Psalm 8
(NRSV)Psalm 8 is a hymn, likely from the Persian period, 500-300 BC. Contemplation upon the stars leads the psalmist to a focus on the majesty of the creator. This hymn of praise to God is for God having created human beings in the divine image, and for placing us in a natural world of wonders where the divine-human relationship is the greatest wonder of all. The whole Psalm may be a reflection upon Genesis 1 and 2.
1 O Lord (Yahweh), our Sovereign (Adonai). The Hebrew combination Yahweh Adonai is rare, occurring only here and in Nehemiah 10: 29, probably done because of the desire in the Persian period to avoid saying the divine name Yahweh. Although Adonai here is the plural form, as is the Hebrew name for God, Elohim, it suggests emphasis. How majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 8 is an inclusio, beginning in verse 1 and ending in verse 9 with the same refrain. We find here a rich experience of awe and joy in the glory of the Lord with which this Psalm begins and ends. You have set your glory above the heavens. This suggests that the rule of the Lord is manifest in works that proclaim divine glory, or heaven, as here. Catholic Medieval theologians and the older Protestant dogmatics appealed to this verse to say that the goal of creation is the glory of the Lord and its recognition and praise by that which the Lord created. Of course, the Lord does not need this. The Lord certainly does need to become God through this action or become sure of deity through this action of creation. Yet, a divine being who first and last sought the glory of the divine being in the action of creation would be a model for the attitude that in us constitutes the perversion of sin in the form of self-seeking. Rather, creation is an expression of the free love of the creator in action oriented fully toward creatures.[1] Nature reveals God to some degree, although prior faith allows one to see the connection. The majesty of Yahweh's "name" reflects the importance attached to names in the ancient world in general and in the theology of many of the theologians of the Hebrew Bible in particular. Two of the most important revelations in the Bible are associated with names: the Divine Name presented to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14), and Peter's response to Jesus' question, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" (Matthew 16: 13,16). Later passages in the Old Testament we find that indirect references like “the Name” replaced direct references like Yahweh. "Glory," likewise, reflects the increasingly indirect approach biblical writers of the late period were using to refer to the divine.[2] 2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants, the reference to words here might find a parallel in Genesis 1, where the word of the Lord is the source of creation. This suggests little children are a revelation of God, Jesus alluding to the verse in Matthew 21:15-16. One will find the Hebrew word for "child" (NRSV's archaic "babe") mainly in poetic contexts, where it denotes the particularly vulnerable members of society; here it refers to those just beginning to speak. As Jeremiah 6:11 makes clear, the word can refer to a young child playing in the streets, for which the specific "nursling" is the frequent parallel term, as here. The Lord has founded a bulwark (or established strength) because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. The glory of the Lord manifested in the heavens is present throughout the created order. The psalmist may be averring that the utterances even of young children attest that God’s eternal purposes for creation and for humanity within creation will overcome any chaotic earthly or heavenly powers that would attempt to thwart God’s creative purposes.
Psalm 8:3-9 articulates the position of human beings within the divinely created order. 3 When I look at your heavens (Genesis 1), the work of your fingers, (Genesis 2) the moon and the stars that you have established. The writer ponders the immensity of creation. Creation represents the divine handiwork.
We need to spend a little time reflecting upon the next verse. 4 What are human beings (‘enosh) that you are mindful of them, mortals (ben-‘adam) that you care for them? The universe is astronomically large and infinitesimally small (subatomic particles). God’s creation is amazing and awe-inspiring. The heavens tell of the glory of God and the firmament are the handiwork of the Lord (Psalm 19:1-6). Job is to ponder the wondrous works of God and consider his smallness amid the vastness of creation (Job 37-38). In this context, how can relatively insignificant human individuals matter all that much to God. The writer ponders how the characteristic activity of the Lord is that of being mindful of and caring for human beings. Humanity seems so insignificant in the presence of such immensity of the universe. Yet, the writer finds that the Lord has interest in humanity. The Lord is paying attention to the single, individual human being amid the vastness of the universe. The questions arise due to amazement that the Lord distinguishes humanity from other creatures.[3] Job 7:16-21 is an interesting and cynical reversal of this notion. In his suffering, Job desires that God would pay less attention and leave him alone. The answer of the psalmist to his own question is that only out of the free kindness of the Lord does humanity become a partner with the Lord.[4] The insignificance of the creature shows the grandeur of creation. Yet, what is the rightful place of human beings?
