Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 8:5
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.
5. Render as R.V.:
For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honour.
In rendering than the angels the A.V. follows the LXX, Vulg., Targ. and Syriac. The later Greek versions (Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion) and Jerome, rightly render than God. For though in some cases Elohim (God or gods) is applied to supernatural beings generally (1Sa 28:13), angels are rather called ‘sons of God;’ and moreover there is a clear reference to the creation of man in the image of God, after His likeness (Gen 1:26-27).
‘Glory’ and ‘honour’ (or, majesty: worship in P.B.V. is an archaism for honour) are the attributes of royalty: of God Himself (Psa 145:5; Psa 145:12), and of kings who are His representatives (Psa 21:5; Psa 45:3). Man is crowned king of creation.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
5, 6. The Psalmist looks back to man’s creation. God’s regard was exhibited in the nature with which man was endowed, and the position of sovereignty in which he was placed.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For thou hast made him – Thou hast made man as such; that is, he was such in the original design of his creation, in the rank given him, and in the dominion conceded to him. The object here is to show the honor conferred on man, or to show how God has regarded and honored him; and the thought is, that in his original creation, though so insignificant as compared with the vast worlds over which God presides, he had given him a rank but little inferior to that of the angels. See the notes at Heb 2:7.
A little lower – The Hebrew word used here – chaser, means to want, to lack – and then, to be in want, to be diminished. The meaming is, Thou hast caused him to want but little; that is, he was but little interior.
Than the angels – So this is rendered by the Aramaic Paraphrase: by the Septuagint; by the Latin Vulgate; by the Syriac and Arabic; and by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews Heb 2:7, who has literally quoted the fourth, fifth, and sixth verses from the Septuagint. The Hebrew, however, is – mi’elohym – than God. So Gesenius renders it, Thou hast caused him to want but little of God; that is, thou hast made him but little lower than God. So DeWette, nur wenig unter Gott. So Tholuck renders it, nur um wenig unter Gott. This is the more natural construction, and this would convey an idea conformable to the course of thought in the psalm, though it has been usually supposed that the word used here – ‘Elohiym – may be applied to angels, or even men, as in Psa 82:1; Psa 97:7; Psa 138:1; Exo 21:6; Exo 22:8-9. Gesenius (Thesau. Ling. Heb., p. 95) maintains that the word never has this signification. The authority, however, of the Aramaic, the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, would seem sufficient to show that that meaning may be attached to the word here with propriety, and that somehow that idea was naturally suggested in the passage itself. Still, if it were not for these versions, the most natural interpretation would be that which takes the word in its usual sense, as referring to God, and as meaning that, in respect to his dominion over the earth, man had been placed in a condition comparatively but little inferior to God himself; he had made him almost equal to himself.
And hast crowned him with glory and honor – With exalted honor. See the notes at Heb 2:7.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 8:5
For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.
Man a little lower than the angels
While the Psalmist refers primarily to man, we learn from St. Paul that the text has a further reference to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I. The text, as spoken of men. Perhaps it was not so much in nature as in position that man, as first formed, was inferior to the angels. Nothing higher could be affirmed of the angels than that they were made in the image of God. If, then, they had originally superiority over man, it must have been in the degree of resemblance. The angel was made immortal, intellectual, holy, powerful, glorious, and in these properties lay their likeness to the Creator. But were not these properties also given to man? Whatever originally the relative position of the angel and the man, we cannot question that since the fall man has been fearfully inferior to the angels. The effect of transgression has been to debase all his powers; but, however degraded and sunken, he still retains the capacities, of his original formation, and they many be so purged and enlarged as to produce, if we may not say to restore, the equality. Take the intellect of man; there is no limit to its progress. Use the like reasoning in regard to power, or holiness, or dignity. The Bible teems with notices, that so far from being by their nature higher than men, angels even now possess not an importance which belongs to our race. It is a mysterious thing, and one to which we scarcely dare allude, that there has arisen a Redeemer of fallen men, but not of fallen angels. And angels are represented as ministering sprints. Believers, as the children of God, are attended and waited on by angels. Then, while human nature is still walled off from every other in its special properties, risen spirits may stand on a par with the very noblest-created intelligence, glowing with the same holiness, arrayed in the same panoply, and gathering in from all the works of God the same immenseness of knowledge and the same material of ecstasy.
II. The text, as spoken of our Lord Jesus Christ. His being made a little lower than the angels is represented as with a view to the glory which was to be the recompense for His sufferings. This is a very important representation, and from it may be drawn a strong and clear argument for the divinity of Christ. We could never see how it could be humility in any creature, whatever the dignity of his condition, to assume the office of a Mediator, and to work out our reconciliation, if an unmeasured exaltation was to be the Mediators reward. A being who knew that he should be immeasurably elevated if he did a certain thing, can hardly be commended for the greatness of his humility in doing that thing. He must be the king already, ere his entering the state of slavery can furnish an example of humility. And yet in consenting to be made a little lower than the angels our blessed Redeemer actually humbled Himself. Who, then, can this man have been before becoming man? We cannot suppose that the attributes or properties of Godhead were capable of being laid aside or suspended. Shrouded and hidden, but not laid aside, was the divinity of Christ. If He could not lay aside the perfections, He could lay aside the glories of Deity. Every outward mark of majesty and greatness might be laid aside. He passes from the form of God to the likeness of men. It is not in the power of language to describe either the humility or the compassion thus displayed. It was literally the emptying Himself, the making Himself poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich. (Henry Melvill, B. D.)
Man and angel
I. Man lower than the angels.
1. By creation the angel is the elder brother of the two, for he was created first. Angels songs always bear some reference to man; something pertaining to man invariably forms part of their theme. Not only in time is man lower than the angels, he is so–
2. In the substance from which he is formed. Angels are pure spirits, but one part of man is formed out of the clay.
3. In his habitation. God gave heaven for an abode unto the angels, but the earth hath He given to the children of men.
4. In his powers. Angels excel in strength. Man that is a worm, and the son of man that is a worm.
5. In his character. Man was not made as he is, but he has made himself so, by his sin.
II. Man equal to the angels.
1. Although not in the same workroom, they are in the same service. The kings livery is worn by the humblest guard of the mail, as well as by the highest officers of the household. The angel said to John in Patmos, I am thy fellow servant.
2. They are equal in rights and privileges. The godly man is as sure of heaven as any of the angels who are now there: only as yet he is not made meet for it.
3. In kindred, for man, too, is a child of God.
4. In duration of existence. Every man is to exist forever. Neither can they die any more.
III. Man higher than the angels. That is, in his glorified state.
1. He shall have a better feast. There will be dishes on mans table that angels can never taste.
2. Better apparel. Mans garments will be the workmanship of grace. They are more expensive. Angels garments cost only a word; but blood was essential to wash the robes of the saints and to make them white.
3. A better song. Saints have themes the angels cannot think upon, and strains which they can never reach.
4. A better position, and superior privileges. Angels shall approach very near the throne; but they shall never sit upon it. (David Roberts, D. D.)
