A Prayer Of Praise.

A PRAYER OF PRAISE.

Psalm 8:1-9.

This is the only praise Psalm which is addressed entirely to the LORD. No call to worship like Psalm 95:1, ‘O come let us sing unto the LORD’. No asides to the congregation like Psalm 107:2, ‘Let the redeemed of the LORD say so’.

Psalm 8:1. The vocative brings us straight into the presence of the LORD (Yahweh): “O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” That presence is maintained throughout the meditation, right down to the repetition of the same line in the final verse (Psalm 8:9). This brackets the whole Psalm with the awareness of the One to whom our address is made. Thus we may ‘boldly approach’ (cf. Hebrews 4:16) the LORD, the Sovereign, the maker of heaven and earth.

Although bold, the very use of the vocative suggests a sense of awe in this approach to the LORD. Yet it is not cold fear, but an approach to One who we can call “our” Adonai, “our” sovereign - ultimately “our” Father! The approach celebrates the excellence, the magnificence of God’s great name “in all the earth!” and reminds us how He has set His “glory”, his ‘weight’, as it were, “above the heavens.”

Psalm 8:2. Jesus quoted “out of the mouth of babes and sucklings” as a challenge to ‘the chief priests and scribes’, who wanted to silence the children from singing ‘Hosanna to the son of David’ (Matthew 21:15-16). The babbling of “babes and sucklings” is better than the bitterness of the unbelief of ‘religious’ people! The “babes and sucklings” represent the ‘babes in Christ’, new disciples (Luke 10:21; Mark 10:15; John 3:3), or maybe even all disciples (1 Corinthians 1:27).

Such babbling “stills the enemy and the avenger”. One faltering lisping prayer from faith-filled trusting lips has more value, more weight before God than all the litanies of unbelief. The Psalm’s “thou hast ordained strength” becomes ‘thou hast ordained praise’ in Matthew 21:16. I would suggest that that is where our ‘strength’ lies - in ‘praise’!

Psalm 8:3. The glory of the LORD has already been recognised as “above the heavens” (Psalm 8:1). Now we turn to the heavens themselves, the visible heavens.

I learned this Psalm by heart, in the Scottish metrical version, under the tutelage of a Free Church Minister, the Chaplain of my High School days. This verse in particular remained with me even in my unbelieving years in my late teens and early twenties. It seemed only apt since the Apollo missions were just getting under way.

“When I look up unto the heavens,

which thine own fingers framed,

Unto the moon, and to the stars,

which were by thee ordained…”

Psalm 8:4-6. At the centre of the Psalm is a meditation on the question, “What is man?” Man in his first estate, in paradise, was given a certain dignity and authority within God’s creation. That dignity and authority, though marred by sin, is not entirely eradicated.

Psalm 8:4. “Man” is a singular noun, although it might indicate a gender inclusive collective (cf. Genesis 1:27). What can “man” be, that the LORD should be “mindful of him?”

“Son of man” - literally “ben Adam” - is also singular, but it cannot refer to the man Adam in his first estate, nor the man Adam after the fall, since the man Adam was no man’s son! We must keep the translation “son of man” in the singular to see what is ultimately meant: not ‘mere mortals’, as some would have it, but Jesus Christ, whose preferred name when referring to Himself was, ‘the Son of man’!

Psalm 8:5-6. Well, everything about “man” is significant because of what God has done: “thou hast made him…”, and “hast crowned him”. “Thou made him to have dominion…; thou hast put all under his feet.”

Psalm 8:5. The New Jewish Publication Society of America translates this verse, ‘For thou hast made him a little less than divine’. The Hebrew word is doubtless, “Elohim” which reads as God, or gods, or even ‘heavenly beings’. ‘Angels’ is the preferred translation of Psalm 8:5 in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. This appears to be the translation quoted in the Greek New Testament (Hebrews 2:7; and Hebrews 2:9).

Psalm 8:6. There is only one way that mankind has “all things under his feet”, and that is mankind in Christ, mankind in the risen Lord Jesus, ‘the church’ (Ephesians 1:20-22). This is where ‘church’ is: ‘sitting together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus’ (Ephesians 2:6). It can be said of Christ, as it can be said of man, even redeemed man, ‘But we see not yet all things put under him’ (Hebrews 2:8). ‘For He (Jesus) must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’ (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).