104:5 He established the earth on its foundations;
it will never be upended.
104:6 The watery deep covered it 1 like a garment;
the waters reached 2 above the mountains. 3
104:7 Your shout made the waters retreat;
at the sound of your thunderous voice they hurried off –
104:8 as the mountains rose up,
and the valleys went down –
to the place you appointed for them. 4
104:9 You set up a boundary for them that they could not cross,
so that they would not cover the earth again. 5
1 tc Heb “you covered it.” The masculine suffix is problematic if the grammatically feminine noun “earth” is the antecedent. For this reason some emend the form to a feminine verb with feminine suffix, כִּסַּתָּה (kisattah, “[the watery deep] covered it [i.e., the earth]”), a reading assumed by the present translation.
2 tn Heb “stood.”
3 sn Verse 6 refers to the condition described in Gen 1:2 (note the use of the Hebrew term תְּהוֹם [tÿhom, “watery deep”] in both texts).
4 tn Heb “from your shout they fled, from the sound of your thunder they hurried off.”
sn Verses 7-8 poetically depict Gen 1:9-10.
5 tn Heb “a boundary you set up, they will not cross, they will not return to cover the earth.”