Psa 104:1 | KD | STEP | With Bless, O my soul, Jahve , as Ps 103, begins this anonymous Psalms 104 also, in which God’s rule in the kingdom of nature, as there in the kingdom of grace, is the theme of praise, and as there the angels are associated with it. The poet sings the God-ordained present condition of the world with respect to the creative beginnings recorded in ; and closes with the wish that evil may be expelled from this good creation, which so thoroughly and fully reveals God’s power, and wisdom, and goodness. It is a Psalm of nature, but such as not poet among the Gentiles could have written. The Israelitish poet stands free and unfettered in the presence of nature as his object, and all things appear to him as brought forth and sustained by the creative might of the one God, brought into being and preserved in existence on purpose that He, the self-sufficient One, may impart Himself in free condescending love - as the creatures and orders of the Holy One, in themselves good and pure, but spotted an disorganized only by the self-corruption of man in sin and wickedness, which self-corruption must be turned out in order that the joy of God in His works and the joy of these works in their Creator may be perfected. The Psalm is altogether an echo of the heptahemeron (or history of the seven days of creation) in Gen 1:1. Corresponding toe the seven days it falls into seven groups, in which the מאד הנה־טוב of is expanded. It is not, however, so worked out that each single group celebrates the work of a day of creation; the Psalm has the commingling whole of the finished creation as its standpoint, and is therefore not so conformed to any plan. Nevertheless it begins with the light and closes with an allusion to the divine Sabbath. When it is considered that is only with violence accommodated to the context, that is forced in without any connection and contrary to any plan, and that can only be made intelligible in that position by means of an artificial combination of the thoughts, then the supposition of Hitzig, ingeniously wrought out by him in his own way, is forced upon one, viz., that this glorious hymn has decoyed some later poet-hand into enlarging upon it.

‏ Psalms 104:1

Hymn in Honour of the God of the Seven Days

With Bless, O my soul, Jahve, as Ps 103, begins this anonymous Psalms 104 also, in which God’s rule in the kingdom of nature, as there in the kingdom of grace, is the theme of praise, and as there the angels are associated with it. The poet sings the God-ordained present condition of the world with respect to the creative beginnings recorded in Gen 1:1; and closes with the wish that evil may be expelled from this good creation, which so thoroughly and fully reveals God’s power, and wisdom, and goodness. It is a Psalm of nature, but such as not poet among the Gentiles could have written. The Israelitish poet stands free and unfettered in the presence of nature as his object, and all things appear to him as brought forth and sustained by the creative might of the one God, brought into being and preserved in existence on purpose that He, the self-sufficient One, may impart Himself in free condescending love - as the creatures and orders of the Holy One, in themselves good and pure, but spotted an disorganized only by the self-corruption of man in sin and wickedness, which self-corruption must be turned out in order that the joy of God in His works and the joy of these works in their Creator may be perfected. The Psalm is altogether an echo of the heptahemeron (or history of the seven days of creation) in Gen 1:1. Corresponding toe the seven days it falls into seven groups, in which the מאד הנה־טוב of Gen 1:31 is expanded. It is not, however, so worked out that each single group celebrates the work of a day of creation; the Psalm has the commingling whole of the finished creation as its standpoint, and is therefore not so conformed to any plan. Nevertheless it begins with the light and closes with an allusion to the divine Sabbath. When it is considered that Psa 104:8 is only with violence accommodated to the context, that Psa 104:18 is forced in without any connection and contrary to any plan, and that Psa 104:32 can only be made intelligible in that position by means of an artificial combination of the thoughts, then the supposition of Hitzig, ingeniously wrought out by him in his own way, is forced upon one, viz., that this glorious hymn has decoyed some later poet-hand into enlarging upon it.