Continuing with an interlude of psalms in the midst of a chronologically ordered Bible study:
(Psalm 8:1) (To the chief musician upon Gittith, a psalm of David) O Lord, our Lord, how excellent Your name in all the earth! Who has set Your glory above the heavens.
David addressed this psalm to the chief musician on Gittith, which Strong's Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries defines as a Gittite harp. He began with an exclamation of the excellence of the Lord in all the earth. His glory is infinitely above the glorious heavens.
(2) Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have You ordained strength because of Your enemies, that You might still the enemy and the avenger.
I believe that David was alluding to the fact that the Lord always seemed to use the youngest, weakest, and lowest of people, babes, to show His great strength to confound His enemies and to still their voices and actions. When He used such lowly and weak people who themselves would have no such great strength, there was no doubt that the Lord Himself subdued His enemies.
(3) When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, (4) What is man that you are mindful of him? And the son of man that You visit him?
When David looked upon the heavens and contemplated the awesome vast work of God, the entire universe with the moon and all the stars which He created and set in their proper places at their appointed times, he wondered why God would take notice of such a lowly short-lived creation. Why would a God who was so vast and glorious, who had created such a vast and glorious universe, turn His thoughts on man and his descendants who were as blips in God's eternity?
I want to take a moment to contemplate the meaning of God ordaining the stars. He not only created them, but He set them in their appointed positions at their appointed times. One of the arguments against a Creator God and an earth that is only about 6000 years old is that the earth is many millions of light years away from the stars. For us to be able to see the light of the stars would mean the earth had to be millions of years old for the light to reach it. But God ordained the stars; He established and ordered them just as they were. God is not restricted by time. He's the very author of time. Time will do as God orders it. We want to explain God in puny human terms and understanding, but He is so much greater and vaster than anything we could ever imagine.
(5) For You have made him a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with glory and honor.
What is man that God would make him only a little lower in nature than the angels? And that would be just for a short time, as the saints will be immortal with the angels and crowned with glory and honor.
(6) You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all under his feet: (7) All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, (8) The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that passes through the paths of the seas.
And God gave man dominion over all the earth and put all things in subjection to him (Genesis 1:26). How awesome is it that God gave so much honor to man who seems so little and insignificant in the scheme of God's eternity?!
(9) O Lord, our Lord, how excellent Your name in all the earth!
David ended his psalm with the same words with which he began it. He doubtless felt even more humility and gratitude after considering all that the Lord had done for man, and for him, specifically. While we don't really know when this psalm was written by David, it appears to be at a time when he contemplated how small and insignificant he was and how incredibly awesome it was that the Lord should bestow such honor on him. That makes it plausible that it could be at this time chronologically when he had just been anointed by God to be the next king and had come to live in the palace of the present king (1 Samuel 16).
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