Psalms

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Psalm 8

How great is your name, O Lord our God,
through all the earth.

Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
on the lips of children and of babes
you have found praise to foil your enemy,
to silence the foe and the rebel.

When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,
the moon and the stars which you arranged,
what is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him little less than a god;
with glory and honour crowned him,
gave him power over the works of your hand,
put all things under his feet.

All of them, sheep and cattle,
yes, even the savage beasts,
birds of the air, and fish
that make their way through the waters.

How great is your name, O Lord our God,
through all the earth!
                                           (vv. 1-9).

Commentary

This psalm of David is everything a hymn should be. It celebrates the glory and grace of God, declares His wonderful works, and relates us and our world to Him, all in a spirit of mingled joy and awe. With great economy of words David contrasts the paradox of God’s ways in His unexpected use of the weak and the strong (v. 2), the spectacular and the obscure (vv. 3-5), the many and the few (vv. 6-8); everything begins and ends with God Himself, the One who is over all, above all, and within all. The overriding theme of the whole psalm is the greatness of God the Creator.

How great is your name, O Lord our God,
through all the earth.

Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
on the lips of children and of babes
you have found praise to foil your enemy,
to silence the foe and the rebel.

When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,
the moon and the stars which you arranged,
what is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him little less than a god;
with glory and honour crowned him,
gave him power over the works of your hand,
put all things under his feet.

All of them, sheep and cattle,
yes, even the savage beasts,
birds of the air, and fish
that make their way through the waters.

How great is your name, O Lord our God,
through all the earth!
                                         (vv. 1-9).

David, so full of reverential awe at the glory of God, rejoices in His splendour and majesty with words that are both ardent and intimate. The dynamic power of his words flows from the blending of these two opposite religious attitudes. The glory of God, which fills the whole earth, is sung by His creatures from the cradle to the grave, and beyond this is taken up by the heavens themselves, so that all creation rings with the praise of God. The wonder of it all is that this great God of glory and majesty is OUR LORD, the One who relates to us in covenant love.

Contemplating the starry sky, David sees the display of God’s handiwork, and acknowledges its beauty and glory, giving thanks to its Maker. He presents the sceptics and atheists with the spontaneous praise of children celebrating the wonders of Creation, and their childlike joy and songs of praise to their Maker. These pure first stirrings of real piety must not be disregarded although they lack reflection, for they are a generous response to the mystery of the world around, and can awaken the adult to new faith when he has become bogged down with his own weighty thinking and reasoning. There is no argument against the spontaneous response of God’s creatures to His presence. David hears the voice of God in these little children, whose intuition surpassed the cognition of adults. Here we are shown that in the little things God is greatest: in minimis, deus maximus. In the response of little ones God has raised up a bulwark against all the rationalist unbelief of adults. In Matthew 11:25 Jesus gave thanks to
His Father for revealing the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven to mere children and for hiding them from the learned and the clever! In His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when He clearly revealed Himself Messiah to anyone whose eyes of faith were open, the children were the ones who took up the chant which revealed that they recognized Him as Messiah. When the Pharisees demanded that Jesus silence them, He quoted this verse to show that the children had more spiritual insight than they (see Matthew 21:16; Wisdom 10:20-21) (vv. 1-2).

Engulfed by the vast illimitable expanse of the heavens, with its sparkling splendour, David is overwhelmed by the immense greatness of God, Who made all this with “His fingers”. How great must God’s mind be that could establish the moon and the stars in their places, with laws that governed their whole existence. If David had our knowledge of the number of galaxies, let alone stars, it would be wonderful to hear his comment! As it was, he was confined to what could be seen with the naked eye; yet even that could produce this wonder and praise from him (v. 3).

It is the revelation of God that enables man to get a right understanding of himself. In the Bible this self-revelation of God and man’s understanding of himself are intimately connected (see Isaiah 6:1-13). Man only truly understands himself in relation to God. By comparison with God man can see his own nothingness and insignificance, and truly wonders how so great a being could want anything to do with him. This understanding comes only when the finite is confronted with the infinite, the temporal with the eternal, the ephemeral with the everlasting God.

Now we can ask “What is man?” and realize that we are speaking about an earth-bound, weak, mortal creature, set in the vastness of a universe he will never fully understand. But he does not stop there, for this thought could produce paralysing fear. Instead, using that sense of awe and wonder as the starting point of his thoughts, he tries to grasp the miracle of grace involved in his relationship with this great God, who does not think it beneath Him to take care of his needs. The sheer grace of it all can now sink into his consciousness, and we can appreciate the combination of awe and love that permeate this lovely poem, when we see that this same God, before whom man pales into insignificance, is the same from whom we accept the gift, not only of life, but of love, forgiveness and peace (v. 4).

Now that man’s position of nothingness before God has been established, we can contemplate the honour and dignity conferred on him by God Himself in the creation, for it was God who constituted man lord of His creation, with power to rule the earth, and have dominion over other creatures (see Genesis 1:28-30). In this sense man shares in God’s reign over the earth, and is made in His likeness, insofar as he is allowed to be crowned with glory and honour, albeit subject to God. The dignity conferred on man by God here is very great, for man is allowed to resemble God in a small way (vv. 5-6).

This passage reaches its full glory in its fulfilment by the Son of Man in the New Testament. The Letter to the Hebrews says that it refers to Jesus in His incarnation, where, for a short time, He was made lower than the angels, but now, in His resurrection, is crowned with glory and splendour because He triumphed over death (Hebrews 2:6-9). In 1 Corinthians 15:27 St Paul claims that this shows that all things will eventually be subjected to Jesus’ kingly rule, when all His foes will have been overcome. Thus we can join creation and redemption together, with Jesus as the bridge, the One who is the head of creation, and the first-born from the dead, the greatest among men, and yet God made manifest in the incarnation.

David now depicts in attractive detail the extent of man’s dominion over the animal kingdom. Man, himself a frail creature, but made in the image and likeness of God, is able to share both in the spiritual and material worlds, and to rule over natural creation. But he does not end there in the contemplation of man’s greatness. He goes back to his starting point, to exult in the great glory of God, which keeps man in balance with regard to himself, lest he stray into the murky area of self-glorification which spoils the image of God in him. In his lordship over the earth man best portrays the image of God when he gives humble service, in love, to those in need. In this he shows the face of God to the world; when he glorifies himself he defaces the image of God in himself, and destroys the world also by his sin.

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