Armenia in comments -- Book: Psalms (tPs) Սաղմոս
Searched terms: aram
tPs 104:1 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 Amo 4:13; Isa 44:24; Isa 45:7; Jer 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 Isa 44:24-28, with no other difference than that the former are more predicative and the latter more attributive. With Psa 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. Isa 40:22) like a tent-cloth (Isa 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 Amo 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 (Isa 19:1), or in rescuing and blessing men. רכוּב (only here) accords in sound with כּרוּב, Psa 18:11. For Psa 104:3 also recalls this primary passage, where the wings of the wind take the place of the cloud-chariot. In Psa 104:4 the lxx (Heb 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. Psa 100:3 Chethb, and on the position of the worlds, Amo 4:13 with Psa 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, Exo 25:39; Exo 30:25, as the second, Exo 37:23; Exo 38:3; Gen 2:7; Ch2 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 Psa 57:5) fire (אשׁ, as in Jer 48:45, masc.). And this may affirm either that God makes use of wind and fire for special missions (cf. Psa 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 Psa 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 Psa 35:5 the angel of Jahve represents the energy of the wind. Psalms 104:5 tPs 104:19 The fifth decastich, in which the poet passes over from the third to the fourth day, shows that he has the order of the days of creation before his mind. The moon is mentioned first of all, because the poet wishes to make the picture of the day follow that of the night. He describes it in Psa 104:19 as the calendarial principal star. מועדים are points and divisions of time (epochs), and the principal measurer of these for civil and ecclesiastical life is the moon (cf. Sir. 43:7, ἀπὸ σελήνης σημεῖον ἑορτῆς), just as the sun, knowing when he is to set, is the infallible measurer of the day. In Psa 104:20 the description, which throughout is drawn in the presence of God in His honour, passes over into direct address: jussives (תּשׁת, ויהי) stand in the hypothetical protasis and in its apodosis (EW. 357, b). It depends upon God's willing only, and it is night, and the wakeful life of the wild beasts begins to be astir. The young lions then roar after their prey, and flagitaturi sunt a Deo cibum suum. The infinitive with Lamed is an elliptical expression of a conjugatio periphrastica (vid., on Hab 1:17), and becomes a varying expression of the future in general in the later language in approximation to the Aramaic. The roar of the lions and their going forth in quest of prey is an asking of God which He Himself has implanted in their nature. With the rising of the sun the aspect of things becomes very different. שׁמשׁ is feminine here, where the poet drops the personification (cf. Psa 19:1-14). The day which dawns with sunrise is the time for man. Both as to matter and style, Psa 104:21 call to mind Job 24:5; Job 37:8; Job 38:40. Psalms 104:24
tPs 104:30
Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created,.... Thy Holy Spirit, as the Targum, who was at first concerned in the creation of all things, the heavens and the earth, and man upon it, Gen 1:2, Job 26:13 which may be alluded to here; though it seems chiefly to intend the generation and production of creatures in the room of those that die off; that so their species may be preserved, and there may be a constant succession of them, as there is in all ages, Ecc 1:4. And thou renewest the face of the earth; by a new set of creatures of all kinds being brought upon it to fill it. As there is also a daily renewing it every morning by the rising sun, giving fresh life and vigour to all created beings; and a yearly one every spring, when the face of all nature is renewed and revived. Jarchi and Arama understand it of the resurrection of the dead; this sense Kimchi mentions as an article of their faith, but not as the sense of the text. It may be applied to the renewing work of the Spirit of God in the souls of men, by whom they are made new, and by whom they are daily renewed in the Spirit of their minds. And there are particular seasons in which God sends forth his Spirit and renews the face of things in the world, and in his churches; upon the effusion of his Spirit in the first times of the Gospels, there was a new face of things, not only in the land of Judea, but throughout the whole Gentile world, where old things passed away, and all things became new; as in the latter day, when the Spirit shall be poured forth from on high, there will be a renewing of the face of the earth again; it will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea; the kingdoms of it will become Christ's; new heavens and a new earth will be created, and Jerusalem will be made a rejoicing, and her people a joy, Isa 65:17. Psalms 104:31