Psalm 8:1-9 O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth! who have set your glory above the heavens.… In all probability this Psalm is the first, or at all events one of the very first, David ever wrote. It breathes the spirit of those lonely nights which he must so often have passed keeping watch over his father's sheep on the wild hills of Bethlehem. To a lad of his strong poetical temperament, the glory of the Syrian sunset, the gradual assembling of the stars, as of an innumerable flock in the silent pastures overhead; the moon, "like a fair shepherdess," walking in her beauty; and, as night began to wane, "the bright and morning star," flashing over the hills of Moab, must have spoken in a language which he was inspired to understand of the excellence of the great Creator of all — of the nothingness, yet at the same time the dignity, of man. In after life how often had he to "tune his harp to notes of woe"? but its first recorded strains are those of adoring praise. David appears to me to stand out eminently from other men, as hearing a voice in the phenomena of nature. I account him as the first of the prophets of nature, of whom, in some sense, Wordsworth was the last. The lessons once learned have become obvious; but to utter them for the first time required inspiration. (Henry Housman.) Parallel Verses KJV: {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. |
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