Gods idea of man
What is the little which marks mans inferiority? It is mainly that the spirit, which is Gods image, is confined in and limited by flesh, and subject to death. The distance from the apex of creation to the Creator must ever be infinite; but man is so far above the non-sentient, though mighty, stars and the creatures that share earth with him, by reason of his being made in the Divine image–i.e., having consciousness, will, and reason–that the distance is foreshortened. The gulf between man and matter is greater than that between man and God. The moral separation caused by sin is not in the Psalmists mind. Thus man is invested with some reflection of Gods glory, and wears this as a crown. He is king on earth . . . Such then is man, as God meant him to be. Such a being is a more glorious revelation of the Name than all stars and systems. Looked at in regard to his duration, his years are a hand breadth before these shining ancients of days that have seen his generations fret their little hour and sink into silence; looked at in contrast with their magnitude and numbers, numberless, he is but an atom, and his dwelling place a speck. Science increases the knowledge of his insignificance, but perhaps not the impression of it made on a quiet heart by the simple sight of the heavens. But besides the merely scientific view, and the merely poetic, and the grimly agnostic, there is the other, the religious, and it is as valid today as ever. To it the heavens are the work of Gods linger, and their glories are His, set there by Him. That being so, mans littleness magnifies the Name, because it enhances the condescending love of God, which has greatened the littleness by such nearness of care, and such gifts of dignity. The reflection of His glory which blazes in the heavens is less bright than that which gleams in the crown of glory and honour on mans lowly yet lofty head. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The dignity of man–his restlessness
But little lower than God (R.V.). It seems as though man were born with the rudiments of omniscience, and was therefore bound to be made impatient by the discovered presence of anything that declined to be known; and born, likewise, with the rudiments of omnipresence, and therefore bound to be disquieted by the sight of any frontier not yet transcended. That is one of the startling proofs of the impatient in our nature. Put a man in a room, and, no matter how large the room, he wants the window up; every place crowds and we want to move out. From the time when Abraham crossed the Euphrates and Joshua went over the Jordan, mankind has been wanting to get out and over the river. We do not know all the lakes in Africa yet, but some of us are a good deal more interested over the imagined discovery of canals in the planet Mars than we are over the seas and waterways of the distant parts of our own globe. No pasture is so large but we want to get over the fence and crop the grass on the other side. Not only are we irritated by limitations of place, and try to be ubiquitous, but are similarly annoyed by limitations of time, and attempt to explore and map the centuries that preface recorded history, and even the ages that are the threshold of the present history of the earth and heavens. We are so accustomed to this habitual intrusion into untraversed domains that it can easily escape us what a certain irrepressibleness moving within us all this betokens; and this sailing out among the stars and then coming home, for a little while, to make a book of what we have seen there, what the stars are made of, how large they are, how much they weigh, whether they are young or old, infant, middle-aged, grey haired, or imbecile, and this groping back into the old years of our universe, towards the primeval days, tracking the progress of events, or trying to decipher the wheel marks made in the old strata or on the cosmic star mist by the giant car of onward movement when creations springtide was yet on, and then coming quietly back to today, and in an easy chair by the fire complacently penciling diary notes of the worlds babyhood, and with no feeling at all but that it is the thing for a man to do, that the universe is to be known, and that man is here to know it–well, there is a Titanic audacity about it all that is to me superbly uplifting. Man may bare failed in a good deal that he attempts, a good many diary memoranda he may have entered under the wrong day of the month or even under the wrong month, but there is a hugeness in the very venture that betrays Titanic fibre. There are certain heights of audacity that the fool may essay to scale, but there are cloud-piercing pinnacles of audacity that there is not room in a fools mind to even conceive or tension to adventure. But not only can man stand up in the face of nature and cross question it and compel it to testify too, but he can exercise upon nature a volitional as well as an intellectual mastery, and can harness it to his own purposes. We are not afraid of the World any more, in the old way in which men used to be, partly because we know her way. We know how to take her. We have a presentiment of what she is plotting before she does it, and so not likely, as once, to be caught napping. The forces that used to play about us with all the untrained friskiness of wild horses prancing and cantering over the plain we have caught, some of them, and have put a collar about their necks and bits in their mouths, and, by means of a good deal of draft tackle that we have rather ingeniously devised, have set them drawing our loads, turning our wheels, working our machinery, and running all our errands. And, now, what we call Civilisation is, a good deal of it, simply a matter of the success with which we make nature do our work. We are not, of course, claiming for man that he has completely subjected the worlds wide energy. Storm and steam have still to be dealt with warily–a thunderbolt is still hot if handled carelessly; but the entire attitude of man towards all these things is changed. A lion is stronger than a man, and if the two meet on brute ground the lion will always be a good deal more than a match for him; but man is a good deal smarter than the lion, and if the two meet on an intelligent ground, the lion will be driven to the wall. So in regard to the raw energies of the material world, if man undertakes to wrestle with nature on material ground, man will invariably be whipped, and the bit of lightning would be just as demoralising to a Socrates as to a mule or pony, providing the encounter take place on territory that is distinctively the lightnings own. But let a man take that same bit of lightning on to ground that is distinctively his own, and he will file its teeth and put a muzzle over its nose, and tie a string around its neck and attach a letter to that string and send the little amphibious streak either under the water to London or overland to San Francisco, and all over so quickly that you see his muzzle on the return trip almost before you had time to know that he was fully off. That is the sort of thing that man is when he steps off from the ground of materiality or of brutality and gathers himself together on the imperial platform of his own God-imitating personality; and there is where he wants to keep himself in all this matter of trying to appreciate his true and genuine denotement. Damaging and discouraging suspicions of diminutiveness are never going to insinuate themselves and get the better of us till we have been allowing our measure to be calculated on some other basis than that of what we distinctly are as personal beings. That is why David in the earlier part of this very Psalm was oppressed by thoughts of mans littleness; he undertook to compute human greatness with an astronomical tape line; he was distressed by the small figure he made as seen against the vastness of the stellar sky taken as a background. But the mere arithmetic immensity of the heavens has properly nothing to do with it; yardsticks are utterly foreign to the account. It was a far greater thing to be David contemplating the heavens than it was to be the heavens making eyes at David. It is a greater thing to be able to think the heavens than it is to be the heavens. (Charles H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
Mans glory–its loss and recovery
In the apse of St. Sophias, Constantinople, the guide points out a place where there is a hidden face of Christ portrayed by some early Christian artist. When the Mohammedan conqueror possessed himself of that noble Christian temple he ordered all Christian symbols to be effaced. This beautiful head of Christ was covered over with canvas. When the Christian conqueror again enters the gates of Constantinople the canvas will doubtless be torn away and this bit of early Christian art be brought to light and restored; and let but the gates of the city of mans soul be opened to the conquering King, and his Lord shall strip away the sins that hide Gods glory in these fleshly temples, and the resplendent image of God shall be seen in men once more.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 5. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels] The original is certainly very emphatic: vattechasserchu meat meelohim, Thou hast lessened him for a little time from God. Or, Thou hast made him less than God for a little time. See these passages explained at large in the notes on Heb 2:6, &c., which I need not repeat here.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thou hast in and through Christ mercifully and wonderfully restored man to his primitive and happy estate, in which he was but one remove below the angels; from which he was fallen by sin.
Hast crowned him, i.e. man, fallen and lost man; who is indeed actually crowned and restored to the glory and dominion here following, not in his own person, but in Christ his Head and Representative, who received this crown and dominion, not so much for himself, who did not need it, as for mans good and in his stead; which also he will in due time communicate unto all his members. And so the two differing expositions of this place concerning mankind and concerning Christ may be reconciled. For he speaks of that happy and honourable estate by Gods favour conferred first upon Christ, of whom therefore this place is rightly expounded, Heb 2:6-8; and then by his hands upon mankind, even upon all that believe in him. And so this whole place compared with that may be thus paraphrased: What is man, that thou shouldst mind or Visit him by thy Son, whom thou hast sent into the world! who, that he might restore man to that happy and glorious estate, which was but a little below that of the angels, was pleased to take upon him mans miserable and mortal nature, and thereby to make himself (who was far above all angels, even their Lord and God) lower than the angels, mortal and miserable, for a little time; after which he was advanced to the highest honour, and to a universal dominion over all Gods works, the angels not excepted.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5-8. God has placed man next indignity to angels, and but a little lower, and has crowned him withthe empire of the world.
