Mazmur 104:1-3

Psalm 104 ¹ 

104:1 Praise the Lord, O my soul!

O Lord my God, you are magnificent. ² 

You are robed in splendor and majesty.

104:2 He covers himself with light as if it were a garment.

He stretches out the skies like a tent curtain,

104:3 and lays the beams of the upper rooms of his palace on the rain clouds. ³ 

He makes the clouds his chariot,

and travels along on the wings of the wind. ⁴ 

Mazmur 104:5-6

104:5 He established the earth on its foundations;

it will never be upended.

104:6 The watery deep covered it ⁵  like a garment;

the waters reached ⁶  above the mountains. ⁷ 

Mazmur 104:13

104:13 He waters the mountains from the upper rooms of his palace; ⁸ 

the earth is full of the fruit you cause to grow. ⁹ 

[104:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 104. The psalmist praises God as the ruler of the world who sustains all life.

[104:1]  ² tn Heb “very great.”

[104:3]  ³ tn Heb “one who lays the beams on water [in] his upper rooms.” The “water” mentioned here corresponds to the “waters above” mentioned in Gen 1:7. For a discussion of the picture envisioned by the psalmist, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World, 44-45.

[104:3]  ⁴ sn Verse 3 may depict the Lord riding a cherub, which is in turn propelled by the wind current. Another option is that the wind is personified as a cherub. See Ps 18:10 and the discussion of ancient Near Eastern parallels to the imagery in M. Weinfeld, “‘Rider of the Clouds’ and ‘Gatherer of the Clouds’,” JANESCU 5 (1973): 422-24.

[104:6]  ⁵ tc Heb “you covered it.” The masculine suffix is problematic if the grammatically feminine noun “earth” is the antecedent. For this reason some emend the form to a feminine verb with feminine suffix, כִּסַּתָּה (kisattah, “[the watery deep] covered it [i.e., the earth]”), a reading assumed by the present translation.

[104:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “stood.”

[104:6]  ⁷ sn Verse 6 refers to the condition described in Gen 1:2 (note the use of the Hebrew term תְּהוֹם [tÿhom, “watery deep”] in both texts).

[104:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “from his upper rooms.”

[104:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “from the fruit of your works the earth is full.” The translation assumes that “fruit” is literal here. If “fruit” is understood more abstractly as “product; result,” then one could translate, “the earth flourishes as a result of your deeds” (cf. NIV, NRSV, REB).