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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 104:1 - 104:1
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The first decastich begins the celebration with work of the first and second days. הֹוד וְהָדָר here is not the doxa belonging to God πρὸ παντὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος (Jud 1:25), but the doxa which He has put on (Job 40:10) since He created the world, over against which He stands in kingly glory, or rather in which He is immanent, and which reflects this kingly glory in various gradations, yea, to a certain extent is this glory itself. For inasmuch as God began the work of creation with the creation of light, He has covered Himself with this created light itself as with a garment. That which once happened in connection with the creation may, as in Amo 4:13; Isa 44:24; Isa 45:7; Jer 10:12, and frequently, be expressed by participles of the present, because the original setting is continued in the preservation of the world; and determinate participles alternate with participles without the article, as in Isa 44:24-28, with no other difference than that the former are more predicative and the latter more attributive. With Psa 104:2 the poet comes upon the work of the second day: the creation of the expanse (רקיע) which divides between the waters. God has spread this out (cf. Isa 40:22) like a tent-cloth (Isa 54:2), of such light and of such fine transparent work; נֹוטֶה here rhymes with עֹטֶה. In those waters which the “expanse” holds aloft over the earth God lays the beams of His upper chambers (עֲלִיֹּותָתו, instead of which we find מַֽעֲלֹותָיו in Amo 9:6, from עֲלִיָּה, ascent, elevation, then an upper story, an upper chamber, which would be more accurately עִלִּיָּה after the Aramaic and Arabic); but not as though the waters were the material for them, they are only the place for them, that is exalted above the earth, and are able to be this because to the Immaterial One even that which is fluid is solid, and that which is dense is transparent. The reservoirs of the upper waters, the clouds, God makes, as the lightning, thunder, and rain indicate, into His chariot (רְכוּב), upon which he rides along in order to make His power felt below upon the earth judicially (Isa 19:1), or in rescuing and blessing men. רְכוּב (only here) accords in sound with כְּרוּב, Psa 18:11. For Psa 104:3 also recalls this primary passage, where the wings of the wind take the place of the cloud-chariot. In Psa 104:4 the lxx (Heb 1:7) makes the first substantive into an accusative of the object, and the second into an accusative of the predicate: Ὁ ποιῶν τοὺς ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ πνεῦματα καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ πυρὸς φλόγα. It is usually translated the reverse say: making the winds into His angels, etc. This rendering is possible so far as the language is concerned (cf. Psa 100:3 Chethîb, and on the position of the worlds, Amo 4:13 with Psa 5:8), and the plural מְשָֽׁרֲתָיו is explicable in connection with this rendering from the force of the parallelism, and the singular אֵשׁ from the fact that this word has no plural. Since, however, עָשָׂה with two accusatives usually signifies to produce something out of something, so that the second accusative (viz., the accusative of the predicate, which is logically the second, but according to the position of the words may just as well be the first, Exo 25:39; Exo 30:25, as the second, Exo 37:23; Exo 38:3; Gen 2:7; 2Ch 4:18-22) denotes the materia ex qua, it may with equal right at least be interpreted: Who makes His messengers out of the winds, His servants out of the flaming or consuming (vid., on Psa 57:5) fire (אֵשׁ, as in Jer 48:45, masc.). And this may affirm either that God makes use of wind and fire for special missions (cf. Psa 148:8), or (cf. Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, i. 325f.) that He gives wind and fire to His angels for the purpose of His operations in the world which are effected through their agency, as the materials of their outward manifestation, and as it were of their self-embodiment,
(Note: It is a Talmudic view that God really makes the angels out of fire, B. Chagiga, 14a (cf. Koran, xxxviii. 77): Day by day are the angels of the service created out of the stream of fire (נהר דינור), and sing their song of praise and perish.)
as then in Psa 18:11 wind and cherub are both to be associated together in thought as the vehicle of the divine activity in the world, and in Psa 35:5 the angel of Jahve represents the energy of the wind.