The NRSV translates the paired Hebrew singular noun-forms ’enosh and ben-’adam as generic plurals. We find a similar pairing in Psalm 144:3-4, where the question is the same as this text, but the answer is that they are like a breath and their days are like a passing shadow. A similar pairing occurs in Psalm 73:5, but this time the NRSV does not show it as such. Young’s literal translation has: “In the misery of mortals they are not, And with common men they are not plagued,” which at least tries to capture the pairing. [5] Even so, the various English collective or plural translations may miss an originally intended Hebrew nuance of God’s noticing a single human being as an individual (a person, a human being) in the midst of the vastness of the universe. Jesus frequently refers to himself as “the Son of Man,” which may have had the general meaning “the Human One.” However, in the apocalyptic passages toward the end of the synoptic gospels (e.g., see Mark 13:23-27; 14:61-62), the referent is likely Daniel 7:13-14 (the Aramaic’s kebar ’enash is “like a son of man” in most English translations but “like a human being” in NRSV and Tanakh), where the context may signify a quasi-divine figure.
The verb-forms (“you are mindful of them” and “you care for them”) are second-person singular Hebrew imperfects that describe God’s characteristic activity; each of the verb-forms ends with a third person singular pronoun with an “energic nun” (the “n” of the Hebrew alphabet). The suffixed verb endings themselves are emphatic. To paraphrase the astonished psalm-singer’s words, “Given the vastness and complexity of the universe, why would you, Majestic Lord, take note of and care deeply for a single one of those human beings!?”
5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God (‘elohim, divine beings[6]), and crowned them with glory and honor. This would mean that human creation has the quality of the divine. God shares divine glory and honor with humanity.[7] 6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet. Humanity receives this glory and honor in the governing or dominion role that God has offered humanity over the rest of creation. Genesis 1:26 uses differing Hebrews words, but the thought is the same. God makes humanity in the image and likeness of divine beings and grants them dominion over other living things. This notion is part of the basic respect for life that we might see as the ethical implication of creation. Human lordship is a responsibility for the earth, and especially for animal life.[8] This ruling position of humanity expresses human closeness to God. God calls upon human beings to share and exercise the dominion of God over creation. Genesis derives the human task of rule directly from the fact that human beings are representatives of God in the divine rule over creation. Human beings prepare the way for the divine dominion in the world.[9] Humans simply share in in the divine likeness and the associated dominion over other creatures that distinguishes humans from the rest of the creatures of God.[10] Hebrews 2:6-8 and I Corinthians 15:27 quote from this part of the psalm. The answer to the question raised in verse 4, as to how God takes an interest in humanity, comes in the form of succinct anthropology, dependent upon Genesis 1-2. Under human dominion are 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. Yet, the psalm does not end on a note of human dominion, glory, and dignity. Rather, the psalm ends as it began, with the glory of the Lord. 9 O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
The language of the dominion of humanity over creation has led some persons to criticize the Bible as the source for the modern tendency to degrade the natural environment. In this view, human supremacy over creation would lead to inappropriate management of it. Scientist Lynn White made this suggestion.[11] His point was that while Judaism and Christianity replaced the reverence for nature contained in animism with its focus upon the divine image of humanity and, in the Christian case, in the divine becoming human. Both religions place humanity at the center or head of nature, rather than surrounded by divine beings in nature. This separation allowed modern science to arise in the West in ways it could not in other cultures. However, he also points out that, divorced from a solid theology of creation, this separation opened human beings to the possibility of exploiting nature through technology and science. He is cautious about all of this, however. Every species has an influence upon its environment, and humanity is no different. Humanity will not care for nature as an end, but rather because nature is the context in which human life occurs. In contrast to animism, Buddhism has such an extreme focus upon inner enlightenment of the person that any thoughts about creation do not affect it. However, the focus upon inner development also seems to lead Buddhism down a path that does not encourage knowledge of nature to improve everyday life.
Psalm 8 is a reminder that human beings are part of creation, as well as the ones most responsible for its care. A further encouragement for Christians is that the redeemed nature of a Christian vision of the future is something toward which Christians can work now.
First, Psalm 8 paints a big history. I have long had an interest in the big story of science. I still find myself fascinated by the history of the earth. In a documentary on Netflix, I saw graphics of the origin of the Milky Way Galaxy, the evolution of this solar system, and the making of the moon. The earth itself has gone through dramatic changes over millions of years, going from quite hot, when Indiana had tropical weather, to a new term, “snowball earth,” when the earth was covered in a sheet of ice. Of course, such a documentary will show the gathering of land and sea, the slow emergence of life, and the emergence of human beings. Big History, a relatively discipline taught in some schools, attempts to place human history in the context of universal natural history. It wants to trace themes from the beginning in the big bang to today. As Stephen Hawking put it, “My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
For those who have no interest in history, it may sound boring. Let me see if I can get you curious.
