Discover Psalm 8 Commentary in detail, with their Bible study and explained, as well as their meaning in the Catholic Bible among others.
Psalm 8-1
O Lord our Lord,
how great is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens!
Psalm 8-2
Out of the mouths of little ones and infants you have established
strength, because of your enemies,
to silence the enemy and the vengeful.
Psalm 8-3
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you formed,
Psalm 8-4
I say, What is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you visit him?
Psalm 8-5
For you have made him a little lower than the angels,
and you have crowned him with glory and honor.
Psalm 8-6
You made him rule over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
Psalm 8-7
sheep and oxen, all of them,
and also the beasts of the field,
Psalm 8-8
the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea;
everything that passes through the paths of the seas.
Psalm 8-9
O Lord our Lord,
how great is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8 Meaning
The meaning of Psalm 8 is very interesting, in it we can see how David tells us about the name of God, talks about his benefits, his virtues and how he finds in him a reason for his existence.
Psalm 8 Commentary
When you love a person, you never tire of talking about that person. It is a delight to have the personality of the loved one as a topic of conversation. Something similar must have experienced the author of Psalm 8 when speaking of the person of God. I therefore invite you to open your Bible to this Psalm. The theme of this psalm is the magnificence of God. When speaking of magnificence we must think of glory, greatness, excellence. This and more is God.
The Psalm overwrite contains instructions for the lead musician and the identity of the Psalm author.
It goes like this: “To the chief musician; on Gitit. A psalm of David.”
The meaning of the word Gitit is not known for sure. Most of the interpreters tend to interpret in the sense that it refers to a musical instrument, similar to a guitar, originating from Gat in Philistia. Surely this psalm should be sung to the accompaniment of this instrument. The author of the Psalm is David, the sweet singer of Israel.
Going to the very content of the psalm, what we first notice is that the magnificence of God is praised.
Psalm 8: 1 says, “O Lord our Lord, how glorious is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens;”
Here we have David praising the magnificence of God. We note that David uses two names for God. Jehovah, the name by which God makes himself known to his people, as the God of the covenant, the God of promise. The other name is Lord, in Hebrew, Adonai, which means the Master, the Sovereign. The use of these two words is not by chance. What David is communicating is that the God who promises to fulfill his covenant is the sovereign God who has all the power at his disposal to fulfill all that he has promised.
This is what is locked behind those beautiful words O Jehovah, Our Lord!
For this reason, God’s name is glorious throughout the earth. This means that because of its magnificence, the name of God shines with its own light throughout the earth, a light that is unlike anything that may exist on earth. The glory of God’s name is such that it rises above or is higher than the heavens themselves. It is a beautiful way of saying that the glory of God is far beyond any place where our imagination reaches.
The God of David is the same God of you and mine, your glory, your greatness, your excellence, in short, its magnificence has not changed one iota. The big question is: Are you praising the magnificence of God? This is the least we can do. Today, for example, have you ever stopped to think about the magnificence of God? If you haven’t, do it now and adopt this habit every day of your life. Set your gaze on the heavens and say: Jehovah, my Lord, how glorious is your name in all the earth. God loves to be treated like this by his creatures. Please God. The most benefited will be you. Unfortunately,
For some, God does not exist or if he exists he cannot be understood, he is a God divorced from his creation. That is why Psalm 8 tells us about the magnificence of God under attack.
Psalm 8: 2 says: “Out of the mouths of children and suckling babies, you have founded the fortress, because of your enemies, to silence the enemy and the avenging.”
In their hardness of heart, the enemies of God, the vengeful, raise their fist against God. Do you know how God covers the mouth of these kinds of people? Calling a choir of children or babies. It is as if God on his throne said: How foolish are the men who attack me, to silence them I only need a chorus of children to praise me. The sincerity of the praise of these children, of those who suck, becomes a strength that silences the enemies of God. The weakest human being who is supported by God is infinitely superior to the strongest human being who is devoid of God’s support.
God uses the foolishness of the world to shame the wise. The weak of the world chose God, to shame the strong. It is totally absurd to attack the magnificence of God. Why join the group of those who will be covered over by a choir of children!
After showing us that the magnificence of God is attacked by some, David goes on to show us that the magnificence of God is admired.
Psalm 8: 3-8 says: “When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you formed, I say: What is man that you are reminded of him, and the son of man that he is You have made him little less than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea; all that passes by the paths of the sea. “
Something that makes you deeply admire the magnificence of God is the fact that despite how great he is, he still takes care of every human being on the face of the earth. David raises his head and looks at the heavens with their countless stars and concludes that all this is the work of God’s fingers. God is Spirit and Spirit does not have a body. So when in the Bible we find things like this, speaking of the fingers of God or elsewhere, the arm of God, or the eyes of God, etc. we must understand that it is speaking in anthropomorphic language, to help us better understand the ideas. This is shocking.
Everything that exists in the universe has been created by God and is something that God can hold between his fingers. Have you ever thought about how big the universe is? Let me give you an idea. Light travels at the astonishing speed of 300,000 km per second. A year has approximately 31.5 million seconds, that means that in a year, light travels slightly more than 9 million million km. But, there are stars that are billions of light years from Earth. The distance to these stars is so but so big that the human mind cannot understand it and that is just as if you were leaving your neighborhood. Not to mention leaving the city or the state or the country. Yet all of this is like a toy in God’s fingers.
But here comes the great, the admirable of the magnificence of God.
Despite all the greatness that God is, he has seen fit to remember man.
Although the earth is like a grain of sand on the vast beach of the universe and although man is a point in that grain of sand, still, God has seen fit to remember man and has decided to fill man with blessing. It is here that David travels in his imagination to the Garden of Eden, where God created man and woman. The man and the woman were created little lower than the angels. This means that man, although he was created in the image and likeness of God, nevertheless was not created as intelligent or as powerful as the angels, but despite that, God gave man a privilege that he did not give to any angel.
The Bible says that God crowned man with glory.
God made man dominate or have under his dominion all that God created on earth. All of creation was placed under the dominion of Adam and his companion. Adam was the master and lord of the sheep, the oxen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky, the fish of the sea and every living being that exists in the depths of the sea. Isn’t that great? Almighty God taking man into account to administer all creation. Something worth taking into account to admire the magnificence of God. Unfortunately this state of affairs did not last long, because the Bible relates that with the fall of man into sin, man ceased to be the master of creation.
From master he became a slave to creation. Today man lives in constant threat from nature. An earthquake kills thousands, a cyclone the same. Like a tornado, a rodent infestation wreaks havoc. They are evidences that man has ceased to be master and lord of creation. But this situation will not prevail forever either, because the day is near when Christ Jesus, as the second Adam, will once again be the Lord and Master of all that God has created. He won it on the cross of Calvary. The magnificence of God admired.
Finally, we find the magnificence of God acclaimed. David began this psalm by praising the magnificence of God and ends this psalm by acclaiming the magnificence of God.
Psalm 8: 9 says, “O Lord our Lord, how great is your name in all the earth!”
Looking at all that God is and all that God has made, we cannot help but exclaim a resounding Amen! So be it. Perhaps you listening friend have been discouraged for some reason. Don’t be discouraged. If you are saved, you have God on your side and you will one day reign together with Christ exercising dominion over creation. Grief is temporary. Later is the best.
