Psalms 8

LORD, our Master, how majestic your name is in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

1O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

NoteTwo different words for God sit side by side here. The first, printed LORD in capitals, stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants (YHWH) that Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; the second is 'adonai', an ordinary word for a master or owner, the term a servant would use of the man he worked for. So the line is roughly: 'YHWH, the one we serve.' The second half of the verse is difficult in Hebrew and the grammar is uncertain; 'you have set your glory above the heavens' is one reading among several.

2From the mouths of small children and nursing babies you have set up strength, because of those who oppose you, to silence the enemy and the one who wants revenge.

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.

NoteThe Hebrew word here is 'strength' or 'stronghold'. The ancient Greek translation of the Psalms read it as 'praise', and that is the form quoted in the New Testament, which is why some Bibles print 'praise' instead. Both readings are old. 'The one who wants revenge' translates a word for an avenger, in Israelite society, the relative whose duty it was to settle a score for a killed or wronged family member.

3When I look at your heavens, which your fingers made, and at the moon and the stars, which you put in place,

3When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4I ask: what is a human being, that you think about him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?

4What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Note'Son of man' is a Hebrew idiom, not a title here. 'Son of' can simply mean 'one of the class of', so 'son of man' means a human being, a mortal, and in Hebrew poetry the second line of a pair usually restates the first in different words. The verse is asking the same question twice.

5You made him a little lower than the angels, and you crowned him with glory and honor.

5For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

NoteThe word translated 'angels' is 'elohim', which in Hebrew can mean God, gods, or heavenly beings generally; the ancient Greek translation chose 'angels' and the King James followed it, but 'God' is an equally possible reading of the Hebrew. The phrase rendered 'a little lower' can mean either 'slightly lower in rank' or 'lower for a short time'; the Hebrew does not decide between them.

6You made him ruler over the things your hands have made. You put everything under his feet:

6Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

NotePutting something under a person's feet is a standard ancient image for complete authority over it, drawn from the victor who set his foot on a defeated enemy. It says the rule is total, not that anything is being trampled.

7all sheep and cattle, and also the wild animals of the open country,

7All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

8the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea, and everything that travels the paths of the oceans.

8The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

9LORD, our Master, how majestic your name is in all the earth!

9O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

NoteThe psalm closes with exactly the words it opened with. This kind of repeated frame is a deliberate device in Hebrew poetry: it marks off the whole poem as a single unit and returns the reader to the starting point.