HEAVEN AND EARTH

MODULE 4: A Tour of the Cosmos

SESSION 22: Ancient Cosmology in Psalm 36

Psalm 36 displays the same ancient cosmology we’ve been looking at in Genesis 1 about the heavens above, the deep below, and the dry land in between. In the psalm, the dry land can be used as an image for the space of the wicked even though, as the psalm says, God’s love and justice extend from the heavens all the way to the deep. The psalm exposes this tension between two realities.

Further there is a layout of the cosmology from heavens, clouds, mountains and the deep. Also this superstructure indicates the level of authority and inhabitants where we have God who surpasses everything, we have the humans (righteous and the wicked) and animals. Psalms 36 implies that the righteous have a good access upward to God while the only direction of the wicked is the deep.