Embrace the Word for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
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Psalm 8 is the first pure praise of the Psalter. This Psalm of David is not a call to praise but a declaration of praise that we are invited to join. The top (8:1) and the bottom (8:9) of the Psalm highlights the majesty of God. The superscription provides an interesting piece of information: “To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.” The term “the Gittith” comes from Gath, a Philistine city and hometown of Goliath (see 1 Samuel 17:4). The instructions, “According to the Gittith” suggest that the Psalm was to be sung in the musical style and/or with the musical instruments of Gath.
Psalm 8 directs us straight back to Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. The themes concerning a ruling king from Psalm 2, joined by the themes surrounding the righteous man who flourishes from Psalm 1, provide an important context for Psalm 8. The declaration of a final victory and prosperity of the godly, Scripture-loving king who provides refuge for his righteous people is the context behind Psalm 8. This focus was somewhat muted as Psalms 3-7 plunged David into a world of wicked rebels. But Psalm 8 refocuses its attention to a man who will rule the world. When this rule is fully implemented, the majesty of the Creator will be fully visible.
David understands his place to be rooted in the promises of the Scriptures that have come before him. He grasps that he is a foreshadowing of someone much grander than himself, for he, in some sense, sees what is still to unfold. But David at least recognizes that the experience of his own life and journey to the throne, previews not only the majestic glory of God that awaits to be displayed, but also the opposition and rebellion that awaits the Son that God will ultimately place on the throne. David’s praise is what we might call a prophetic praise for he points forward to the One who would come after him.
Psalm 8 opens and closes with a declaration: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (8:1,9). Declaring the majesty of God’s name is simply to declare the majesty of God. YAWEH is David’s Master and Lord. Psalm 8 is a pause in the narration of the opposition to David’s ascendancy to the throne and the affliction he has experienced through that opposition (Psalms 3-7). But at the end of Psalm 7 David expressed his resolve for “the name of the Lord” to be praised (7:17). Psalm 8 is David’s follow through to his resolve. As the narration of opposition would soon resume (see Psalm 9 and beyond), David renews his resolve: “I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High” (9:2). In the midst of his troubles David is aware of a universe that is full of God’s greatness and power, and he is directed to respond with praise.
David likens his vocalized praise of the Lord to the voices that are commonly thought to be weak and insignificant, “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger” (8:2). God has declared that He will defeat His enemies (see Psalm 2). Such defeat would come in concurrence with a most unlikely battle force: unimpressive little ones. But the Lord has determined that the cries of the weak and insignificant would display His strength and thus silence the enemy. David’s perspective on his sufferings and struggles is that they show that he is like a weak child. But this is to further show that when David’s enemies are defeated and he ascends to the throne, it will be a testimony to the majesty of the Lord’s power and greatness. The nations will rebel: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us’” (See Psalm 2:2-3). But the Lord would silence them through a most unlikely fashion.
Building on David’s amazement of how God would defeat His enemies, David is further amazed at what else God has decided to do through the weak and insignificant: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (8:3-4). With a vast universe as a backdrop, David wonders why such a great and powerful God would be mindful of a mere mortal—an earthling, made from dust. Our galaxy alone has somewhere between two hundred to four hundred billion stars, and there are over one hundred seventy billion galaxies. David no doubt feels small, however, he is also aware that God’s majestic greatness is displayed more fully through human weakness. David is amazed that God would care at all for him, let alone deploy him in His service.
Through a mere mortal, God intends to rule the universe: “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas” (8:7-8). Drawing from Genesis 1:26-28, David looks back and reflects on the full realm of what God gave man to rule over. God could have called in the angels to assume the ruling authority of the universe, after all, they are greater than humans: “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (8:6). But God has determined to display the glory of His power more fully through man. God has given man dignity by placing him as ruler over creation. Such a decision to give man such a lofty calling to rule over such a vast universe, makes it impossible to misinterpret where the true strength comes from when a human defeats God’s enemies and reigns on the throne. That strength comes from God alone.
As we reflect on Psalm 8, our thoughts should immediately shift from David to the One that David points us to. David marvels over the glory of God’s greatness being displayed through children. Jesus quotes David on the Sunday before His Crucifixion as He entered Jerusalem. The crowds shouted: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (See Matthew 21:9). The religious leaders were offended by the response of the crowds, particularly pointing out to Jesus that children were involved in these acknowledgments: “But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” (See Matthew 21:15-16a). Jesus’ reply was to quote from Psalm 8: “And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise?’” (See Matthew 21:16). Jesus applied David’s words to Himself to show His understanding that as the children praised Him, they were spelling out the imminent defeat of His enemies. Victory would come by what Jesus would soon do on the Cross, and it was through the testimony of the children that victory was announced.
As we reflect on the current state of man’s rule over creation, that is, what David speaks of in terms of man’s rule over creation based on Genesis 1:26-28, we should acknowledge that such rule was not, at present, fully in place. Sin had marred the image of God in man, as well as disqualified man from properly ruling over creation. But David’s words of man ruling over creation as a display of God’s glory, turns out to be a prophetic word that also points forward to Jesus. The writer of Hebrews draws from Psalm 8 and he shows how Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of David’s words: “For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, ‘What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.’ Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (see Hebrews 2:5-9). It is through the Person and Work of Jesus that God has returned to man the authority to rule over creation once again. Jesus reclaimed the authority for mankind to rule once again through the Cross. Through the weakness of the Cross—the weakness of Christ’s agony in the garden; the weakness of Christ’s arrest and trial; the weakness of Christ’s mocking, and beatings, and nakedness; the weakness of the sufferings by way of crucifixion—through the weakness of the Cross, all things are now under the feet of the Risen Lord. Through the weakness of the Cross, God creates a new humanity who will once again rule creation. Through the weakness of the Cross, God displays the majesty of His greatness and power.
David interprets his own troubles and affliction through the sufferings and weakness of the Cross. David realizes that it will be through his weakness that the Lord’s strength would be shown. We can experience the same realization: “we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (see 2 Corinthians 4:7). “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (8:9).
That’s all for Embrace the Word for Wednesday, January 14, 2026. I look forward to being back with you for the Friday, January 16, 2026 episode of Embrace the Word as we take a look at Psalm 9.