Psalm 104 as a creation account

David Carr argues that the Genesis 1 account is using both Genesis 2-3 and Psalm 104 (and other works/traditions), writing in The Formation of Genesis 1-11 that:

the creation account of Genesis 1 interacts with several identifiable precursors outside it, namely the Enuma Elish epic, Psalm 104, and (countering some recent treatments) Genesis 2– 3. (introduction)
While arguing that Genesis 1 using Psalm 104 is more likely than the opposite, he nevertheless remains somewhat agnostic concerning the direction of influence.

While arguing that Genesis 1 using Psalm 104 is more likely than the opposite, he nevertheless remains somewhat agnostic concerning the direction of influence.
In particular, Psalm 104 features intriguing parallels to Genesis 1 up through day five. The prologues of the two texts feature similar pictures of water (with the relatively rare word תהום !) covering the earth and wind before creation (Gen 1:2; Ps 104:3– 6), of light at the outset of creation (Gen 1:3– 4; Ps 104:1b– 2a), of God spreading out heaven (Ps 104:2b) and of making the heavenly plate (Gen 1:6– 8), of God gathering waters into one place (Gen 1:9– 10; Ps 104:7– 9), of God making food (and other goods) on the earth thus revealed (Gen 1:11– 12; Ps 104:10– 18), and of God creating the heavenly bodies (to mark time; Gen 1:14– 18; Ps 104:19– 23), and the sea and its creatures (Gen 1:20– 21; Ps 104:25– 26).19

If these striking and relatively specific parallels are interpreted as indicators of genetic textual dependence, there are some indicators that Psalm 104 would be the earlier of the two texts. Most importantly, there is little reflection in Psalm 104 of major parts of Genesis 1, especially the central and theologically evocative description of the creation of humanity in Gen 1:26– 28. If the two texts are genetically related, it is easier to see how the author of Genesis 1 might expand the creation praise in Psalm 104, than it is to see why the author of the Psalm 104 hymn would only praise the less theologically central parts of the Genesis 1 creation. […]

In sum, there are a number of indicators to suggest that large portions of Genesis 1 represent a prose-narrative iteration of Priestly temple cosmological traditions attested in poetic form in Psalm 104. To be sure, it is impossible to reach certainty on a specific textual relationship between these texts, especially given the fact that they are (despite hymnic elements in Gen 1) different genres and have different foci. Nevertheless, they have enough similarities in specifics and order that theories about the intertextual dependence of Genesis 1 on Psalm 104 (or vice versa) will persist.23

Clines’ Varieties of Creation in the Bible rovides a nice description of/comparison between Genesis 1, Job 38-40 and Psalm 104, but doesn’t go into issues of dating or which may have influenced the other. https://www.academia.edu/2381241/Varieties_of_Creation_in_the_Bible

1. Genesis 1

a. Separation and distinction
*Perhaps the most prominent feature of the account of creation in Genesis 1 is the fact that creation proceeds by a process of separation. Light is separated from darkness (1:4 ), the heavenly waters are separated from the earthly waters by a solid firmament (1:6‐7), the dry earth is separated from the watery sea (1:9‐10, the verb “to separate” not appearing here, however), the day is separated from the night (1:14) and light is thus separated from darkness (1:18). The separation of each element in creation from every other element is emphasized again by the repeated phrase “according to its kind”, which occurs five times in Genesis 1 (11, 12, 21, 24, 25). According to the priestly worldview, observance of distinctions is essential: between clean and unclean, but holy and common, between Israel and what is not Israel, between the sexes. Mixtures of “kinds” are anathema: a field must not be sown with two kinds of seed, a garment must not be made of two kinds of cloth (Lev. 19.19). The world is created as an ordered whole, everything has a place and is in its place. The naming of the elements of the created order (day, night, sky, earth, seas) belongs with this stress on the individuality of the components of the world order. Separation and distinction are what makes creation a cosmos. The alternative is chaos. The structuring of the narrative of creation into the works of six days is another instance of the priestly ordering principle. *

b. Goodness
The repeated refrain, “And God saw that it was good” (seven times in Genesis 1, though strangely not in reference to the works of the second day), is a second important theme in Genesis 1. The totality of the works of creation are in fact esteemed “very good” (1:31). This phrase of self‐congratulation witnesses to the pleasure of the creator in his creation. It perhaps does not mean that everything in creation is equally good; on the first day, when light and darkness are created, it is the light, and not the darkness, that is said to be good. “Darkness is good insofar as it is a necessary part of God’s creation, but it not as good as the light which alone received God’s approval” (Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary [Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984], p. 113).

