The exclamation which begins and ends this psalm, enclosing it as a
jewel in a setting, determines its theme as being neither the nightly
heaven, with all its stars, nor the dignity of man, but the name of the
Lord as proclaimed by both. The Biblical contemplation of nature and man
starts from and ends in God. The main thought of the psalm is the
superiority of the revelation in man's nature and place to that in the
vault of heaven. The very smallness of man makes the revelation of God
in His dealings with him great. In his insignificance is lodged a Divine
spark, and, lowly as is his head as he stands beneath the midnight sky
blazing with inaccessible lights, it is crowned with a halo which
reflects God's glory more brightly than does their lustre. That one idea
is the theme of both parts of the psalm. In the former (vv. 1, 2) it is
briefly stated; in the latter (vv. 3-8) it is wrought out in detail. The
movement of thought is by expansion rather than progress.
The name of the Lord is His character as made known. The psalmist
looks beyond Israel, the recipient of a fuller manifestation, and,
with adoring wonder, sees far-flashing through all the earth, as if
written in light, the splendour of that name. The universal revelation
in the depths of the sparkling heavens and the special one by which
Israel can say, "our Lord," are both recognised. The very abruptness
of the exclamation in ver. 1 tells that it is the end of long, silent
contemplation, which overflows at last in speech. The remainder of
ver. 1 and ver. 2 present the two forms of Divine manifestation which
it is the main purpose of the psalm to contrast, and which effect the
world-wide diffusion of the glory of the Name. These are the
apocalypse in the nightly heavens and the witness from the mouth of
babes and sucklings. As to the former, there is some difficulty in the
text as it stands; and there may be a question also as to the
connection with the preceding burst of praise. The word rendered "hast
set" is an imperative, which introduces an incongruous thought, since
the psalm proceeds on the conviction that God has already done what
such a reading would be asking Him to do. The simplest solution is to
suppose a textual corruption, and to make the slight change required
for the rendering of the A.V. and R.V. God's name is glorious in all
the earth, first, because He has set His glory upon the heavens, which
stretch their solemn magnificence above every land. It is His glory of
which theirs is the shimmering reflection, visible to every eye
upturned from "this dim spot which men call earth." May we attach
significance to the difference between "Thy name" and "Thy glory"?
Possibly there is a hint of the relative inferiority even of the
heavenly proclamation, inasmuch as, while it rays out "glory," the
lustre of power and infinitude, it is only on earth that that
revelation becomes the utterance of the Name, since here are hearts
and minds to interpret.
The relative at the beginning of the last clause of ver. 1 seems to
require that the initial exclamation should not be isolated, as it is
in the last verse; but, in any case, the two methods of revelation
must be taken in the closest connection, and brought into line as
parallel media of revelation.
Ver. 2 gives the second of these. The sudden drop from the glories of
the heavens to the babble and prattle of infancy and childhood is most
impressive, and gives extraordinary force to the paradox that the
latter's witness is more powerful to silence gainsayers than that of the
former. This conviction is expressed in a noble metaphor, which is
blurred by the rendering "strength." The word here rather means _a
strength_ in the old use of the term--that is, a stronghold or
fortress--and the image, somewhat more daring than colder Western taste
finds permissible, is that, out of such frail material as children's
speech, God builds a tower of strength, which, like some border castle,
will bridle and still the restless enemy. There seems no sufficient
reason for taking "children and sucklings" in any but its natural
meaning, however the reference to lowly believers may accord with the
spirit of the psalm. The children's voices are taken as a type of feeble
instruments, which are yet strong enough to silence the enemy.
Childhood, "with no language but a cry," is, if rightly regarded in its
source, its budding possibilities, its dependence, its growth, a more
potent witness to a more wondrous name than are all the stars. In like
manner, man is man's clearest revelation of God. The more lowly he is,
the more lofty his testimony. What are all His servants' words but the
babbling of children who "do not know half the deep things they speak"?
God's strongest fortress is built of weakest stones. The rendering of
the LXX., which is that used by our Lord in the Temple when He claimed
the children's shrill hosannas as perfected praise, is an explanation
rather than a translation, and as such is quite in the line of the
psalmist's meaning. To find in the "children and sucklings" a reference
either to the humble believers in Israel or to the nation as a whole,
and in the "enemy and the vengeful man" hostile nations, introduces
thoughts alien to the universality of the psalm, which deals with
humanity as a whole and with the great revelations wide as humanity. If
the two parts of the psalm are to be kept together, the theme of the
compendious first portion must be the same as that of the second,
namely, the glory of God as revealed by nature and man, but most chiefly
by the latter, notwithstanding and even by his comparative feebleness.
