week 4 blog 2
I'll be totally honest here, I am a little tired of the Psalms, and I am happy that Monday will be our last day with them. That being said, I'm going to talk about them. I want to discuss something that we did talk about in class, the natural images in the Psalms. It is very interesting how they are used and how they seem to be so closely related to God in the Psalms. There are three main ideas about nature in the Psalms and those are, God's creation of nature, God's use of nature and man's relationship to nature.

The first thing is the fact that everyone needs to know that God created nature, and this idea can be seen in Psalm 104. The entire Psalm seems to walk through many aspects of nature and credits them all to God. "With the deep You covered it like a garment- over mountains the waters stood" which is referring to God actually creating the land (separating the land from the waters). "The trees of the Lord drink their fill, the Lebanon cedars He planted." All aspects of nature from the land to the trees were created by God. The Psalms also credits God with the way in which things in nature can be used by other things in nature, even man. "He makes hay sprout for cattle, grass for the labor of humankind." The Psalms show how God not only created nature, but also sustains it through his different creations.

There is also the idea that God can use and manipulate nature in any way he wishes. This idea is seen in Psalm 104 also. "He goes on the wings of the wind. He makes His messengers the winds, His ministers, glowing fire." This passage shows how God can use the wind to get out his message and use parts of nature to help man. But, there are also points where God can use nature in other ways. In Psalm 18 God uses nature in a much more violent way: "The Lord thundered from on high... He let loose His arrows, and scattered them, lightning bolts shot... The channels of water were exposed and the worlds foundations laid bare from the Lord's roaring." This passage uses nature images in a violent manor and wants to show how God can manipulate nature as a powerful weapon, a very different idea from using the wind as a messenger.

The final aspect of nature in the Psalms is man's relationship to nature. This idea is again, seen in Psalm 104. In the previously mentioned passage, "He makes hay sprout for cattle, grass for the labor of humankind," there is a clear message that humans should work on the land. In other words, the message is that nature was created for man to use and work on in order to prosper from it. This idea is repeated later in the Psalm; "Man gos out to his work and to his labor until evening." Nature was created to help man and for man to work on and prosper from. This is a common theme in many literary works throughout history and it is not surprising to see it in works as early as the Psalms.