(To the chief Musician. Upon the Gittith. A Psalm of David.) Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy majesty above the heavens.
Psalm 8 opens with a cry that reaches from the ground under our feet to the space above the stars. It calls God by two names at once, claims the whole earth for that name, and does so at the close of a group of psalms about rejection and enemies. (Where the ESV says "majestic", older translations say "excellent" — the word the writers below use.)
These are people who saw their King rejected. Psalm 8 closes their story, and they sing it themselves after their rescue.
We have now come to Psalm 8. It closes this unfolding of the state of the remnant, and of God's purposes about the rejected Anointed of Jehovah. The now delivered remnant is still the speaker. "O Jehovah, our Lord!" The heathen have risen up against Him in vain! It is not now a king in Zion — though that will surely be true — but a glory set above the heavens. It is not now only the people of the great King who are blessed. Wherever the children of men live, Jehovah's name, Israel's Lord, is great.
Behind the two English titles lie two Hebrew words, the second of them plural. One writer takes that name to cover the Father, the Son and the Spirit alike.
Don't these and many other Scriptures identify the Father, the Son and the Spirit — these three ever-glorious Persons — not only with "ELOHIM" (Genesis 1:1 and elsewhere), but also with the "LORD our Lord" of Psalm 8:1, 9? In Hebrew that is "JEHOVAH our ADONAHY" — a plural. His Name of excellence is to be spread abroad over all the earth, and His glory is above the heavens.
The verse states it as fact. The world around us does not look like it.
The name of Jehovah our Lord is excellent. Beyond all question it excels every other name. The highest heaven acknowledges that excellence in full; all the earth does not yet. Over most of the earth people still blaspheme it. A day is coming when the words of the first and last verses of Psalm 8 will come true in glory. But for that day we have to wait.
The psalm names both the trouble and the Person who will end it.
Today we would have to exclaim instead, "O Lord our Lord, how dishonoured is Your name in all the earth!" There is a reason for this. Our short Psalm names the source of the trouble in one word — "man." Having done so, it passes on at once to dwell upon the great Person who is going to make the name of the Lord excellent in all the earth — "the Son of Man."
The verb "set" has a history that runs back to the first chapter of the Bible.
In Psalm 8:1 we meet this word — "O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your Name in all the earth! You have set (ordained) Your glory above the heavens." This word first appears in Genesis 1:17, where we read that God set "two great lights" in the sky. The verb here is in the middle voice, reflexive, the glory of the action belonging to the One who performed it.
This glory is not the night sky the psalmist looks at two verses later.
It is not the glory of moon and stars spread over the heavens, such as the psalmist speaks of in the third verse, but a glory above all created things, however wonderful.
The earth has not yet owned that name. Even so, there is something to see now.
The earth where people live is not yet put under Him, as our Scripture tells us. Yet when we look at Him crowned with glory and honour on high, faith already sees the divine glory set in Him above the heavens. That is the pledge that all the earth will soon own His name as excellent, as it really is.
The heading over this psalm carries the word "Gittith". One writer links it both to music and to the winepress.
Most take it to be the name of a musical instrument, perhaps used by the Gittites, the people of Gath. Even so, an element in it does point to thoughts like "wine-pressing". Scripture ties that idea again and again to judgment followed by gladness in the hearts of God's people, because God has vindicated His righteousness.
- The name. The name of Jehovah our Lord excels every other name. The highest heaven owns that in full. Earth still blasphemes it.
- The cause. The psalm traces the trouble to one word, "man", and then moves straight to the One who will fix it: the Son of Man.
- The setting. "Set" is the word used when God set the two great lights in the sky — an action whose glory belongs to the One who performed it.
- The reach. Not a king in Zion only, but a glory above the heavens and a name great wherever people live.
- The pledge. The earth is not yet subject to Him. But faith looks at Him crowned with glory and honour on high, and that sight guarantees the rest.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established praise because of thine adversaries, to still the enemy and the avenger.
Psalm 8 begins with God's name filling the whole earth, and then turns to the mouths of babies as the place where God founds strength. Why does He answer His foes with the weakest voices there are, and why does He silence the enemy instead of arguing him down?
Jesus quoted this verse when children praised Him and the leaders were annoyed. Where the Psalm says strength, He said praise. One writer ties the two together:
The religious leaders themselves saw His wonderful works of power and grace, and to their great annoyance they heard the children's cry. Jesus defended the children in their simplicity, quoting the verse from Psalm 8 as fulfilled in them. The Psalm says "established strength," while He applied it by saying "perfected praise." Either way the thought is the same: God does what He wants, and receives the praise He looks for, through small and weak things. This makes it clear that the strength and the praise come from Himself.
Another writer traces where such praise comes from, and who offers it now:
Strength is founded, praise is perfected, out of the mouths of babies and infants. By divine power, grace makes its new-born vessel of mercy, and that vessel prepares pure songs of perfect praise, in which the Lord alone is exalted and everything that would exalt itself is brought low... His believing people, who are described as "new-born babies," now offer the fruit of perfect praise to God, and He accepts it.
The leaders who objected to the children's praise got their answer from this verse. It put them, not the children, in the wrong:
The hostility of the leading men, who spoke and acted for the people, now came into the open, and they formally refused their rightful Lord and King... The Lord rebuked them with a passage from Psalm 8, which on this occasion fitted perfectly. It was meant both to rebuke the Jews, by giving them, for the present, the place of the enemy and the avenger, and to present Him, the rejected Messiah, before them in His full and proper glories.
When men would not honour the Lord, the Father made sure someone would:
Even in the days of His humiliation, babies and infants speaking His praise stilled the enemy and the avenger. The Father saw to it that, if the Lord was despised and rejected by men for His sake, there would still be a testimony to His glory.
One writer sees God setting man aside and putting His Word in the mouths of the weakest. He also names who will still the enemy:
David also saw man set aside, so that God might give and establish His Word out of the mouth of even babies and infants. "The enemy and the avenger" — who may be the same as "the man of the earth" in Psalm 10 — will be stilled, not by the efforts of mortal man, but by God Himself, working through the weakest and least important instruments. That work is reserved for the Son of Man Himself.
Another writer says the silencing goes further than stopping critics, and shows why such praise must come first:
So the enemy is silenced by more than the praise of babies and infants... He Himself will "strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall kill the wicked" (see Isaiah 11:4). But for this He will establish praise out of the mouth of babies and infants — that is, I have no doubt, of newly converted souls, humbled and brought down to feel the littleness and weakness this implies. So we see clearly why He must produce such praise before the kingdom can come: the heirs of it must be made ready.
One writer names the reason it must be weakness that sings:
The heavens above speak of His greatness without a word. But it is out of the mouths of babies and infants that He has established strength and perfected praise... It is weakness that can celebrate the strength of God, and He puts His strength to work only for weakness.
- Source. Strength and praise both come out of God — the infant mouth only proves the supply is not human.
- Gift. Grace makes the worshipper before it makes the song. The song brings self low and exalts the Lord alone.
- Reach. Children gave the praise the leaders withheld. By refusing it, the leaders took the place of the enemy in the verse.
- Guard. In the days of His rejection the Father saw to it that His Son's glory never went unwitnessed.
- Result. The Son of man Himself will still the enemy. First He establishes praise in the small and weak, and so makes the heirs of His kingdom ready.