Psalm 104:8. Water Cycle or Plate Tectonics?

Waters, mountains and valleys

I’ve been doing a lot of research on Psalm 104 (LXX 103). I am preparing to do a few 20-30 minute YouTube videos on this psalm. It has really fascinated me. Nature lovers quote this psalm all the time. It is read at the beginning of every Eastern Orthodox vespers service. The imagery is beautiful, the theology is beautiful, the poetry is beautiful.

My goal with this psalm is to understand clearly what images are being described to us. The author is narrating and explaining the world which surrounds him, a world which makes the author declare, “How great are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all. The earth is full of your riches.”

One of the puzzles in this psalm is in verse 8. There are two very different ways this verse gets translated, and the translations are about 50/50 split. Below are my generic renderings of each camp.

Translation 1: “The mountains rise up; the valleys sink down, to the place you have established for them.”

Translation 2: “They go up the mountains; they go down the valleys, to the place you have established for them.” Here, “they” is understood to be “waters”.

Verdict: Translation 2 is what was we should understand was originally intended.

Here are the key reasons why we should be envisioning the water cycle and not plate tectonics in this verse.

First, according to my Greek language PhD pal, Jeff Reed, the Greek translation is ambiguous as to what is “moving up” and “moving down”. The Greek words for “water”, “mountain”, and “valley” are all neuter and therefore have the same form in both the nominative and accusative forms. “Mountains” and “valleys” therefore could be the subject of the verbs or the object. Out of curiosity we checked Codex Sinaiticus (sometimes called the world’s oldest Bible), and the fully magnified portion of the text was not helpful (perhaps an infra-red image would be more conclusive):

So is the Hebrew similarly ambiguous? Not so much. The strongest evidence that this verse is not talking about mountains going up and valleys going down is that the gender of “valleys” (feminine) does not match the gender of the verb for “go down” (masculine). Assuming the imperfect tense here [which is safe because that is the verb conjugation of the surrounding verbs relating to the waters] the form for “go down” would be quite different if it were tied to the feminine plural noun “valleys”. For you Hebrew readers it would be teradnah (תרדנה) instead of yer’du (ירדו). So if the valleys are not the things descending, it must be the waters.

The next reason is the context within the psalm. Verses 5-9 go together as a clear unit, and their core subject is water. The water stands on the mountains; the water flees and scatters; the water stays behind its boundary - it will not return again to cover the earth (Gen 1). In academic circles one would say that verse 8 forms an inclusio with verse 5.

Reason #4: It seems more likely that Iron Age man had a better understanding of the water cycle than any intuitive grasp of mountain uplift. Many of us have actually witnessed water-bearing clouds move up the slopes of mountains and deposit their contents when they get up high. In verse 7 it tells us that God rebukes (thunder!!) the waters for being up there and they flee! They go down to where they are supposed to be; to the place set for them (i.e., the sea or lake or spring).

Having said this, I would not rule out an intuitive understanding of rising mountains by folks who lived thousands of years ago. If you have ever stood on a clear day at the edge of the Judean wilderness looking east over the Jordan rift valley, it does not take much imagination to see the layers on the other side and imagine they at one time touched where you are standing and were ripped apart in the past with the Dead Sea floor falling to its present depth (430m below sea level). It is hard for me to say if I am able to be objective here. Perhaps I am projecting my understanding of large-scale geologic activity on a writer 3 millennia ago.

Fifth, I was happy to see a Qumran/Dead Sea Scrolls witness to this verse. Here is an image of it from the Dead Sea Scrolls digital library at www.deadseascrolls.org.il.

https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/image/B-284262

My first observation here is that this scribe was not the best. I am in no way an expert or even trained in epigraphy, but other scroll materials are easier to read. Fortunately, even I can see in the above highlighted verse what I needed to see: the masculine plural ending for “go down” and feminine plural ending for “valleys”.

So why do around half of all English translations understand this verse as the mountains going up and the valleys going down? I cite the Hebrew poetry. When the Greek (and Latin?) translators went about their work, they were careful to be as literal as possible. In the syntax of Hebrew prose, the verb precedes the subject which precedes the object - partly opposite of English. English: God tests them. Biblical Hebrew: Tests God them. So taking this verse in isolation, it literally reads:

“They go up the mountains. They go down the valleys.” But knowing Hebrew prose syntax is the way it is, we “correct” this to say, “The mountains go up; the valleys go down.” Unfortunately this is a mistake in this context. The fact that we are dealing with an inclusio within a poem, we need to seek outside of this line to find our unstated subject - the waters. That leaves the mountains and valleys to be the objects of the action, not the subjects.

I want to be clear that I am not saying the Greek translation of the Hebrew is wrong. It’s not wrong; it’s perfectly fine. I have stated at the outset that the Greek is itself somewhat open to interpretation. Rather, I am saying that English translations that rely on the Greek are the mistaken ones.

To wrap this up: what is the image we should be thinking about when we read or hear this verse? Naturally minus all the meteorological terms, something like this:

King David, or whomever the author of this psalm was, was a keen observer of the natural world. I am reminded of the episode after Elijah destroys the priests of Ba’al when the country is drought-stricken. Elijah tells his servant to go look to the western horizon of the Mediterranean Sea from the top of Mount Carmel. His servant comes back and said, “There is nothing.” Then Elijah said, “Go again seven times, and return to me seven times.” So it came to pass that on the seventh time the servant said, “Behold, a little cloud, like the footprint of a man, bringing up water.” So Elijah said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Make ready your chariot and get down from here before the rain overtakes you.’” Thus it came to pass that the sky darkened with black clouds and wind, and there was a heavy downpour of rain. (3 Kingdoms 19:12).