Psalm 8
To the chief Musician upon Gititih, A Psalm of David.
1O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
2Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
3When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
6Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
7All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
8The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
9O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
Chapter 8
This psalm starts out with praise to God, simply for the excellence of His name. When I think of God, wonderful and glorious things come to mind, which I do praise Him for. He is glory is basically indescribable, which I have found to be true in my life. I think, from experience, I have found His glory to be indescribable when prasing him aloud and have gotten choked up as a result of it. It reminds me of those times, which I think did illustrated aspects of my intimacy with God. Some of the aspects that come to mind are my love for Him, my effort to know Him, and my fear of Him. Even children begin to praise God at a young age (v. 2). I can remember when I was young and I would sing praises to Him. Matthew Henry writes concerning the verse by saying, "Sometimes the power of God brings to pass great things in his church, by very weak and unlikely instruments, that the excellency of the power might the more evidently appear to be of God, and not of man. This he does, because of his enemies, that he may put them to silence." It's as if God uses small things to accomplish big goals. He probably figures that since children are more open to prasing him than hard-hearted adults, they are more likely to conquer an enemy. Verses 3-4 kind of contrast God's creation -- the universe, in this case -- and God's attitude towards man. I don't thank God for creating the universe all that much, but perhaps I should start doing that. He doesn't have to worship man (v. 4) since man is not deserving of worship due to being imperfect. Recently I recall listening to a YouTube video or an apologetics radio program where someone was talking about thet fact that God is worthy of praising and worhipping since He is perfect. I see how that makes sense, especially since it would be against God's nature for Him to worship someone lower than Him. I myself am not an angelic being (v. 5), but I'm only a little bit lower. I still have my imperfections, but God loves me anyway. He even blesses me when He knows I will be blessed. At least I don't have to submit to animals and I have a degree of power over them (vv. 6-8). I see that as if one lives with quite a few pets, they are still under his or her command and cannot harm him if they are trained properly. I could think of many examples of man having power over animals -- in a good way, of course -- but I'm not sure if I'd really get aywhere. It's nice to see that fact supported by scripture, though. I see the final verse as a reprise of verse 1, which I don't have much to say about, but I suppose some of the Pslams are written with a reprise.
Source used:
"Matthew Henry Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible: Pslams 8." http://www.searchgodsword.org/com/mhc-con/view.cgi?book=ps&chapter=008
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