Psalm 8
The measure of man
One important feature of Psalm 8 is its description of man and his place in the created order, but the Psalm does not begin by talking about man. It begins with a celebration of the surpassing majesty of God (v.1), "O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth" The psalm ends with the same assertion (v.9) "O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!". Sandwiched between these two similar assertions, you find a description of man in vv. 4 to 8. This immediately teaches us an important lesson. We will never understand the true nature of man unless we see him as God's creature. Man's true nature can be understood only when it is set against a divine background.This psalm was written by king David. There are two parts to this psalm: First, the heavens and the infant (vv. 1-2) and second, the heavens and man (vv. 3-9)
1. The heavens and the infant
David has been meditating for a long time during a beautiful Eastern night, looking at the starry sky. He is full of admiration for the sight that his eyes beheld and he cries out (v.1)
"O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! "
The name of God is his character, personality and attributes. The heavens declare how glorious God is The glory of heaven is nothing but a reflection of God's glory. As the earth is surrounded on all sides by heaven, so God's glory is seen "in all the earth". This revelation is not reserved for a special nation only, but is given to the whole of mankind. Everybody can understand something about God when they look at the wonders of the universe (Rom.1:20), "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead".
Psalm19 goes even further, for it personifies heaven as a divine messenger (vv. 1-4),
"The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language Where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world."
In this way, day & night are like alternate choruses that sing the glory of God.
The testimony they bear to God is always the same. Time cannot alter their message.
"Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge". Their testimony is universal; it is not limited to any particular place. Any human language is confined to narrow limits, but not so with the language of heaven. It goes "to the end of the world". Anybody on earth understands the testimony that day and night bear to God. But the name of God is so majestic and his glory so great that they are "above the heavens" (v.1), "O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!" Creation, wonderful as it is, cannot fully declare the glory of God. The testimony of revelation is only a partial revelation, for God is above his creation. If God has set his glory above the heavens, it is certain that nothing under the heavens can adquately praise him. Yet God wants men to praise Him and glorify his name. In fact, even infants and children can praise God and do so, according to v.2.
"Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength,
Because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger."
But who are the "enemy & avenger" that the Psalmist mentions in v. 2? They are those who deny the testimony that creation bears to the greatness of God. Creation bears witness to the power of God who made all things. It also bears witness to the goodness of God, who provides for the needs of his creation. To silence such opponents, God just has to appeal to infants or children. They are not able to make long and eloquent speeches, but the expression of their simple faith is often more powerful than any clever arguments. Verse 2 paraphrases so well what Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians (1:27), "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise,
and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things
which are mighty." Psalm 8 is quoted several times in the New Testament, on one occasion by Jesus, on what we call Palm Sunday. While He was in the temple area, the children praised him, crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David". This made the chief priests and teachers of the law indignant, but Jesus replied, referring to Psalm 8, (Matt. 21:16), "Have you never read, 'From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise'?" By applying Psalm 8 to himself, Jesus openly declared his deity. He also placed the scribes and teachers in the category of "the enemy and the avenger". They are those who are opposed to the cause of God.
Even before they are able to speak, infants testify to the goodness and wisdom of God. Calvin points out that verse in Psalm 8 does not refer to the voice of little children but to their mouth. Their mouth shows God's concern for the weak, who cannot provide for their own needs. The mouth of a new born baby knows where to find its food and how to take it. One does not need to teach them these things, they know them instinctively. In this way, the mouth of the infant silences those who deny divine Providence
2. The heavens and the man (vv.3-8)
The psalmist has been meditating on the glory of God as revealed by the universe. While he looks at the canopy of heaven, he is struck with how small man is in comparison. He cries out (vv.3-4),
"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?"
Sometimes we experience this kind emotion too. Our scientific knowledge reminds us constantly of man's insignificance. We know that the earth is only a small planet in a relatively small solar system and we know something of the distances involved. We know that light coming to us from the most distant parts of the universe takes billions of years to get here. Even within our Solar System the distances are very great. Perhaps you remember the spacecraft Voyager II that reached Neptune on August 25 1989. Neptune is not even the outermost of the planets - Pluto is beyond it - but the radio waves sent back to earth from Neptune at the speed of light took four hours to get here, so a single set of communications from earth to the spacecraft and back to us took a third of a day. How small we are in this vast cosmic setting! How astonishing that the God of this vast universe should think of us and care for us! Yet that is what God does. Not only does God think of us, but He has also crowned us with "glory and honour" (v. 5),
"For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honour."
