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Psalms

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Psalm 136

1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loyal love endures.⁠ 2 Give thanks to the God of gods,⁠ for his loyal love endures. 3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his loyal love endures. 4 To the one who performs magnificent, amazing deeds all by himself, for his loyal love endures. 5 To the one who used wisdom to make the heavens, for his loyal love endures.⁠ 6 To the one who spread out the earth over the water,⁠ for his loyal love endures. 7 To the one who made the great lights, for his loyal love endures,⁠ 8 the sun to rule by day, for his loyal love endures, 9 the moon and stars to rule by night, for his loyal love endures. 10 To the one who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, for his loyal love endures, 11 and led Israel out from their midst, for his loyal love endures, 12 with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, for his loyal love endures. 13 To the one who divided the Red Sea in two, for his loyal love endures, 14 and led Israel through its midst, for his loyal love endures, 15 and tossed Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea, for his loyal love endures. 16 To the one who led his people through the wilderness, for his loyal love endures. 17 To the one who struck down great kings, for his loyal love endures, 18 and killed powerful kings, for his loyal love endures, 19 Sihon, king of the Amorites, for his loyal love endures, 20 Og, king of Bashan, for his loyal love endures, 21 and gave their land as an inheritance, for his loyal love endures, 22 as an inheritance to Israel his servant, for his loyal love endures. 23 To the one who remembered us when we were down, for his loyal love endures, 24 and snatched us away from our enemies, for his loyal love endures. 25 To the one who gives food to all living things, for his loyal love endures. 26 Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his loyal love endures!

Texts in conversation

Compare Isaiah 40:22 and Psalm 136:6

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Psalm 136 and Isaiah 40 describe the earth being spread out above the waters, reflecting a cosmology where the world is a flat surface on a cosmic sea. This imagery appears throughout the Hebrew Bible, where the waters represent a boundary of creation.

Passages

Isaiah 40:22

Hebrew Bible
21 Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told to you since the very beginning? Have you not understood from the time the earth’s foundations were made? 22 He is the one who sits on the earth’s horizon; its inhabitants are like grasshoppers before him. He is the one who stretches out the sky like a thin curtain, and spreads it out like a pitched tent. 23 He is the one who reduces rulers to nothing; he makes the earth’s leaders insignificant. 24 Indeed, they are barely planted; yes, they are barely sown; yes, they barely take root in the earth, and then he blows on them, causing them to dry up, and the wind carries them away like straw.
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

Psalm 136:6

Hebrew Bible
4 To the one who performs magnificent, amazing deeds all by himself, for his loyal love endures. 5 To the one who used wisdom to make the heavens, for his loyal love endures. 6 To the one who spread out the earth over the water, for his loyal love endures. 7 To the one who made the great lights, for his loyal love endures, 8 the sun to rule by day, for his loyal love endures, 9 the moon and stars to rule by night, for his loyal love endures.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

References

"... The ancient Israelites conceived of the earth as a flat disk floating on the cosmic, inferior sea (Isaiah 40:22; Psalm 136:6) and thought that the same cosmic sea surrounds the earth all around (Zechariah 9:10; Psalm 72:8). They also saw a basic continuity between the geographic seas and the cosmic seas. Based on these observations, Batto argues that the poet responsible for the Song at the Sea, in speaking of יםסוף, did not distinguish the Red Sea to the south of Canaan from the cosmic sea at the end of the earth, “a sea which in their minds was fraught with connotations of primeval chaos.” In sum, the sea in the Song is the Red Sea, the geographical sea to the south, but not exclusively so, for it is also the cosmic Sea at the End. The geographic sea and the cosmic sea occupy the same space in the unified world of the ancients ..."
Paul K.-K. Cho, Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 105–106.

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

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Isaiah 40:22 and Psalm 136:6

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