Ps. 89.11 (owning creation)

The heavens are yours / so is the earth;
the world and its fullness / you have founded them! 

I find in this verse an interesting echo of the opening of Genesis where we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth was formless and empty.” This verse largely tracks Genesis in reverse: “heavens are yours and the earth”, matching Genesis 1.1 while “the world and its fullness” reversing “the earth was formless and empty”. In both, this ‘ownership’ or ‘creation’ is established by and through Yhwh’s bringing order out of chaos. In Genesis, it is by the spirit and the ‘speaking’; here, it is by Yhwh’s destruction of Rahab and mastery over the sea. What I find interesting is that the Genesis account would not, in my opinion, ‘work’ as well in Psalm 89. It is ‘too refined’ to play the dramatic role necessary. What I mean is that the story told in psalm 89 about Rahab and the ‘establishment’ of creation serves the purposes of the lament surrounding the fall of the Davidic house better than the Genesis account.  Specifically, the account of Rahab and her destruction involves the ‘kingly act of pacification’, the role assigned to a king to bring peace to his realm and to establish justice and order. Once that is established, then the psalm moves into this portion regarding Yhwh’s ownership over heaven and earth and the ‘form and fullness’ of creation. It moves along the same pattern as that of a king—who first pacifies his enemies and, within the (just) peace that he has established, there emerges the bounty and prodigality of life. Which is what David was ‘chosen as son’ to perform, to re-enact this role of Yhwh.Yet, when that covenantal bond is broken, David's realm returns to that state of chaos that it emerged from.