c. The material of creation
It is a matter of debate whether Genesis 1 represents a creatio ex nihilo. I think the prevailing opinion at the present is that it does not. Verse 1 is a headline for the whole chapter rather than the first event narrated; so the “waste and void” of v. 2 could be understand as the matter from which the creation was made. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), for example, says, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, the earth was a formless void …”, which suggests that the heavens are earth were created out of an already existing “void”. The term for “create” (bārā’) is not only used for the creation of the world, but also elsewhere for the creation of things for which the idea of creation out of nothing is somewhat inappropriate: humanity (e.g. Isa. 45:12), the people of Israel (Isa. 43:1), wonders and new things (e.g. Isa. 65:18; Jer. 31:32). The term however is never accompanied by a specific term for any material used. It does not necessarily imply that there was nothing before creation, but that God’s creation brings something into being that was not there before (W.H. Schmidt, ‘arb br’ to create’, in Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (trans. Mark E. Biddle; Peabody, MA; Hendrikson Publishers, 1977), I, p. 255. 253-56 (255)).

d. Humanity
Humanity is evidently the pinnacle of the whole creation. Three aspects of the chapter are significant: (1) The structure of Genesis 1 is clearly intended to climax with the creation of humans, and so everything in the physical universe and in the world of living beings is in some sense preliminary to the creation of humans, and has them and their needs in view (Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary [trans. John H. Marks; Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, revised edition, 1972], p. 57). (2) The creation of humans is introduced more impressively than any other creation in Genesis 1. It is prefaced by a divine resolution, “Let us make humans” (1:26), Gerhard von Rad inferring that “God participates more intimately and intensively in this than in the earlier works of creation” (Von Rad, Genesis, p. 57). (3) Humans are created as the image of God (1:26), meaning that they represent God on earth; images represent deities or rulers in places where they are not. (4) Humans are explicitly told to occupy the earth and “subdue” it, and to have “dominion” over all the animals (1:28); all the plants and trees that were made on the third day are given to them. Genesis 1 is adamantly anthropocentric.

e. Fragility
We have only to turn a couple of pages in our Bible to find that humankind, the pinnacle of creation, has corrupted the earth that had been pronounced “very good”. Perhaps the animals too are included in the sentence “All flesh had corrupted its (or, his [God’s] way) upon the earth” (6:12). The corruption is so terrible that the deity knows of no remedy for it, but joins in with the corruption, announcing that he himself is about to “corrupt” all flesh together with the earth (6:13). Our Bible versions squeamishly have God determining to “destroy” the earth, not “corrupt” it, but it is the same verb (hišḥît) that has been used for the actions of “all flesh”. It is never said that God finds the postdiluvian world “very good” or even “good”. And as for human nature, the very reason for the destruction of the earth by a flood remains in force: it was because the wickedness of humanity was great in the earth and every imagination (rxy) 8 of the thoughts of its heart was only evil continually that the Flood was sent (6:5), but it is no different after the Flood, when God acknowledges that the imagination (rxy) of the heart of humans is evil from their youth (8:21). The only reason why a recurrence of a universal flood has not hung over the head of humanity throughout history is a divine undertaking never to send one again, even though God has ever since had as good cause to do so.

f. Alternatives to creation
It is hard to see what the point of affirming that God is the creator of the world unless one considers the alternatives to such a statement. The first major alternative is the belief that the world or universe has always existed, as in Heraclitus’s dictum: “This cosmic order [is] one for all beings, no god or human has created it, but it was always there, and it is and always will be living fire, sometimes glowing bright and sometimes dying down” (Fragment 30 [1.84.1 Diels]). The second alternative is a cosmology without a creator, in which there is not a force, let alone a person, outside the universe. Such a view is plainly contrary to every biblical concept of creation, and there is certainly a difference between a world that is self‐ generating and one that is the result of an act of a personal will.

