Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c (NRSV)
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord
my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honor and
majesty,
2 wrapped
in light as with a garment.
You stretch out the heavens like a
tent,
3 you
set the beams of your chambers on the waters,
you make the clouds your chariot,
you ride on the wings of the wind,
4 you make the winds
your messengers,
fire and flame your ministers.
5 You set the earth on
its foundations,
so that it shall never be shaken.
6 You cover it with the
deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the
mountains.
7 At your rebuke they
flee;
at the sound of your thunder they
take to flight.
8 They rose up to the
mountains, ran down to the valleys
to the place that you appointed for
them.
9 You set a boundary
that they may not pass,
so that they might not again cover
the earth.
24 O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your
creatures.
35 Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Psalm
104:1-9, 24, 35c is part of a psalm that is a hymn oriented to nature. The Israelite Monarchy may be the time of writing for
this psalm. However, Pannenberg refers to it as an exilic psalm. The poet
combines profound religious thought with reflecting on nature in an intimate
way. The creation focus of Psalm 104 is similar to that of Psalm 19:1-6 and
Genesis 1, where God created sun, moon and stars (which other people worshiped
as gods/goddesses), and the creation praises the Creator. Also in Psalms
96:9-13; 98:7-9; and 148 (all), creation itself does the praise-singing. Other
passages that marvel at God's creation include Psalms 8 and 89; Proverbs
8:23-31. See Isaiah 40 passim and
Isaiah 46:1 ff. for a prophetic emphasis on God as Creator, in mocking contrast
to the inability of idols made by human
beings to do anything. Isaiah 40:12 ff. parallels Job 38:1 ff. The reign of God
is without beginning or end, not attained by a fight with chaos. Further, the
sequence here of plants before the stars is like Genesis 1, largely because
they belong closely to the earth and to depreciate the stars in comparison with
the divine rank that the stars had in the religious world around Israel,
especially Babylon.[1]
One parallel to Psalm 104 in another culture is that of Ikhnaton, Pharaoh
Amenophes IV (1375-1358 BC), Hymn to the Sun.[2]
Psalm
104: 1 is a statement of the theme. 1 Bless the Lord, meaning praise the God of
Israel, O my soul, a poetic reference
to “I.” This phrase appears biblically only at the beginning and end
of Psalms 104 and 103. O Lord my God, you are very great. The
perception of nature will lead to a reflection on the majesty of God.
Psalm
104:1c-4, the psalmist then contemplates the heavens. Here is a theophany of
God from heaven. You are clothed with
honor and majesty, 2wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch
out the heavens like a tent, 3you set the beams of your chambers on
the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the
wind, 4 you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your
ministers.
Psalm
104: 5-9 refer to the earth. It reflects an origin of earth with wonder and
awe. 5 You set the earth on
its foundations, so that nothing shall
ever shake it. Verses 6-9 reflect
the Israelites’ literal and theologically figurative fear of the sea. The sea
represented a scary, overwhelmingly unpredictable and frequently deadly
location, since they were a non-seafaring people. Theologically it meant the
chaos that their providential Lord God would personally have to keep in check. 6 You cover it with the deep (tehom[3]
see Genesis 1:2) as with a garment; the
waters stood above the mountains. 7 At your rebuke, they flee; at
the sound of your thunder, they take to flight. 8 They rose up to
the mountains, ran down to the valleys to the place that you appointed for
them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they
might not again cover the earth. God brought cosmos from chaos. Awe and trust in God are the source of this
poetic expression. Here, God has established the earth for eternity and
experiences protection against the waters of chaos. The Lord has set the earth
on a solid foundation, covering it with a garment, and setting boundaries.[4]
Accordingly, God sets boundaries for (or otherwise controls) the ocean’s
chaotically destructive waters (see also Genesis 1:9-10; Job 38:8-11; Proverbs
8:28-29; Jeremiah 5:22; Nahum 1:4). Jesus walks on water (Mark
6:45 ff.) and calms the
winds and storm-tossed sea (Mark 4:35 ff.). Revelation 21:1 speaks of
the time when there will be no more sea.[5]
All
this brings to mind Katharina
von Schlegel Jane Borthwick
In
Psalm 104: 24, which begins a section that concludes with verse 26, wonder fills the sea, to the point where Leviathan plays in
it. In fact, one can sense the exuberance of the writer. James Herriot
In verse 35b, the
psalm concludes with Bless the Lord, offer
praise to the God of Israel, O my soul. We
find this summons in several places in the Psalter (e.g., Psalm 103:1, 2, 20,
21, 22; 115:18). Praise the Lord (Hallelujah)! In Hebrew, the phrase is Halelu-yah, from halal
("to praise"). Yah is simply a short form of Yahweh's name.
Therefore, "Hallelujah" means "Praise Yah(weh)."
Where in nature do
we see straight lines, exact triangles, perfect circles and other standardized
shapes? Nowhere. As mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, a man I will tell you more
about in a moment, put it, "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not
cones, coastlines are not circles and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning
travel in a straight line." Nature does not follow traditional Euclidian
geometry.
