What Does Psalms 104:2 Mean?

(2) **Who coverest.**—Perhaps better with the participles of the original retained: Putting on light as a robe; Spreading the heavens as a curtain. The psalmist does not think of the formation of light as of a single past act, but as a continued glorious operation of Divine power and splendour. Not only is light as to the modern poet, “Nature’s resplendent robe, Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt In unessential gloom,” but it is the dress of *Divinity, *the “ethereal woof” that God Himself is for ever weaving for His own wear. **Curtain.**—Especially of a *tent *(see Song of Solomon 1:5, &c.), the tremulous movement of its folds being expressed in the Hebrew word. Different explanations have been given of the figure. Some see an allusion to the curtains of the Tabernacle (Exodus 26, 27). The associations of this ritual were dear to a religious Hebrew, and he may well have had in his mind the rich folds of the curtain of the Holy of Holies. So a modern poet speaks of “The arras-folds, that variegate The earth, God’s ante-chamber. Herder, again, refers the image to the survival of the nomadic instinct. But there is no need to put a limit to a figure so natural and suggestive. Possibly images of palace, temple, and tent, all combined, rose to the poet’s thought, as in Shelley’s “Ode to Heaven”:— “Palace roof of cloudless nights! Paradise of golden lights! Deep immeasurable vast, Which art now, and which wert then; Of the present and the past, Of the Eternal where and when, Presence-chamber, temple, home, Ever-canopying dome Of acts and ages yet to come!”