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Psalm 104:1-2 vs. “How Great Is Our God”

Chris Tomlin · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

PassagePsalm 104:1-2 chapter ↗ 2 more proofs on Psalm 104 →
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumArriving · 2004
Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)
Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • Verse one's pictures nearly all have addresses inside Psalm 104 itself: royal splendor and the garment of light (vv. 1-2), creation startled at His voice (v. 7), the trembling earth (v. 32)
  • The centre of attention stays on God throughout; the first person appears only to invite other singers and to commit the heart to praise
  • The origin account is first person and on record. Tomlin names Psalm 104, and the named verses match the song's opening
  • What the second verse says of God has scriptural homes outside the psalm: his eternity (Psalm 90:2), the threefold Name (Matthew 28:19), the Lion and the Lamb (Revelation 5:5-6)

⚠ Cautions

  • The Trinity verse is the songwriters' creedal addition. Psalm 104 names no Trinity, so a listener sent to the psalm by the origin story will not find that verse in it
  • The song itself cites nothing. The Psalm 104 connection lives in interviews, and a singer has no pointer from the song to the chapter
  • The retreating darkness is the one verse-one picture without a Psalm 104 address. In the psalm, darkness is part of God's ordered day (v. 20); the nearest texts for darkness that cannot stand before God are Psalm 139:11-12 and John 1:5

Verse Proof

Psalm 104:1-2

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps Himself in light as with a garment; He stretches out the heavens like a tent,”

Psalm 104 is a creation hymn. It opens with the psalmist commanding his own soul to bless the LORD, then turns to God's greatness: robed in splendor and majesty, wrapped in light, stretching out the heavens like a tent. From there the psalm tours creation in roughly the order of Genesis 1. The waters flee at God's rebuke (v. 7), springs feed the beasts, grass and wine and bread come up for man, birds nest in the trees, the moon marks seasons, and night and day each have their working creatures. It ends with the earth trembling at His look (v. 32) and the singer vowing to sing to the LORD all his life. Verses 1 and 2 are the doorway to all of it.

What the song says, described not quoted

Two verses, a chorus, and a bridge, and every line speaks about God rather than to Him. The first verse pictures a King robed in splendor, wrapped in royal light, with darkness personified as retreating and shaken by His voice, and the earth called to gladness. The second verse moves from space to time: God standing unchanged across the ages, time itself in His grip, first and last, and then a compact creedal line naming all three persons of the Trinity, pictured as the Lion and the Lamb. The chorus is one declarative sentence about God's greatness, sung as the title, with a call for other singers to join in and an expectation that everyone will come to see it. The bridge stacks up the supremacy of God's name and His worthiness of praise, then commits the singer's own heart to the same sentence. No verse is cited anywhere and no translation is named.

The song points at no passage; the pairing rests on the writer's own account. Tomlin has said on record that the song began on his sofa in an Austin apartment with Psalm 104 open, and that the chorus came out of the psalm's opening picture of splendor, majesty, and the garment of light. The chorus arrived before the verses, and the bridge was added by producer Ed Cash after hearing the song. Verse one compresses images that sit inside Psalm 104 itself. Verse two does something different: the Trinity and the Lion and the Lamb are the church's confession and Revelation's imagery, not the psalm's, brought in by the songwriters. Nothing in the song points a listener to any of these sources.

· Not a quote: The song quotes no scripture and cites none. Its first verse compresses images that all sit inside Psalm 104, the seed text Tomlin has named on record. But its second verse sings the church's trinitarian creed, which no psalm contains.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

One chapter supplies almost every picture in verse one, and the song never says so.

Why it matters

This is one of the most-sung worship songs in the world: a Dove Song of the Year, fifth on CCLI's list a decade after release, carried into churches in many languages. For many singers it is now the frame around Psalm 104. Told "this song is Psalm 104," a listener will find verse one's pictures there and the Trinity nowhere in the chapter. Knowing which verse came from where keeps both the psalm and the creed in their right places.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

Every line is about God and none is to Him, so what repetition plants here is testimony: one sentence about God rehearsed until it becomes the mind's default caption for Him, and the habit of saying it in company rather than alone. That forms a singer toward God. It also plants the creed. For many congregations this song's second verse is the only trinitarian formula they sing in a given month, and looping it stores the three Names alongside pictures of eternity. What the song does not plant is the psalm's ground-level detail. Psalm 104 proves the greatness with water, grass, bread, wine, and nesting birds, and a singer who reads the chapter alongside the song gets the creation the sentence is true about.

