Dressed For Royalty

Psalm 104:1-12

1Praise the LORD, I tell myself;

O LORD my God, how great you are!

You are robed with honor and with majesty;

2you are dressed in a robe of light.

You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens;

3you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds.

You make the clouds your chariots;

you ride upon the wings of the wind.

4The winds are your messengers;

flames of fire are your servants.

5You placed the world on its foundation

so it would never be moved.

6You clothed the earth with floods of water,

water that covered even the mountains.

7At the sound of your rebuke, the water fled;

at the sound of your thunder, it fled away.

8Mountains rose and valleys sank

to the levels you decreed.

9Then you set a firm boundary for the seas,

so they would never again cover the earth.

10You make the springs pour water into ravines,

so streams gush down from the mountains.

11They provide water for all the animals,

and the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

12The birds nest beside the streams

and sing among the branches of the trees.

The traveler was on his way back from a jungle expedition, on which he studied primitive cultures for his latest book. In England he met a new friend who plied him with questions about his many adventures around the world.

This friend turned out to be well connected in British society. He invited the traveler to stay at his home for a few days to meet his wife and a few friends. There would be a formal dinner that weekend with a duchess, who would love to hear the traveler’s stories.

The traveler’s head was spinning. A week earlier he had been camping out with people from a stone-age culture. Now he would be dining with a duchess. One problem, though—he had nothing to wear. His traveling clothes were stained and tattered; he had no formal attire worthy of royalty.

“No matter,” his host replied. “I’ll buy you a suitable outfit.” So the traveler was decked out in Britain’s best finery, and he saluted the duchess in style.

Psalm 104 addresses royalty, too—the Lord God. He himself is “dressed in a robe of light” (verse 2), but he makes sure the universe is appropriately attired as well (verse 6). This foreshadows a New Testament truth that God clothes us in the righteousness of Jesus in order to prepare us to dine at his table.

O tell of his might, O sing of his grace,

Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.

His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,

And dark is his path on the wings of the storm.

ROBERT GRANT

Bible Networking

Light is often associated with the Lord. See Matthew 17:2; 1 Timothy 6:16; and 1 John 1:5 .

Notable Quotable

Verse 2 “is a picture of God providing the sky like a curtain so that men may not be blinded by the blaze of His glory.”

W. E. BARNES