Open and Unafraid: A 5-day Journey Through the PsalmsSample

The God of Israel does not propagate the world through a physical act of begetting. Yahweh does not require divine intermediaries to create heaven and earth. Nor does the Lord create out of mere necessity. The Lord does not have to create the cosmos—He chooses to create in love. In Psalm 104:24 the psalmist writes, “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” 

This is similar to the language that we find in Proverbs 8 and Jeremiah 51:15, where “wisdom” takes center stage in God’s creative acts.* Psalm 36:5 draws our attention to the fact that love likewise marks God’s creative work: God’s love “extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.” Psalm 33:5 adds that “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.” In the verse that follows, the psalmist notes that the heavens were made “by the word of the Lord” and “by the breath of His mouth” (Ps. 33:6). All things have been created by his “command” (Ps. 148:5 niv).

In asserting this, the psalmist reminds us that human beings make nothing original in the world. They only make something of the world that God has already made, from top to bottom, from quark to quasars. Moreover, we ought not to put our ultimate trust in mortal human beings. The psalmist writes: “When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish” (Ps. 146:4). It is God whom we should trust. For it is by God’s power and breath that we have our being.

In the psalms, wisdom, power, and love feature largely in God’s work of creation. But the psalmist declares that it is for the sake of joy that God makes the world. “Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs,” the psalmist writes in Psalm 65:8, and then adds, “you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.” All throughout the Psalter, creation raises its joyful praise. The rivers clap their hands and the mountains sing for joy (Ps. 98:8). The valleys shout with gladness, the trees sing, and the fields make merry (Ps. 96:10–13). God, in short, creates for joy.

* On this point, see E. C. Lucas, “Wisdom Theology,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings , 901–12.