Psalm 8:4

Hebrew Bible

2 From the mouths of children and nursing babies you have ordained praise on account of your adversaries, so that you might put an end to the vindictive enemy. 3 When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made, and see the moon and the stars, which you set in place, 4 Of what importance is the human race, that you should notice them? Of what importance is mankind, that you should pay attention to them? 5 You made them a little less than the heavenly beings. You crowned mankind with honor and majesty. 6 you appoint them to rule over your creation; you have placed everything under their authority,

Job 7:17

Hebrew Bible

15 so that I would prefer strangling and death more than life. 16 I loathe it; I do not want to live forever; leave me alone, for my days are a vapor! 17What is mankind that you make so much of them, and that you pay attention to them? 18 And that you visit them every morning, and try them every moment? 19 Will you never look away from me, will you not let me alone long enough to swallow my spittle?

 Notes and References

"... if the formula in Psalm 8:5 (“what is man that you should remember him, and the son of man that you should visit him”) would already have the sense of “accusation” and “punishment,” there is nothing in Job 7:17–18 to parody the viewpoint of Psalm 8:5. Following Coats’s view, Raymond van Leeuwen argues that the claim that Job 7:17–18 is a parody of Psalm 8:5 should be dismissed since the lexical formula is “stereotypical, with free variations” and should most likely be comprehended as “literary adaptations still standing close to a living, oral formula.” Then, one needs to consider the viewpoint of humanity in Job 7:17–18, which has more reasonable homogeneity with Psalm 144:3–435 than Psalm 8:5–7 ..."

Kwon, JiSeong J. "Not Parody, but Irony: Irony in the Book of Job" in Häner, Tobias, (ed.) Irony in the Bible: Between Subversion and Innovation (pp. 123-124) Brill, 2023

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