Psalm 104:2

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(2) Who coverest.—Perhaps better with the participles of the original retained:

Putting on light as a robe;

Spreading the heavens as a curtain.

The psalmist does not think of the formation of light as of a single past act, but as a continued glorious operation of Divine power and splendour. Not only is light as to the modern poet,

“Nature’s resplendent robe,

Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt

In unessential gloom,”

but it is the dress of Divinity, the “ethereal woof” that God Himself is for ever weaving for His own wear.

Curtain.—Especially of a tent (see Song of Solomon 1:5, &c.), the tremulous movement of its folds being expressed in the Hebrew word. Different explanations have been given of the figure. Some see an allusion to the curtains of the Tabernacle (Exodus 26, 27). The associations of this ritual were dear to a religious Hebrew, and he may well have had in his mind the rich folds of the curtain of the Holy of Holies. So a modern poet speaks of

“The arras-folds, that variegate

The earth, God’s ante-chamber.

Herder, again, refers the image to the survival of the nomadic instinct. But there is no need to put a limit to a figure so natural and suggestive. Possibly images of palace, temple, and tent, all combined, rose to the poet’s thought, as in Shelley’s “Ode to Heaven”:—

“Palace roof of cloudless nights!

Paradise of golden lights!

Deep immeasurable vast,

Which art now, and which wert then;

Of the present and the past,

Of the Eternal where and when,

Presence-chamber, temple, home,

Ever-canopying dome

Of acts and ages yet to come!”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

104:1-9 Every object we behold calls on us to bless and praise the Lord, who is great. His eternal power and Godhead are clearly shown by the things which he hath made. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. The Lord Jesus, the Son of his love, is the Light of the world.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment - Referring to the first work of creation Genesis 1:3, "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." He seemed to put on light as a garment; he himself appeared as if invested with light. It was the first "manifestation" of God. He seemed at once to have put on light as his robe.

Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain - As an expanse spread over us. The word used here means a curtain or hanging, so called from its tremulous motion, from a word meaning to tremble. Thus it is applied to a curtain before a door; to a tent, etc. It is applied here to the heavens, as they seem to be "spread out" like the curtains of a tent, as if God had spread them out for a tent for himself to dwell in. See the notes at Isaiah 40:22.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. light—is a figurative representation of the glory of the invisible God (Mt 17:2; 1Ti 6:16). Its use in this connection may refer to the first work of creation (Ge 1:3).

stretchest out the heavens—the visible heavens or sky which cover the earth as a curtain (Isa 40:12).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Coverest, or adornest, or clothest. With light; either,

1. With that light which no man can approach unto, as it is called 1 Timothy 6:16, wherewith therefore he may well be said to be covered or hid from the eyes of mortal men. Or rather,

2. With that first-created light, Genesis 1:3, which the psalmist fitly puts in the first place, as being the first of God’s visible works.

Like a curtain; the use whereof it hath, partly in reference to that glorious mansion of the blessed God and his holy angels, which these visible heavens (far above which it is, Ephesians 4:10) do veil and cover; and partly in reference to the earth, which they enclose and protect.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment,.... Referring, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi think, to the light, which was first created; and indeed this was commanded out of darkness by God the Word, or by the essential Word of God. Light is expressive of the nature of God himself, who is light, and in him is no darkness at all, and who dwells in light (h) inaccessible, and so may be said to be clothed with it; which is applicable to Christ as a divine Person, 1 John 1:5. and to whom this term "light" well agrees; Light being one of the names of the Messiah in the Old Testament, Psalm 43:3, and is often given him in the New Testament, as the author of the light of nature, grace, and glory, John 1:9. He is now possessed of the light and glory of the heavenly state, of which his transfiguration on the mount was an emblem, when his face shone like the sun, and his raiment was as the light, Matthew 17:2.

Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; alluding to the firmament or expanse, which, being spread out like a curtain, divided between the waters and the waters, Genesis 1:6. Heaven is represented as a tent stretched out, with curtains drawn around it, to hide the dazzling and unapproachable light in which the Lord dwells, Isaiah 40:22 and it is as a curtain or canopy stretched out and encompassing this earth; the stretching of it out belongs to God alone, and is a proof of the deity of Christ, to whom it is here and elsewhere ascribed, Job 9:8. Here Christ dwells invisible to us at present; he is received up into heaven, retained there, and from thence will descend at the last day; and in the mean while is within the curtains of heaven, unseen by us.

(h) "Pura in luce refulsit alma parens", Virgil. Aeneid. 2. "Et paulo post, pallas insedit, nimbo effulgens".

