Immaterial One even that which is fluid is solid, and that which is dense is transparent. The reservoirs of the upper waters, the clouds, God makes, as the lightning, thunder, and rain indicate, into His chariot (רכוּב), upon which he rides along in order to make His power felt below upon the earth judicially (Isa 19:1), or in rescuing and blessing men. רכוּב (only here) accords in sound with כּרוּב, Psa 18:11. For Psa 104:3 also recalls this primary passage, where the wings of the wind take the place of the cloud-chariot. In Psa 104:4 the lxx (Heb 1:7) makes the first substantive into an accusative of the object, and the second into an accusative of the predicate: Ὁ ποιῶν τοὺς ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ πνεῦματα καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ πυρὸς φλόγα. It is usually translated the reverse say: making the winds into His angels, etc. This rendering is possible so far as the language is concerned (cf. Psa 100:3 Chethîb, and on the position of the worlds, Amo 4:13 with Psa 5:8), and the plural משׁרתיו is explicable in connection with this rendering from the force of the parallelism, and the singular אשׁ from the fact that this word has no plural. Since, however, עשׂה with two accusatives usually signifies to produce something out of something, so that the second accusative (viz., the accusative of the predicate, which is logically the second, but according to the position of the words may just as well be the first, Exo 25:39; Exo 30:25, as the second, Exo 37:23; Exo 38:3; Gen 2:7; 2Ch 4:18-22) denotes the materia ex qua, it may with equal right at least be interpreted: Who makes His messengers out of the winds, His servants out of the flaming or consuming (vid., on Psa 57:5) fire (אשׁ, as in Jer 48:45, masc.). And this may affirm either that God makes use of wind and fire for special missions (cf. Psa 148:8), or (cf. Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, i. 325f.) that He gives wind and fire to His angels for the purpose of His operations in the world which are effected through their agency, as the materials of their outward manifestation, and as it were of their self-embodiment,[1] as then in Psa 18:11 wind and cherub are both to be associated together in thought as the vehicle of the divine activity in the world, and in Psa 35:5 the angel of Jahve represents the energy of the wind.
- ↑ It is a Talmudic view that God really makes the angels out of fire, B. Chagiga, 14a (cf. Koran, xxxviii. 77): Day by day are the angels of the service created out of the stream of fire (נהר דינור), and sing their song of praise and perish.
