To the Chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork from him.
1. “The glory of the Lord” denotes (1) that visible manifestation of His Presence by which He was wont to reveal Himself to Israel, the Shechinah as it was called in later times (Exo 16:7; Exo 16:10; Exo 33:22; Romans 9:4): and (2) in a wider sense, as here, the glory of God is the unique majesty of His Being as it is revealed to man, that manifestation of His Deity which the creature should recognize with reverent adoration. All creation is a revelation of God, but the heavens in their vastness, splendor, order, and mystery are the most impressive reflection of His greatness and majesty. The simplest observer can read the message; but how much more emphatic and significant has it become through the discoveries of modern astronomy!
the firmament) Lit. the expand: the vault of heaven, spread out over the earth (Genesis 1:6 ff.; Job 37:18), proclaims what He has done and can do.
Source: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
1 6. The universal revelation of God in Nature.
Source: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The heavens declare the glory of God – They announce, proclaim, make known his glory. The word heavens here refers to the material heavens as they appear to the eye – the region of the sun, moon, and stars. The Hebrew word is used in the Scriptures uniformly in the plural number, though in our common translation the singular number is often used. Gen 1:1, Genesis 1:8-9, Genesis 1:14, Genesis 1:17, Genesis 1:20; Genesis 6:17; Genesis 7:11, Genesis 7:19, Genesis 7:23; et sope. The plural, however, is often retained, but without any special reason why it should be retained in one place rather than in another. Gen 2:1, Genesis 2:4; Deu 10:14; Ezr 9:6; Psalm 2:4; Psa 8:1, Psalm 8:3; PS 18:13. The original idea may have been that there was one heaven above another – one in which the sun was placed, another in which the moon was placed, then the planets, the fixed stars, etc. Above all was supposed to be the place where God dwells. The word glory here means that which constitutes the glory or honor of God – his wisdom, power, skill, faithfulness, benevolence, as seen in the starry worlds above us, the silent, but solemn movements by day and by night. The idea is, that these convey to the mind a true impression of the greatness and majesty of God. The reference here is to these heavens as they appear to the naked eye, and as they are observed by all men. It may be added that the impression is far more solemn and grand when we take into the estimate the disclosures of the modern astronomy, and when we look at the heavens, not merely by the naked eye, but through the revelations of the telescope.
And the firmament – See the note at Dan 12:3. The word rendered firmament – raqya, means properly an expanse – that which is spread out – and is applied to the heavens as they appear to be spread out or expanded above us. The word occurs elsewhere in the following places, and is always rendered firmament in our common version, Genesis 1:6, Genesis 1:7 (twice), Genesis 1:8, Genesis 1:14, Genesis 1:15, Genesis 1:17, Genesis 1:20; Psa 150:1; Eze 1:22-23, Eze 1:25-26; Eze 10:1; Dan 12:3. The word firmament – that which is firm or fixed – is taken from the word used by the translators of the Septuagint, stereoma, from the idea that the heavens above us are a solid concave. In the Scriptures the stars are represented as placed in that expanse, so that if it should be rolled together as a tent is rolled up, they would fall down to the earth. See the note at Isaiah 34:4. The reference in the passage before us is to the heavens as they appear to be spread out over our heads, and in which the stars are fixed.
Showeth his handywork – The heavens make known the work of his hands. The idea is that God had made those heavens by his own hands, and that the firmament, thus adorned with sun, and moon, and stars, showed the wisdom and skill with which it was done. compare Psalm 8:3.
Source: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God.
The glory of God
Nature exists not for a merely natural, but for a moral end; not for what it is, but for what it says or declares.
YO. What nature tells us to think of God.
1. Nature reveals God. The race as a whole have heard the declaration of His eternal power from him and Godhead. In proportion as they have heard, adored, they have risen in the scale of manhood.
two. Nature declares the knowledge and power of God. The marks of mathematical and geometric law in nature are conspicuous. The more we explore the different departments of nature, the more we find it pervaded by strict arithmetical and dynamic laws. We meet thoughts everywhere. The race of man, as a whole, has heard, and to some extent understood, the testimony of nature to infinite thought and power.
3. Nature declares that God is just and good. This has been called in question. Nature says that every natural law, if obeyed, tends to happiness. Natures laws are benevolent, Men have not fully appreciated this, for one reason, because they have so commonly broken those laws and have suffered. But does nature in any wise speak of the Divine mercy? This question has often been wrongly answered. Listen attentively, and you will hear nature say that God is merciful. It is a striking fact that very many, if not all, physical penalties can be mitigated, if not relieved, by some counter law, some curious side-process or arrangement. God has so made nature as practically to encourage self-sacrifice for each other. Whenever men take pains for each other, to help each other over their faults and their consequences, there is an illustration, however faint, of the Divine principle of mercy. Mercy is the policy of the Divine government; it is the character of God Himself.