glory and honourarethe attributes of royal dignity (Psa 21:5;Psa 45:3). The position assignedman is that described (Ge1:26-28) as belonging to Adam, in his original condition, theterms employed in detailing the subjects of man’s dominioncorresponding with those there used. In a modified sense, in hispresent fallen state, man is still invested with some remains of thisoriginal dominion. It is very evident, however, by the apostle’sinspired expositions (Heb 2:6-8;1Co 15:27; 1Co 15:28)that the language here employed finds its fulfilment only in thefinal exaltation of Christ’s human nature. There is no limit to the”all things” mentioned, God only excepted, who “putsall things under.” Man, in the person and glorious destiny ofJesus of Nazareth, the second Adam, the head and representative ofthe race, will not only be restored to his original position, butexalted far beyond it. “The last enemy, death,” throughfear of which, man, in his present estate, is “all his lifetimein bondage” [Heb 2:15],”shall be destroyed” [1Co15:26]. Then all things will have been put under his feet,”principalities and powers being made subject to him” [1Pe3:22]. This view, so far from being alien from the scope of thepassage, is more consistent than any other; for man as a race cannotwell be conceived to have a higher honor put upon him than to be thusexalted in the person and destiny of Jesus of Nazareth. And at thesame time, by no other of His glorious manifestations has God moreillustriously declared those attributes which distinguish His namethan in the scheme of redemption, of which this economy forms such animportant and essential feature. In the generic import of thelanguage, as describing man’s present relation to the works of God’shands, it may be regarded as typical, thus allowing not only theusual application, but also this higher sense which the inspiredwriters of the New Testament have assigned it.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,…. Than Elohim, “than God”, as this word usually signifies: and could it be interpreted of man, as made by God, it might be thought to refer to the creation of him in the image and likeness of God; but as it must be understood of the human nature of Christ, it may regard the wonderful union of it to the Son of God, on account of which it is called by the same name, Lu 1:35; and so made but a little lower than God, being next unto him, and in so near an union with a divine Person; and which union is hypostatical or personal, the human nature being taken into a personal union with the Son of God: and so these words give an instance of God’s marvellous regard to it; and contain a reason, proving that he has been mindful of it, and visited it. Though rather this clause refers to the humiliation of Christ in his human nature, as it is interpreted in Heb 2:9; and so it removes an objection, as it is connected with the following clause, which might be made against what had been observed in Ps 8:4, on account of the low estate of Christ’s human nature, when here on the earth; and the sense is, that God has been mindful of it, and visited it, notwithstanding its state of humiliation for a little while, seeing he has crowned it with glory and honour, c. Christ was made low as to nature, place, estate, reputation, and life he who was the most high God, in the form of God, and equal to him in the divine nature, was made frail mortal flesh, and was in the form of a servant in the human nature. He who dwelt on high, and lay in the bosom of his Father, descended into the lower parts of the earth, was formed in the womb of a virgin, and when born was laid in a manager, and dwelt and conversed with sinful mortal men upon earth: he who was Lord of all, whose is the earth, and the fulness of it, had not where to lay his head: he whose glory was the glory of the only begotten of the Father, became a worm and no man in the esteem of men, was despised and rejected of men, and was of no reputation: and he who was the Lord of life and glory was crucified and killed; becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Such is the nature of Christ’s humiliation, expressed by being “made low”; the degree of it is, “lower than Elohim”, than God: he was equal to him in the divine nature, but inferior to him in the human nature, Joh 14:28. As Mediator he was the servant of God, and the servant is not greater than his master; nor as such so great: and he was in his low estate in such a condition as to need the help and assistance of God, which he had in the day of salvation: and especially he was lower when he, was deserted by him, Mt 27:46. Agreeably to which, some render the words, as they will bear to be rendered, “thou didst make him want God”, or “didst deprive”, or “bereave him of God” i; that is, of the gracious presence of God: and so Christ was made lower than God in nature, office, and condition. Sometimes the word “Elohim” is used for civil magistrates, as in Ps 82:6; because they are in God’s stead, and represent him; and, on account of their majesty, authority, and power, bear some resemblance to him. Now Christ was made lower than they, inasmuch as he not only taught obedience to them, but obeyed them himself, was a servant of rulers, paid tribute to them, and suffered himself to be examined, tried, judged, and condemned by them; but since the word is rendered “angels” by the Chaldee paraphrase, the Septuagint interpreters, the Jewish commentators, Aben Ezra, Jarchi, Kimchi, and Ben Melech, and in the Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions, and above all by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, it is best to interpret it of them: and Christ was made lower than they by assuming human nature, which is inferior to theirs, especially in the corporeal part of it; and more so, inasmuch as it was attended with infirmities, and subject to sorrows and griefs; and as it was sometimes reduced to great extremes, and to want the comforts of life; and sometimes was in such distress as to need the assistance and ministration of angels, which it had, Mt 4:11; and particularly it was lower than they when deserted by God, whose face they always behold. To which may be added, that Christ was made under, a law given by the disposition of angels, ordained by them, and is called “the word” spoken by them; some parts of which they are not subject to; but the particular instance the apostle observes is suffering of death, Heb 2:9; which angels are not liable to, they die not. The duration of this low estate was “a little while”; for so the Hebrew word may be rendered, as it is in
Ps 37:10, and the Greek , used by the Septuagint, and the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, as it is in Ac 5:34; which refers either to the time of suffering death, and lying under the power of that and the grave, which was but a little time; or at most to the days of his flesh, reaching from his incarnation to his resurrection; which was a course but of a few years, and may very well be expressed in this manner. And to this low estate was Christ brought by Jehovah the Father, who is the person spoken of throughout the psalm; he preordained him to it, prepared a body for him, sent him in the fulness of time, made of a woman, made under the law, and had a very great hand in his sufferings and death: though all was with Christ’s full consent, and with his free good will;
and hast crowned him with glory and honour; by raising him from the dead, and setting him at his own right hand, committing all judgment to him; and requiring all creatures, angels and men, to give worship and adoration to him. And this being in consequence of his sufferings, after he had run the race, and endured a fight of afflictions; and because of the greatness of his glory and honour, with which he was as it were on all sides surrounded, he is said to be “crowned” with it; who a little before was crowned with thorns, and encompassed with the terrors of death and hell. This respects his mediatorial glory.
i – “et deficere facies” (“vel facisti”, Pagninus) “eum paululum a Deo”, Montanus; “destitui quidem eum voluisti paululum a Deo”, Michaelis; “carere eum fecisti Deo parumper”, Gejerus.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
5. Thou hast made him little lower. The Hebrew copulative כי , ki, I have no doubt, ought to be translated into the causal particle for, seeing the Psalmist confirms what he has just now said concerning the infinite goodness of God towards men, in showing himself near to them, and mindful of them. In the first place, he represents them as adorned with so many honors as to render their condition not far inferior to divine and celestial glory. In the second place, he mentions the external dominion and power which they possess over all creatures, from which it appears how high the degree of dignity is to which God hath exalted them. I have, indeed, no doubt but he intends, by the first, (149) the distinguished endowments which clearly manifest that men were formed after the image of God, and created to the hope of a blessed and immortal life. The reason with which they are endued, and by which they can distinguish between good and evil; the principle of religion which is planted in them; their intercourse with each other, which is preserved from being broken up by certain sacred bonds; the regard to what is becoming, and the sense of shame which guilt awakens in them, as well as their continuing to be governed by laws; all these things are clear indications of pre-eminent and celestial wisdom. David, therefore, not without good reason, exclaims that mankind are adorned with glory and honor. To be crowned, is here taken metaphorically, as if David had said, he is clothed and adorned with marks of honor, which are not far removed from the splendor of the divine majesty. The Septuagint render אלהים, Elohim, by angels, of which I do not disapprove, since this name, as is well known, is often given to angels, and I explain the words of David as meaning the same thing as if he had said, that the condition of men is nothing less than a divine and celestial state. But as the other translation seems more natural, and as it is almost universally adopted by the Jewish interpreters, I have preferred following it. Nor is it any sufficient objection to this view, that the apostle, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, (Heb 2:7) quoting this passage, says, little less than the angels, and not than God; (150) for we know what freedoms the apostles took in quoting texts of Scripture; not, indeed, to wrest them to a meaning different from the true one but because they reckoned it sufficient to show, by a reference to Scripture, that what they taught was sanctioned by the word of God, although they did not quote the precise words. Accordingly, they never had any hesitation in changing the words, provided the substance of the text remained unchanged.
There is another question which it is more difficult to solve. While the Psalmist here discourses concerning the excellency of men, and describes them, in respect of this, as coming near to God, the apostle applies the passage to the humiliation of Christ. In the first place, we must consider the propriety of applying to the person of Christ what is here spoken concerning all mankind; and, secondly, how we may explain it as referring to Christ’s being humbled in his death, when he lay without form or beauty, and as it were disfigured under the reproach and curse of the cross. What some say, that what is true of the members may be properly and suitably transferred to the head, might be a sufficient answer to the first question; but I go a step farther, for Christ is not only the first begotten of every creature, but also the restorer of mankind. What David here relates belongs properly to the beginning of the creation, when man’s nature was perfect. (151) But we know that, by the fall of Adam, all mankind fell from their primeval state of integrity, for by this the image of God was almost entirely effaced from us, and we were also divested of those distinguishing gifts by which we would have been, as it were, elevated to the condition of demigods; in short, from a state of the highest excellence, we were reduced to a condition of wretched and shameful destitution. In consequence of this corruption, the liberality of God, of which David here speaks, ceased, so far, at least, as that it does not at all appear in the brilliancy and splendor in which it was manifested when man was in his unfallen state. True, it is not altogether extinguished; but, alas! how small a portion of it remains amidst the miserable overthrow and ruins of the fall. But as the heavenly Father hath bestowed upon his Son an immeasurable fullness of all blessings, that all of us may draw from this fountain, it follows that whatever God bestows upon us by him belongs of fight to him in the highest degree; yea, he himself is the living image of God, according to which we must be renewed, upon which depends our participation of the invaluable blessings which are here spoken of. If any person object that David first put the question, What is man? because God has so abundantly poured forth his favor upon a creature, so miserable, contemptible, and worthless; but that there is no cause for such admiration of God’s favor for Christ, who is not an ordinary man, but the only begotten Son of God. The answer is easy, and it is this: What was bestowed upon Christ’s human nature was a free gift; nay, more, the fact that a mortal man, and the son of Adam, is the only Son of God, and the Lord of glory, and the head of angels, affords a bright illustration of the mercy of God. At the same time, it is to be observed, that whatever gifts he has received ought to be considered as proceeding from the free grace of God, so much the more for this reason, that they are intended principally to be conferred upon us. His excellence and heavenly dignity, therefore, are extended to us also, seeing it is for our sake he is enriched with them.
