What is man? (Psalms 8 and 144)

 

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!

You make him to rule 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 through the paths of the seas. –Psalm 8

What makes human beings special? Are we special, or merely the highest form of life we know of so far? Might there be intelligent life on other planets… more intelligent than us? If there’s not other sentient life out there among the galaxies, isn’t that a waste of such immense grandeur?

David didn’t find it to be so. He began and ended his meditation on mankind’s nature with praise for God: “O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is Your name in all the earth!” (verses 1 and 9). Mankind is not alone in the universe. We may be insufficient as an excuse for the enormity of the universe, but God is not.

Human beings are dwarfed by the universe… and also by Earth’s oceans, mountains, sequoia trees and blue whales.. yet David was principally awed by God.

He repeated his question in Psalm 144, verses 3 and 4:

O LORD, what is man, that You take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that You think of him? Man is like a mere breath; His days are like a passing shadow.

Psalms 8 and 144 look at the question of human nature from different angles. In Psalm 8, man is compared to the universe. In Psalm 144, he is compared to God.

Psalm 8 paraphrases Genesis 1:26-28, the record of humanity’s creation and our stated purpose –

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The conclusion of Psalm 8 is that human beings are higher than the animals, birds, and sea creatures over which we rule, but lower than God (or angels, as some translations say). This is borne out in the next psalm, which asks God to keep men in their place: 

Arise, O LORD, do not let man prevail;

Let the nations be judged before You.

Put them in fear, O LORD;

Let the nations know that they are but men. (Psalm 9:19-20)

Genesis 11:6 hints at mankind's capacity for greatness (and great evil) when banded together. After the great flood, men resisted God's command to "fill the earth." Rather, they wanted to stay in one place and make a name for themselves by building a city with an immense tower. Unless God in His mercy intervened, "now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them."

Psalm 144 is both a personal and general reflection. As king, David was plagued by various enemies and he sought God’s help to survive their threats. As a member of the human race he recognized humanity’s limits. The conclusion of Psalm 144 is that God is eternal, but we are finite. We have many problems in life and then an ignominious end, returning to the dust from which we’re formed.

Since David’s time, mankind has solved many problems, but matters such as climate change, hostility between nations, and interpersonal conflicts continue to make us feel puny and weak. We require God’s help to both cope with our destiny and our day-to-day troubles, large and small.

The question remains, what (and why) is man? Why does God pay attention to people who are so quickly gone, whose life spans barely register on the timeline of eternity?

David didn’t so much answer the question as simply affirm that mankind is special because God crowned it with a certain degree of glory and majesty (honor), as was the Creator’s prerogative to do.

David’s personal story made him believe God cared for him and thought about him, taken as he’d been from the sheepfolds to the throne of Israel. With God’s help he had become a mighty warrior–the giant slayer!–but he knew he wasn’t invincible. Sin had taken its toll on him personally, on his family, and on the nation he ruled. His only hope was deliverance from God.

Natural revelation matches what has been verbally conveyed through God’s law and prophecy. Men and women are significantly different from other creatures because we’re made in God’s image. We do occupy a unique position in the universe, and we are not alone. Being finite creatures, we owe our Eternal Creator praise, and we desperately need His help. We can’t get along without Him.

As Psalm 148 says, all human beings owe God praise–kings, princes, and judges; young and old, men and women. We should praise Him along with all of creation–animate and inanimate objects (angels as well as beasts, heavenly bodies and land formations), as well as forces of nature (i.e., weather systems). "Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He has also established them forever and ever; He has made a decree which will not pass away."

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Three other passages explore additional aspects of the question. Briefly:

▶Job’s “What is man?” in 7:17-20 is not full of wonder or praise, but rather bitterness and despair. Unlike those of us who can find God’s unrelenting gaze comforting (“every morning… every moment”), Job considered it tortuous because he didn’t know why he was suffering or how well he had pleased God (Job 1:1,8,22;2:3,10). The thought of God as “watcher of mankind” added to his suffering.

▶In answer to Job's question, Eliphaz’s restatement is completely without hope (Job 15:14-16). He argued that men cannot make themselves pure. He is not wrong, but has missed key bits of information. Job’s conscience told him otherwise, in accord with what we know was God’s assessment of Job.

▶Hebrews 2:5-11 applied Psalm 8 directly to the Son of Man who was made "for a little while lower than angels." This is a profound summation of the difficulty mankind has with God. We are sinners in need of a Savior. We can not stand before Him without Jesus' justifying and sanctifying work.

Next: In God's image & likeness, part 1 (Genesis 1)

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Photo credit: Johannes Plenio on Unsplash.com