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Psalm 8: The Smallness That Was Crowned
This psalm begins and ends with the same line — how excellent is thy name in all the earth — like a great golden frame around the most staggering question ever asked. David looks up at the night sky, at the moon and stars which God set in place with what the poet calls His fingers (not even His hands — His fingers, as though arranging ornaments), and he is undone. What is man? The question is not academic. It is the gasp of someone who has just grasped the scale of things and cannot fathom why the Maker of all that immensity should bother with creatures as small and brief as we are. And yet — here is the turn that makes the psalm sing — the answer is not what we expect. We are not dismissed. We are crowned. Made a little lower than the angels, given glory and honour, handed dominion over sheep and oxen and the fish that move through the paths of the seas. The psalm insists that our smallness is not the final word; our appointment is. We are not accidents in an indifferent cosmos. We are tenants placed in a garden, crowned by a King who, for reasons passing understanding, is mindful of us.
00:00 How Excellent Is Thy Name
00:15 The Heavens, the Moon, the Stars
00:28 What Is Man?
00:40 Crowned with Glory and Honour
00:52 Dominion over All
01:00 The Name Above the Earth
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Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day — Psalm Chapter 8. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Psalm 8 O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set the glory above the heavens, out of the mouth of babes and sectlings, hast thou ordained strength because of thy enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him and the Son of man that thou visitest him, for thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and has crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madeest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands, thou hast put all things under his feet. All sheep, an oxen, ye, and the beasts of the field, the fall of the air and the fish of the sea and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
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