# Job 38–41

a. Order
The world has been neatly and tidily organized by Yahweh. The formal structure of the first speech, with its neat set of ten strophes followed by seven (both perfect numbers) creates that impression. Just as in Genesis 1, with its similar tidy design, there is no chaos in the universal structure: everything that exists evidences forethought, planning and wisdom. The world may be encountered by humans as an apparently random collection of objects and events, but the form of these creation texts wants to suggest that there is a deep and stable order beneath them.
b. Intimacy
In this discourse, Yahweh knows his universe intimately. He knows how broad the earth is (38:18), the directions to the dwellings of light and darkness (38:19), the system of the stars (38:33), the birth cycle of mountain goats (39:1‐3); he implants migratory instincts into birds (39:26) and maternal fecklessness into ostriches (39:16‐17). “Nature for the Job poet is not a Newtonian clock operating with automatic mechanisms”, remarks Robert Alter.10 This God loves the detail, and, even when he is taking the broadest view, he only ever works with examples.

c. Nurture
*Sustenance and nurture are key objectives of the universal order. Whether it is the physical universe or the animal world, the divine intimacy is directed to sustaining life. Creation is not just a past event according to this worldview; every day the morning has to be remade by its creator, calling up the dawn, grasping the fringes of the earth, shaking the Dog‐star from its place, bringing up the horizon in relief as clay under a seal till everything stands out like folds in a cloak and the light of the Dog‐star is dimmed as the stars of the Navigator’s line go out one by one (38:12‐15). According to this worldview, the god of all the earth is counting the months of pregnancy of each doe of the mountain goats (39:2), imbuing horses with their strength (39:19), training hawks in flight (39:26), providing fresh meat for young lions in their lairs (38:39‐40), directing the raven to its quarry when its fledglings croak for lack of food (38:41). *
d. Biodiversity
In this discourse, the world is hugely various. “World is crazier and more of it than we think, / Incorrigibly plural”; Yahweh himself revels in “the drunkenness of things being various” (Louis MacNeice, “Snow”). The world lives for itself, and if anything is instrumental, if anything serves a purpose other than itself, that is coincidental. The purposes of the universal structure are infinitely multiple, each of its elements with its own quiddity and its own mission—whether it is the sea, the clouds, light, darkness, rain, stars, mountain goat, ostrich, war‐horse or eagle. On the theme of biodiversity in the divine speeches, see Ellen van Wolde, “Towards an ‘Integrated Approach’ in Biblical Studies, Illustrated with a Dialogue between Job 28 and Job 38,” in Congress Volume: Leiden, 2004 (ed. André Lemaire; VTSup 109; Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 355‐82

e. No problems
There is no problem with the world. Yahweh does not attempt a justification for anything that happens in the world, and there is nothing that he needs to set right. The world is as he designed it. The sea does not breach its eternal bounds (38:8‐11); the onager ranges freely over the hills for pasture, oblivious to the shouts of the donkey‐driver (39:7‐8); Behemoth lies forever somnolent under the lotus plants in the river (40:21, 23). There is no dereliction from an original state of perfection; there is no eschaton toward which the universal order tends. God’s in his heaven; all’s well with the world.

