What Does Psalm 104:26 Mean in the King James?
There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Leviathan’s vastness belongs to play: the sea creature is God’s making, moving in its own element.
THE MEANING
Ships cross the sea while Leviathan moves there too, made to play in its waters. Its immense life belongs within God’s creation, beyond the measure of human use or control.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
What is vast and untamable is not outside God’s making; here Leviathan is a creature made to play in the sea.
THE ROOT
לְשַׂחֶק
lesacheq
GROWS FROM
שׂחק
to laugh, play, or sport
The root carries both play and laughter, so “play” holds a note of delight as well as movement. Leviathan’s power is presented as a form of life within God’s sea, not as an interruption to it.
ALSO GROWS
mesacheqeth: playing, rejoicing
מְשַׂחֶקֶת
In Proverbs 8:30, Wisdom is described with this same root as “rejoicing” before God; the shared word links the sea’s play with delight in creation.
sechoq: laughter
שְׂחוֹק
Ecclesiastes 2:2 uses this noun for laughter, showing that the root’s language of play also carries the sound of delight.
THE PATTERN
Creatures beyond human command remain God’s handiwork and within God’s care.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?THE THREAD
Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;The Hebrew verb translated “rejoicing,” מְשַׂחֶקֶת (mesacheqeth), comes from the same root שׂחק (śaḥaq), meaning “play” or “laugh,” as the word rendered “play” here. In both verses, play belongs within God’s created world, opening this sea scene onto a wider image of delight.
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