Perhaps more profoundly than any other OT passage, this psalm holds together two spheres of God’s revelation that believers hold dear, namely creation and scripture. Natural and special revelation complement one another, “declaring” different facets of the one Revealer. Yet in this psalm it would appear the Revealer did not make this complementarity known to an author but to an editor, who joined together two or perhaps three compositions that were originally independent.

19:1–9 Even in English translation verses 1–6 and 7–14 read like two separate compositions. Their poetic styles (esp. their metrical patterns), genres, and traditions (and perhaps time periods) are markedly different. Verses 1–6 appear to be a hymn about creation (cf. Pss. 8; 104), but they are unlike other psalmic hymns…