Psalm 104:6

Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(6) The deep.—The water-world is first considered as a vast garment wrapped round the earth, so that the mountain-tops are covered. But here it is beyond its right, and the Divine rebuke forces it to retire within narrower limits. It is noticeable that the idea of a chaos finds no place in the poetic conception of the world’s genesis. The primitive world is not formless, but has its mountains and valleys already existing, though merged beneath the sea.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 104:6-7. Thou coveredst it with the deep — That is, in the first creation, of which the psalmist is here speaking, when the earth, while yet without form, was covered all over, and, as it were, clothed with the great deep, that vast expansion of air and waters; the waters stood above the mountains — Those which are now the highest mountains were all under that liquid element. At thy rebuke — That is, at thy powerful command, which, as it were, rebuked, and thereby corrected and regulated that indigested congeries and confusion of things; they fled — Namely, the inferior waters; at the voice of thy thunder — Thy powerful voice, which resounded like thunder; they hasted away — To the place that thou hadst prepared for them, where they still make their bed.

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

Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment - Compare the notes at Job 38:9. The meaning is, that God covered the earth with the sea - the waters - the abyss - as if a garment had been spread over it. The reference is to Genesis 1:2; where, in the account of the work of creation, what is there called "the deep" - the abyss - (the same Hebrew word as here - תהום tehôm - covered the earth, or was what "appeared," or was manifest, before the waters were collected into seas, and the dry land was seen.

The waters stood above the mountains - Above what are now the mountains. As yet no dry land appeared. It seemed to be one wide waste of waters. This does not refer to the Deluge, but to the appearance of the earth at the time of the creation, before the gathering of the waters into seas and oceans, Genesis 1:9. At that stage in the work, all that appeared was a wide waste of waters.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6-9. These verses rather describe the wonders of the flood than the creation (Ge 7:19, 20; 2Pe 3:5, 6). God's method of arresting the flood and making its waters subside is poetically called a "rebuke" (Ps 76:6; Isa 50:2), and the process of the flood's subsiding by undulations among the hills and valleys is vividly described.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Thou coveredst it with the deep; either,

1. In the general deluge. Or rather,

2. In the first creation, as we read, Genesis 1:2,9; of which the psalmist is here speaking.

The waters stood above the mountains; the mountains were not made by the deluge, as some have thought, who for that reason understand this verse of the said deluge, for it is apparent they were before it, Genesis 7:19, and most probably were in the first creation, because this variety of mountains and valleys is both ornamental and useful to the world.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou coverest it with the deep as with a garment,.... This refers not to the waters of the flood, when the earth was covered with them, even the tops of the highest mountains; but to the huge mass of waters, the abyss and depth of them, which lay upon the earth and covered it as a garment, at its first creation, as the context and the scope of it show; and which deep was covered with darkness, at which time the earth was without form, and void, Genesis 1:2 an emblem of the corrupt state of man by nature, destitute of the image of God, void and empty of all that is good, having an huge mass of sin and corruption on him, and being darkness itself; though this depth does not separate the elect of God, in this state, from his love; nor these aboundings of sin hinder the superaboundings of the grace of God; nor the operations of his Spirit; nor the communication of light unto them; nor the forming and renewing them, so as to become a curious piece of workmanship; even as the state of the original earth did not hinder the moving of the Spirit upon the waters that covered it, to the bringing of it into a beautiful form and order.

The waters stood above the mountains; from whence we learn the mountains were from the beginning of the creation; since they were when the depths of water covered the unformed chaos; and which depths were so very great as to reach above the highest mountains; an emblem of the universal corruption of human nature; the highest, the greatest men that ever were, comparable to mountains, have been involved in it, as David, Paul, and others.

Geneva Study Bible

Thou coveredst it with the {c} deep as with a garment: the {d} waters stood above the mountains.

(c) You make the sea to be an ornament to the earth.

(d) If by your power you did not bridle the rage of the waters, the whole world would be destroyed.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

6. This verse does not refer to the Flood, though its language may be borrowed from the account of the Flood (Genesis 7:19-20; and cp. Psalm 104:9 with Genesis 9:11; Genesis 9:15), but to the primitive condition of the earth. It is regarded as already moulded into hill and valley, but enveloped with the ‘abyss’ of waters (Genesis 1:2), by which even the highest mountains are covered. Cp. Milton, Par. Lost, vii. 278,

Over all the face of earth

Main ocean flowed.”

The tense of the original is a graphic ‘imperfect.’ “The waters were standing above the mountains.”

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 6. - Thou coveredst it with the deep, as with a garment (see Genesis 1:9). A watery covering was spread at first over the whole earth, and enveloped it like a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. The highest inequalities of the land were concealed under the watery integument. Psalm 104:6

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In a second decastich the poet speaks of the restraining of the lower waters and the establishing of the land standing out of the water. The suffix, referring back to ארץ, is intended to say that the earth hanging free in space (Job 26:7) has its internal supports. Its eternal stability is preserved even amidst the judgment predicted in Isaiah 24:16., since it comes forth out of it, unremoved from its former station, as a transformed, glorified earth. The deep (תּהום) with which God covers it is that primordial mass of water in which it lay first of all as it were in embryo, for it came into being ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ δι ̓ ὕδατος (2 Peter 3:5). כּסּיתו does not refer to תהום (masc. as in Job 28:14), because then עליה would be required, but to ארץ, and the masculine is to be explained either by attraction) according to the model of 1 Samuel 2:4), or by a reversion to the masculine ground-form as the discourse proceeds (cf. the same thing with עיר 2 Samuel 17:13, צעקה Exodus 11:6, יד Ezekiel 2:9). According to Psalm 104:6, the earth thus overflowed with water was already mountainous; the primal formation of the mountains is therefore just as old as the תהום mentioned in direct succession to the תהו ובהו. After this, Psalm 104:7 describe the subduing of the primordial waters by raising up the dry land and the confining of these waters in basins surrounded by banks. Terrified by the despotic command of God, they started asunder, and mountains rose aloft, the dry land with its heights and its low grounds appeared. The rendering that the waters, thrown into wild excitement, rose up the mountains and descended again (Hengstenberg), does not harmonize with the fact that they are represented in Psalm 104:6 as standing above the mountains. Accordingly, too, it is not to be interpreted after Psalm 107:26 : they (the waters) rose mountain-high, they sunk down like valleys. The reference of the description to the coming forth of the dry land on the third day of creation requires that הרים should be taken as subject to יעלוּ. But then, too, the בקעות are the subject to ירדוּ, as Hilary of Poictiers renders it in his Genesis, 5:97, etc.: subsidunt valles, and not the waters as subsiding into the valleys. Hupfeld is correct; Psalm 104:8 is a parenthesis which affirms that, inasmuch as the waters retreating laid the solid land bare, mountains and valleys as such came forth visibly; cf. Ovid, Metam. i.:344: Flumina subsidunt, montes exire videntur.