Psalms 104:3

104:3 and lays the beams of the upper rooms of his palace on the rain clouds. ¹ 

He makes the clouds his chariot,

and travels along on the wings of the wind. ² 

Genesis 1:7

1:7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. ³  It was so. ⁴ 

Genesis 7:11

7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month – on that day all the fountains of the great deep ⁵  burst open and the floodgates of the heavens ⁶  were opened.

¹ tn Heb “one who lays the beams on water [in] his upper rooms.” The “water” mentioned here corresponds to the “waters above” mentioned in Gen 1:7. For a discussion of the picture envisioned by the psalmist, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World, 44-45.

² sn Verse 3 may depict the Lord riding a cherub, which is in turn propelled by the wind current. Another option is that the wind is personified as a cherub. See Ps 18:10 and the discussion of ancient Near Eastern parallels to the imagery in M. Weinfeld, “‘Rider of the Clouds’ and ‘Gatherer of the Clouds’,” JANESCU 5 (1973): 422-24.

³ tn Heb “the expanse.”

⁴ tn This statement indicates that it happened the way God designed it, underscoring the connection between word and event.

⁵ tn The Hebrew term תְּהוֹם (tÿhom, “deep”) refers to the watery deep, the salty ocean – especially the primeval ocean that surrounds and underlies the earth (see Gen 1:2).

⁶ sn On the prescientific view of the sky reflected here, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World (AnBib), 46.