What the apostle therefore says in that passage concerning the abasement of Christ for a short time, is not intended by him as an explanation of this text; but for the purpose of enriching and illustrating the subject on which he is discoursing, he introduces and accommodates to it what had been spoken in a different sense. The same apostle did not hesitate, in Rom 10:6, in the same manner to enrich and to employ, in a sense different from their original one, the words of Moses in Deu 30:12 :
“
Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?”
etc. The apostle, therefore, in quoting this psalm, had not so much an eye to what David meant; but making an allusion to these words, Thou hast made him a little lower; and again, Thou hast crowned him with honor, he applies this diminution to the death of Christ, and the glory and honor to his resurrection. (152) A similar account may be given of Paul’s declaration in Eph 4:8, in which he does not so much explain the meaning of the text, (Psa 68:18) as he devoutly applies it, by way of accommodation, to the person of Christ.
(149) “ Qu’il n’entende par la premier.” — Fr.
(150) Certainly the fact that Paul uses the word angels instead of God, does not prove the inaccuracy of Calvin’s rendering. As the Septuagint version was in general use among the Jews in the time of Paul, he very naturally quotes from it just as we do from our English version. And this was sufficient for his purpose. His object was, to answer an objection which the Jews brought against the Christian dispensation, as being inferior to the Mosaic, inasmuch as angels were mediators of the latter, while the mediator or head of the former was in their estimation but a man. This objection he answers from their own Scriptures, and quotes this psalm to show, that Christ, in his human nature, was little inferior to the angels, and that he is exalted far above them in respect of the glory and dominion with which he is crowned. If the apostle had quoted from the Hebrew Scriptures, and used אלהים, Elohim, God, meaning the Most High, his argument in support of the dignity of Christ in human nature would have been still stronger. – See Stuart’s Commentary on the Hebrews, vol. 2, pp. 68-71.
(151) “ Lorsque la nature de l’humain n’estoit point encore corrompue.” — Fr. “When the nature of man was not yet corrupted.”
(152) “ Tu l’as fait un peu moindre; puis Tu l’as couronne d’honneur, il approprie ceste diminution a la mort de Christ, et la gloire et bonneur a la resurrection.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(5) The Hebrew poet dwells on neither of these aspects, but at once passes on to the essential greatness of man and his superiority in creation, by reason of his moral sense and his spiritual likeness to God. Another English poet sings to the stars:
Tis to be forgiven
That, in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies oerleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you.
BYRON: Childe Harold.
But the psalmist looks beyond the bright worlds to a higher kinship with God Himself.
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.Literally, thou makest him want but a little from God: i.e., hast made him little less than Divine. We should read, however, instead of for thou, and thou hast made, &c. The Authorised Version follows the LXX. in a translation suggested doubtlessly by the desire to tone down an expression about the Deity that seemed too bold. That version was adopted in his quotation by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. 2:6-7). (See Note in New Testament Commentary.) Undoubtedly the word Elohim, being used to express a class of supernatural beings, includes angels as well as the Divine being (1Sa. 28:13; Zec. 12:8). But here there is nothing in the context to suggest limitation to one part of that class.
Crowned.Or, compassed.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
5. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels Hebrew, Thou hast made him less, a little from, or than, God. Man, physically compared, is inferior to the wide creation; but another point of comparison restores him to his true rank. The Septuagint translates , ( God,) by , angels; so, also, the Chaldee, Vulgate, the ancient Jewish, and some modern interpreters. So, also, our English Version. But this is a gloss and not a translation, and is not satisfactorily sustained by Hebrew usage. Elohim is used to denote kings, judges, princes, as representing God in dominion and authority. See Exo 21:6; Exo 22:8-9; Exo 22:28; Psa 82:1; Psa 82:6; Psa 95:3; Psa 97:7; Psa 97:9; Psa 138:1. In Psa 96:4-5, it means false gods, “gods of the nations.” In Gen 3:5, it means the true God, not “gods.” In 1Sa 28:13, it seems to be used for a godlike form: “I saw a godlike form ascending,” etc. The rendering, “Thou hast made him little less than a god,” gives no sense, or, if any, a false one. “Remove him little from divinity; that is, from a divine and heavenly, or at least from a superhuman state,” (Alexander,) is too vague for satisfaction. Whatever may be the interpretation, Elohim must be rendered God, and the comparison must lie between man and God. Nor is this without authority. The statement of the psalmist is based directly on Gen 1:27: “God created man in his own image.” Here is the foundation of the comparison, and of the asserted dignity of man. The idea is, not that man is only a little removed from the absolute Godhead, but that, in the original idea and purpose of God, he is the closest resemblance of God in endowments, the first in rank of created beings. Besides, , Septuagint , ( a little,) may signify for a little time, as the quotation of the apostle, Heb 2:9, certainly does mean. In Heb 2:7 this passage is quoted from the Septuagint, not the Hebrew. It is a free quotation, ad sensum, without an attempt at verbal accuracy, the Greek version being used because at that time more widely read and better understood than the Hebrew text. Professor Stuart thinks, that the placing of man below the angels sufficed for the apostle’s argument without raising a question on the Greek text, though in doing so he claimed less for the argument than would have been claimed by insisting that the word Elohim should be interpreted God,” as in the Hebrew. To this it must be added that the apostle, in Psa 8:7, ranks not the original dignity of man below that of angels, but only his earthly state. So Christ ranks “ , for a little while, lower than the angels for the suffering of death.” But the sequel of the argument shows that by his resurrection, ascension, and regal enthronement at the right hand of God, he carries our human nature above the rank of angels, and thus illustrates the ultimate dignity of man, according to our text.
Glory and honour Two words nearly synonymous, and united for emphasis, expressive here, as often, of kingly majesty. Psa 21:5. See note on Psa 97:7.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 8:5. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels Him, that is, the Son of Man, spoken of in the preceding verse. This, as well as the following verse, is applied by the apostle to the Hebrews to our Saviour, chap. Psa 2:7 where we shall enlarge upon it: see also 1Co 15:27. Instead of a little lower, &c. some would render the Hebrew word, meat, for a little time lower than the angels: for, say they, as it is Jesus Christ who is here treated of, and as the words relate to the time of his abasement, we cannot say that he was made but a little lower than the angels, since he then appeared under the form of a servant, and was a worm rather than a man; but he was so only for a little time. See Php 2:6-8.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
These verses come in with greater fulness, to explain and to confirm what went before: how the Son of God was made a little, or for a little space, lower than the angels, during his incarnation and ministry upon earth. For, as the Covenant-head of his church and people, he was before all things, and by him all things did consist, consequently he was above angels. His goings forth were of old, from everlasting. He was the first born of every creature, saith the apostle, the image of the invisible God, the appointed heir of all things, and by whom God made the worlds. Now all these can only refer to Christ as Mediator, both God and man in one Person. His name, Mediator, is suited to both his natures, and not separate from either, but in the union of both forming one Christ. Hence the Psalmist, in contemplating the wonders of redemption, and by such a wonderful way, thus exclaims, What is man, that thou art mindful of him!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 8:5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Ver. 5. For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels ] Compare here with Heb 2:6-7 , and it will appear that whatsoever is spoken here of man is applied to Christ, and so is proper to the saints, by virtue of their union with Christ; in which respect they are more glorious, saith one, than heaven, angels, or any creature. This is their dignity; and for their duty, they must therefore give the more earnest heed to the doctrine of the gospel, lest at any time they should leak, or let slip the same, but retain and obey it. This is the apostle’s own inference, Heb 2:5-7 , for thus he argueth: Unto the angels God hath not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak; but to man (for whose sake the Son of God came in the flesh, for whose sake the gospel was preached, for whose sake we speak of that world to come) he hath; therefore it behoveth man to observe and obey the gospel.
