Psalm 104 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 104 (1928 BCP) is the great hymn of the Creator in the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer (1928). It is appointed at Evening Prayer on the Twentieth Day of the month. The psalm turns from the praise of the Lord's majesty to the ordered life of water, field, creature, sea, and human labour, and finally makes that contemplation personal: “I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live.”
Prayer Book Text and Shape
PRAISE the LORD, O my soul: * O LORD my God, thou art become exceeding glorious; thou art clothed with majesty and honour. 2 Thou deckest thyself with light as it were with a garment, * and spreadest out the heavens like a curtain. 3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, * and maketh the clouds his chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind. 4 He maketh his angels winds, * and his ministers a flaming fire.
The opening addresses God rather than treating the world as self-explanatory. Light, heaven, cloud, wind, and fire are images of the Creator's royal freedom. The Prayer Book's translation keeps the psalm's movement from doxology into attention: the one who says “Praise the LORD, O my soul” is taught to see the world as gift and work of God.
He sendeth the springs into the rivers, * which run among the hills. 11 All beasts of the field drink thereof, * and the wild asses quench their thirst. 12 Beside them shall the fowls of the air have their habitation, * and sing among the branches. 13 He watereth the hills from above; * the earth is filled with the fruit of thy works. 14 He bringeth forth grass for the cattle, * and green herb for the service of men; 15 That he may bring food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man; * and oil to make him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen man's heart.
The springs serve animals before the poem names human food and gladness. That order matters: the psalm praises a world in which creatures have their own places and needs, while human work receives its good things from the same giver. Its language is thanksgiving, not a licence for possession without creaturely dependence.
Wisdom, Creaturely Dependence, and Praise
O LORD, how manifold are thy works! * in wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches. 25 So is the great and wide sea also; * wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. 26 There go the ships, and there is that leviathan, * whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein. 27 These wait all upon thee, * that thou mayest give them meat in due season. 28 When thou givest it them, they gather it; * and when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good. 29 When thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: * when thou takest away their breath, they die, and are turned again to their dust. 30 When thou lettest thy breath go forth, they shall be made; * and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
“In wisdom” names a coherent divine ordering, but the psalm does not reduce that order to human usefulness. Leviathan belongs in the sea as a creature God made; ships are present, but they do not command the poem. Verses 27–30 hold providence and mortality together: every creature waits upon God, receives, dies, and is renewed by the divine breath. This resonates with Genesis 1–2, where creaturely life is received, and with Acts 17:25, which says that God gives to all “life, and breath, and all things.”
John Calvin, commenting on verses 24–26, similarly emphasizes that the psalm's selected scenes lead the reader beyond themselves to the wisdom that orders the whole:
The prophet does not make a full enumeration of the works of God, which would be an endless task, but only touches upon certain particulars, that every one may be led from the consideration of them to reflect the more attentively on that wisdom by which God governs the whole world, and every particular part of it.
Calvin's comment is a Reformation-era interpretation rather than part of the Prayer Book text. It helps make explicit the psalm's movement from particular creatures to grateful wonder at divine wisdom; it does not diminish the concrete earth, sea, animals, and human work that the psalm praises.
The glorious majesty of the LORD shall endure for ever; * the LORD shall rejoice in his works. 32 The earth shall tremble at the look of him; * if he do but touch the hills, they shall smoke. 33 I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live; * I will praise my God while I have my being. 34 And so shall my words please him: * my joy shall be in the LORD. 35 As for sinners, they shall be consumed out of the earth, * and the ungodly shall come to an end. 36 Praise thou the LORD, O my soul. * Praise the LORD.
The psalm ends in praise but not sentimentality. Divine joy in God's works is joined to the prayer that sin and ungodliness should cease. The final repetition of the opening summons makes the worshipper's praise a lifelong response to the Creator, whose glory is not exhausted by creation's beauty.
A Historic Christian Reading
Augustine's exposition is not a replacement for the psalm's literal celebration of creation. It is a historic Christian reading that lets its images also speak of the Church's life in Christ. His opening takes “light” in relation to the Church made luminous by grace:
“Clothed with light as a garment.” Clothed with His Church, because she is made “light” in Him, who before was darkness in herself, as the apostle says: “You were sometime darkness, but now light in the Lord.”
That reading is explicitly Christological and ecclesial. It should be received as interpretation, not as a denial that the Prayer Book text first praises the Creator's light and heavens. Its value is to connect the psalm's praise with Ephesians 5:8 and the Church's vocation to live as light in the Lord.
“O Lord, how great are made Your works!” … “In Wisdom have You made them all.” All therefore You have made in Christ.… “The earth is full of Your creation.”
Augustine identifies the psalm's “Wisdom” with Christ, in keeping with the New Testament's account of creation through the Son (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). The interpretation adds a doctrinal horizon to verse 24 without making the psalm merely an allegory: the works praised remain God's good works, and Christian confession names their source through the Son.
“You shall take away their spirit, and they shall fail; You shall send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be made: and You shall renew the face of the earth”: that is, with new men, confessing themselves to have been justified, not righteous of their own power, so that the grace of God is in them.
Here Augustine reads the giving of breath as a figure for grace and renewal. The Prayer Book text itself speaks first of God giving life to creatures and renewing the earth; Augustine's theological extension places that praise alongside the new creation in Christ. Both readings preserve the psalm's central confession of radical dependence on God.
Prayer Book Use
Psalm 104 is appointed for Evening Prayer on the Twentieth Day. Its placement makes the day's close an act of praise for the Creator's governance of the rhythms of light and darkness, work and rest, creaturely nourishment and mortality. Read or sung in the Office, it gives the congregation words to bless the Lord not apart from the material world but amid it.
See Also
External Links
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), “The Psalter,” Psalm 104, Benedic, anima mea, verses 1–4, Twentieth Day, Evening Prayer, Justus Anglican, “The Psalter (1928)”, Psalm 104.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), “The Psalter,” Psalm 104, Benedic, anima mea, verses 10–15, Twentieth Day, Evening Prayer, Justus Anglican, “The Psalter (1928)”, Psalm 104.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), “The Psalter,” Psalm 104, Benedic, anima mea, verses 24–30, Twentieth Day, Evening Prayer, Justus Anglican, “The Psalter (1928)”, Psalm 104.
- ↑ John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 4, trans. James Anderson (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), Psalm 104:24–26, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, “Psalm 104:24–26”.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), “The Psalter,” Psalm 104, Benedic, anima mea, verses 31–36, Twentieth Day, Evening Prayer, Justus Anglican, “The Psalter (1928)”, Psalm 104.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 104, §1, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), revised by Kevin Knight, New Advent, “Exposition on Psalm 104”. Augustine follows the Vulgate numbering, so this is Psalm 103 in his citation system.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 104, §31, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), revised by Kevin Knight, New Advent, “Exposition on Psalm 104”. Augustine follows the Vulgate numbering, so this is Psalm 103 in his citation system.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 104, §42, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), revised by Kevin Knight, New Advent, “Exposition on Psalm 104”. Augustine follows the Vulgate numbering, so this is Psalm 103 in his citation system.