Helpful comparison

Lay verse one beside the psalm and the addresses line up. The royal robe and the garment of light are the passage above (vv. 1-2). Creation startled by God's voice is verse 7 (BSB): “At Your rebuke the waters fled; at the sound of Your thunder they hurried away—”. The trembling earth is verse 32 (BSB): “He looks on the earth, and it trembles; He touches the mountains, and they smolder.” The chorus's title sentence has psalmic homes of its own: Psalm 147:5 (BSB) says “Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding has no limit,” and Psalm 145:3 opens with a greatness beyond searching out. Set this proof beside our Shout to the Lord entry and the two kinds of uncited song show clearly. There the images scatter across Psalm 96, Psalm 98, and Habakkuk 3, and no single chapter can check the song. Here one chapter supplies nearly everything in verse one, so the check is possible, and it passes. What the chapter cannot supply is verse two. The Trinity and the Lion and the Lamb come from the church's confession and from Revelation 5, and knowing that keeps the seed story from being stretched over the whole song.

Sources

Corrections

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 11 (English Standard Version)” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 11:1-7 Sing it straight through. It is all seven verses of Psalm 11, in order, in a version the track title names. A reviewer says one verse comes back as a refrain, and it is the psalm's own verse.

✓ All seven verses, in order. We set the printed sung text beside an ESV and compared it word by word: 131 words, all matching, nothing added and nothing dropped

⚠ The printed text under the video lists each line once. It is not a map of the song. A review of the album says verse 4 comes back as a refrain

 ✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 16” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 16:1-11 You can sing this one straight through. It is all eleven verses of Psalm 16, in order, in a named version. What you repeat is the psalm.

✓ The printed sung text carries all eleven verses of Psalm 16, in order, with no line printed twice and no refrain added

⚠ The track title alone will not tell you which Bible you are singing. On Apple Music and Spotify it is just "Psalm 16". The version is named on the album page and in the video description.

 ✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 53 (English Standard Version)” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 53:1-6 Yes, you can sing it. All six verses of Psalm 53 are here, in order, from a version the release names. The words you repeat are the psalm's own.

✓ The printed sung text carries all six verses of Psalm 53, in order, and every one of its 142 words matches an ESV of the psalm

⚠ The printed text is not a transcript. A review of the album calls the psalm's opening line the song's refrain. We did not listen through to count repeats, so that rests on the review

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NOT A QUOTE “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” Chris Tomlin 1 Chronicles 17:16-17 Sing it. Nothing here is offered as scripture. It is Newton's hymn with a 2006 chorus added. If you want the text behind it, read 1 Chronicles 17:16-17 alongside the song rather than expecting to find it inside.

✓ Never says it is quoting, anywhere: no verse cited, no translation named, nothing framed as scripture

⚠ The chorus is Tomlin and Giglio's, written in 2006. Many people now sing it as part of "Amazing Grace" without knowing it is not part of "Amazing Grace"

 NOT A QUOTE “Holy Forever” Chris Tomlin Revelation 4:8 Sing it. It is a song about the holiness Revelation 4:8 describes, not a quotation of the verse. The threefold holy is there; the verse's title and its closing clause are not.

✓ The threefold holy keeps the shape of the creatures' cry, and the title phrase carries the verse's point that the cry does not end

⚠ The song never quotes the verse. Its title, Lord God Almighty, and its closing clause about the One who was and is and is to come are not sung, so a singer who wants Revelation 4:8 by heart will not get it here

 NOT A QUOTE “All Creatures of Our God and King” Sovereign Grace Music Psalm 148:7-10 Sing it. Nothing here is presented as scripture. Its resemblance to Psalm 148 comes from Draper's English, which turned Francis's praise of God for creation into a call addressed to creation.

✓ Says it is nothing but a song. No verse is cited on the recording, no translation is named, and the credit line points at the poem it came from rather than at a chapter of the Bible

⚠ The Psalm 148 resemblance belongs to the English. Francis's Italian praises God for the sun and moon and calls them brother and sister rather than ordering them to praise. A singer told this is Francis's Psalm 148 is being told two things, and only one of them is checkable

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