Let us think for a
moment about the lowly cauliflower, for example. If we want to get some sense
of measurement of a cauliflower head, we can easily weigh it and come up with a
number. However, if we want to measure its surface, we have great difficulty
arriving at a number, for the surface is neither flat nor smooth. To measure
it, we would need some way to measure irregularity or roughness. What is more,
if we cut off one of the florets and study it, we see that it, like the whole
cauliflower head, is also rough. The same is true if we break a sprig off the
floret - and is even true of smaller pieces of the sprig. In fact, each smaller
part is like the whole cauliflower, only more diminutive.
It turns out that
this principle applies to many things in nature, such as trees. If we look at a
tree closely, we see that the individual branches look like small trees, and
the same is true of the smaller branches off the larger ones.
Now let us return
to the mathematician. Mandelbrot was not the first to notice that in natural
formations, small parts often resemble the whole. However, before him, people
regarded this feature as an isolated curiosity. In the 1970s, however,
Mandelbrot took this phenomenon - which he calls "self-similarity" -
and used it as a basis on which to build a new kind of geometry, a
non-Euclidian geometry for applying science and measurement to non-smooth
objects in the real world. Self-similarity is the property of having a substructure
analogous or identical to an overall structure. For example, a part of a line
segment is itself a line segment, and thus a line segment exhibits
self-similarity. By contrast, no part of a circle is a circle, and thus a
circle does not exhibit self-similarity. Many natural phenomena, such as clouds
and plants, are self-similar to some degree. In the process, he coined the word
fractals to refer to these irregular shapes. However, more importantly, he
demonstrated that the irregularly shaped objects in nature do not have a random
shape. Such shapes actually follow simple rules to generate seemingly complex
and chaotic patterns. Mandelbrot said the roughness of shapes in nature is not
a mess but something in which he found "very strong traces of order."
(He developed the word fractals from the Latin fractus, which means
broken.) Mandelbrot went on to write a
book about his new geometry based on fractals, which he also described as the
"science of roughness." He said he preferred the word roughness to irregularity
because grammatically, "irregularity is the contrary of regularity,"
whereas in nature, the contrary of regularity is rough.
One more example
sometimes used to explain fractals is a coastline, which, of course, is
irregular or "rough." On a map, we might represent a small section of
coastline as a straight line, but, in reality, even small sections do not form
straight lines. If we look at that section closely, we see that its composition
is that of several small peninsulas and inlets. If we look even more closely,
we see that each peninsula and inlet has its own bays and headlands. If we
continue to look at even smaller sections, we will discover that the pattern is
always present. Moreover, the recurring pattern of roughness is more or less the
same, no matter how closely we look at the object in question.
Understanding
fractals has made possible significant advances in fields as varied as physics,
music, linguistics, weather forecasting, medicine, economics and even
movie-making. In the case of the latter, for example, a film director needing a
shot with a mountain in the background can put into a computer a fractal
algorithm of a pattern of peaks and crags, and the computer can generate the
whole mountain, reproducing those basic shapes on varying scales. Granted, the
result is not a real mountain, but it looks like a real one. In addition, if
the director decides the mountain is not rugged enough for the scene, the
special-effects people can simply bump up the roughness number and regenerate the
mountain.
All of this
suggests that nature does have an order, even if the order is not the smooth
surface on which Euclidean geometry paints. Rather, the order of nature is more
like the rough surface of fractal geometry. If you have followed me so far,
maybe we can think of this type of order in nature as a metaphor of the type of
order we find in human life. After all, human beings are part of nature. What
if we viewed what occurs in the human life as having an order something like
that of fractal geometry? Human life is hardly smooth. It has all the twists
and turns that we find in nature. In our limited experience of our personal
lives or of human life on this planet, it may appear irregular. In reality, it
may simply be rough; having an order that one might perceive if one could gain
the proper perspective. It has a design, if you please, even if our limited
perspective makes it look random.
What would happen if such reflections can help
us understand the way God is at work in the world?
[1]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume
II, 13, 117.
[2]
Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky,
O living Aton, Beginning of life!
When thou risest in the Eastern horizon,
Thou fillest every land with thy beauty.
Thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high above
every land,
Thy rays, they encompass the lands, even all that thou
hast made.
Thou art Re, and thou carriest them all away captive;
Thou bindest them by thy love.
Though thou art far away, thy rays are upon the earth;
Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.
When thou settest in the western horizon of the sky,
The earth is in darkness like the dead;
They sleep in their chambers,
Their heads are wrapped up,
Their nostrils are stopped,
And none seeth the other,
While all their things are stolen
Which are under their heads,
And they know it not.
Every lion cometh forth from his den,
All serpents, they Sting.
Darkness ...
The world is in silence,
He that made them resteth in his horizon.
Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon.
When thou shinest as Aton by day
Thou drivest away the darkness.
When thou sendest forth thy rays,
The Two Lands (Egypt) are in daily festivity,
Awake and standing upon their feet
When thou hast raised them up.
Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing,
Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.
(Then) in all the world they do their work.
