Psalm 104:19-26
New Catholic Bible
19 You created the moon that marks the seasons
and the sun that knows its time for setting.[a]
20 You bring on darkness, and it is night,
when all the beasts of the forests go on the prowl.
21 The young lions[b] roar for their prey,
seeking their food from God.
22 When the sun rises, they steal away
and return to their lairs to rest.
23 People go forth to their work
and to their labor until darkness descends.
24 [c]How countless are your works, O Lord;
by your wisdom you have made them all;
the earth abounds with your creatures.
25 There is the sea, vast and broad,
filled with numberless species,
living creatures both great and small.
26 There the ships sail forth,
and the Leviathan[d] that you formed to play therein.
Footnotes
- Psalm 104:19 The ancients governed their lives by the cycles of the sun and moon, which God created on the fourth day for that purpose (see Gen 1:14-19).
- Psalm 104:21 The young lions and man represent the animal and the human kingdom. The psalmist, in accord with the beliefs of his day, postulates that animals come out at night to search for their food, and humans do their working and eating by day. See Jn 9:4, where Jesus uses the inability of humans to work at night (because of the circumstances of his time—absence of light at night) to impart a greater spiritual truth.
- Psalm 104:24 The psalmist now takes up God’s creation of the sea and everything in it on the fifth day (see Gen 1:20-23). He calls upon the people to worship the Lord’s wisdom and creative diversity. Here he emphasizes sea creatures to complement the wild and domesticated animals and humans mentioned in verses 10-18.
- Psalm 104:26 See note on Ps 74:13-14. Here Leviathan is a whale or large cetacean. The name is that of a fabled dragon and is already found in Ugaritic poems of the 15th century B.C.