• The entire expanse of human civilization — 5,000 years — makes up a mere two percent of the human beings living on earth.
• Approximately 98 percent of human history occurred before the invention of agriculture.
• All the matter we know of in the universe is likely to be no more than one billionth of the actual matter that was originally created.
• Earth’s moon was probably created by a collision between the young Earth and a Mars-sized proto-planet.
• At present, we cannot drill deeper than about seven miles into the Earth, which is just 0.2 percent of the distance to the center (4,000 miles away).
• Between A.D. 1000 and 2000, human populations rose by a factor of 24.
• Traveling in a jet plane, it would take 5 million years to get from our solar system to the next-nearest star.
The point is that some people are trying to see the big picture, and therefore better help us understand our place in it. Louie Giglio captures that message in a multimedia sermon called “Indescribable,” which contains spectacular images and statistics from the cosmos. It is worth a 40-minute online viewing. Here are a few of his statistics:
• A beam of light takes eight minutes to cross the 93 million miles between Earth and the sun.
• Our solar system — sun and eight planets — is the relative size of a quarter, making our galaxy the size of North America.
• If you were to count the stars in our galaxy, one per second, it would take you 2,500 years to count them all.
• The Milky Way galaxy contains billions of stars, but our galaxy is only one of at least 200 billion galaxies.
In the philosophical and theological discussion of the universe, the question of teleology often arises. Is there any hint that all of this is headed somewhere? Is there a goal, a purpose, which we can discern in the vastness of creation? If so, then nature is striving for perfectibility. It is a tempting notion. Evolution describes adaptation of species to life on this earth and in this universe to improvement of design, in a sense, or at least fitness for life. We must not think of this as nature willing itself toward this, but rather, the natural process of evolution. The other view is that evolution is pure, random chance. Life blunders like a blind person in a battlefield. Luck controls survival. Yet, maybe the conflict is not as deep as we might think. Human beings have a deep commonality with the rest of life. We know that human expression of emotion and thinking has a mirror in the snarls, grimaces, and behavior of animals. Our explanations for the origin of nature and its history will reflect our emotion, intelligence, and imagination. We must not pretend that we can achieve some form of narrative objectivity that only God could have. In other words, if fitness, design, and beauty are the result of evolutionary processes, then maybe a nuanced notion of teleology is a good direction to move. Here is the way one scientist put it.[12]
Second, God gets personal in little history. While God counts and names the trillions of stars, God goes so much further with each of us, designing us each uniquely. God knows what makes us tick, hears our prayers when we cry out and cares about each one of us. We should feel awe. Honor. Divinely inflated self-worth. All that beauty to look at and God pays attention to us.
Third, Psalm 8 does not remove a quite real problem many have the world God has made - the reality of suffering. Life is a struggle. Living things feel off other living things. I do not want to get too disturbing here, but all living things struggle to live. All living things die. This, too, is an important part of the world God has made. We do not understand it all. We might wish it were different.
Fourth, Psalm 8 can help us put ourselves in proper perspective. Life is not about us. The work of the fingers of God testifies to the indescribable, majestic work of God. This means that our involvement in the world should have a basis in our respect for the natural order that God has created. Psalm 8 is like a reality sandwich. God is bigger than we can describe, and we just are not that big a deal in the grand scheme. We are significant insignificants.
[1] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 55-57.
[2] (for others, see the list in Eichrodt, 219).
[3] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2 [43.2] 20.
[4] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3 [69.3] 228.
[5] One can translate the Hebrew noun-forms in a variety of ways, as exemplified by Greek and English translations of the verse: The LXX has anqrwpoV and uioV anqrwpou (anqrwpoV can mean a human being of either gender in biblical Greek). NIV has “man” and “the son of man.” NLT has “people” and “mere mortals.” Tanakh has “man” and “mortal man.” NET has “the human race” and “mankind.” The singular or collective Hebrew noun-forms, by both basic and contextual meaning, encompass women and children as well as men, and they imply the entirety of the human race.
[6] Although the Hebrew uses elohim here, many translators would suggest that “divine beings” is a better translation that “God,” meaning that God made humanity, not a little lower that God, but a little lower than the angels and other divine beings. The human being in these verses is a translation of two interchangeable Hebrews words in this context, 'enosh and ben-'adam.
[7] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 216.
[8] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4 [55.1] 351-2.
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 203.
[10] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 189.
[11] ("The historical roots of our ecologic crisis," Science, vol. 155, no. 3767, March 10, 1967, 1203-1207)
[12] -Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 25.
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