Psalm 8/Commentary

PSALM 8 “Crown of Creation”

“This psalm is an unsurpassed example of what a hymn should be, celebrating as it does the glory and grace of God, rehearsing who He is and what He has done, and relating us and our world to Him; all with a masterly economy of words, and in a spirit of mingled joy and awe. It brings to light the unexpectedness of God’s ways in the roles He has assigned to the strong and the weak (2), the spectacular and the obscure (3-5), the multitudinous and the few (6-8); but it begins and ends with God Himself, and its overriding theme is ‘How excellent is thy name!’” (Kidner pp. 65-66).

Leupold entitles this psalm “God’s glory revealed in man’s dignity”. “From one point of view this psalm is one of the ‘nature psalms’ (Ps. 19, 29,65,109)…In a striking way the psalm indicates how high an estimate revealed truth puts upon man. The true dignity of man is taught nowhere as effectively as in the Scriptures” (Leupold p. 100). Other titles for this psalm include, “The Paradox of Man Before God”, and “Genesis 1 set to music”.

The truth of the above quotation, especially the last line is vividly displayed in the following comment: “This psalm contains one of the best-known verses in all of the Bible: ‘What is man that You are minded of him…?’ Ringing down the generations, this haunting question pursues us. As our knowledge of the universe has grown, the query has become more pressing. Carl Sagan notes, ‘As long as there have been humans we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people’. Is this the only answer modern science can give?….If science as science is reduced to using the words ‘insignificant’, ‘humdrum’, and ‘forgotten’ when looking at our world, then we need another source to answer the question, ‘What is man…?’”

(Williams p. 74).

Carefully note that the psalm isn’t an expression of joy in the creation apart from the Creator. “Pantheism deifies and glorifies nature as a separate entity from the Creator” (Gaebelein p. 109). Rejoicing in the Creation is fruitless, unless we praise the One who made it!

The Praise Of His Glory

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8:1 The beginning and ending of the psalm (1,9), give the same exclamation of God’s majestic name. “This adoration is ardent and intimate, for all its reverence.

The God whose glory fills the earth is our Lord” (Kidner p. 66). David is here saying, “Jehovah, who art our sovereign Lord and Master”. The word “majestic” suggests splendor and magnificence. As elsewhere, the “name” of God stands for His glorious attributes and character. God’s deliverance (Exodus 15:6), His might in judgment (1 Samuel 4:8), His law (Isaiah 42:21), and His rule over creation (Psalm 8:1,9; 93;4), are all majestic. “All creation reveals the power and glory of God’s name (Romans 1:20)” (Gaebelein p. 110).

8:1 The statement “above the heavens” reminds us that God’s rule over all things, both on earth and in the heavens, manifests His true greatness. God’s glory is manifested in the physical creation (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19:1), but what is beyond this physical creation, is a greater manifestation of God’s glory.

Remember, the wonder of God Himself is far greater than the wonder of what He has made!

8:2 This statement is quoted by Jesus in Matthew 21:16. “With all the earth and heaven proclaiming God in verse 1, the rising discord of foes..enemy..avenger presents a challenge which God meets with ‘what is weak in the world’…the free confession of love and trust is a devastating answer to the accuser and his arsenal of doubts and slanders” (Kidner pp. 66-67).

Points To Note: Regardless of how the wicked try to assert themselves, and regardless of all their sophisticated arguments, the faith of children, the innocent, the weak, and the oppressed is a stern rebuke to their skepticism and unbelief. 2.

