Psalm 8: The Majesty of God and the Dignity of Humanity
Psalm 8 NRSV
Divine Majesty and Human Dignity
To the leader: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.
This psalm was written for the worship leader.
The words "according to The Gittith" may refer to the musical instrument that David wrote this psalm for. The "gittith" refers to a Philistine harp that is like our guitar. David took his enemy's instrument and tunes and turned them into glorious praise.
There are two lessons in this. First, any musical style or instrument can be used to glorify God. Second, God can take what we encounter in our battles with our enemies and turn them around. What ever you are facing right now, you should collect some tunes and some instruments as it were for when you come out on the other side. Once the battle is won, or maybe even in the middle of the battle, take the enemy's instrument and play a song of victory. And that is what this song is, a song of victory. It follows Psalms 3-7 that allude to Absolom's rebellion against David and the question of how God was going to fulfil his promise to David in the midst of such seeming defeat. The end of Psalm 7 says, "I will sing about the name of the LORD Most High" (v. 17).
There are moments in the middle of our battles when we have to stop and make a decision that we are going to sing!
Psalm 8:1 begins this song:
1 O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
David takes the direct approach. He does not sing about the LORD, He sings to Him. He says, "O Lord!." This is the covenant name of YHWH. He is addressing the One who he is in relationship with. He is refocussing on the One who is greater than all of our battles, The Creator God, the Savior, the One who made a covenant with Abraham, the One who wrestled with Jacob and changed his name to Israel, the One who delivered Israel from Egypt by the hand of Moses, the One who brought the tribes into the Promised Land, the One who set David up as king -- Oh LORD! What is in a Name! For the Hebrews the nature, character, power, and history of an individual were in a name. When David addresses the LORD by name, he is calling on everything that God is and has done, every promise He has made! What's in a name?!
In the NT we have been the privilege of knowing this God by a Name that He has chosen for Himself that is above every other Name, the Name of JESUS. Whatever we do in word or deed we are to do it all in the Name of JESUS giving thanks unto God and the Father by Him! We baptizze in that Name. The sick are healed in that Name. The power of the enemy is thwarted in that Name! In Him (in that Name) all the fullness of God's character, nature, history, promises dwells in a bodily form! In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge! If you see Him, you see the Invisible Father!
Oh LORD! JESUS!
David then addresses the LORD as "our Lord" or "our Soveriegn." The Hebrew word here is adonai. It refers to one who is in control. David is acknowledging that God's got this. The world may seem like a mess, I may be a mess, you may be a mess, the government may be a mess, but at the end of the day YHWH is still on the throne!
And his Name is greater! Sometimes you just need to speak the Name of JESUS over what your going through realizing that HE is greater. Sometimes you need to get together with another fellow believer and just speak that Name over everything in your life agreeing asking it in His Name! Oh, the Name of the LORD is a strong tower, the righteous can run into it and be saved! God you really are in control. This world seems like it is spinning out of control but, Oh LORD our Sovereign how excellent is you name in all the earth!
One day every knew will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father! All the earth. Everywhere teh curse of sin is, His Name is majestic. Everywhere gross darkness covers the people, the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it! Everywhere sickness seems to prevail, His Healing Name can be spoken. Jesus said all power is given unto Me in heaven and earth, go therefore and preach the gospel to ALL nations! His Name works no matter what language it is spoken in. You do NOT have to speak His Name in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. You can speak it in English, Spanish, Chinese, or Arabic -- just speak it with faith and love and hope! His Name is majestic in all the earth!
This verse and the final verse form and inclusio as they repeat the same thing. It begins with an acknowledgement of God's greatness and sovereignty and ends with an acknowledgment of His greatness and sovereignty! He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who Is, and Was, and Is to Come!
What makes everything in the middle of the song of your existence great is that it begins with His praise and ends with His praise!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
The universe is vast beyond our comprehension. Creation itself has wonders that we will never understand. Solomon says of the LORD that the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. Even in the realm of science fiction, like Star Trek, it is unthinkable to be able to travel outside our own galaxy. And we live in a one of the arms of the Milky Way and only see a few of the stars compared to the billions that are all around us spinning through the vacuum of space at dizzying speeds. The empty ocean of darkness that is between us and what seem to be other galaxies is immeasurable! Yet, God is bigger than it all and He made it all! His glory is above the heavens! In Him we live, and move, and have our being! We are his offspring. We were made by one who transcends and is outside of the space time continuum and yet has chosen to pervade and saturate it with Himself. He is immanent within the tiniest details the quantum world. All of God is everywhere, yet His glory transcends it ALL!
2 Out of the mouths of babes and infantsyou have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
God has chosen to use the weakest of instruments to show His glory however.
Out of the mouths of babes and infants God founds a bulwark because of His foes.
God does not need strength to defeat the mighty, he delights in using weakness. The principalities and powers of this world are not more powerful than the simplest prayer of an honest-hearted child.
The imagery here is like the child of a powerful and wealthy person calling on them and them coming to their aid. God's strength is perfected in weakness! When I am weak then am I strong!
Isaiah 41:14-16 NIV
14Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob,
little Israel, do not fear,
for I myself will help you,” declares the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
15“See, I will make you into a threshing sledge,
new and sharp, with many teeth.
You will thresh the mountains and crush them,
and reduce the hills to chaff.
16You will winnow them, the wind will pick them up,
and a gale will blow them away.
