Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 104

Clothed. — For the same metaphor see Psalms 93:1.

First and second days of Creation. Instead, however, of describing the creation of light, the poet makes a sublime approach to his theme by treating it as a symbol of the Divine majesty. It is the vesture of God, the tremulous curtain of His tent, whose supporting beams are based, not on the earth, but on those cloud-masses which form an upper ocean. This curtain is then, as it were, drawn aside for the exit of the Monarch attended by His throng of winged messengers.

Who coverest. — Perhaps it is better rendered with the participles of the original retained, as: Putting on light as a robe;
spreading the heavens as a curtain.

The psalmist does not think of the formation of light as a single past act, but as a continued glorious operation of Divine power and splendour.

Not only is light, according to the modern poet:

“Nature’s resplendent robe,
Without whose vesting beauty all would be wrapped
In unessential gloom,”

but it is the dress of Divinity, the “ethereal woof” that God Himself is forever weaving for His own wear.

Curtain. — This refers especially to a tent (see Song of Solomon 1:5 and following), with the tremulous movement of its folds being expressed in the Hebrew word.

Different explanations have been given of the figure. Some see an allusion to the curtains of the Tabernacle (Exodus 26:27).

The associations of this ritual were dear to a religious Hebrew, and he may well have had in his mind the rich folds of the curtain of the Holy of Holies. So a modern poet speaks of:

“The arras-folds, that variegate
The earth, God’s antechamber.”

Herder, again, refers the image to the survival of the nomadic instinct. But there is no need to put a limit to a figure so natural and suggestive.

Possibly, images of palace, temple, and tent, all combined, rose to the poet’s thought, as in Shelley’s “Ode to Heaven”:

“Palace roof of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep immeasurable vast,
Which are now, and which were then;
Of the present and the past,
Of the Eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome
Of acts and ages yet to come!”

Layeth the beams. —Literally, makes to meet. The meaning of the Hebrew word, which is an exact equivalent of the Latin contignare, is clear from Nehemiah 2:8; Nehemiah 3:3; Nehemiah 3:6, and from the meaning of the derived noun (2 Kings 6:2; 2 Kings 6:5; Song of Solomon 1:17).

Chambers. —Literally, lofts or upper stories. (See 2 Kings 4:10; Jeremiah 22:13–14.)

In the waters. —The manner of this ethereal architecture is necessarily somewhat difficult to picture. The pavilion which God rears for His own abode appears to rest on a floor of rain-clouds, like a tent spread on a flat eastern roof. (Amos 9:6–7.) Southey’s description of the Palace of Indra may perhaps help the imagination:

“Built on the lake, the waters were its floor;
And here its walls were water arched with fire,
And here were fire with water vaulted o’er;
And spires and pinnacles of fire
Round watery cupolas aspire,
And domes of rainbow rest on fiery towers.”

Curse of Kehama.

Who maketh the clouds His chariot. —See Psalms 18:10, probably the original of this verse; chariot (rekhûb) here taking the place of cherub.

Walketh upon the wings of the wind. —Doubtless the metaphor is taken from the clouds, which, in a wind-swept sky, float along like “the drifted wings of many companies of angels.” The clause is thus in direct parallelism with the description of the cloud chariot. The figure has passed into modern song:

“Every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.”

MILTON: Lycidas.

“No wing of wind the region swept.”

TENNYSON: In Memoriam.

Who makes ... —Rather,

Who makes winds His messenger
A flaming fire His ministers.

Or, keeping the order of the Hebrew,
Who makes His messengers of winds,
And His ministers of flaming fire.

This is plainly the meaning required by the context, which deals with the use made by the Divine King of the various forms and forces of Nature. Just as He makes the clouds serve as a chariot and the sky as a tent, so He employs the winds as messengers and the lightnings as servants.

Taken quite alone, the construction and arrangement of the verse favours the interpretation of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 1:7; see the note in the New Testament Commentary). This was the traditional Jewish interpretation, and on it were founded various theories of angelic agency.

But not only do the requirements of the context set aside this interpretation, but Hebrew literature also offers enough instances to show that the order in which a poet arranged his words was comparatively immaterial.

Indeed, Dean Perowne has cited two instances (Isaiah 37:26; Isaiah 60:18) of precisely similar inversion of the natural order of immediate object and predicate (See Expositor, December, 1878).

And no difficulty needs to be made about the change of number in flame of fire and ministers, since even if the former were not synonymous with lightnings, its predicate might be plural (See Proverbs 16:14, “The wrath of a king is messengers of death.”).