Compare with 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. 3. “Whatever an ‘enemy or revengeful person’ may say by way of a bitter attack upon the honor of God’s name, in the eyes of all dispassionate observers such opponents are refuted by what children may in their own way say or do” (Leupold p. 102). 4. Considering how Jesus quoted this passage (Matthew 11:25), it is clear that the word “babes” also applies to people that the world would consider to be weak and unimportant. If the slightly educated and ordinary person can believe in God —what does that say to the highly educated skeptic? 5. The faith of a very simple man or woman often destroys all the complicated arguments of unbelievers! Compare with John 9:30-33. Such a verse reminds me of hearing about a college professor who was giving a very detailed and complicated presentation which argued that the Israelites had not passed through the Red Sea, but instead had passed through a very shallow marsh, thus proving that the Bible was in error and that there wasn’t anything miraculous about the Exodus. An old uneducated believer in the audience responded, “Well, for God to drown all those in Egyptians in a foot of water— it must have been a miracle!”

What Is Man?

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8:3 “Out of this whole array, from stars to sea-creatures, only man can look at this scene with the insight to ask such a question, even in doubt; therefore it already points to its answer. Further, man has been taught to say ‘Thy and ‘Thou’ in such a setting: not only to acknowledge a Creator but to converse with Him. From His side, God shows in Isaiah 40:26ff., that the right inference from His ordered heavens is not His remoteness but His eye for detail; and adds in Isaiah 45:18ff; 51:16 that He planned no meaningless and empty universe” (Kidner p. 67).

8:3 Why is it that only man can “consider” the heavens? (Genesis 1:26-27) Here is positive proof that man is different from the animals, a proof of the fact that He is indeed created in the image of God. To even be able to ask the question, “Is there a God?”, is proof that there is! The heavens are not the product of evolution or an accident, they are the work of God’s fingers. “David is the purported penman of this magnificent psalm. Being a shepherd lad in youth he no doubt had surveyed the moonlit and starlit constellations on numerous nights as he cast his youthful and deeply reverent eyes from his sheep below to the heavens above. With prompt reverence he sensed in his soul that all he saw belonged to God. They are His heavens. They are not the precise handiwork of humans; they are not the collections of Chance” 1 Note the word “ordained”, which means “appointed or fixed”. Nothing in the universe is there by chance, not even the movements of the heavenly bodies. The moon is exactly where God wants it to be (which happens to be the best location for it).

This is also true of every star. On this point I am reminded that if the moon were set at less distance from the earth, tides would submerge all continents twice daily, and the mountains would erode away. Are you thankful that you don’t live in a universe created by chance? Therefore, such things as the “Big Dipper”, are God’s pictures in the sky. No wonder that David in chapter 14 will call the “atheist” a fool. If David, a shepherd could see the handiwork of God in the universe, what does this say about the wisdom of scientists, who study the same universe and see it merely as the product of an accident or chance?

Point To Note: “It is curious indeed to consider how man could have formulated the idea of God if he were the result of matter only. Man does not have the capacity to think or imagine something above that information which has been fed to him by the five senses. And yet, man has conceived of a Being that is not dependent on sense perception” 2 “If God does not exist, then we have no answer for the origin of emotion, sensation, and appreciation” (p. 93).

8:4 “In relation to the vastness of space, the order and the importance of the heavenly bodies, what is man! Why did God invest man with glory? Why does God uniquely care for man?” (Gaebelein p. 112). The phrase “take thought”, 1 2

Studies in Psalms, Robert R. Taylor, Jr., p. 21 The Fall Of Unbelief, Roger E. Dickson, p. 84 3

suggests God’s care, Who acts on behalf of man. In addition, instead of visiting the human race with judgment (which man deserves), God has visited him with mercy (Matthew 5:45). Jesus stressed the same truth when He reminded us that one soul, is more important than the entire created universe (Matthew 16:26).

Man Is God’s Creation 8:5 First of all, man is also the product of God’s fingers. God created man a “little lower than God”. Here the side reference for “God” is, “or the angels”. And this is the way this verse is quoted in Hebrews 2:7. The term “God” (Elohim) here is used in its rarer, generic sense, to mean supernatural beings (compare with 1 Samuel 28:13; Psalm 82:1,6). This makes sense, because man is far more than just a little below God Himself (Isaiah 55:8-9)! The word “little” can sometimes mean “for a little while” in both Hebrew and Greek. Compare this with Luke 20:36. Angels are spiritual beings, while man is a spiritual being in a temporary and physical body. It is ironic that man in his attempt to glorify himself and find independence from God, has only succeeded in degrading himself. Just listen to the irony, the atheists and humanists argue “There is no God”, “we are gods”, “no God will save us, we will save ourselves”. When we ask the question, “Who are we?” They respond, “We are the product of chance, we are evolved monkeys!”