f. Delight
*Not only is there no problem with the world: every element in it is a source of constant delight to its maker. As the divine speeches move towards their climax, Yahweh candidly confesses, “I will not keep silence about its limbs, and I will tell of its incomparable might” (41:12 [4]), as if he cannot refrain from composing an ode of praise to the crocodile. In a similar exclamation of satisfaction with the hippopotamus he exclaims, “What strength it has in its loins, what vigor in the muscles of its belly!” (40:16). It is hard to miss the equal delight he feels in the freedom of the onager (39:5‐8), the independence of the aurochs (39:9‐12) and the confidence of the war horse (39:19‐25). *

g. Death
*The portrait of the animals here is wholly positive; not a bad word is said about any one of them, and the role of death in the natural world is largely obscured. It is never made explicit that many of them live by killing other animals and that all of them inevitably die. There is just one place where death is foregrounded. The lion is depicted as hunting for its prey; elsewhere the term πr<f, is sometimes used for food that is not meat (as at Mal. 3:10; Psa. 111:5; Prov. 31:15), even for food eaten by animals (Job 24:5), but there can be little mistake here about what kind of prey the lions are after. The food brought by the ravens for their young is probably not represented as having been killed by them, since they do not hunt and the food is termed merely ‘provisions’ (ßayid) and ‘food’ (’ōkel) (38:41). The ostrich’s offspring risk death if her eggs are trampled on by a predator, but that remains a possibility. Even the vultures have not been killing for food for their young. They do ‘feed on blood’, but it is not here apparently the blood of other animals but rather of humans slain in war, since the term for the ‘slain’ (ḥālāl), whose blood (and flesh, no doubt) they are feasting on, always refers to humans (39.30) (David J.A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, III (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), p. 236a). Even in the battle scene with the war‐ horse (39.19‐25), despite the flashing spear and javelin, the arrows and the sword, no one gets hurt; it is more a ballet than a battle. And as for Behemoth and Leviathan, despite their vastness and fearsomeness, no harm is done. Behemoth is totally herbivorous, eating grass like an ox (40.15), and, as if in a pastoral idyll, is surrounded by the other animals at play (40.20). Leviathan, for its part, keeps itself to itself, shut up tight in its corselet of scales, frightening everyone but actually doing no harm to any one (its food is never mentioned). *

h. Humans
*There is nothing about humans in the divine speeches. Job is of course addressed, and, in a way, that marks humans out as something special in the divine economy. It is true that the sea also is addressed at 38:11, and the clouds at 38:14, and the eagle is commanded to soar into the sky at 39:27; from the side of creation, the lightning bolts report to Yahweh at 38:35, and the fledglings of the raven cry to him at 38:41. But, unlike these creatures, Job is not incidentally present in the divine speeches; throughout, he is the focus of Yahweh’s attention, and both speeches are formally addressed to him. Nonetheless, apart from the direct forensic addresses to Job himself (38:2‐3; 40:7‐14), the human world and its concerns are totally ignored by the divine speeches (the reference to the ”wicked” in 38:13 is probably a scribal error, the wicked and haughty in 40:11‐14 belong to Job’s programme, not to God’s, and the intersection of the world of the crocodile with humans in 41:1‐11 focalizes the crocodile rather than humans). In other words, Yahweh can give a considered and comprehensive account of his purposes in creation without considering the topic of humans! Nothing could be more different from the idea of humans as the pinnacle of creation we encountered in Genesis 1. *

i. Animals
The animals depicted in the divine speeches serve no human purposes. Unlike the domesticated ox and ass, sheep and camel, whose lives are intermeshed with daily human activity, the animals here exist for their own sake and live in a world that is largely unknown to humans. From the perspective of the world of animals that is taken in these divine speeches, humans inhabit only a shadowy hinterland and appear only rarely. We can only infer the charioteer(s) in the war‐horse picture in 39:23, and it is only from afar that we hear the thunder of the captains and the shouting in the battle (39:25). For a moment we glimpse the horse’s rider in pursuit of the ostrich (39:18), and the human corpses sighted by the vulture (39:30). The creation of humans is no more special than that of Behemoth (40:15). The fruitlessness of any human assault on it is hinted at in 40:19 and mocked in 40:24. The absurdity of a domestication of Leviathan forms the subject of an extended riff in 41:1‐6, and the equal futility of an assault on it by weapons of war (41:7‐ 11). Human bystanders do appear in the poem, but only momentarily as they watch Leviathan swimming off into the distance and leaving behind a wake of foam (41:32), or as mighty heroes terrified at its jumps and splashes (41:25).