But you will rejoice in the Lord
and glory in the Holy One of Israel.
During Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem as his disciples and little children praised him and acknowledged that He was the Messiah, the powerful and knowledgable tried to get Jesus to stop them. He quoted Psalm 8:2 to them. God will get glory from someone and He will work for them!
David started out making God real big with his praise, then getting real small in his estimation of what God chooses to use. We are but children. The powers in heavenly places sometimes look at us like hairless talking monkeys, and they wonder at the fact that God has chosen us as His Image-bearers! He is teaching the principalitie and power in heavenly places His manifold wisdom through the church, made up of babies in the big scheme of the universe! (Eph 3:10) And I think He is "Laughing all the way."
David muses:
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals[a] that you care for them?
David did not have light pollution we do. When he looked up at the night sky he saw what seemed like an endless array of stars.In an echo of Genesis 1 David speaks of YHWH in a unique way compared to the other gods of the people around him. The creation of the stars were a simple act of the LORD's fingers. "He made the stars also" (Gen 1:17). The stars are innumerable. Yet, to the LORD it is simple. He also made the moon. These are the heavenly bodies that we see at night. This may be a song that was sung as a part of a night worship servce. What is mindblowing to us, is simple for God. That is how great He is! And the stars and moon that He has established speak to us that He is the God of our darkest places! It is when the night is darkest the stars are the brightest!
David asks a question that has been asked by many. What is man?
The word he first uses is "adam." The generic word for human beings, male and female. The second word is "enosh." It is first used at the end of Gen 4 when Seth bears a son and names him Enosh. It means an earthy humble human. God thinks about us! We may not seem like much to others, but God has placed the highest dignity on us.
Humanity is the crown of His creation. His final act on the sixth day of creation was to make humankind in His image and give them dominion.
The next verses speak of this in a unigue way.
5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,[b] and crowned them with glory and honor.
Humanity is just below elohim (the word translated "angels" in the KJV and by the writer of Hebrews in the NT). Elohim can refer to God Himself, the heavenly beings, angels, human judges, or false gods or goddesses.
In the Hebrew Bible it seems to indicate humanity's dignity creature God has chosen to place immediately under Himself.
Crowned with glory and honor!
The dignity that humanity possesses is not from himself; it is from his Creator. This is why God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. This is why Jesus began the sermon on the mount with "Blessed are the poor in spirit..."
All our dignity is derived. God's glory transcends the very universe. His honor is beyond what anyone can reach. And He has chosen to place you and I as the apple of His Eye. We are in a very real sense the center of the story, by God's design not our own.
Humanity is a middle creature.
The psalm progresses from the top down: the LORD, above the heavens, the heavens, teh moon and stars, the elohim, then humanity head to toe. Humanity is crowned with glory and honor (the head). Then hands, and finally David says that everything is under humanities feet.
6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,
Under the feet (and dominion) does not mean freedom to abuse and exploit creation. Humanity is lower than the elohim but higher than the animals. He is a middle creature. And that is where God placed His Image. God loves to dwell in the middle. It was in the middle to the garden where God placed the tree of life. It was in the middle of the camp of Israel where God's dwelling place, the Tabernacle was placed. And central to that Shrine was the Most Holy Place where God dwelt in the middle of the cherubim. Jesus hung on a cross suspended between heaven and earth, in the middle. And there were two thieves crucified with Him; the One Who hung the stars hung there in the middle! When God chose to give a revelation of Himself to all of creation it was as one of these middle creatures. The writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8 as evidence of what God made humanity to be and what JESUS is! Jesus has solidarity with us!
Adam was placed in the garden to dress and keep it. This is our home and God has charged us with its care.
7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
David them moves horizontally through what God has placed under humanity. He names domesticated animals first, those creatures that are closest to us. Then he names the beasts of the field. That can be a little more dangerous and farther out. Then the birds of the air. They can be inaccessible. The fish of the sea. They are out there in the deep that once swallows the earth in inky blackness when the Spirit of God hovered. Finally furthest out are whatever passes along the paths of the sea, the Leviathan, the Rahab, and the sea monsters. The chaos monsters, yes even these God has made humanity to have dominion over. Wherever teh sole of your foot touches, I will give you for an inheritance! JESUS walked upon the waters of the sea of Galilee and invited Peter to do the same. God does not want the dark forces of the deep to have dominion over you.
If you will yield your weak and frail humanity to Him, He will give you dominion!
Returning to Hebrews 2.
Hebrews 2:5-18
5For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak.
6But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?
7Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands:
8Thou hast 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 see not yet all things put under him.
9But 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 should taste death for every man.
10For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren,
12Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.
13And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.
14Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 16For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. 17Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. 18For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.
What Adam lost Christ regained and then some! See the world to come is not under the dominion of the elohim. Because Christ came and died as a faithful Human Being, all those who are in Christ can partake of His inheritance, which is all things.
Paul says it this way in Romans 8:32:
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
We do not see everything as it should be. We struggle to have dominion over the world, the flesh, and the devil.
We struggle to live as we should, to think as we should. All of creation is groaning. We don't see all thing in their proper place, but we see JESUS!
Can you see Him? If you can, you will one day be like Him! Let's end our look at this psalm as David did, with an exclamation of praise!
9 O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Footnotes
Psalm 8:4 Heb ben adam, lit. son of man
Psalm 8:5 Or than the divine beings or angels: Heb elohim
