104:2 coverest thyself with light. This 104^th psalm gives unique insight into the mysteries of God’s creation, from its first beginnings to the great Flood, to the providential care of His creation in the present world and to the consummation. “God is light” (I John 1:5), so light did not have to be created, as did darkness (Isaiah 45:7); it needed merely to be “formed” in such fashion as to provide divine apparel for the Creator as He entered, as it were, into His physical universe when He created it.

104:2 stretchest out the heavens. The “heavens” are simply the infinite reaches of created “space” in His space/mass/time universe. The “stretching out” may refer either to their limitless extent, or to their expansion, or both.

104:3 in the waters. The “waters” seem to have provided the initial matrix within which all “matter” was contained (note Genesis 1:2; II Peter 3:5). Somewhere in the physical universe God established His “chambers,” where He is “dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto” (I Timothy 6:16).

104:3 wings of the wind. The Hebrew for “wind” is the same as for “spirit.” Symbolically, God “rides” on the waters, and “walks” by His Spirit. This implies the energizing, activating movement of the Spirit (Genesis 1:2), as God began to prepare His vast cosmos, and the earth in particular, for the men and women He would create in His own image.

104:4 maketh his angels. Prior to man’s creation, however, God made the angels, evidently on the first day of creation week, after He Himself had entered His universe and began to move therein by the Spirit. Some translators have read this statement as: “God made the winds His messengers, and the fires His servants.” The inspired New Testament writer of Hebrews, however, quoted it properly: “And of the angels He saith, Who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire” (Hebrews 1:7). The angels are spiritual (rather than physical) beings, though they can assume quasi-physical bodies on occasion. Angels are commonly associated in Scripture with the stars, possibly because their dwellings are normally in the stars (which are, of course, “flaming fires”). Compare Judges 5:20; Job 38:7; Isaiah 14:12,14; Revelation 1:20; 12:3-9.

104:5 foundations of the earth. The earth’s “matter”—that is, the “dust of the earth,” or its physical elements—was created on the first day of creation week, evidently suspended in the pervasive waters. The earth’s foundations, solid, continental blocks of material, were not laid until the third day, rising thence out of the waters. Once formed, this planet earth was destined to continue forever.