This verse means that God has honoured man above everything else He has created. How did God honour man? He did in three ways. Firstly, by giving to man a certain measure of glory, as v.5 asserts. Clearly man was made in God's image and therefore he reflects something of God's glory. Secondly, God honoured man by making him ruler over his creation. Rule is something normally ascribed to God (1 Tim. 6:15), "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords". Psalm 8 says that God shared this rule with man, making him ruler over creation. Thirdly, God placed man in what has been called "a mediating position" in the universe. Thomas Aquinas, says that Psalm 8 places man midway between the angels and the beasts. He says that angels have spirits but no bodies and
animals have bodies but no spirits. Man, however, has both a spirit and a body and so comes between the two. He comes between the angels,who are above him and the beasts which are below him. He is midway on the scale of intelligent creation. This is exactly what Psalm 8 expresses when it speaks of man, it says (vv. 5-8),
"For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honour. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen – even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas."
So man is under the angels but above the beasts, over which he is called to rule.
but notice something interesting here, notice how this psalm describes man. It describes him as being "a little lower than the angels" rather than "a little higher than the beasts." This truth could have been expressed the other way around:
Man is "a little higher than the beasts" rather than "a little lower than the angels". But this is not what Psalm 8 says because man's privilege is to look upward to God and not downward to the beasts. As he looks upward to God, he becomes increasingly God-like in his character. Man was made in God's image.He is the image bearer of God here below. The Hebrew word translated angel in v. 5 is an interesting one. It is actually "Elohim", the plural word for God. The Bible uses that word when it speaks of man's creation (Gen. 1:26), "Then God (Elohim) said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'" David is clearly linking man to God, being slightly less than Him in whose image he is made. But here is the sad thing. Although made in God's image, man has turned his back on God and since he will not look upward to God, he actually looks downward to the beasts and so becomes increasingly like them. The great example here is King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whose story is told in the book of Daniel.
Nebuchadnezzar turned his back on God. On one occasion he said as he looked out over the great capital of his empire (Dan. 4:30), "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honour of my majesty?" The words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven saying (4:31), "King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you! And they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen; and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses." And so it was. Nebuchadnezzar became insane. It is insanity to take the glory of God for oneself, putting oneself in the place of God. So Nebuchadnezzar was driven out to live with and behave like the wild animals. This is the way our society increasingly regards itself. Western society has lost sight of God. It no longer sees man as a creature made in God's image, whose chief end is "to glorify God and enjoy him for ever." It has eliminated God from its collective consciousness, and because it no longer looks to God, it looks in the only other direction it can. It looks downward to the beasts and derives its identity from the animal world. This is what evolution is all about. Eliminate God, and evolution is the only theory left. We are only slightly advanced beasts, according to this theory. Besides, since we see ourselves as beasts, we begin to behave like beasts. Indeed, we behave worse than beasts, for we end up doing things that even animals would not do. Just read Romans 1. Fortunately for us, God is merciful and patient beyond measure. So what did He do? He sent his own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to save us from our wilful ignorance & rebellion.
Psalm 8 is quoted in Hebrews chapter 2 and the author applies it to Jesus (Heb. 2:5-9),"For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. But one testified in a certain place, saying: 'What is man that You are mindful of him, Or the son of man that You take care of him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honour, And set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.' For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone." He says that Jesus was made a little lower than the angels (the incarnation) in order to die for us. But because Jesus humbled Himself, even to the point of death – the death of the cross – the Father has "crowned him with glory and honour" & "put all things in subjection under his feet". Then the author of the letter to the Hebrews goes on to say (2:8c) "But now we do not yet see all things put under him". Although we do not see everything subject to Jesus yet, there is one thing we do see (Heb. 2:9), "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels,
for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour". What happens when by faith we see Jesus "crowned with glory and honour?" The answer is obvious. At this point we are looking up again, by the grace of God. We fix our eyes on the God who saves us from all our sins.
When men and women lift up their eyes to God in faith, they start resembling Him (2 Cor. 3:18), "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
just as by the Spirit of the Lord." This is the one great lesson of Psalm 8. Man is an intermediate creature. He is under heavenly beings but above earthly beasts. If he looks downward, he becomes increasingly beast-like in his behaviour. If he looks upward to God, he becomes increasingly Christ-like in his character. As the Psalmist bring his Psalm to a conclusion, he looks once more at the beauty of God and says (v.9), "O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!" In this way, he comes full circle. The contemplation of God's glory helps him understand the true nature of man. Man's nature is characterised by a strange mixture of smallness and grandeur. This renewed vision of man's nature prompts the psalmist to praise & worship God with renewed fervour.
"O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!"