Bible Commentaries

8:1. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

They are very high, but thy glory is higher than the heavens.

Psalms 8:2-4. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine 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?

He, whose voice rolls the stars along, who makes those bright worlds to fly like sparks from the anvil of his omnipotence, how can he stoop so low as to regard his fallen creature, man, who is so small, so insignificant?

Psalms 8:5-6. For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

Man is God’s viceroy. He reigns over God’s works in God’s name. Let him not set up to be a king, and try to usurp the honour of his great Lord, the Imperator, the Universal Governor.

Psalms 8:7-8. All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

What a king man is! Let him not be cruel to the beasts of the field; let him not be a tyrant; God did not make him for that purpose. Let his reign be generous and kind; and if the animals must suffer, yet spare them as much suffering as possible. O man, be thou a generous viceroy, for thou art under a most generous King, who is himself the happy God, and who delights in the happiness of all his creatures!

Psalms 8:9. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Thus does the psalmist finish as he began the psalm, by praising the name of the Lord.

This exposition consisted of readings from Psalms 6:8.