Passage

Psalms 104.24

Book: Psalms · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

22. The sun ariseth, they get them away, And lay them down in their dens. 23. Man goeth forth unto his work And to his labor until the evening.

24. O Jehovah, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: The earth is full of thy riches.

Yonder is the sea, great and wide, Wherein are things creeping innumerable, Both small and great beasts. 26. There go the ships; There is leviathan, whom thou hast formed to play therein. (Psalms 104:22-26, ASV)

WEB

22. The sun rises, and they steal away, and lay down in their dens. 23. Man goes out to his work, to his labor until the evening.

24. Yahweh, how many are your works! In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your riches.

There is the sea, great and wide, in which are innumerable living things, both small and large animals. 26. There the ships go, and leviathan, whom you formed to play there. (Psalms 104:22-26, WEB)

KJV

22. The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. 23. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.

24. O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. 26. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein. ^{made: Heb. formed} (Psalms 104:22-26, KJV)

YLT

22. The sun riseth, they are gathered, And in their dens they crouch. 23. Man goeth forth to his work, And to his service, till evening.

24. How many have been Thy works, O Jehovah, All of them in wisdom Thou hast made, Full is the earth of thy possessions.

This, the sea, great and broad of sides, There [are] moving things, innumerable, Living creatures, small with great. 26. There do ships go: leviathan, That Thou hast formed to play in it. (Psalms 104:22-26, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: An unnamed psalmist. The Hebrew text carries no title; the Greek Septuagint attributes the psalm to David
Audience: Addressed to Jehovah in praise ("O Jehovah my God, thou art very great," 104:1), and sung in Israel's worship
Location: Not stated
Time period: Not stated; the psalm cannot be dated with confidence

Theological reading

"O Jehovah, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: The earth is full of thy riches."

The creation hymn. Psalm 104 walks through the created order in roughly the sequence of Genesis 1: light and the heavens (104:2), the waters and the earth (104:5-9), springs, plants and animals (104:10-18), moon and sun (104:19), and the sea with its creatures (104:25-26). Verse 24 is the psalmist stopping to marvel at the whole.

Three words. "Manifold" (Strong's H7231) means many and varied. "Wisdom" (H2451) is the skill of a craftsman who makes things fit together; Proverbs says the same, "Jehovah by wisdom founded the earth" (Proverbs 3:19, ASV). "Riches" (H7075) means possessions, what God has made and owns. The world is varied, ordered by wisdom, and his.

The Hymn to the Aten. Scholars have long compared this psalm with the Egyptian Great Hymn to the Aten from the reign of Akhenaten, which also praises the sun-disk for sustaining people, animals and ships. The difference is basic. In the psalm the sun is a creature that keeps the schedule it was given: "The sun knoweth his going down" (104:19). The Creator stands behind nature, not inside one part of it.

The argument from order. The Atheism vs the Christian God comparison uses this verse for the claim that a wise Creator best explains a world that is both orderly and understandable. The atheist reply deserves a fair hearing: natural laws and natural selection can produce order and apparent design without any mind behind them. The theist answers that this pushes the question back a step. Why are there laws at all, why do they take a mathematical form our minds can grasp, and why are the constants suited to life? The psalm itself makes no technical argument. It sees a world "made in wisdom" and praises the one who made it. See Teleological Arguments and Fine-Tuning Argument.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

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Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Laws of the Universe as Witness to Design

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.