All cattle rest upon their pasturage,
The trees and the plants flourish,
The birds flutter in their marshes,
Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
All the sheep dance upon their feet,
All winged things fly,
They live when thou hast shone upon them.
The barques sail up-stream and down-stream alike.
Every highway is open because thou dawnest.
The fish in the river leap up before thee.
Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.
Creator of the germ in woman,
Maker of seed in man,
Giving life to the son in the body of his mother,
Soothing him that he may not weep,
Nurse (even) in the womb,
Giver of breath to animate every one that he maketh!
When he cometh forth from the body ... on the day of
his birth,
Thou openest his mouth in speech,
Thou suppliest his necessities.
When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the shell,
Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive.
When thou hast brought him together
To (the point of) bursting it in the egg,
He cometh forth from the egg
To chirp with all his might.
He goeth about upon his two feet
When he hath come forth therefrom.
How manifold are thy works!
They are hidden from before (us),
O sole God, whose powers no other possesseth.
Thou didst creat the earth according to thy heart
While thou wast alone:
Men, all cattle large and small,
All that are upon the earth,
That go about upon their feet;
(All) that are on high,
That fly wilh their wings.
The foreign countries, Syria and Kush,
The land of Egypt;
Thou settest every man into his place,
Every one has his possessions,
And his days are reckoned.
Their tongues are diverse in speech,
Their forms likewise and their skins are
distinguished.
(For) thou makest different the strangers.
Thou makest the Nile in the Nether World,
Thou bringest it as thou desirest,
To preserve alive the people.
For thou hast made them for thyself,
The lord of them all, resting among them;
Thou lord of every land, who risest for them,
Thou Sun of day, great in majesty.
All the distant countries,
Thou makest (also) their life,
Thou hast set a Nile in the sky;
When it falleth for them,
It maketh waves upon the mountains,
Like the great green sea,
Watering the fields in their towns.
How excellent are thy designs, O lord of eternity!
There is a Nile in the sky for the strangers
And for the cattle of every country that go upon their
feet.
(But) the Nile, it cometh from the Nether World for
Egypt.
Thy rays nourish every garden;
When thou risest they live,
They grow by thee.
Thou makest the seasons
In order to create all thy work:
Winter to bring them coolness,
And heat they they may taste thee.
Thou didst make the distant sky to rise therein,
In order to behold all that thou hast made,
Thou alone, shining in thy form as living Aton,
Dawning, glittering, going afar and returning.
Thou makest millions of forms
Through thyself alone;
Cities, towns, and tribes, highways and rivers.
All eyes see thee before them,
For thou art Aton of the day over the earth.
Thou art in my heart,
There is no other that knoweth thee
Save thy son Akhnaton.
Thou has made him wise
In thy designs and in thy might.
The world is in thy hand,
Even as thou hast made them.
When thou hast risen they live,
When thou settest, they die;
For thou art length of life of thyself,
Men live through thee,
While (their) eyes are on thy beauty
Until thou settest.
All labour is put away
When thou settest in the west.
Thou didst establish the world,
And raise them up for thy son,
Who came forth from thy limbs,
The King of Upper and Lower Egypt,
Living in Truth, Lord of the Two Lands,
Nefer-khrpru-Re, Wan-Re (Akhnaton),
Son of Re, living in Truth, lord of diadems,
Akhnaton, whose life is long;
(And for) the chief royal wife, his beloved,
Mistress of the Two Lands, Nefer-nefru-Aton,
Nofretete,
Living and flourishing for ever and ever.
[3] Can
mean (according to the Koehler-Baumgartner Hebrew lexicon): the primeval ocean
or flood, the flood or deluge, or the deep (the ocean depths).
[4]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume
II, 11.
[5] An
alternative (or supplemental) interpretation of Psalm 104:6-9 is to understand
these verses as an allusion to God’s promises after the Genesis flood. By this
understanding, these verses parallel God’s covenant promise to Noah (= humankind) never more to send an
all-the-earth destroying flood (Genesis 9:8-17). Cosmologically speaking, God
created and still controls the waters; they do not have self-standing power in
opposition to God (in contrast to the views of some of Israel’s neighbors). Even the “sea
monsters” (Genesis 1:21) and Leviathan (here in Psalm 104:26), a potentially
destructive crocodilian or serpentine force, are parts of God’s creation, no
longer representatives of potentially untamable chaos; God controls
Leviathan (see Psalm 74:13-14 and Isaiah 27:1); and God will destroy the
comparable dragonlike creature of the book of Revelation). God rescues the
faithful who call upon God for deliverance from the “waters” of life (see Psalm
18:4-5, 15-16). After all, according to Psalm 24:1-2, “The earth is the LORD’s
and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded
it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.”
[6]
Carole R. Fontaine says (in Women's Bible Commentary [Westminster John Knox
Press], 153):
"Unlike the Torah and the Prophets, which view
God primarily in terms of covenant and national history, for the wisdom
tradition God is primarily Creator. God used Wisdom to create the world and
placed Wisdom within creation, where people could observe its harmonies and
live in right relation to it ... ."
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