And hast crowned him with glory and honour
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the angels. Hebrew. Elohim. See App-4. Rendered “angels” in Heb 2:7; also here, in Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic. See also Psa 97:7. Heb 1:6.
crowned, &c. This refers to “the second man”. See notes on Heb 2:8, and 2Pe 1:17.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Psa 8:5-6
Psa 8:5-6
“For thou has made him but little lower than God,
And crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet:”
“A little lower than God.” We mention what we considered errors in the English Revised Version (1885) and American Standard Version renditions of the first verse; but here we must confess the superiority of those later versions over older renditions. Those older translations were unduly influenced by the Septuagint (LXX) which mistranslated “Elohim,” reading it as “angels” instead of “God.” More on this below.
Look at some of the other reasons for man’s unique place in the Creation of God: (3) God created him but a little lower than Himself and in his very image! (4) He crowned him with glory and honor, and (5) He put all things under man’s feet, giving him dominion over God’s works!
“But a little lower than God …” The Septuagint (LXX) mistranslated this passage, making it read, “But a little lower than the angels”; and, as the Septuagint (LXX) was the common Bible known by many in Jesus’ ministry, it is thus quoted in Heb 2:6-8 f. However, “The Hebrew word which the Septuagint (LXX) renders as “angels” is actually “[~’Elohiym],” meaning “God”; and there can be no doubt of the correct rendition. This error, however, has not been a damaging one, because angels themselves are very high beings, and it is also true that we “for a little while” are made lower than the angels also, being at the same time lower than God.
The author of Heb 2:6-8 gives a temporal sense to verse 5a, making 5b a contrast rather than a parallel, expressing man’s lordship of the world to come, not as yet realized, it is true, but guaranteed to us by the fact that Jesus is already crowned!
It must be realized, of course, that all of the great honors and privileges with which man was endowed by the Creator are not at all fully realized in our present world because of the consequence of the fall of the Adamic race in Eden and the continued rebellion and wickedness of Adam’s foolish posterity. All of the promises and glories mentioned here were for man, as God created him, not as he became when he repudiated the benign government of God and chose to become a servant of the devil.
Jesus Christ, however, entered our earth life, overcame all sin and wickedness, brought the prospect of eternal life to as many as would receive him, love him, and obey him. He has now sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High in full possession of “all authority in heaven and upon earth” (Mat 28:18-20).
It would seem that the Psalmist here had no intention of writing a Psalm depicting the Coming of God’s Messiah to bless humanity; but in Heb 2:6-8 it is categorically stated that all that was intended in the creation of man was fulfilled only in Jesus Christ our Lord. He was the only human ever born who was in every way and at all times exactly what God created man to be.
Whatever fulfillment of this marvelous Psalm for our human race that may lie in the future, must come though Jesus Christ and through him alone. Even then, mortal men will be saved eternally and share the glory of Christ himself only as they consent to be his followers and obey him.
But for those who do indeed accept the available salvation, they shall actually partake of the glory of Christ himself in the very throne of God.
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 8:5. Little lower than the angels referred to man’s nature being subject to death while the angels could not die. Notwithstanding his mortal body, man had been given glory and honor above that of the angels. It will be described in the following paragraph.
Psa 8:6-8. This refers to the time when God placed mankind over the works of creation. Please read Gen 1:26-28.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels
In Psalms 2. Christ was presented as Jehovah’s Son and King, rejected and crucified but yet to reign in Zion. In Psalms 8, while His deity is fully recognized (Psa 8:1), Psalms 110 with Mat 22:41-46 He is seen as Son of man Psa 8:4-6 who, “made for a little while lower than the angels, ” is to have dominion over the redeemed creation Heb 2:6-11. The authority here is racial and Adamic, rather than purely divine as in Psalms 2, or Davidic as in Psalms 89. That which the first man lost, the second man and “last Adam” more than regained. Heb 2:6-11 in connection with Psalms 8, and Rom 8:17-21 show that the “many sons” whom He is bringing to glory, are joint heirs with Him in both the royal right of Psalms 2. and the human right of Hebrews 2. See Psalms 16, next in order of the Messianic Psalms.
angel (See Scofield “Heb 1:4”).
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
The Greatness of Man
For thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honour.Psa 8:5.
1. This Eighth Psalm seems to belong to the time when David had charge of his fathers flocks, rather than to any other period of his life. We may agree with Delitzsch and others that probably none of the Davidic Psalms in the Psalter were composed until after he was anointed king, and became the sweet psalmist of Israel (2Sa 23:1, R.V.). But that does not forbid our finding here a vivid reminiscence of some brilliant night on the hills of Bethlehem, when the shepherd youth lifted up his soul to God, praising Him for the glory of the heavens, and, even more, for the honour He has bestowed upon man. It is probable that many of the Psalms were written in the tranquil old age of the royal singer, recalling the most remarkable events of his earlier life, and reproducing the thoughts and emotions that had then stirred mightily within him, and to some extent the very words in which they had found expression.
It is an evening song, the carol of the nightingale rejoicing in the sheen of the moon and the stars. Yet we may be sure that the soul of the singer was flooded with the sunlight of Divine grace and favour. It is a lyrical episode to the grand lyric of the creation, touching it at the story of the fourth and sixth of the creative days. There are several kindred songs, celebrating the wonders of nature as exhibiting the perfections of God. But not one of them combines so marvellously the highest poetic beauty with inspiring suggestiveness. It touches the extreme points of Gods self-attestation to man, uniting the glory of the beginning with the greater glory of the close, the light that flashed out when there was yet no human eye to behold it, with the light of the city of the redeemed.
2. The culminating point of the Psalm is the glory originally bestowed upon man in investing him with the sovereignty over all creatures upon the earth, alluding to the Divine ordinance in Gen 1:28. The Divine work on the fourth day of creation, and the crowning work of the sixth, are brought vividly into the present, and in sharp contrast. The glory of the visible heavens with their flaming orbs seems to entitle them to higher estimation than any possible product of almighty power. But upon man, in his insignificance and feebleness, even a greater glory was bestowed, and he is invested with the highest dignity. Under God, and yet but a little lower, he is made lord over all the earth. Every tenant of land, and air, and sea, is subjected to his power.
3. Is this glorious Psalm prospective, as well as retrospective? By any legitimate interpretation, does it include within its sweep of space, and time, and power, Gods redemptive as well as His creative work? Does it contain any hint of a greater glory and a higher dignity in the future?
We think that it does most assuredly. If not distinctly in the thought of the sacred poet, it lay in the thought and purpose of God, as clearly as if already accomplished, that whenever the full glory of fellowship with God should be realized, whenever the germinal and immature living principle that he received by the Divine breathhis higher Divine natureshould attain its most perfect beauty and strength, he would indeed be lord over all in a loftier sphere. He was not made in the image of God that he might for ever be a keeper of sheep and driver of oxen, or that he might subjugate the lion, and harpoon the whale. This dominion over the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea is a parable for the future, when more absolutely, all things shall be put under his feet. His rule over the brute creation was a fact in the then present, in accordance with his capacity in the first period of his existence. It comprehends a prophecy and pledge that, whatever position he shall hereafter occupy, when the glory of his nature reaches its fullest development, and he attains fitness for higher dignity and rule, he shall be lord paramount, none above him save God only.
The purpose of Jehovah seemed to be defeated when sin entered into the world, and the indispensable conditions of spiritual growth and pre-eminence ceased to exist, but it has never been abandoned. It is realized through Christ, as Head of a new humanity, who, by uniting them to Himself, as partakers of His own life, restores to men all they had lost, whether actual or possible. They become associated with Him in the highest glory and honour.
In the light of these comments we can understand the effective use which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes of the 8th Psalm in chap. Psa 2:5-10. The splendid significance which he attributes to it is quite within its legitimate scope and meaning, in its historic connexion with the account in Genesis.
4. It is to be noticed that the familiar words of the fifth verse, For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, are changed by the Revisers into, For thou hast made him but little lower than God. No alteration can possibly be more significant. Seeing that its accuracy is indisputable, one may truthfully assert that this single correction is sufficient in itself to justify the replacement of the older version by the newer, wherever the Bible is read in public. Old association is nothing in comparison with truth. Nor can any truth be of greater importance than the difference between angels and God, as related to humanity. If it be asked why the writer of Hebrews in the second chapter refers to man as being a little lower than the angels, the answer is very simple. He was evidently quoting from memory, and his remembrance was not of the Hebrew Scriptures, but of their translation into Greek in the Septuagint. This was a version made some two centuries before Christ by a number of Jewish scholars, for the benefit of their fellow-countrymen in North Africa who had lost the use of their mother-tongue. They were probably deterred by reasons of reverence from adopting what they knew to be the exact translation, and so fell back upon a secondary meaning of the word Elohim. But timidity has no more right than rashness to rob us of that which is true. In matters of such vast import we need not only the truth, but the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is little significance or inspiration for us in the suggestion of our kinship to angels; but the whole meaning of our life, as well as all our hope beyond death, turns upon the question whether or not we are related to God. As the worth of every coin in this realm depends upon the impress of the royal image, not that of any statesman, so does the intrinsic value of human nature, together with its present duty and eternal hope, depend, not upon kinship with angels, but upon the reality of that relationship to the Divine which is so graphically set forth in the first chapter of Genesis 1 [Note: F. Ballard, Does it Matter what a Man Believes? 154.]
