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Praise!

 For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)

Now, this is what a Psalm is supposed to be. Praise. Worship. Gratitude. Positive to the nth degree. It’s even a praise sandwich, beginning and ending with Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! This is the sort of psalm that makes me jealous. I wish I could extemporaneously praise so well. Of course, we don’t know that David didn’t spend five years struggling with the wording of this one. I just assume that he opened his mouth and out came this, well, maybe this jig of praise, since it’s too short to be a symphony.

 Something of note in this one is the disjunctive nature of the words. Normally, when we think of music that is disjunct, it’s the notes that jump up and down (think the theme to Star Wars). In this case, it’s the words that jump: down (global), up, down, up, down, a little up, and down (global). What may be more surprising, at least from an ancient perspective, is that “Lord, our Lord” is associated with the “down.” Yes, the “You” of the rest of the psalm refers to God in both the ups and downs, but His title is tied to the earth. That might be an interesting pattern to try to follow as we write our own prayers.

Another noteworthy notion is that David’s praise of God was not at the cost of himself. What I mean by this is that while in lament psalms, David and/or other psalmists sing the “I’m a worm…” bit, David doesn’t do so here. Yes, man is a little lower than angels, but a little lower than angels is far above wormhood. In fact, part of David’s point is that God should be praised for having made man as something between the angels and the animals, and apparently closer to the angels. I know there are lots of people who want to kick man into a subbasement in comparison to the lowest of animals, but that’s not what Scripture says, and that’s not where David goes in this psalm. A lesson for us all.

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