
  14. 104:14
    • The LORD makes grass grow for the cattle.
    • The LORD makes plants grow for man to cultivate.
    • The purpose is to bring forth food out of the earth.
  15. 104:15
    • Wine gladdens the heart of man.
    • Oil makes the face shine.
    • Bread sustains the heart of man.
  16. 104:16
    • The trees of the LORD are fully watered.
    • The cedars of Lebanon are trees the LORD planted.
  17. 104:17
    • Birds make their nests in those trees.
    • The stork's house is in the cypress trees.
  18. 104:18
    • The high mountains belong to the wild goats.
    • The cliffs are a refuge for the rock badgers.
  19. 104:19
    • The LORD made the moon to mark appointed times.
    • The sun knows its setting.
  20. 104:20
    • The LORD brings darkness and it becomes night.
    • In the night all the beasts of the forest move about.
  21. 104:21
    • The young lions roar for prey.
    • The young lions seek their food from God.
  22. 104:22
    • When the sun rises, the lions withdraw.
    • The lions lie down in their dens.
  23. 104:23
    • Man goes out to his work.
    • Man labors until evening.
  24. 104:24
    • The speaker exclaims that the LORD's works are many.
    • The LORD made them all in wisdom.
    • The earth is full of the LORD's possessions.
  25. 104:25
    • There is a great and wide sea.
    • In the sea are creeping things beyond number.
    • In the sea are living creatures both small and great.
  26. 104:26
    • Ships travel on the sea.
    • Leviathan is there.
    • The LORD formed Leviathan to play in the sea, or to play with; the wording allows either.
  27. 104:27
    • All of them look to the LORD.
    • They look to him to give them their food at its proper time.
  28. 104:28
    • When the LORD gives to them, they gather it.
    • When the LORD opens his hand, they are satisfied with good.
  29. 104:29
    • When the LORD hides his face, they are dismayed.
    • When the LORD takes away their breath, they die.
    • They return to their dust.
  30. 104:30
    • When the LORD sends forth his spirit, they are created.
    • The LORD renews the face of the ground.
  31. 104:31
    • The glory of the LORD will endure forever.
    • The LORD will rejoice in his works.
  32. 104:32
    • The LORD looks at the earth and it trembles.
    • The LORD touches the mountains and they smoke.
  33. 104:33
    • The speaker will sing to the LORD as long as he lives.
    • The speaker will sing praise to his God while he still exists.
  34. 104:34
    • The speaker's meditation will be pleasing to the LORD.
    • The speaker will be glad in the LORD.
  35. 104:35
    • The speaker asks that sinners be consumed from the earth.
    • The speaker asks that the wicked be no more.
    • The speaker calls on his own soul to bless the LORD.
    • The speaker calls for praise of the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

104:1
Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters, the Hebrew has the personal name of Israel's God, four consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers said "the Lord" aloud in its place, and English Bibles have followed that custom ever since. "Bless" here does not mean to grant a favor; said of God by a person, the Hebrew verb means to kneel before, honor, praise. "My soul" in Hebrew (nephesh) means the whole living self, not an inner part separable from the body, closer to "my whole being" than to the modern idea of a soul.
104:2
The King James "curtain" and the rendering's "tent" translate a word for the cloth of a tent. The picture is of the sky as a great fabric pulled taut over the earth, the way a nomad stretches goat-hair panels over poles.
104:3
Ancient Hebrew writers pictured a body of water above the sky as well as below the earth. Here God's own dwelling is built like an upper story, with its floor beams sunk into that upper water. The chariot and the "wings of the wind" belong to a stock picture, found across the ancient Near East, of a god riding the storm.
104:4
The Hebrew word ruach means wind, breath, and spirit all at once, and the word translated "angels" in the King James simply means "messengers." So the line can be read either way: God makes the winds into his messengers, or he makes his messengers into winds. Ancient readers took it both ways.
104:5
"Foundations" is builders' language. The earth is imagined as a structure set on footings, the way a house is, so that it does not shift.
104:6
"The deep" translates tehom, the standard Hebrew word for the vast primeval sea, the same word used in the opening lines of Genesis. It names the water itself, not a depth or a place.
104:7
To "rebuke" someone is to speak to them sharply, the way you would to stop a fight.
104:8
The Hebrew of this verse is genuinely unclear, and translators split. Either the waters go up over the mountains and down into the valleys as they drain away, or the mountains themselves rise and the valleys sink as the water retreats. Both readings are old and both are defensible.
104:9
The line is the edge of the sea, the shore. The water stops there and comes no farther.
104:10
A spring is water that comes up out of the ground. People and animals drank from springs.
104:11
Wild donkeys were never tamed. They lived in dry country, so finding water really mattered to them.
104:14
To farm means to plant seeds and grow food. People grew grain, beans and fruit.
104:15
Olive oil was rubbed on the skin and hair after washing, in the dry Mediterranean climate, both to protect the skin and as a mark of being well and at ease. A shining face meant a person who was doing well, not one who was sweating. Wine, oil and bread were the three staple products of the land.
104:16
The cedars of Lebanon were enormous conifers from the mountains north of Israel, the most prized timber in the region and used for palaces and temples. They were the standard example of a huge tree, and they grow on rainfall alone, no one waters them, which is the point being made.
104:17
The tree named in Hebrew here is a berosh, a conifer of some kind; whether it was a cypress, a juniper or a fir is not certain, which is why translations differ. The King James says "fir."
104:18
The animal the King James calls a "cony" is the rock hyrax, a stout, rabbit-sized creature that lives in colonies among rock crevices in Israel and is unrelated to rabbits. "Cony" was the ordinary English word for a rabbit in 1611.
104:19
The Hebrew word behind "seasons" means appointed times, the fixed points of the calendar, including the religious festivals. Israel counted months by the moon, so the moon's phases were what told people the date.
104:21
"Meat" in the KJV means food of any kind, not just animal flesh.
104:22
A den is an animal's home, like a cave or a hole. Lions sleep there in the daytime.
104:24
The Hebrew word here can mean both "creatures" and "possessions"; it comes from a verb meaning to acquire or create. The line says the earth is full of what God has made and so holds title to.
104:26
Leviathan is a great sea creature named elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible as a monster of the deep, sometimes many-headed, that God subdues. Here the picture is deliberately mild: the terror of the sea is a thing God made, splashing about in its pool.
104:29
"Hiding the face" is a standard Hebrew idiom for withdrawing attention and favor, turning away from someone rather than covering one's features. "Breath" is again ruach, the same word as wind and spirit in verses 4 and 30, so the taking of breath here and the sending of it in the next verse are the same word.
104:30
The word translated "Spirit" is the same ruach that meant "wind" in verse 4 and "breath" in verse 29. The Hebrew does not distinguish, and translators must choose; "breath" and "spirit" and "wind" are all live options for this line.
104:32
Mountains that smoke when God touches them are drawing on the way God's arrival was described at Sinai, with the mountain smoking and shaking. It is standard poetic language for a divine appearance, not a report of a volcano.
104:35
The last two words of the King James, "Praise ye the LORD," are one Hebrew word, hallelu-yah, "praise Yah," Yah being the short form of the divine name. It is the word that came into English as "hallelujah." This is where it first appears in the book of Psalms.

Read Psalms 104