k. Continuous creation
Unlike Genesis 1, where all the acts of creation are located in the distant past, in the divine speeches of Job many creative acts also occur in the present, enabling us to speak of “continuous” or “continued” creation. Notable is the strophe describing the appointment of the morning, when Yahweh seizes the earth by its fringes and shakes the Dog‐Stars loose, and the landscape is transformed like clay under a seal (38:12‐15). The cycle of the seasons marked by movements of the constellations (9:31‐33), the coming of rain, with the cutting of a channel through the air for the torrents to fall (38:25‐26), and the sending out of lightning bolts and tilting over the water jars of the heavens so that downpours occur, fusing the soil into a solid mass (38:34‐38) are other examples of continuous creation.

Psalm 104

1. Psalm 104
2. a. Structure The psalm has seven strophes plus a doxology at the end, no doubt intended to be reminiscent of Genesis 1, and conveying a sense of the orderedness of the created world. Each strophe deals with some aspect of the creation: heavens and winds, earth and seas, water, plants and trees, sun and moon, sea, food and life. All the strophes except the first two relate the creation to the wellbeing of animals and humans (in the third strophe, only of animals).
3. b. Continuous creation The psalm is remarkable as a depiction of creation for institution focus on ongoing or repeated creation (creatio continua). There are some elements indeed that look back to a primordial act of creation, such as setting the earth on its foundations (v. 5), covering it with the deep water (v. 6), setting a bound that the seas should not pass (v. 9), creating the moon (v. 19) and Leviathan (v. 26). All of these verbs are in the perfect tense, indicating completed past actions. But most of the other verbs describing God’s creatorial activities are participles or imperfect verbs, indicating ongoing activity: making springs gush forth in the valleys (v. 10), watering the mountains (v. 13), making grass grow (v. 14), making darkness (v. 20), giving food to animals and humans alike (v. 28), sending out his spirit that creates life (v. 30). In that last passage the term “create” (bārā’), which in Genesis 1 was the key term for the activity of primeval time, is unmistakably in reference to the ongoing creation. God is not resting on a perpetual sabbath, as we might infer from Genesis 1, but still at work. Should he “hide his face” and not smile upon his creation, all his creatures are dismayed and fear for the worst (v. 29).
4. c. Animals The psalm very effectively conveys the sense that the created order is a space shared by animals and humans. As the poet contemplates the benefits of creation, his gaze in most of the strophes rests both on animals and humans. Yahweh causes grass to grow for the cattle—and also plants for people to use (v. 14). He makes the darkness, when all the animals come creeping out to seek their food, and also the daytime, when humans come out to do their daily work (vv. 20‐23). Or, if he turns to the sea, he sees it teeming with innumerable life forms both small and great (v. 25)—and also the ships, human constructions that, in taking advantage of that dangerous element in creation, are quite as remarkable as the Leviathan that swims in it as God’s giant plaything (v. d. Praise of the creator Unlike Genesis 1, which takes a relatively objective stance to the creation of the universe, and strikes a didactic note, and unlike Job 38–41, which has the form of an argumentative and reproachful address to an opponent, the picture of creation in Psalm 104 has the form of a hymn of praise to the creator whose works are being described. It opens with the poet summoning himself to praise Yahweh (v. 1), and concludes with a whole doxology of praise. The fact of creation is thus transformed in the context of the Psalms from a somewhat external reality into the poet’s expression of pleasure in the creator (vv. 31‐34). At the same time, the poet offers the quite unusual wish that Yahweh himself may “rejoice in his works” (v. 31), as if hoping that Yahweh may share the poet’s own sense of pleasure in the world he has created. This is a poetic transformation of the more austere notation of Genesis 1 that “God saw that it was good”; there was no emotion in that statement, but a somewhat distanced assessment. Here the poet invites the deity to reap his own benefit from his creation by simply enjoying it.