8:5 Man is still crowned with glory and honor. Even after the fall, we are still created in the image of God (James 3:9). In addition, we are continuing to manifest our divine right over creation (Genesis 1:28). Do we live like people who have been crowned with glory and honor? Do we complain about God’s high moral standards? Do we argue that the Bible presents an unrealistic standard, or do we feel honored that God would expect such of us?

8:6-7 Here is one of the ways in which man has been crowed with glory and honor. These two verses remind us of the dominion which was given to man in Genesis 1:28. “Man’s position over creation was granted before the Fall (Genesis 1:28), but it was not taken away from him (Genesis 9:1-3,7)….All creatures, domesticated and wild, are subject to man’s authority and may at his will be used for food” (Gaebelein p. 114).

8:8 “It would seem that birds of the air and fish of the sea, places of habitation well beyond man’s natural habitat, would be able either to fly or swim away from man’s dominion. Not so!! His dominion extends to the air above and into the might deep as well…Psalm 8:8 mentions ‘whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas’. This is of intriguing and quickening interest. Matthew Fontaine Maury lived from 1806-1873. While ill on one occasion he had his son read the Bible to him. The son read Psalm 8. Verse 8 caught the ill man’s rapt attention.

He declared that if the Bible spoke of the paths of the sea, he would, upon getting well, discover them. He later found and charted these systems of sea travel involving an interaction between wind and water. He authored an

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informative book on oceanography. More than half a century ago C.L. Lewis wrote a book which he entitled, ‘Matthew Fontaine Maury, Pathfinder of the Seas’. The U.S. Naval Institute published it in 1927” (Taylor p. 24). But more intriguing than all this is, how did David, a shepherd know that there were paths in the seas? Remember, the Israelites were a non-seafaring people.

As Applied To Jesus In Hebrews 2:6-8, Psalm 8:4-6 is quoted and an application is made to Jesus.

When the Son of God became flesh (John 1:14), He assumed a bodily condition that was a little lower than the angels (yet He was still God, Colossians 2:9; John 5:18ff; 14:9). In addition, while we don’t presently see all things subjected to man (Hebrews 2:8) (especially, man’s ability to control his own speech, James 3:7-8), but we do see Jesus who has already won the victory for us (Hebrews 2:9). Whatever rule “man” lost at the Fall, Jesus has regained for us and presently rules over all. If we remain faithful, we will gain what Adam and Eve forfeited and far more. Once again, man will be in the very presence of God. In their fullness, the words of these verses are only true in Jesus Christ.

Points To Note: 1. In a sense, right now as a Christian, God has enabled us to regain something of this dominion. In Christ, we can regain control over ourselves (1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Ephesians 4:22ff; Colossians 3:5ff). 2. We can liberate ourselves from the devil and escape His domination (John 8:31-32,34). 3. We can become what God wanted for man and man’s relationships (Ephesians 4:24; 5:22ff). 4.

Instead of raping the earth and squandering its resources, we can appreciate what God has given us and use it wisely. We can become good stewards of our dominion.

8:9 “Like a final chorus, verse 9 repeats verse 1…As we discover our divine destiny (the purpose for which we were created, Ephesians 2:10), we will participate in making God’s name excellent in all the earth” (Williams p. 79). “At its return, the refrain will be sung with fresh understanding. It also renews the primary emphasis, which is on God and His grace. For man’s dominion over nature, wonderful though it is, takes second place to his calling as servant and worshipper” (Kidner p. 68).

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