The second part (vv. 3-8) expands the theme of the first. The nightly
sky is more overwhelming than the bare blue vault of day. Light
conceals and darkness unveils the solemn glories. The silent depths,
the inaccessible splendours, spoke to this psalmist, as they do to all
sensitive souls, of man's relative insignificance, but they spoke also
of the God whose hand had fashioned them, and the thought of Him
carried with it the assurance of His care for so small a creature, and
therefore changed the aspect of his insignificance. To an ear deaf to
the witness of the heavens to their Maker, the only voice which sounds
from their crushing magnificence is one which counsels unmitigated
despair, insists on man's nothingness, and mocks his aspirations. If
we stop with "What is man?" the answer is, A fleeting nothing. The
magnitude, the duration, the multitudes of these awful suns and stars
dwarf him. Modern astronomy has so far increased the impression that
it has landed many minds in blank unbelief that God has visited so
small a speck as earth, and abundant ridicule has been poured on the
arrogance which dreams that such stupendous events, as the Christian
revelation asserts, have been transacted on earth for man. If we begin
with man, certainly his insignificance makes it supremely absurd to
suppose him thus distinguished; but if we begin at the other end, the
supposition takes a new appearance of probability. If there is a God,
and men are His creatures, it is supremely unlikely that He should not
have a care of them. Nothing can be more absurd than the supposition
of a dumb God, who has never spoken to such a being as man. The
psalmist gives full weight to man's smallness, his frailty, and his
lowly origin, for his exclamation, "What is man?" means, "How little
is he!" and he uses the words which connote frailty and mortality, and
emphasise the fact of birth as if in contrast with "the work of Thy
fingers"; but all these points only enhance the wonderfulness of what
is to the poet an axiom--that God has personal relations with His
creature. "Thou art mindful of him" refers to God's thought, "Thou
visitest him" to His acts of loving care; and both point to God's
universal beneficence, not to His special revelation. The bitter
parody in Job vii. 17, 18, takes the truth by the other handle, and
makes the personal relations those of a rigid inspector on the one
hand and a creature not worth being so strict with on the other.
Mindfulness is only watchfulness for slips, and visiting means penal
visitation. So the same fact may be the source of thankful wonder or
of almost blasphemous murmuring.
Vv. 5-8 draw out the consequences of God's loving regard, which has
made the insignificance of man the medium of a nobler manifestation of
the Divine name than streams from all the stars. There is no allusion
here to sin; and its absence has led to the assertion that this
psalmist knew nothing of a fall, and was not in harmony with the
prevalent Old Testament tone as to the condition of humanity. But
surely the contemplation of the ideal manhood, as it came from God's
hand, does not need to be darkened by the shadows of the actual. The
picture of man as God made him is the only theme which concerns the
psalmist; and he paints it with colours drawn from the Genesis
account, which tells of the fall as well as the creation of man.
The picture contains three elements: man is Deiform, crowned with glory
and honour, and lord of the creatures on earth. The rendering "than the
angels" in the A.V. comes from the LXX., but though defensible, is less
probable than the more lofty conception contained in "than God," which
is vindicated, not only by lexical considerations, but as embodying an
allusion to the original creation "in the image of God." What then is
the "little" which marks man's inferiority? It is mainly that the
spirit, which is God's 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 which 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 psalmist's mind. Thus man is invested with
some reflection of God's glory, and wears this as a crown. He is king on
earth.
The enumeration of his subjects follows, in language reminding again
of the Genesis narrative. The catalogue begins with those nearest to
him, the long-tamed domestic animals, and of these the most submissive
(sheep) first; it then passes to the untamed animals, whose home is
"the field" or uncultivated land, and from them goes to the heights
and depths, where the free fowls of the air and fish of the sea and
all the mysterious monsters that may roam the hidden ways of that
unknown ocean dwell. The power of taming and disciplining some, the
right to use all, belong to man, but his subjects have their rights
and their king his limits of power and his duties.
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 handbreadth 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 to-day as ever. To it the heavens are the work of God's finger,
and their glories are His, set there by Him. That being so, man's
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 man's lowly yet lofty head. The "babe and suckling" of
creation has a mouth from which the strength of perfected praise issues
and makes a bulwark against all gainsayers.
The use made of this psalm in the Epistle to the Hebrews proceeds on
the understanding that it describes ideal humanity. Where, then, says
the writer of the epistle, shall we look for the realisation of that
ideal? Do not the grand words sound liker irony than truth? Is this
poor creature that crawls about the world, its slave, discrowned and
sure to die, the Man whom the psalmist saw? No. Then was the fair
vision a baseless fabric, and is there nothing to be looked for but a
dreary continuance of such abortions dragging out their futile being
through hopeless generations? No; the promise shall be fulfilled for
humanity, because it has been fulfilled in one Man: the Man Christ
Jesus. He is the realised ideal, and in Him is a life which will be
communicated to all who trust and obey Him, and they, too, will become
all that God meant man to be. The psalm was not intended as a
prophecy, but every clear vision of God's purpose is a prophecy, for
none of His purposes remain unfulfilled. It was not intended as a
picture of the Christ, but it is so; for He, and He alone, is the Man
who answers to that fair Divine Ideal, and He will make all His people
partakers of His royalty and perfect manhood.
So the psalm ends, as it began, with adoring wonder, and proclaims
this as the result of the twofold witness which it has so nobly set
forth: that God's name shines glorious through all the earth, and
every eye may see its lustre.