Search Tools


 
To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm of David. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

8:2 the mouth of babes. The Lord Jesus cited this verse in rebuking the chief priests and scribes in the temple (Matthew 21:16).


8:3 thou hast ordained. God has “ordained” all the heavenly bodies and their motions; these were not established by an imaginary primeval “big bang.”


8:4 What is man. The psalmist exhibits a very modern concept of the infinite magnitude of the heavens in comparison to man.


8:4 the son of man. This is the first reference in the Bible of the phrase “son of man” (or “son of Adam”), a term used some eighty times of Himself by the Lord Jesus.


8:5 lower than the angels. Man is not, as evolutionists think, “a little higher than the apes,” but rather “a little lower than the angels.”


8:6 have dominion. This is a confirmation that God’s original “dominion mandate” (Genesis 1:26-28) is still in effect. This verse is also cited in Hebrews 2:5-8, and there is applied specifically to Christ.


8:7 beasts of the field. The terminology of the animal creation clearly hearkens back to the original dominion mandate (Genesis 1:26-28; 9:2).


8:8 paths of the seas. That there are “paths of the seas” was scientifically confirmed by Matthew Maury, the “father of oceanography and hydrography.” The godly maritime officer received the motivation for his discoveries from this and similar Scriptures.

Psalm 9 (title) Muth-labben. Muth-labben is used only here, and its meaning is said by most Hebrew scholars to be “Death of the Son.” At first, such a title seems out of context in relation to the psalm itself, until a deeper meaning is discerned. The psalm is a song of triumph, rather than death, with the wicked destroyed forever (Psalm 9:5), the Lord enduring forever (Psalm 9:7), and the ungodly nations cast into hell (Psalm 9:17). God’s Son had been introduced in Psalm 2 as the Messiah, offered in sacrifice and raised from the dead (see notes on Psalm 2:6,7), and Psalm 9 now glorifies that same mighty victory resulting from the sacrificial death of the Son of God.


About the New Defender's Study Bible