Go to Related Reading
About this book

Psalms

About this book
Psalm 104

1 Praise the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are magnificent. You are robed in splendor and majesty. 2 He covers himself with light as if it were a garment. He stretches out the skies like a tent curtain⁠ 3 and lays the beams on water in his upper rooms3. He makes the clouds his chariot and travels on the wings of the wind.⁠ 4 He makes the winds his messengers⁠ and the flaming fire his attendant.⁠ 5 He established the earth on its foundations; it will never be moved. 6 The watery deep covered it like a garment; the waters reached above the mountains. 7 Your shout made the waters retreat; at the sound of your thunderous voice they hurried off— 8 as the mountains rose up and the valleys went down—to the place you appointed for them. 9 You set up a boundary for them that they could not cross, so that they would not cover the earth again.⁠ 10 He turns springs into streams; they flow between the mountains. 11 They provide water for all the animals in the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 The birds of the sky live beside them; they chirp among the bushes. 13 He waters the mountains from the upper rooms of his palace; the earth is full of the fruit you cause to grow. 14 He provides grass for the cattle and crops for people to cultivate, so they can produce food from the ground 15 as well as wine that makes people glad, and olive oil to make their faces shine as well as bread that sustains them. 16 The trees of the Lord receive all the rain they need, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted, 17 where the birds make nests near the evergreens in which the herons live. 18 The wild goats live in the high mountains; the rock badgers find safety in the cliffs. 19 He made the moon to mark the months, and the sun sets according to a regular schedule.⁠ 20 You make it dark and night comes, during which all the beasts of the forest prowl around.⁠ 21 The lions roar for prey, seeking their food from God. 22 When the sun rises, they withdraw and sleep in their dens. 23 People then go out to do their work, and they labor until evening. 24 How many living things you have made, O Lord! You have exhibited great skill in making all of them;⁠ the earth is full of the living things you have made. 25 Over here is the deep, wide sea, which teems with innumerable swimming creatures, living things both small and large. 26 The ships travel there, and over here swims Leviathan35 you made to play in it.⁠ 27 All your creatures wait for you to provide them with food on a regular basis. 28 You give food to them and they receive it; you open your hand and they are filled with food. 29 When you ignore them, they panic. When you take away their life’s breath, they die and return to dust.⁠ 30 When you send your life-giving breath, they are created, and you replenish the surface of the ground. 31 May the splendor of the Lord endure. May the Lord find pleasure in the living things he has made. 32 He looks down on the earth and it shakes; he touches the mountains and they start to smolder. 33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God as long as I exist. 34 May my thoughts be pleasing to him. I will rejoice in the Lord. 35 May sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked vanish. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 1:21 and Psalm 104:26

Hebrew Bible

Share:

Summary

Psalm 104 says Leviathan is a creature made by God, placing him among the sea creatures or monsters created in Genesis 1. Psalm 104 reshapes an ancient Near Eastern mythological pattern where the chaotic sea monster opposes the creator.

Passages

Genesis 1:21

Hebrew Bible
19 There was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day. 20 God said, “Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” 21 God created the great sea creatures and every living and moving thing with which the water swarmed, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” 23 There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Psalm 104:26

Hebrew Bible
24 How many living things you have made, O Lord! You have exhibited great skill in making all of them; the earth is full of the living things you have made. 25 Over here is the deep, wide sea, which teems with innumerable swimming creatures, living things both small and large. 26 The ships travel there, and over here swims Leviathan35 you made to play in it. 27 All your creatures wait for you to provide them with food on a regular basis. 28 You give food to them and they receive it; you open your hand and they are filled with food.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

References

"... The survival and embellishment of the eschatological combat myth in post-biblical Jewish literature argues against the view that its presence in the Hebrew Bible is only vestigial. We have already seen that Kaufmann's belief that Israel recontextualized the cosmogonic myth as a mere rebellion is not generally borne out in the texts, which lack the rhetoric of revolt. The fact that the combat may take place after the origination of the physical universe would be decisive only if the point of creation in the Hebrew Bible were creatio ex nihilo, but this is not the point even in Genesis 1. In support of the conventional view that 'the Hebrew myths dealing with the birth of the cosmos envision no struggle between the creator and any other beings,' one scholar has recently noted that 'with the most detail to be found anywhere, the poet in Job 40-41 can picture Behemoth and Leviathan as mere playthings in YHWH's hands.' This reinforces his assertion that 'what is primordial is the goodness of this world and of humanity; what is radically intrusive is the evil which humanity does.' This statement is inadequate to capture even the theology of Genesis 1, which will occupy us in the next chapter. And, couched as a generalization about the Hebrew Bible, it is highly vulnerable. The truth is that Leviathan usually seems to be primordial. In fact, only Psalm 104:26 attributes his creation to YHWH. Whereas Job 40-41 explicitly states that Behemoth is a work of God, no such statement is made of Leviathan in the much longer section devoted to him. Instead, we hear only' of God's heroic capture and conquest of the great sea beast. The theology of the first chapter of the Bible surely relativized the old combat myth and eventually required that it be seen as a revolt-primordial, eschatological, or both-but the optimistic theology failed to uproot the older and more pessimistic combat myth altogether ..."
Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence, Mythos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 48–49.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Your feedback

Genesis 1:21 and Psalm 104:26

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library