The race started high. At the beginning of his career mans moral and spiritual plane was but little lower than that of the Deity. Humanity is Jehovahs finest product. Gods greatest work is not a planet, a shining sun, an ether sea, a potent law, a celestial city; it is not singing angels and shining seraphim, but man. At the summit of creation God made man but little lower than God, stamped him with the Divine image, crowned him, and gave him dominion over all creatures. This is the Bible doctrine of the origin of man, and it takes us to the heights. To be a member of the human race, the Psalmist declares, is to come of a great line. It is to have Jehovah for an hereditary ancestor. It is to trace ones descent from altitudes but little lower than the lofty peaks whose dizzy heights lose themselves in the clouds of the infinite, where Divine Being has its explanation. To have the blood of man in your veins is to be dowered with a heritage of being past the price of all worlds and the glory of all angels.
One may be a very lowly, a very humble and obscure and unworthy member of this human race; he may be some unfortunate defective or cripple; he may be a vagabond on the streets, a waif without a home, a criminal in a dungeon, the victim of his own vices; but upon him there lingers the tracery of the skies and about him is the livery, though in rags, of the life that is but little lower than God. He belongs to the first family of the realm. He possesses a dignity unequalled by all material things. He has a soul; and Jesus was speaking calmly and without exaggeration when He said: What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?2 [Note: J. I. Vance, Tendency, 31.]
Hark! the Eden trees are stirring,
Slow and solemn to your hearing!
Plane and cedar, palm and fir,
Tamarisk and juniper,
Each is throbbing in vibration
Since that crowning of creation,
When the God-breath spake abroad,
Pealing down the depths of Godhead,
Let us make man like to God.
And the pine stood quivering
In the Eden-gorges wooded,
As the awful word went by;
Like a vibrant chorded string
Stretched from mountain-peak to sky!
And the cypress did expand,
Slow and gradual, branch and head;
And the cedars strong black shade
Fluttered brokenly and grand!
Grove and forest bowed aslant
In emotion jubilant.1 [Note: E. B. Browning, Drama of Exile.]
5. There are evidently two thoughts struggling together in the mind of the Psalmistthe littleness and the greatness of man. In a mind apt to pensive reflections, alive to moral truths, and responsive to the impressions of Gods great universe, the unscientific contemplation of any of the grander forms of nature produces that double effect. And certainly the grandest of them all, which is spread over our heads, forces both these thoughts upon us. They seem so far above us, they swim into their stations night after night, and look down with cold, unchanging beauty on sorrow, and hot strife, and shrieks, and groans, and death. They are so calm, so pure, so remote, so eternal. Thus David felt mans littleness. And yetand yet, bigness is not greatness, and duration is not life, and the creature that knows God is highest. So the consciousness of mans separation from and superiority to these silent stars springs up strong and victorious over the other thought.
We are shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching-out of the heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his nothingness before God; but that the sight of Gods creation will do it.2 [Note: Ruskin.]
I.
Man and Nature
1. Our knowledge of God, and our interest in Gods works and ways, should begin, not with the beginning of the Creation, or with the phenomena of the external world, but with the present relations of God to our own spirits, to ourselves personally and to mankind. What is God to us, and what are we to God? These are the questions which concern us most closely. If we can attain to a clear and firm faith on these points, we may be content to remain in some ignorance as to the mode of Gods working in nature. The trust and love which are based upon our own spiritual relations with God will not depend upon our settling how the laws of nature are made to serve the will of God, but will overflow, as it were, upon the outward world, will be ready to accommodate themselves thankfully to whatever science may disclose to us.
Take the case of the Israelites themselves, whose sacred books the ancient Scriptures were. In what character was God first and chiefly known to them? As Jehovah, the God of the Covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The young Israelite was taught, as soon as he was able to learn, that he was the subject of a righteous King, whose laws he was bound to obey. By this righteous King his race had been called out and claimed. Jehovah had been the Friend and Guide of his fathers, and by a series of mighty acts had delivered the people of Israel, and made a nation of them. The absolute allegiance of every Israelite was due to a Lord who was not to be confounded with any outward or visible thing. Worship of outward and visible things was a crime against the invisible Lord. Jehovah was the Lord of visible things, and He desired the children of the chosen seed to be also spiritually masters of visible things. He bade them serve Him and be true to Him apart from any relations with outward things; and He then promised to reward with outward things those who in spirit were loyal to Him.
The books of the New Testament are the books of a spiritual Kingdom, a Kingdom revealed in Christ, and having for its sphere the spiritual natures of men. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, manifests and declares the Father. By His death and resurrection He founds a Kingdom in which men are brought near to their Father in heaven. The Apostles go forth to proclaim this Kingdom, and their Master the Lord of it, and to invite men to enter into it and be thereby saved. The high spiritual and human importance of the Gospel would naturally make all questions relating to the physical world comparatively insignificant to those who were charged with the first promulgation of the Gospel. Accordingly, in the New Testament we find scarcely a single allusion to the earliest history of the world or of mankind. If then we are to follow such guidance all difficulties and problems about the laws of nature and the antiquity of the world and of the human race are insignificant compared with the great truths of our relation to Christ and to the Father in the Spirit.1 [Note: J. LI. Davies, The Gospel and Modern Life, 97, 101.]
There is nowhere for a moment any doubt in Christ as to what the true life of man is. He is here and now, a creature of Nature, like other creatures; but his true life is not natural, like that of the fowls of the air, or the lilies of the field. He is essentially a moral being, with relations beyond nature, and wants, and aspirations, and duties which connect him with a Divine or supernatural order. From first to last this spiritual conception underlies the Gospels, and makes itself felt in them. There is no argument, because there is no hesitation. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? The possibility of a negative answer is not supposed. The claims of the natural order, some have even thought, are unduly depressed. The spiritual life seems to overshadow and displace them. But this is only by way of emphasis, and in order to rouse men from the dreams of a mere sensual existence. After all these things do the Gentiles seekthose who know no better, to whom the meaning of the spiritual and Divine order has not come. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. The spiritual must be held in its true place as primary; after this the natural has also its place, and to be recognized in addition.2 [Note: Principal John Tulloch.]
2. Now there never has been a time when it was more necessary to keep in mind the truth that, in virtue of his relation to God, man is great above all that we call nature. For, apart altogether from the ubiquitous blight of unbelief, the rush and crush of a civilization which is essentially selfish tends to dishearten myriads, if not drive them to despair. The ever-increasing pressure of modern life tends to divide mankind more and more sharply into two classes, those who think too much of themselves and those who think too little. It were hard to say which of these classes is the more numerous, but it is not difficult to discern which is the more to be pitied. We hear often and rightly about the curse of pride. Yet there is a kind of pride which is not only holy but the very starting-point of nobility. We quote Scripture freely as to the beauty of humility, and it were doubtless unmeasured gain if all who bear the Christian name herein displayed the Christian spirit. Still there is a false as well as a true humility. There is an estimate of oneself so poor and small as to become a dangerous slope ushering down to a bottomless gulf of despair. Self-conceit is no doubt ugly enough to merit the protests it calls forth. But the opposite extreme is far worse. Self-conceit may be objectionable, but self-contempt is ruinous. The former is quite compatible with a lofty hope and a vivid sense of duty. The latter leads straight away to depression, despair, and suicide.
It is a pitiful, nay, even a tragic fact, that more men and women are found to-day than ever heretofore, echoing, whether with coarse speech or in highly intellectual reviews, the old wail of Omar Khayym
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bitsand then
Remould it nearer to the Hearts Desire!
It is verily a real gospel for to-day that can answer such doleful quatrains with an emphatic No!1 [Note: F. Ballard, Does it Matter what a Man Believes? 158.]
