Covering thyself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent-curtain; --
This verse paints two pictures: God wearing light, and God spreading out the sky like a tent. Both raise one question. If light is His covering, does creation show us God, or hide Him?
These words of praise come from a man who already knows God as his Redeemer. Their order follows the opening days of creation in Genesis: God is light, and He spreads the sky above the waters.
The psalm opens with praise to the Creator. It comes from a man who, according to the previous psalm, already knows Jehovah as Redeemer. That is why he can say, "O Lord my God, you are very great." In these opening verses the psalmist sees a view of creation that matches the first and second days of creation. God, who is light, divides the waters from the waters. He stretches out the heavens above, over the waters beneath.
A garment is worn, but it is also seen.
Inaccessible in His own essential glory, He covers Himself with light as with a garment, and stretches out the heavens like the curtain of a tent. The visible is thus the robe of the Invisible. He indwells it, and through it we may discern, if dimly, His glorious Form.
The dimness is not a failure of the light.
Yet this dimness itself is Light. There is no hiding, except to make Him better known. Our sight is weak, so we look at the sun through a darkened glass.
The words fit God alone. Could Job dress himself in such glory? His sackcloth and ashes gave the answer.
Could anyone say this of Job? — "You are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment." … But had his own right hand even stopped the raiders who drove away his possessions? Or turned aside the storm that swept away his children? Sadly, he had to use a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself. His clothing was sackcloth, not glory and majesty. His seat was the ashes of a ruined life, not the throne of glory.
The brightness that overpowers our sight is the very thing that stirs worship. And the stretched-out heavens keep their calm beauty while the clouds below keep changing.
Of whom else could anyone say that He has covered Himself with light as with a garment? Here the light is so bright that it blinds our feeble eyes, yet it draws out deeper worship. "Stretching out the heavens like a tent." We marvel as we watch the heavens, and how they are kept in calm, majestic beauty. The clouds move and change all the time, but they have no effect on the heavens themselves.
Here is the limit of the picture. A robe of light shows greatness, not character.
God's purpose was to make known His moral nature and character, and the happiness of the life He lives. To carry out that purpose, He had to come out from the unapproachable light where He dwells alone. He did this when He came forth in the exercise of the creating power that is His own. In the creation He has produced, He has clothed Himself "with light as with a garment." But when we look at God in creation, we do not see His moral nature and life. Creation shows "His eternal power and divinity" (Rom. 1:20). It proclaims the power and divinity that was eternally in Him, but not what He is in moral nature and character.
Commentators also apply these words to Jesus. The same description fits Him as He walked among people.
In the Old Testament we read of God as the One who covers Himself "with light as with a garment." We could say the same of our Lord as He walked through this world of darkness. He stood in perfect contrast to everyone around Him. This was true all through the years of His ministry. It stood out most in the hours just before His crucifixion.
- Robe. The light is not God on display; it is His covering. The visible is the robe of the Invisible, and the sky is the curtain of His tent.
- Veil. The dimming is kindness, not hiding. He veils Himself only to make Himself better known, the way darkened glass lets weak eyes see the sun.
- Reach. No creature can wear that garment; Job, in sackcloth on the ashes, was the proof.
- Limit. The robe declares eternal power and divinity, but not moral nature. Creation shows what God can do, not what He is like.
- Person. So He came out from the unapproachable light. In Christ, the contrast with the surrounding darkness shone clearest as the cross drew near.
Who layeth the beams of his upper chambers in the waters, who maketh clouds his chariot, who walketh upon the wings of the wind;
The psalm's opening lines picture God dressing Himself in light and stretching out the sky. Verse 3 carries the picture further. God frames His own rooms above the waters, and He rides on the clouds. Is this only poetry about weather? Or does it show a God who is present and moving inside the world He made?
The "waters" here are not the sea below. They are the waters God separated above at creation. One writer follows the line in an older wording, which has "upper chambers" and "walks" where the ESV has "chambers" and "rides":
Strange as it may sound, "He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters" (v. 3). These are "the waters above" (Gen. 1:7), water carried in the clouds. Those clouds are in effect made "His chariot," and we can only watch them, for we do not ride in them. Nor can we "walk on the wings of the wind," as our great Creator and Redeemer does.
The verse says more than that God made these things. He travels in them. And the one singing already knows Him as more than a Maker:
The psalm opens with praise to the Creator. The one singing already knows the Lord as Redeemer, as the previous psalm shows. So he can say, "O Lord my God, you are very great." In these opening verses a view of creation rises before the psalmist. It matches the first and second days of creation. God, who is light, divides the waters from the waters. He stretches out the heavens above over the waters beneath. In all this great work we see God not only creating, but moving in His own creation. He "makes the clouds His chariot," and "walks on the wings of the wind." Angels wait on Him as His ministers.
Some would treat this as pre-scientific imagery. One writer answers that discovering how clouds and winds work has not removed the Person behind them:
The psalmist will not explain what happens in the heavens by matter and motion alone. To him it is all filled with the Presence and Will of a divine Being, whom these things in some sense show. We have discovered some of the mechanics involved. That has done nothing to disprove what the psalmist believed. The description is poetic, but its meaning is not hard to understand, and no one can prove it superstitious. Superstition thrives in the dark; it is inconsistent, fantastic, irrational. These things have proved rational, and so authoritative that we call them "law." To claim them as the work of Mind, of a divine Governor, is not superstition at all.
One writer traces this cloud from Israel's early history to the day Jesus was taken up:
The cloud first took Him at the head of His redeemed people, to lead them on the way (Ex. 13). Later it carried Him to fill His place in the tabernacle, and then in the temple (Ex. 40; 2 Chr. 5). So the cloudy chariot waited on Him of old (Ps. 104:3). And when the sins of the people had disturbed His rest among them, the cherubim carry Him away (Ezek. 1); and the cherubim were called "the chariot of the cherubim" (1 Chr. 28:18). On all these occasions He was attended by His appointed chariot. And so He is now. He is "carried up."
Riding the clouds belongs to God. So the way Jesus appears at His return settles who He is:
Every eye will see Him in surroundings that show His Deity. For this is the Lord God Himself, "who makes the clouds His chariot, who walks on the wings of the wind" (Ps. 104:3)… Our verse here announces that all the tribes of the earth will wail because of Him. This is not repentance. They wail because His coming seals their doom, and they realize it.
One writer reads the beams sunk into the waters as a picture of where God's glory rests — on the death of Christ:
The glory of God rests on the cross. "Who lays the beams of His chambers in the waters." The beams of the chambers of glory rest, as it were, on foundations laid deep in death. The Lamb of God went down into that death, so that everything should be established and made sure there. What could be more blessed or comforting than that?
- Framed — God builds His upper rooms over the waters above, the water that clouds carry.
- Ridden — the clouds are His chariot: God is not only the Maker standing outside creation, He moves within it.
- Reasonable — knowing how clouds and winds work does not explain God away. Order we call "law" points to a Mind.
- Carried — the same cloud led Israel, filled the tabernacle and the temple, and took Jesus up.
- Returning — He comes back on the clouds, and that marks Him out as God. The glory of that day rests on the cross.