Psalms

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Psalm 8

1 For the music director, according to the gittith style; a psalm of David. O Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your reputation throughout the earth! You reveal your majesty in the heavens above.⁠ 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,⁠ 7 including all the sheep and cattle, as well as the wild animals,⁠ 8 the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that moves through the currents of the seas. 9 O Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your reputation throughout the earth!

Texts in conversation

Compare Psalm 8:4 and Job 7:17

Hebrew Bible

Summary

Job’s language closely echoes Psalm 8, yet his tone reverses its meaning. Where the psalm marvels that humans are worthy of divine attention, Job turns the same phrasing toward lament, questioning why such attention brings suffering instead of honor.

Passages

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,

600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

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! 17 “What 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?

500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Job

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 144:3–4 than Psalm 8:5–7 ..."

JiSeong J. Kwon, “Not Parody, but Irony: Irony in the Book of Job,” in Irony in the Bible: Between Subversion and Innovation, ed. Tobias Häner, Virginia Miller, and Carolyn J. Sharp (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 114–131.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Psalms150 psalms

Compare Psalm 8:4 and Job 7:17

Summary

Passages

Psalm 8:4

Job 7:17

References

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