Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 8:3 - 8:3

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 8:3 - 8:3


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(Heb.: 8:4-6) Stier wrongly translates: For I shall behold. The principal thought towards which the rest tends is Psa 8:5 (parallel are Psa 8:2 a, 3), and consequently Psa 8:4 is the protasis (par., Psa 8:2), and כִּי accordingly is = quum, quando, in the sense of quoties. As often as he gazes at the heavens which bear upon themselves the name of God in characters of light (wherefore he says שָׁמֶיךָ), the heavens with their boundless spaces (an idea which lies in the plur. שָׁמַיִם) extending beyond the reach of mortal eye, the moon (יָרֵחַ, dialectic ורח, perhaps, as Maurer derives it, from יָרַח = יָרַק subflavum esse), and beyond this the innumerable stars which are lost in infinite space (כֹּוכָבִים = כַּבְכָּבִים prop. round, ball-shaped, spherical bodies) to which Jahve appointed their fixed place on the vault of heaven which He has formed with all the skill of His creative wisdom (כֹּונֵן to place and set up, in the sense of existence and duration): so often does the thought “what is mortal man...?” increase in power and intensity. The most natural thought would be: frail, puny man is as nothing before all this; but this thought is passed over in order to celebrate, with grateful emotion and astonished adoration, the divine love which appears in all the more glorious light, - a love which condescends to poor man, the dust of earth. Even if אֱנֹושׁ does not come from אָנַשׁ to be fragile, nevertheless, according to the usage of the language, it describes man from the side of his impotence, frailty, and mortality (vid., Psa 103:15; Isa 51:12, and on Gen 4:26). בֶּן־אָדָם, also, is not without a similar collateral reference. With retrospective reference to עֹולְלִים וְיֹנְקִים, בֶּן־אָדָם is equivalent to יְלוּד־אִשָּׁה in Job 14:1 : man, who is not, like the stars, God's directly creative work, but comes into being through human agency born of woman. From both designations it follows that it is the existing generation of man that is spoken of. Man, as we see him in ourselves and others, this weak and dependent being is, nevertheless, not forgotten by God, God remembers him and looks about after him (פָּקַד of observing attentively, especially visitation, and with the accus. it is generally used of lovingly provident visitation, e.g., Jer 15:15). He does not leave him to himself, but enters into personal intercourse with him, he is the special and favoured object whither His eye turns (cf. Psa 144:3, and the parody of the tempted one in Job 7:17.).

It is not until Psa 8:6 that the writer glances back at creation. וַתְּחַסְּרֵהוּ (differing from the fut. consec. Job 7:18) describes that which happened formerly. חִסַּר מִן signifies to cause to be short of, wanting in something, to deprive any one of something (cf. Ecc 4:8). מן is here neither comparative (paullo inferiorem eum fecisti Deo), nor negative (paullum derogasti ei, ne esset Deus), but partitive (paullum derogasti ei divinae naturae); and, without אֱלֹהִים being on that account an abstract plural, paullum Deorum, = Dei (vid., Genesis S. 66f.), is equivalent to paullum numinis Deorum. According to Gen 1:27 man is created בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים, he is a being in the image of God, and, therefore, nearly a divine being. But when God says: “let us make man in our image after our likeness,” He there connects Himself with the angels. The translation of the lxx ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ ̓ ἀγγέλους, with which the Targum and the prevailing Jewish interpretations also harmonize, is, therefore, not unwarranted. Because in the biblical mode of conception the angels are so closely connected with God as the nearest creaturely effulgence of His nature, it is really possible that in מֵֽאֱלֹהִים David may have thought of God including the angels. Since man is in the image of God, he is at the same time in the likeness of an angel, and since he is only a little less than divine, he is also only a little less than angelic. The position, somewhat exalted above the angels, which he occupies by being the bond between all created things, in so far as mind and matter are united in him, is here left out of consideration. The writer has only this one thing in his mind, that man is inferior to God, who is רוּחַ, and to the angels who are רוּחֹות (Isa 31:3; Heb 1:14) in this respect, that he is a material being, and on this very account a finite and mortal being; as Theodoret well and briefly observes: τῷ θνητῷ τῶν ἀγγέλων ἠλάττωται. This is the מְעַט in which whatever is wanting to him to make him a divine being is concentrated. But it is nothing more than מְעַט. The assertion in Psa 8:6 refers to the fact of the nature of man being in the image of God, and especially to the spirit breathed into him from God; Psa 8:6, to his godlike position as ruler in accordance with this his participation in the divine nature: honore ac decore coronasti eum. כָּבֹוד is the manifestation of glory described from the side of its weightiness and fulness; הֹוד (cf. הֵד, הֵידָד) from the side of its far resounding announcement of itself (vid., on Job 39:20); הָדָר from the side of its brilliancy, majesty, and beauty. הֹוד וְהָדָר, Psa 96:6, or also הֲדַר כִּבֹור הֹוד ה, Psa 145:5, is the appellation of the divine doxa, with the image of which man is adorned as with a regal crown. The preceding fut. consec. also stamps תְּעַטְּרֵהוּ and תַּמְשִׁילֵהוּ as historical retrospects. The next strophe unfolds the regal glory of man: he is the lord of all things, the lord of all earthly creatures.