Geneva Study Bible

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. Light, the first created element, is as it were God’s robe, revealing while it conceals Him. Nothing can serve better as the expression of His Nature (1 John 1:5; 1 Timothy 6:16). Light is universally diffused; it is the condition of life, the source of gladness, the emblem of purity.

who stretchest out &c.] Cp. Isaiah 40:22. The canopy of the sky is compared to a tent-curtain, stretched out over the earth. By His simple fiat God spread out these heavens as easily as a man might pitch his tent. Their vastness is a symbol of the majesty of the King Who dwells in His royal pavilion, Whom yet “heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain.”

Observe the present participles, covering thyself, stretching out. The original act of creation is regarded as continued into the present in the maintenance of the universe.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment. Light was the first thing created (Genesis 1:3), before either the heaven (Genesis 1:6-8) or the earth (Genesis 1:9, 10). In light God, the invisible, as it were, enshrouds himself, making it the image of his hidden glory. Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; or, "a canopy" (comp. Isaiah 40:22; Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 44:25). The metaphor is taken from the stretching out or "spreading out" of a tent (see Isaiah 40:22). Psalm 104:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The first decastich begins the celebration with work of the first and second days. הוד והדר here is not the doxa belonging to God πρὸ παντὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος (Jde 1:25), but the doxa which He has put on (Job 40:10) since He created the world, over against which He stands in kingly glory, or rather in which He is immanent, and which reflects this kingly glory in various gradations, yea, to a certain extent is this glory itself. For inasmuch as God began the work of creation with the creation of light, He has covered Himself with this created light itself as with a garment. That which once happened in connection with the creation may, as in Amos 4:13; Isaiah 44:24; Isaiah 45:7; Jeremiah 10:12, and frequently, be expressed by participles of the present, because the original setting is continued in the preservation of the world; and determinate participles alternate with participles without the article, as in Isaiah 44:24-28, with no other difference than that the former are more predicative and the latter more attributive. With Psalm 104:2 the poet comes upon the work of the second day: the creation of the expanse (רקיע) which divides between the waters. God has spread this out (cf. Isaiah 40:22) like a tent-cloth (Isaiah 54:2), of such light and of such fine transparent work; נוטה here rhymes with עטה. In those waters which the "expanse" holds aloft over the earth God lays the beams of His upper chambers (עליּותתו, instead of which we find מעלותיו in Amos 9:6, from עליּה, ascent, elevation, then an upper story, an upper chamber, which would be more accurately עלּיּה after the Aramaic and Arabic); but not as though the waters were the material for them, they are only the place for them, that is exalted above the earth, and are able to be this because to the Immaterial One even that which is fluid is solid, and that which is dense is transparent. The reservoirs of the upper waters, the clouds, God makes, as the lightning, thunder, and rain indicate, into His chariot (רכוּב), upon which he rides along in order to make His power felt below upon the earth judicially (Isaiah 19:1), or in rescuing and blessing men. רכוּב (only here) accords in sound with כּרוּב, Psalm 18:11. For Psalm 104:3 also recalls this primary passage, where the wings of the wind take the place of the cloud-chariot. In Psalm 104:4 the lxx (Hebrews 1:7) makes the first substantive into an accusative of the object, and the second into an accusative of the predicate: Ὁ ποιῶν τοὺς ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ πνεῦματα καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ πυρὸς φλόγα. It is usually translated the reverse say: making the winds into His angels, etc. This rendering is possible so far as the language is concerned (cf. Psalm 100:3 Chethb, and on the position of the worlds, Amos 4:13 with Psalm 5:8), and the plural משׁרתיו is explicable in connection with this rendering from the force of the parallelism, and the singular אשׁ from the fact that this word has no plural. Since, however, עשׂה with two accusatives usually signifies to produce something out of something, so that the second accusative (viz., the accusative of the predicate, which is logically the second, but according to the position of the words may just as well be the first, Exodus 25:39; Exodus 30:25, as the second, Exodus 37:23; Exodus 38:3; Genesis 2:7; 2 Chronicles 4:18-22) denotes the materia ex qua, it may with equal right at least be interpreted: Who makes His messengers out of the winds, His servants out of the flaming or consuming (vid., on Psalm 57:5) fire (אשׁ, as in Jeremiah 48:45, masc.). And this may affirm either that God makes use of wind and fire for special missions (cf. Psalm 148:8), or (cf. Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, i. 325f.) that He gives wind and fire to His angels for the purpose of His operations in the world which are effected through their agency, as the materials of their outward manifestation, and as it were of their self-embodiment,

(Note: It is a Talmudic view that God really makes the angels out of fire, B. Chagiga, 14a (cf. Koran, xxxviii. 77): Day by day are the angels of the service created out of the stream of fire (נהר דינור), and sing their song of praise and perish.)

as then in Psalm 18:11 wind and cherub are both to be associated together in thought as the vehicle of the divine activity in the world, and in Psalm 35:5 the angel of Jahve represents the energy of the wind.