The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

divine mandate which held the floods in check: they knew their old supremacy, and hastened to reassert it, but now the covenant promise for ever prevents a return of that carnival of waters, that revolt of the waves: ought we not rather to call it that impetuous rush of the indignant floods to avenge the injured honour of their King, whom men had offended? (p. 304) One of the more conservative and dependable commentators on Psalms concludes that verses 6–8 refer to the Flood (Alexander 1864, pp. 421–422). Alexander’s key argument involves the use of “rebuke” in verse 7, which he parallels with God’s wrathful rebuke in Psalms 18:15 and 76:6, as well as Isaiah 50:2. Although he takes the subject of the verbs in verse 8 to be “waters,” he insists that they consist of the Flood waters so that the psalmist “founds the statement of a general truth on that of a particular event” (viz., the Flood) (p. 422). By this means verse 9 forms a natural transition to the present (post-Flood) general description in verse 10. Kidner (1975) identifies everything from verse 10 on as “the hospitable earth that was the end-product of this separation of seas and dry land” (p. 370) at creation. He thus eliminates any reference to the Flood. McCurdy translated and made additions to Moll’s German commentary on Psalms 73–150 as part of Lange’s commentary series in 1872. McCurdy received linguistic and exegetical help from the great Princeton Seminary Hebrew scholar W.H. Green. Zondervan’s reprint of the new edition in 1960 made the monumental series more readily available for current Bible students. According to Moll and McCurdy (1872, 1960), verse 8a (“Mountains rose up, valleys sank down”) should be understood as parenthetical, explaining how “the place” (v. 8b) was prepared for the retreating waters when the earth was created: Before Thy rebuke they fled, Before Thy voice of thunder they trembled away — Mountains rose up, valleys sank down — To the place, which thou didst establish for them. (p. 529) However, Moll (1872, 1960) explains his reason for making the event creation rather than the Flood as follows: “The mountains are as old as the earth, and the waters which originally covered it” (p. 529). In other words, there is no room in his thinking for a catastrophic, global Flood that would have destroyed the pre-Flood mountains. This same mindset might undergird the majority of Psalms commentaries as well as the way commentators limit Psalm 104 to the creation event alone. Uniformitarianism associates the rising of the mountains and sinking of the valleys with the means by which the present natural order reflects creation — i.e., the present is the key to the past — a past without a catastrophic, global Flood. But, if the rising of the mountains and the sinking of the valleys produced the current natural state (which they did according to scholars like Moll, McCurdy, and Green), such tectonic activity must have taken place during or immediately following the Flood (cf. Barker 1986, p. 78). Ross (2014) argues that verse 9 provides evidence that the biblical Flood could not have been global. He takes the reference as a description of God’s raising of continents and making the oceans on Day 3 of creation. In addition, Ross equates Psalm 104:9 with Proverbs 8:29 (“He set for the sea its boundary”; p. 147). This association ignores the absence of the word g e vūl in Proverbs 8:29 — instead, it uses choq (literally, “limit” or “regulation”; cf. Koehler and Baumgartner 1994–2000, p. 346). Ross could have responded with Jeremiah 5:22 in which both g e vūl and choq occur to characterize the purpose of the sand on the seashores. However, Jeremiah 5:22 speaks of the present post-Flood earth, not the Day 3 earth. Evidence supporting reference to the Flood rather than to creation includes the following elements in Psalm 104:6–10: • “Above the mountains” in verse 6 parallels Genesis 7:20’s description of the waters prevailing fifteen cubits higher than the mountains. • “Rebuke” (Hebrew root ga‘ar ) in verse 7 presents a strongly negative and destructive concept that militates against creation as the reference. This term fits best with the Flood event, since God in His wrath judged the world by means of the Flood. • “Fled” and “hurried away” in verse 7 imply fleeing in terror, rather than simple obedience (Lewis 1980, p. 310). • Verse 8 rounds out the stanza by specifying the formation of mountains and valleys. The simplest grammatical understanding takes the mountains and valleys as the subjects of the verbs, not “waters,” which is at a distance incompatible with being the subject of the two verbs. And, the verbs do not follow the same form as verbs clearly taking the waters as subject (no final nun forms in v. 8). • “Boundary” occurs in the first position in the sentence (v. 9), for emphasis. God set a boundary or limit for the waters as a result of the activities of verse 8. • The return to a second person perfect form of the verb in verse 9 provides a marker for introducing the new topic and looking at the next stage in the description of the earth — the post- Flood world. • God set the boundary to prevent the waters from returning (the verb can also be translated as “return again”) to cover the earth. If this refers to the third day of creation, the boundary clearly failed or was breached during the Flood. That would frustrate or nullify God’s work or purpose in placing the boundary. However, due to His own promise in Genesis 9:8–17, those waters will never again cover the earth as they did during the Flood (cf. Barker 1986, 79). • Verse 10’s description applies to the post-Flood world the readers can observe for themselves. In fact, the remainder of the psalm continues this present-time description of the world in which the psalmist’s readers live. TEXT AND TRANSLATION OF PSALM 104:8 Some readers might continue to object to placing Psalm 104:8’s event at, during, or after the Flood because of the majority of commentators, a potential textual issue in verse 8, and/or the variety of translations of the verse. Spurgeon (N.d.), for example, took “the waters” as subject of the verbs in this verse, The vanquished waters are henceforth obedient. “ They go up by the mountains, ” climbing in the form of clouds even to the summits of the Alps. “ They go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them: ” they are as willing to descend in rain, and brooks, and torrents as they were eager to ascend in mists. (p. 304) Making the same textual and translation decision, Lawson (2006) writes, “These waters flowed over the mountains and then ran down into the valleys . In this stage, God put the topography of the earth in its place” (p. 155). The Greek Septuagint (Psalm 103 in its numbering) uses the accusative case, rather than nominative, for both “mountains” (ὄρη, orē ) and “plains” (πεδία, pedia ): “They go up to the mountains, and down to the plains.” Another early example, the Aramaic Targum, Barrick ◀ Exegetical analysis of Psalm 104:8 ▶ 2018 ICC 99