John Calvin Commentary Psalms 104:29

"Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; Thou takest away their breath, they die, And return to their dust." — Psalms 104:29 (ASV)

Thou shalt hide thy face, and they shall be afraid. In these words, the Psalmist declares that we stand or fall according to the will of God. We continue to live as long as he sustains us by his power; but no sooner does he withdraw his life-giving spirit than we die.

Even Plato knew this, who so often teaches that, properly speaking, there is only one God, and that all things subsist, or have their being, only in him. Nor do I doubt that it was the will of God, by means of that heathen writer, to awaken all people to the knowledge that they derive their life from another source than from themselves.

In the first place, the Psalmist asserts that if God hide his face they are afraid; and, secondly, that if he take away their spirit they die, and return to their dust. By these words he points out that when God graciously looks upon us, that look gives us life, and that as long as his serene countenance shines, it inspires all creatures with life.

Our blindness then is doubly inexcusable if we do not, on our part, cast our eyes upon that goodness which gives life to the whole world. The prophet describes step by step the destruction of living creatures when God withdraws from them his secret energy, so that from the contrast he may better commend that continued inspiration by which all things are maintained in life and vigor.

He could have gone further and asserted that all things, unless upheld in being by God, would return to nothing; but he was content with affirming in general and popular language that whatever is not cherished by Him falls into corruption. He again declares that the world is daily renewed, because God sends forth his spirit. In the propagation of living creatures, we doubtless see continually a new creation of the world.

In now calling that God’s spirit, which he before represented as the spirit of living creatures, there is no contradiction. God sends forth that spirit which remains with him wherever he pleases; and as soon as he has sent it forth, all things are created. In this way, what was his own he makes ours.

But this gives no support to the old dream of the Manichaeans, which that filthy dog Servetus has made still worse in our own day. The Manichaeans said that the soul of man is a particle of the Divine Spirit and is propagated from it like the shoot of a tree; but this base man has had the audacity to assert that oxen, asses, and dogs are parts of the divine essence.

The Manichaeans at least had this pretext for their error: that the soul was created after the image of God. But to maintain this with respect to swine and cattle is in the highest degree monstrous and detestable. Nothing was further from the prophet’s intention than to divide the spirit of God into parts, so that a portion of it should dwell essentially in every living creature.

But he termed that the spirit of God which proceeds from him. Incidentally, he instructs us that it is ours because it is given to us to quicken us. The substance of what is stated is that when we see the world daily decaying and daily renewed, the life-giving power of God is reflected to us in this as in a mirror.

All the deaths which take place among living creatures are just so many examples of our nothingness, so to speak; and when others are produced and grow up in their place, we have in that a renewal of the world presented to us. Since, then, the world daily dies and is daily renewed in its various parts, the manifest conclusion is that it subsists only by a secret virtue derived from God.