Cosmic Ark

Psalm 104 celebrates the glories of creation, both the events of the original creation when Yahweh stretched out heaven like a tent curtain and made the clouds His chariot (vv. 2-3) and the continuous glory of the world that we know – the mountains and the sea, the springs that flow into the valleys, the thunder that roars.

The Psalm spends a lot of time on the animal kingdom. It’s a sung menagerie: cattle, birds, storks, wild goats, rock badgers, lions, and all the beasts of the forest (vv. 14, 17-23). It’s a lesson in botany – grass, trees, cedars, fir trees. No wonder the Psalmist is overwhelmed: “How many are your works! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of Your possessions. There is the sea, great and broad, in which are swarms without number, animals small and great. . . . Leviathan, which you formed to sport there” (vv. 24-26).

The world is a cosmic ark, teeming with animals.

And in the middle of it all is man. He goes out to his labor, feeding his cattle, turning olives into oil that makes his face shine, turning grapes to wine to gladden his heart (vv. 14-15). In this cosmic ark, man is the daybreak. The nigh belongs to prowling lions and other beasts (v. 20-21). When the sun rises, they find darkness in daylight, and leave the day to man and his work, who labors til evening.

The world is a cosmic ark, and every carpenter and vintner is a Noah, who was himself a new Adam.