Oh, my Father! keep me humble. Help me to have respect towards my fellow-mento recognize their several gifts as from Thee. Deliver me from the diabolical sins of malice, envy, or jealousy, and give me hearty joy in my brothers good, in his work, in his gifts and talents; and may I be truly glad in his superiority to myself, if Thou art glorified! Root out all weak vanity, all devilish pride, all that is abhorrent to the mind of Christ. God, hear my prayer! Grant me the wondrous joy of humility, which is seeing Thee as All in All.2 [Note: Memoir of Norman MacLeod, ii. 318.]
II.
The Nobility of Man
1. What are the chief difficulties in the way of an encouraging belief in mans nobility?
(1) First, there is the absurdity, as it seems to not a few, of the Almighty caring for such a race, and therefore the possibility of the Incarnation. Which, asks Mr. Frederic Harrison, is the more deliriously extravagant, the disproportionate condescension of the Infinite Creator, or the self-complacent arrogance with which the created mite accepts, or rather dreams of, such an inconceivable prerogative? His planet is one of the least of all the myriad units in a boundless Infinity; in the countless aeons of time he is one of the latest and the briefest; of the whole living world on the planet, since the ages of the primitive protozoon, man is but an infinitesimal fraction. In all this enormous array of life, in all these aeons, was there never anything living which specially interested the Creator, nothing that the Redeemer could care for, or die for? If so, what a waste creation must have been! Why was all this tremendous tragedy, great enough to convulse the Universe, confined to the minutest speck of it, for the benefit of one puny and very late-born race?
But is it not the fact that along with the discovery of Mans utter insignificance, there has come the discovery of powers and faculties unknown and unsuspected, so that more than ever all things are in subjection to him, his dominion has become wider, his throne more firmly established? Is it not the fact that the whole realm of Nature is explored by him, is compelled to minister to his wants, or to unfold its treasures of knowledge? Is it not the fact that more than ever it can be said
The lightning is his slave; heavens utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.
Not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of humanity is to be the glorious consummation of Natures long and tedious work. Man seems now, much more clearly than ever, the chief among Gods creatures. The whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of Gods handiwork, the Human Soul.1 [Note: J. Fiske, Mans Destiny, 31.]
This earth too small
For Love Divine! Is God not Infinite?
If so, His Love is infinite. Too small!
One famished babe meets pity oft from man
More than an army slain! Too small for Love!
Was Earth too small to be of God created?
Why then too small to be redeemed?1 [Note: Aubrey de Vere.]
(2) How is the man who knows himself to be but commonplace, and is daily driven to take his chance in the crushing crowd of the unprivileged and unknown, to find hope and inspiration? This, it must ever be remembered, is the type of doubt which most of all prevails. It is well for the aristocracy, in body or mind or position, to descant upon the pleasures of life, and extol its delightful opportunities. Unfortunately, under present social conditions, the rank and file of humanity scarcely know what these mean. Surely it is one of the most monstrous and cruel anomalies of civilization that the vast majority of our fellows should be toiling through hard, drab, dreary lives, in order that a minority may have chances of sipping lifes nectar which are inevitably denied to themselves. Who would not feel inspired if, with Ruskin, we could travel luxuriously through all Europes fascinations of nature and art? Would not myriads of poor, overworked men and women be invigorated if they could winter at Davos Platz, or escape the cutting winds of spring by a sojourn in the Riviera, or flee from the depressions of a wet summer to the sunny South of France? But these reliefs and enjoyments, we know, are for the favoured few. If amongst such, ennui and depression oft prevail, and globe-trotting millionaires find a disposition to suicide, how are the struggling many to keep heart amidst their wearing and wearying monotonies?
Yet the humblest hind or the poorest struggler in the slums may, if he will, herein congratulate himself that he is crowned with glory and honour. And if parsons are not pleasing to him, he may receive his crown from the hands of so competent a witness as Professor Huxley, who thus estimates that great Alps and Andes of the living worldMan: Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that Man is in substance and in structure one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech so that now he stands raised upon his accumulated experience as upon a mountain-top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting here and there a ray from the infinite source of truth.1 [Note: Huxley, Mans Place in Nature, 76.] More than that. The lowliest pauper may not only say with Descartes, I think, therefore I am, but may quote the Psalmist in additionI am but little lower than God. For, accepting the testimony of latest science as just quoted, we know of no thinker in the universe save God and ourselves. Our power to think, compared with His, is truly both infinitesimal and derived, but it is real, and it is the medium of a kinship as valid and inspiring as is the dawning consciousness of a baby prince that his father is the king supreme in the land. How then can the man who appreciates such relationship to the Divine be driven even by modern cynicism into self-contempt? In his possession of mind he is, in very deed, the son of the King of kings.
There is, however, by all acknowledgment, something higher than mind. Intellectual power is one thing; moral character is another. To-day, happily, no one dare say, in respectable society, that so long as a man is clever it does not matter whether he is good. The folly which openly declares that there are no good and there are no bad2 [Note: Editors reply in The Clarion to Rev. C. Noel.] needs no disproof. For it not only contradicts itself,3 [Note: Not Guilty, 260.] but in putting an end to the possibility of morality it makes itself as contemptible as degrading. F. W. Robertson was immeasurably more true and worthy of regard when he wrote in his diary, I resolve to believe in myself, and in the powers which God has given me. Such a resolve, no less humble than potent, is based not upon promises, but upon facts equally undeniable and immeasurable. Besides God, so far as our knowledge extends, no other than man can say I will. That he can and does so determine, is beyond controversy, for it is hourly consciousness. But such moral freedom marks man out from all the known universe as but little less than Divine.4 [Note: F. Ballard, Does it Matter what a Man Believes? 174.]
No human life is perfect, not one is without its limitation, but David Hill so followed Christ that he was known as His. In China the life he lived was recognized by the Chinese as corresponding to the Life he preached, and they called him The little Jesus. A few days after the news of his death was cabled to this country, a relative of his, herself the daughter of a Fijian missionary, met the writer, and we spoke together of our dear friend. Suddenly, looking at me with tearful eyes, she challenged me. You knew him, she said, well; was he not like Jesus Christ? The question was unexpected, but like a flash came the perception that only one answer was possibleYes, he was like Jesus Christ.1 [Note: J. E. Hellier, Life of David Hill, 74.]
(3) But the chief difficulty is sin and the fruits of it. What then? Are we to abandon in despair our hopes for our fellows, and to smile with quiet incredulity at the rhapsodies of sanguine theorists like David? If we are to confine our view to earthyes. But there is more to see than the sad sights around us. All these menthese imperfect, degraded, half-brutified menhave their share in our Psalm. They have gone out and wasted their substance in riotous living; but from the swine-trough and the rags they may come to the best robe and the feast in the fathers house. The veriest barbarian, with scarcely a spark of reason or a flickering beam of conscience, sunken in animal delights, and vibrating between animal hopes and animal fearsto him may belong the wondrous attributes; to be visited by God, crowned with glory and honour, higher than all stars, and lord of all creatures.
I see Jesus; and my most vexing questions are answered, my most grievous misgivings dispelled.
I contrast my littleness and weakness with the vastness of the material world round about me, and with the inexorable action of natural law, and I am sorely disquieted; what am I among these constellations and systems and irresistible forces? But He redeems me at a tremendous cost, and I know that I must be a thing of price.
I look at my solitude in the midst of the millions who people the universe; and again I am filled with perplexity and foreboding. But He loves me and gives Himself for me; He sanctifies and keeps and chastens and cleanses meme apart from all others. So I am comforted, for I understand that I am not forgotten.
I think of my guiltiness and sin in the presence of the holy law; and this thought begets still keener doubts and worse alarms. But His Cross assures me that there are remembrance and forgiveness and welcome for guilty men. It justifies me altogether. It solves my every difficulty, victoriously, touchingly, divinely.
I am saddened by the shortness and transitoriness of my life; once more trouble is born within my soul. But then there rises in front of me the sight of Him who has conquered death as my Representative and Forerunner, leaving behind Him a rifled and empty grave. Here is the very consolation for which I yearn.
The vision of Jesus is indeed the medicine for all my distresses. It never fails to effect a cure. It ends my every sickness, solves my every riddle, peoples my every desolation, defeats my every dread.1 [Note: A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence, 189.]
2. Two facts are to be taken into account. And when both are reckoned with then we know that man is indeed and in truth but little lower than God.
(1) The first fact is Creation.Turn to that noble archaic record, Gen 1:26-28, which transcends the imaginings of modern science as far as it does those legends of creation which make the heathen literature with which they are incorporated incredible. Its simplicity, its sublimity, its fitness attest its origin and authority to be Divine. God created man in his own image (Gen 1:27). There we have the Divine likeness. Our mental and moral nature is made on the same plan as Gods: the Divine in miniature. Truth, love, and purity, like the principles of mathematics, are the same in us as in Him. If it were not so, we could not know or understand Him. But since it is so, it has been possible for Him to take on Himself our naturepossible also that we shall be one day transformed to the perfect image of His beauty.
