There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.
Psalm 104 is one of the great creation poems in the Bible — a sweeping, joyful song about how God made and sustains all living things. This verse is set in the middle of a description of the sea: ships sail across it on their ordinary routes, and somewhere in those same depths swims the Leviathan. In the ancient cultures surrounding Israel, the Leviathan was a symbol of chaos and cosmic terror — a monster that threatened the ordered world. But this psalm reframes the creature entirely: the Leviathan is not a threat to be feared. It is something God 'formed to frolic' in the deep. The word 'frolic' is playful and completely deliberate. What the surrounding world considered a force of destruction, the psalmist sees as God's creature at play.
Creator God, you made the Leviathan to frolic and the stars to burn and the deep places of the ocean just because you could. Help me receive the world you made with wonder instead of anxiety. Remind me that the chaos I fear is still in your hands. Amen.
Imagine the most uncontrollable thing in your world — whatever wakes you up at 3 AM, whatever chaos feels biggest and most beyond you right now. Now imagine that God made it specifically to play. That is the audacity of this psalm. The Leviathan — a creature ancient people genuinely feared as a cosmic force of destruction — is here a creature frolicking in water God formed for it. The psalmist doesn't explain away the terror. He recontextualizes it. What looks like chaos from where you're standing may look very different from another vantage point. You don't have to have everything figured out to trust that the One who made the Leviathan to frolic is also the One who made you — and knows exactly what waters you are swimming in right now.
The psalm calls the Leviathan something God 'formed to frolic.' What does it tell you about God's character that He made something for sheer play?
What is something in your life right now that feels like chaos — and is it possible there is something about it you are not yet seeing clearly?
Psalm 104 is a poem of joyful praise, but Israel experienced real and prolonged suffering. How do you hold genuine joy in creation alongside real pain in your own life without one canceling out the other?
The image of a God who creates things 'to frolic' — how might that change how you think about rest, play, or creative work in your own life?
What is one thing you could do this week to simply receive and enjoy creation — not as a spiritual discipline or for any productive reason, but just because God made it?
Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Psalms 74:14
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.
Genesis 1:21
He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.
Job 41:34
Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
Job 41:1
In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Isaiah 27:1
Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.
Job 3:8
Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 1:17
There the ships [of the sea] sail, And Leviathan [the sea monster], which You have formed to play there.
AMP
There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.
ESV
There the ships move along, [And] Leviathan, which You have formed to sport in it.
NASB
There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.
NIV
There the ships sail about; There is that Leviathan Which You have made to play there.
NKJV
See the ships sailing along, and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea.
NLT
Ships plow those waters, and Leviathan, your pet dragon, romps in them.
MSG