Psalm 8 Part 1: The Majesty of God’s Name
Psalm 8:1, Exodus 3:13-14. The Name above all Names!
“O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is Your name in all the earth,
Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!”
Psalms 8:1 NASB1995
One of the most beautiful psalms that is attributed to King David is Psalm 8, which is a glorious hymn to the Creator of everything! This new devotional series examines this Psalm verse by verse (nine total verses). This first verse is divided into three phrases.
“O Lord, our Lord”. This is a simple statement that recognizes God as our Lord and Master. The first Lord in this phrase, according to the Blue Letter Bible lexicon is the Hebrew word יְהֹוָה or Jehovah with this meaning:
Jehovah = "the existing One"
the proper name of the one true God
Our God is immutable and eternal and His name is not derived from creation, unlike the gods of Egypt (or other gods created by humans). He’s not the Sun God or the God of the Dead or the God of the Harvest or the God that looks like a cat or a jackal. The revelation of this name was given to Moses in Exodus 3. It’s also worth recalling when you read the passage from Exodus that in John 21 when Jesus identifies Himself to the arresting party in Gethsemane (from one of the miracle devotionals), He says “I AM HE” and they fall to the ground:
“Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ””
Exodus 3:13-14 NASB1995
The second Lord in the phrase, according to the Blue Letter Bible lexicon is the Hebrew word אָדוֹן or adon, pronounced as Adone or Adonai. These definitions below are the most relevant to this usage for God; this word can also be used to address men who are leaders, masters or kings:
lord, master
reference to God
the Lord God
Lord of the whole earth
reference to God
my Lord, my Lord and my God
Adonai (parallel with Yahweh)
The idea of God as always existing (I AM) and eternal is really impossible for the mere mortal and limited human brain to understand. I like this answer from Gotquestions.org on God and Time (excerpts from their article):
We live in a physical world with its four known space-time dimensions of length, width, height (or depth) and time. However, God dwells in a different realm—the spirit realm—beyond the perception of our physical senses. It’s not that God isn’t real; it’s a matter of His not being limited by the physical laws and dimensions that govern our world (Isaiah 57:15). Knowing that “God is spirit” (John 4:24), what is His relationship to time?
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In a sense, the marking of time is irrelevant to God because He transcends it. Peter, in 2 Peter 3:8, cautioned his readers not to let this one critical fact escape their notice—that God’s perspective on time is far different from mankind’s (Psalm 102:12, 24-27). The Lord does not count time as we do. He is above and outside of the sphere of time. God sees all of eternity’s past and eternity’s future. The time that passes on earth is of no consequence from God’s timeless perspective. A second is no different from an eon; a billion years pass like seconds to the eternal God.
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So, what is time? To put it simply, time is duration. Our clocks mark change or, more precisely, our timepieces are benchmarks of change that indicate the passage of time. We could say, then, that time is a necessary precondition for change and change is a sufficient condition to establish the passage of time. In other words, whenever there’s change of any kind we know that time has passed. We see this as we go through life, as we age. And we cannot recover the minutes that have passed by.
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Additionally, the science of physics tells us that time is a property resulting from the existence of matter. As such, time exists when matter exists. But God is not matter; God, in fact, created matter. The bottom line is this: time began when God created the universe. Before that, God was simply existing. Since there was no matter, and because God does not change, time had no existence and therefore no meaning, no relation to Him.…
And this brings us to the meaning of the word eternity. Eternity is a term used to express the concept of something that has no end and/or no beginning. God has no beginning or end, but He cannot be wholly defined by eternity, especially as a measure of time. (God is eternal, but eternity does not equal God. Similarly, God is all-powerful, but power does not equal God.) Eternity is one of God’s attributes, but, having created time, He is greater than time and exists outside of it.
Ok, that’s pretty metaphysical, isn’t it? Our God is beyond any descriptions we can place on Him from our lowly limitations of language, science, religion and imagination. He is eternal but eternity does not equal God. He IS and WAS and WILL BE.
“How majestic is Your name in all of the earth.” The NASB1995 version of the Bible that I use for these devotionals used the word majestic, as do several other translations. Other versions use words like Excellent” (KJV) and “Magnificent”. Majestic is defined as follows, in an English-language dictionary:
Impressive or beautiful in a dignified or inspiring way. synonym: grand.
Possessing or exhibiting majesty; of august dignity, stateliness, or imposing grandeur; lofty; noble; grand.
Having qualities of splendor or royalty.
The photo above is the famous “blue marble” view of Earth that was captured by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way home from the last Apollo landing on the moon in 1972. Every human being since creation has called this planet home, along with innumerable other creatures. It is the only place we have found life so far in this Universe. God’s name truly is GRAND in all of the Earth. You can take the nihilist viewpoint that our home world is a tiny “blue marble” lost in the vastness of space that means nothing and came from nothing (and, consequently, that viewpoint also means that you mean nothing) or you can take the awesome (full of awe) viewpoint that every human, creature, ocean, lake, mountain, desert, forest, river is a reflection of the GRAND and MAJESTIC name of GOD (He called His creation GOOD seven times in Genesis 1 and we can trust Him). I prefer the awesome viewpoint now in my life - it brings peace and joy and gratitude, as we will learn later in this Psalm.
“Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!” This is a phrase that gets interesting when you look at different translations (as I noted, I use the NASB1995 version). Here’s a sampling from a few of the more popular Bible translations:
KJV (King James Version): who hast set Thy glory above the heavens
ESV (English Standard Version): You have set Your glory above the heavens
NIV (New International Version): You have set Your glory in the heavens
NET (New English Translation): You reveal Your majesty in the heavens above.
Those are some significant differences! The KVJ (and NKJV), the NASB1995/2020 and the ESV are considered “formal” translations that are closed to the original text in Hebrew and Greek. The NIV and NET are “moderate” translations that try to update the language to more modern colloquial terms. In my opinion, the translation I am using has a better translation of the original intent of the phrase. God’s majesty is so profound that the true splendor of His name can only be displayed above the heavens as we know them, in the spiritual realm of Heaven. The physical heavens as we see them are, indeed, splendid beyond words and we discover more each day thanks to space telescopes like the James Webb and Hubble. But God is even above that! Yet He is also proclaimed on Earth. He is HERE, THERE and EVERYWHERE (oops, didn’t mean to channel the Beatles).
God IS - Amen!
A grand opening for this beautiful Psalm! Even the name of God is beyond anything we can see and imagine! My next devotional will examine verse 2 of Psalm 8.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord, our Lord: You are the Great “I AM”, the creator of all that we can see (and beyond) and the name above all names. May I always be humbled by the grace that has given to ME by the eternal, all-power God! Amen
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Gotquestions.org is an online Bible answer site run by Got Questions ministries.