Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; thou takest away their breath, they expire and return to their dust.
Psalm 104 praises God as the maker and keeper of the whole world. Verse 29 turns to the other side of that: every creature's comfort and its very life hang on God's face and on the breath He lends.
Read verse 29 next to the verse before it. God opens His hand and fills every creature. Life is not something they own. It is a supply they receive without pause.
"The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing." We easily forget that every living creature depends on Him for its existence every moment of its life.
Hiding the face and taking away the breath are two steps of one withdrawal. The first brings trouble. The second ends the creature's life. One writer traces both steps and adds that God deals with man the same way.
If He sees fit to limit their food, He sometimes does this, and they are troubled (v. 29). In fact, He does this with man too. Then in the end He takes away their breath, and death sends them back to the same dust they came from. Yet, as easily as He makes a creature die, He can by His Spirit create another to take its place, so renewing the face of the earth (v. 30).
The verse applies to God's servants as well. One writer uses it to explain how the prophet Elijah lost his strength.
The moment a believer lets anything at all come between his soul and God, the distance grows beyond measure. The result must be that the prophet loses all his strength, because you find strength nowhere except before God. "When you hide your face, they are dismayed." Elijah was a remarkable instrument of the Lord's power. But he had not grasped to the same degree that in himself there was neither goodness, nor light, nor strength.
Nothing forces God to keep the world alive. Elihu, one of the men who spoke to Job, asks what would happen if God turned His heart back on Himself.
He is absolutely self-sufficient. He needs nothing from outside Himself... Suppose, says Elihu, He were to turn back into that Divine Sufficiency, and set His heart — not upon man, as some translations have it, but upon Himself — what would become of His creation? "All flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust" (v. 15). "when you take away their breath, they die" (Ps. 104:29)... So the apostle Peter tells the saints in the middle of suffering to "entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good" (1 Peter 4:19). How good it is to remember that the One who "upholds the universe by the word of His power" is also our Saviour, Lord and Friend.
The Hebrew word for "breath" here is ruach. The next verse uses the same word for "Spirit". One writer answers a man who argued that both verses should read "breath". The same word carries two senses, and the context decides which.
The "breath of life" in Genesis 6:17 is not the spirit, as a comparison with 7:22 may show. Nor is it in Psalm 104:29. He argues that if ruach in verse 29 means "breath," it must mean the same in verse 30: "You send forth your breath; they are created." But here the words "send forth" need the other translation... God forms the spirit in man: He does not form the breath of life in him.
The psalm does not stop at dust. One writer reads verses 29 and 30 as a picture of what God will finally do for creation.
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Psalm 104 looks at Creation in the same light. God's providence rules over all even now. But in the end He will apply His resurrection strength to Creation. Creation will then again, as it once was, become the object of divine delight. It now groans and suffers pain, but then it will be delivered.
- Given — no creature owns its life. God opens His hand and fills every living thing, moment by moment.
- Hidden — when He hides His face, He limits what creatures receive and trouble follows. Elijah found that away from God he had no strength.
- Withdrawn — the breath was never ours to keep. If God set His heart on Himself alone, all flesh would return to dust.
- Distinguished — ruach means "breath" in verse 29 and "Spirit" in verse 30. God forms the spirit in man, not the breath of life.
- Renewed — the same God who ends a life sends His Spirit and renews the face of the earth. The One who holds up all things is also our Saviour and Friend.
Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth.
Psalm 104 has just watched creatures die and return to dust; now the same hand sends life out again, and the ground fills with living things. Two questions follow: what is this "Spirit" God sends out, and how far does the renewing go?
The Hebrew word here, ruach, can be rendered "breath" or "Spirit." Some have argued for "breath," the air an animal draws. One writer answers that the verb settles it.
Some argue that if ruach in verse 29 is translated "breath," it must be translated the same way in verse 30: "When You send forth Your breath (ruach), they are created." But here the "sending forth" calls for the other rendering. Even if it were breath in both places, how would that prove his point? God forms the spirit in man; He does not form the breath of life in him.
One writer sets this line beside two others to show the Spirit's part in creation.
His creatorship. He had a part with the Father and the Son in everything God did. Otherwise what is the force of the passage, "By His Spirit He adorned the heavens"? (Job 26:13) As to the lower orders of creation we read, "When You send forth Your Spirit, they are created" (Ps. 104:30). Now go back to the earliest record. The very first mention of God at work in the six days is, "the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:2). What could be plainer!
Verses 29 and 30 stand together. The removal of one generation and the arrival of the next both trace back to God, and neither costs Him effort.
Then finally He takes away their breath, and death sends them back to the same dust from which they came. Yet He makes a creature die easily. Just as easily He can create another by His Spirit to take its place, and so renew the face of the earth (v. 30).
Every creature in the psalm lives on what God hands out, moment by moment.
All these must be fed at His table. They gather from His hand and take their fill of what He gives. If He hides His face, they suffer. If He takes away their breath, they go back to the dust they came from. Yet He is the fountain of life. If He sends out His Spirit, a new creation replaces these vanished forms, and He renews the earth.
Some use this verse to argue that people are only animals, since God's Spirit makes both. One writer answers that Genesis says something about man this psalm never says.
No intelligent Christian claims that the phrase "living soul" marks man off from the rest of creation. But Scripture says that man's natural life came straight from God. It says this of him alone, and not of the animals placed under his rule. That statement was surely meant to convey what no one should have doubted: man, as man, apart from eternal life in the Son of God, is inwardly and essentially different from all other animals. And from the very first passage that speaks this way, Scripture carefully shows that man alone of all creatures on earth received his inner being from the breathing of the Lord God. Ps. 104:30 does not say the same thing as Gen. 2:7.
Commentators differ on how far the renewing reaches. One looks past the present round of life and death to the end.
Psalm 104 looks at creation in the same light. God's providence rules over all even now. But in the end He will put His resurrection strength to work on creation. Creation will then become the object of divine delight again, as it once was. It now groans and suffers pain, but He will then set it free.
Another writer keeps the psalm within its own limits.
Psalm 104 takes up creation in the same way. The Spirit is able to bring in the goodness in the middle of all it sees. Yet it does not go beyond a fallen creation.
- Sent, not merely breathed. The verb "send out" shows this is God's Spirit going forth, not just air in an animal's lungs.
- Sent to create. The Spirit shares the work of creation with the Father and the Son, hovering over the waters at the very start.
- Sent to replace. As easily as He takes breath away, He sends His Spirit and a new generation of life takes the place of the old.
- Sent to all, yet man stands apart. God is the fountain of life for every creature, yet man alone received his inner being straight from God.
- Sent forward. Commentators differ: one keeps the psalm inside a creation still fallen, another sees creation set free at the end.