Psalm 104: The Greatest Miracles

As Psalm 104 describes how God created everything perfectly for every creature, either as food (“grass for cattle” in verse 14) or homes (“high mountains for wild goats” in 18), and how he created a perfect biosphere, like the cedars in Lebanon both living and being home to the nesting birds (16), or the sea in verse 25.

But mankind is treated differently.

Man is described as the only species that needs to work for its food, with synonyms for work being used in 104:14 (“man’s labors so he may extract bread from the earth”) and 104:23 (“[When the sun rises] man then goes out to work, to his labor until evening.”)

The psalm seems to also understand the gamut of some human needs. If we break verse 15 into three categories, we arrive at the concepts of “wine makes people happy”, “oil makes people beautiful”, and “bread keeps people alive”.

(It almost makes someone hum “Shiny Happy People” by R.E.M.)

The irony of every single one of the categories is that they are the work of man, not the work of God. Grapes grow, while man has to have the patience and expertise to turn them into wine. Olives grow, yet it takes tremendous effort to transform them into oil. Wheat grows, but it takes water and fire to turn it into bread.

But the psalm views each of these as a gift from God. In fact, 104:14 is altered by the Mishna (Berakhot 6:1) to be transformed into a blessing that “[God] extracts the bread from the earth.”

When the psalmist writes “How many things You have made… You have made them all with wisdom” in 104:24, it seems to apply to mankind as well. It takes wisdom to make a good Syrah.

There seems to be some connection between this idea of human effort and God’s gift. If we think about Ecclesiastes 9:7 which states: “Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy, for your actions have been long approved by God.”

In other words — “Feel free to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of your labor, because God is happy with what you are doing.”

So how exactly is 104:15 celebrating God?

Deuteronomy 8:17-18 responds to this question: “and you may say to yourselves, ‘My own power and the might of my own hand have won this ‘wealth’ for me.' Remember that it is God who gives you the power to get ‘wealth’.”

Perhaps a better reading of Psalm 104:15 is that we praise God that wine has the ability to make man happy, oil has the ability to make one beautiful, and bread has the ability to keep one sated. It’s the things we take most for granted that are the greatest miracles.