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Psalms

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Psalm 33

1 You godly ones, shout for joy because of the Lord! It is appropriate for the morally upright to offer him praise. 2 Give thanks to the Lord with the harp. Sing to him to the accompaniment of a ten-stringed instrument. 3 Sing to him a new song. Play skillfully as you shout out your praises to him. 4 For the Lord’s decrees are just, and everything he does is fair. 5 He promotes equity and justice; the Lord’s faithfulness extends throughout the earth. 6 By the Lord’s decree the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all the starry hosts.⁠ 7 He piles up the water of the sea; he puts the oceans in storehouses.⁠ 8 Let the whole earth fear the Lord. Let all who live in the world stand in awe of him. 9 For he spoke, and it came into existence. He issued the decree, and it stood firm.⁠ 10 The Lord frustrates the decisions of the nations; he nullifies the plans of the peoples. 11 The Lord’s decisions stand forever; his plans abide throughout the ages. 12 How blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen to be his special possession. 13 The Lord watches from heaven; he sees all people.⁠ 14 From the place where he lives he looks carefully at all the earth’s inhabitants. 15 He is the one who forms every human heart, and takes note of all their actions. 16 No king is delivered by his vast army; a warrior is not saved by his great might. 17 A horse disappoints those who trust in it for victory; despite its great strength, it cannot deliver. 18 Look, the Lord takes notice of his loyal followers, those who wait for him to demonstrate his faithfulness 19 by saving their lives from death and sustaining them during times of famine. 20 We wait for the Lord; he is our deliverer and shield. 21 For our hearts rejoice in him, for we trust in his holy name. 22 May we experience your faithfulness, O Lord, for we wait for you.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 1:3 and Psalm 33:9

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Genesis depicts creation through God’s speech, bringing order without struggle. Psalm 33 repeats this, saying the world exists because God spoke. These may represent a move away from ancient Near Eastern traditions of creation through divine conflict.

Passages

Genesis 1:3

Hebrew Bible
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was hovering11 over the surface of the water. 3 God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light! 4 God saw that the light was good, so God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” There was evening, and there was morning, marking the first day.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Psalm 33:9

Hebrew Bible
7 He piles up the water of the sea; he puts the oceans in storehouses. 8 Let the whole earth fear the Lord. Let all who live in the world stand in awe of him. 9 For he spoke, and it came into existence. He issued the decree, and it stood firm. 10 The Lord frustrates the decisions of the nations; he nullifies the plans of the peoples. 11 The Lord’s decisions stand forever; his plans abide throughout the ages.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

References

"... The first word of the Torah is “In the beginning” – in Hebrew just one word, beresit. It is a beginning in an absolute sense. As the psalmist says: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Psalm 90:2). Before the “beginning” there was nothing but God. The second word in Genesis is also of particular relevance: “To create” is one of the very few verbs in the Hebrew Bible that is only used with God as subject. Nothing happens at this beginning except God’s creative actions. But the next verse seems to contradict the absoluteness of this beginning: The earth did already exist. Yet it was still “formless and void,” a chaos dominated by waters and darkness. This shows that the author of the creation story in Genesis was not the first one to think and to speak about the beginning of the world. There existed many traditions in other countries and cultures of the ancient world about the origins of the world, some of whom were obviously known in Israel. In particular the Babylonian tradition tells us about an original chaos that had to be beaten by a creator god in order to establish the habitable world. The Hebrew word for the chaotic waters, tehom, echoes the name of Tiamat, the chaotic monster in the Babylonian mythology. Yet the relationship between these two traditions shows at the same time their fundamental difference. The Babylonian creator god, Marduk, had to go through a hard and dangerous fight against the chaotic monster. But the god of Genesis does not fight. He just speaks. It is one of the basic wordings in the biblical creation story: God spoke and it happened. To quote again a psalmist: “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:9). Yet the Hebrew Bible contains also certain echoes of the mythological tradition of a primeval fight of the creator god against chaotic powers ..."
Rolf Rendtorff, “Creation and Redemption in the Torah,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Hebrew Bible, ed. Leo G. Perdue, Blackwell Companions to Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 311–320.

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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Genesis 1:3 and Psalm 33:9

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