II. What God thinks of nature.
1. God looks upon nature as a basis of language. Let the heavenly orbs be for signs. Signs are vehicles of ideas. Let them say something; let them be words. The universe is Gods telephone, Gods grand signal service system by which He can flash messages from the heights above to the deepest valleys below. The material system is Gods great instrument of conversation.
two. God tells us what to think of this eloquent material system. It is Gods most glorious schoolroom by which to teach us reality,–above all, to teach us self-government, and painstaking for one another. Why are we in such a world? Because we needed to be. We need what we get here. We need that knowledge of ourselves which nature can give. We need to be where we are. We need just the restraints and the liberties, the trials and the triumphs, the joys and the sorrows, the smiles and the tears, the bliss and the anguish of this strange life. And in all, and through all, we need to know Him who placed us here, and is revealing Himself to us in a thousand ways. (Charles Beecher.)
The Biblical conception of nature
The whole of revelation rests on this broad platform: how God and nature stand to one another. Now, there are two opposite extremes into which our conceptions on this point may fail. We may immerse God in nature; or we may isolate nature from God.
1. We immerse God in nature if we treat nature as itself possessed of properties which are strictly personal; as when, for example, we accustom ourselves to think of it as originating its own processes, as intending its own results, or as conscious of its own plan. Men talk of nature as though it were aiming at certain ends, striving to accomplish them, adapting itself to new conditions, overcoming fresh obstacles, and so forth. The corrective lies in the scriptural idea of creation as an act of will of One who is outside of material being. Scripture is strictly philosophical when it traces all phenomena, all change, ultimately to a will. But will is an attribute of personality; and the Person whose will determines that nature should be what it is must be a Person not Himself included in the nature which He wills shall be. He is God. Again–
two. We may unduly isolate nature as Gods workmanship from God the worker. We do this, eg, when we conceive of the universe as teaching us nothing of God, being only a whirl of material change without spiritual meaning; or when we represent it as a machine which, being somehow endued with a given stock of force, must go on so long as the force lasts, like a watch that has been once wound up. To separate the work from the worker after this sheer and mechanical fashion may do some harm to science, and it hardly leaves any foothold for religion. Again, the spiritual conception of creation will furnish the corrective. According to it, God is personally separate from and above nature, yet for all that He has put into His handiwork of him His own thoughts of him. We may fairly say that both sides of the idea lie in embryo in the solitary phrase, By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made. For the word of any person serves two functions: it is the organ of command, conveying an act of will; it is also the organ of expression, revealing the speakers nature. Stupendous conception of primary force! The force of personal will, resident in the Supernatural Being, in the one sole unmade, unborn Person, who is that He is; he is, and was, and is to come, the Almighty. The sole cause; sole origin of being; sole efficient factor in the beginning; is this act of volition or self-determination of an Infinite Personal Will. He spake, and it was done; I have commanded, and it stood fast. It accords with experience; it satisfies philosophy; not less does it meet the religious necessities of the spirit; for if I am to worship at all, where shall I find a nobler object of worship than the Person who will give being to all beings but Himself? On the other hand, the word of a speaker while it utters his will must no less reflect, consciously or unconsciously, his inner self. It seems to me that in this Biblical conception of nature as the revelation of its Maker we find the common root whence have grown two very dissimilar growths of the ancient and of the modern world. The great fact of the whole ancient world was this, that its multiform religions started from a nature basis. The sun and stars, the reproductive forces of animal and vegetable life, the decay and revival of the year, the wondrous cycle, in short, of cosmic change through which nature accomplishes itself, was the common fact which very early riveted the attention of primitive man, till out of it there grew up in many lands, under many shapes, a system of religious observance everywhere the same in principle. Being whose thoughts these objects revealed, men began to adore the symbol, and to forget the Invisible Person behind it. Easy and rapid was the downward plane to idolatry and polytheism and gross fetish worship. Yet what is worth noting is, that such nature religions would have been impossible had not nature really spoken to unsophisticated men a Divine message, had it not been charged to their souls from the first with Divine ideas. We are far enough removed now from that early stage of human experience. The world is grown aged, and the work of its age is not to worship nature, but to master it. Yet this modern science which leads to the utilization of physical forces for human needs is not less an outgrowth from the same root. For all our power over nature reposes immediately on our correct reading of natural laws….