Psalm 8 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 8 (1928 BCP) is a hymn of praise to the Creator whose glory fills the earth and who nevertheless remembers humanity. In the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, it completes the first day's evening portion of the Psalter. Its movement from the heavens to human dignity and the creatures entrusted to human dominion makes it a prayer of adoration, humility, and responsibility.

Text of the Psalm

The Prayer Book gives the Latin opening as Domine, Dominus noster. The asterisks mark the verse divisions used in reading or chanting:

O LORD our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world; * thou that hast set thy glory above the heavens!
2 Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies, * that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I consider thy heavens, even the work of thy fingers; * the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained;
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? * and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5 Thou madest him lower than the angels, * to crown him with glory and worship.
6 Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of thy hands; * and thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet:
7 All sheep and oxen; * yea, and the beasts of the field;
8 The fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea; * and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD our Governor, * how excellent is thy Name in all the world!

The Lord's name and the praise of the weak

The first and last verses frame the psalm with praise of the Lord's name. Between them, the singer looks at the heavens and asks why the Creator attends to human beings at all. The answer is not human self-importance: human glory is received from God and remains within a created order that belongs to him.

Verse 2 says that God has ordained strength from the mouths of babes and sucklings. The 1928 Psalter here follows the traditional English prayer-book wording. When Jesus receives the children's acclamation in the temple, Matthew records the wording as “perfected praise”:

And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased, And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?

The Gospel's use does not change the Prayer Book text; it shows how the Church hears the psalm's unlikely praise in relation to Christ. Augustine identifies the “babes and sucklings” with those still nourished in the faith and connects their praise with the children in the Gospel:

I cannot take babes and sucklings to be any other than those to whom the Apostle says, As unto babes in Christ I have given you milk to drink, not meat. Who were meant by those who went before the Lord praising Him, of whom the Lord Himself used this testimony.

Augustine's reading makes praise a school of faith rather than a reward for religious expertise. It also cautions against treating the psalm's concern for the weak as merely rhetorical: the praise of those with least social standing exposes the limits of proud self-sufficiency.

Wonder, visitation, and human dignity

The heavens, moon, and stars prompt the central question: “What is man?” The question is answered by God's mindfulness and visitation before it speaks of human dominion. John Mason Neale, an Anglican priest and hymn writer, relates the verse to divine condescension:

When, therefore, the prophet considers all these things, tending to man's salvation, the providence whereby all events work together for his good,—the Church to be his mother, the Saints to be his examples and his friends,—his thoughts are naturally carried back to the one source of all, which is the Incarnation.

Neale is offering a Christian interpretation, not a replacement for the psalm's praise of the Creator. The New Testament itself applies verses 4–6 to Christ while retaining the tension between dignity bestowed and the world not yet visibly subject to humanity:

But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.

This apostolic reading places the psalm's language of humiliation, glory, and dominion in relation to Jesus' suffering and exaltation. It should not be used to deny the psalm's plain wonder at the human creature or to turn dominion into a claim of autonomous power.

Dominion under the Creator

Verses 6–8 name domestic animals, wild animals, birds, and sea creatures. They echo the ordering of creatures in Genesis and describe a delegated rule: God remains the maker and owner, while humanity receives a task within creation.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

The Psalm does not say that creatures have no worth apart from human use; its repeated praise begins and ends with the Lord's excellent name. Neale notes the literal reference to human rule over other creatures before proposing allegorical readings:

The literal interpretation of these verses, as referring to the dominion of man over the lower creation, bestowed on Adam and confirmed to Noah, has led to the use of this Psalm in the Office in time of cattle-plague.

That nineteenth-century liturgical observation is historically specific. The text itself supplies the larger theological boundary: dominion follows God's mindfulness and crowning, and so is accountable to the Creator whose name the congregation praises.

Prayer in Evening Prayer

Psalm 8 follows Psalms 6 and 7 in the first day's Evening Prayer portion of the 1928 Psalter. The monthly Psalter thereby places lament for mercy and appeal for judgment before this doxological conclusion. In the office, the people respond to God's word with the ancient doxology:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Psalm 8's opening and closing address—“O LORD our Governor”—therefore belongs in a service whose praise is explicitly Trinitarian. The office does not turn the psalm into a proof-text. It trains worshippers to bring wonder at creation, the humility of creatureliness, and Christological faith into public praise.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 7 (1928 BCP)

External Links

• The 1928 Psalter, Psalms 1–50, Society of Archbishop Justus
• Augustine's exposition of Psalm 8, New Advent