But we must notice that it is in relation to God, because of the Divine likeness, not in himself, that man is great. One of the ablest attempts to supersede Christianity is that which goes by the name of Positivism or the Religion of Humanity, which sets Man on the throne of the universe, and makes of him the sole object of worship. A helper of men outside Humanity, said the late Professor Clifford, the Truth will not allow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines of the Superhuman Deity fade slowly away from before us, and, as the mist of His Presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure, of Him who made all gods and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the face of our Father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in His eyes, and says, Before Jehovah was, I am.
The Great Being, Humanity, is only an abstraction. There is no such thing in reality, Principal Caird reminds us, as an animal which is no particular animal, a plant which is no particular plant, a man or humanity which is no individual man. It is only a fiction of the observers mind. There is logical force as well as humorous illustration in the contention of Dean Page Roberts, that there is no more a humanity apart from individual men and women than there is a great being apart from all individual dogs, which we may call Caninity, or a transcendent Durham ox, apart from individual oxen, which may be named Bovinity. Nor does the geniality of Mr. Chesterton render his argument the less telling: It is evidently impossible to worship Humanity, just as it is impossible to worship the Savile Club: both are excellent institutions, to which we may happen to belong. But we perceive clearly that the Savile Club did not make the stars and does not fill the universe. And it is surely unreasonable to attack the doctrine of the Trinity as a piece of bewildering mysticism, and then to ask men to worship a being who is ninety million persons in one God, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.1 [Note: P. MAdam Muir, Modern Substitutes for Christianity, 112.]
(2) The second fact is Redemption.Man looks not at the face of the stars, but into the faces of his fellow-men. He looks down into his own guilty heart and darkened mind. He looks at fallen, sinful human nature. He sees man imbruted, besotted, his face written over with the ruin of Gods law, and his powers eaten out with lust, and he says: It cannot be. The song is false. Man is too vile to claim the care of the holy God, and the old doubt breaks forth afresh.
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Jesus is the triumphant vindication of the high origin of man. He came to reveal God, to tear aside the veil human fear had woven across the face of Deity. He succeeded, and said, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. But He came also to reveal man, to tear away the disguises sin had woven around the human, to show the higher, the finer, the Divine possibilities there are for every soul in Him. He has succeeded here also. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. We see the worlds vastness and mans littleness, and say, What is man that thou art mindful of him? We see Gods holiness and mans sinfulness, and say, What is man that thou art mindful of him? Then we see Jesus. We see how low Divine love can stoop and how high it can lift; and once more the ancient song arises without a broken note
Thou hast made him but little lower than God!
Thou hast, O Lord, a wondrous plan,
To build a tower to reach the skies;
Its base is earth, its progress man,
Its summit sacrifice.
Tis only for the summits sake
Thou layest the foundation-stone;
The mornings of creation break
For sacrifice alone.
Thou wouldst not have prepared one star
To float upon the azure main,
Hadst Thou not witnessed from afar
The Lamb that should be slain.
Thou wouldst not have infused Thy life
Into the insect of an hour,
Hadst Thou not seen neath natures strife
Thy sacrificial flower.
To Him that wears the cross of pain
Thou leadest all Thine ages on;
Through cloud and storm, through wind and rain,
Through sense of glories gone.
Thou wilt not let me live alone;
Thou wilt not let me keep my rest;
Thy blast on every tree has blown
To throw me on Thy breast.
Thou madest me for Him whose love
From dawn to eve made His will Thine,
And all my ages only move
Within that light to shine.1 [Note: G. Matheson, Sacred Songs, 13.]
The creation was the work of a word. The redemption was the work of a lifeof a life of self-denial, of a death on the Cross. The creation cost God nothing. The redemption cost the death of His Son, and all that that death implied. Measure the distance between the words Let there be light and the words Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, and that will show the interval which separates the value of the created universe from the value of man. Christians can ask no other measure of the greatness of the human soul. Christians can ask no further proof of the infinite importance of human life and human action. The self-conquests that seem so small, the resistance to temptation, the triumphs over besetting sin, the keeping of the temper, the sacrifice of self, the adherence to truthmeasure them by their share in the Cross of Christ, and see who can call them little things. And in this, too, as in so much else, revelation does but proclaim what is ever whispered in the inmost shrine of the spirit given to man. The creation that we see is vast, and its forces are mighty, but vaster far and mightier far out of all comparison are those eternal differences between right and wrong on which rest for ever the feet of the throne of God.2 [Note: Archbishop Temple.] [Note: The Great Texts of the Bible: Job to Psalm XXIII, ed. James Hastings (New York; Edinburgh: Charles Scribner’s Sons; T&T Clark, 1913), 113-244.]
Literature
Alexander (J. A.), The Gospel of Jesus Christ, 512.
Ballard (F.), Does it Matter what a Man Believes? 154.
Barton (G. A.), The Boots of Christian Teaching, 45.
Bersier (E.), Sermons, vi. 203.
Davies (J. Ll.), The Gospel and Modern Life, 88.
Hodge (C.), Princeton Sermons, 64.
Hutton (W. H.), The Lives and Legends of the English Saints, 1.
Kingsley (C.), Sermons for the Times, 129.
Lorimer (G. C), in Marylebone Presbyterian Pulpit, ii. No. 6.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions of Holy Scripture; 1 Timothy to Hebrews, 212.
Maurice (F. D.), Sermons in Country Churches, 148.
Melvill (H.), The Golden Lectures, 321.
Meyer (F. B.), The Way into the Holiest, 34.
Muir (P. M.), Modern Substitutes for Christianity, 91.
Perin (G. L.), The Sunny Side of Life, 255.
Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 189.
Sowter (G. A.), Trial and Triumph, 199.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xvii. No. 1094.
Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, ii. 81.
Christian World Pulpit, xl. 241 (Clifford); lxxii. 73 (Clayton); lxxvi. 324 (Morris).
Expositor, 3rd Ser., x. 81 (Cheyne).
Homiletic Review, xxi. 167 (Dobbs); lx. 142 (Vance).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
thou: Psa 103:20, Gen 1:26, Gen 1:27, Gen 2:7, 2Sa 14:29, Job 4:18-20, Phi 2:7, Phi 2:8, Heb 2:7, Heb 2:9, Heb 2:16
hast: Psa 21:3-5, Psa 45:1-3, Psa 45:6, Joh 13:31, Joh 13:32, Eph 1:21, Phi 2:9-11, Heb 2:9, 1Pe 1:20, 1Pe 1:21
Reciprocal: Gen 32:10 – mercies Job 41:4 – wilt thou Psa 103:4 – crowneth Dan 7:13 – one like Mat 10:31 – General Eph 4:9 – the lower Rev 19:12 – on his
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 8:5. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels Such was man as he came out of the hands of his Maker, in his primeval state. He was lower than the angels, because, by his body, he was allied to the earth, and to the beasts that perish; but as by his soul, which was spiritual and immortal, he was near akin to the angels; he might be truly said to be but a little lower than they, and was in order next to them. And hast crowned him with glory and honour Endued him with noble faculties and capacities. He that gave man his being, distinguished him from the inferior creatures, and qualified him for dominion over them, by making him wiser than the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the heaven, Job 35:1. Mans reason is his crown of glory, and he should take care not to profane that crown by perverting the use of it, nor forfeit it by acting contrary to its dictates.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
8:5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the {c} angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
(c) Concerning his first creation.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The NIV and AV versions have interpreted the Hebrew word elohim as meaning "heavenly beings" or "angels." However, this word usually refers to God Himself, and we should probably understand it in this sense here, too. [Note: Donald R. Glenn, "Psalms 8 and Hebrews 2 : A Case Study in Biblical Hermeneutics and Biblical Theology," in Walvoord: A Tribute, pp. 41-42.] God made man a little lower than Himself, in His own image that no other created beings bear. David did not say that God made man a little higher than the animals. Many scholars believe the image of God includes what God has enabled man to do, as well as what he is essentially. This includes ruling over lower forms of life (Gen 1:26) as God rules over all. God has crowned man with glory and majesty by giving him the authority to rule over creation as His agent. Of course, man has failed to do what God created him to do (Heb 2:6-8). Jesus Christ, the last Adam (1Co 15:45; 1Co 15:47), will fulfill mankind’s destiny when He returns to earth and brings all creation under His control (1Co 15:27-28).