Commentators are not agreed whether verses 13-15 refer to creation (Dentan, Fisher, Toombs, Anderson) or to the events of the exodus from Egypt (Briggs). It seems more likely that they refer to creation, using expressions and figures of popular pagan accounts of how the creator God defeated the primeval monsters of the deep. It is significant that seven times in verses 13-17 the psalmist uses the personal pronoun “you” as an emphatic device to assert God’s activities; by implication he is denying that some pagan god, Baal or Marduk, had done these things. If the exodus from Egypt is taken as the event being described, then the dragons and Leviathan are symbols of Egypt.

But on the assumption that creation is being depicted, verse 13a refers to the defeat of the sea, personified as an enemy (see in Gen 1.6-7 the division of the primeval waters into the upper and the lower waters); in some creation accounts the Sea (Yam) was a dragon, the opponent of the creator God, who defeated the dragon (see also 89.9-10); so New English Bible “thou didst cleave the sea-monster in two.” In languages where the sea is unknown, it is sometimes possible to speak of a collection of waters; for example, “you have divided the places of water in half.” Verse 13a may sometimes be rendered as a means-with-result in this way: “by your power you divided the waters in two parts” or “because you are powerful you….”

In verse 13b the dragons on the waters may be parallel with Leviathan in verse 14a. The Hebrew word is tanninim, the plural of tannin; in Ugaritic Tannin is another name for Leviathan, so here Dahood has “smashed the heads of Tannin.” In Job 7.12 “sea” (yam) is parallel with “sea monster” (tannin).

Verse 14a is parallel with verse 13b; Leviathan (also 104.26; Isa 27.1) is the name of the mythological dragon, which in other places is called by a different name. Notice that it is thought of as having several heads. Dragons on the waters may sometimes be rendered as “great sea snakes” or “big animals that live in the sea.” If such a descriptive expression results in confusion, it is best to provide an explanatory note.

The creatures of the wilderness (Good News Translation “desert animals”) translates what is literally “to the people to the desert dwellers” (see the latter word in 72.9a). The Septuagint both here and in 72.9a translates “the Ethiopians.” The word for “people” is used in Proverbs 30.25-26 of a group of animals. Here the whole phrase means either “desert animals,” as Good News Translation has it (Weiser, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “desert beasts”; Bible de Jérusalem and New Jerusalem Bible “wild animals”; New English Bible and Bible en français courant “sharks”), or “desert people” (see New Jerusalem Bible “the denizens of the desert”; Dahood “desert tribes”). In languages where deserts and wildernesses are unknown, one may often use a descriptive expression such as “animals in places where people don’t live” or “animals in the lands where no one grows food.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .