For Your splendor is exalted far beyond the heavens.
From the mouths of babies and nursing infants
You prepared praise because of Your enemies,
That You may destroy the enemy and avenger.
For I shall look at the heavens, the works of Your fingers,
The moon and stars You established.
What is man that You remember him,
Or the son of man that You visit him?
You made him a little lower than the angels;
You crowned him with glory and honor.
You set him over the works of Your hands;
You subjected all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen,
And besides these, also the animals of the field,
The birds of heaven and the fish of the sea,
And the things passing through the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord, how wondrous is Your name in all the earth. (Psalm 8 LXX)
By these words that we have quoted is indicated both God the Word, to whom the beginning of the psalm applies, and the man of whom He is mindful, whom He visits, whom He has made a little lower than the angels, whom He crowns with glory and honor, and whom He placed over the works of His hands. How great is the diversity of natures in him emerges here in that so lowly and insignificant is the condition of him whom God designed to call to mind that blessed David was struck with astonishment and wonder at their combination in it, as we said. I mean, when he says What is man that You are mindful and so on, he openly implies the lowliness of our nature and the absence of merit of the one of whom God is supposed to be so mindful as even to give it equal claim to honor in being united to Him. This is, in fact, the reason for the prophet in his astonishment to marvel at God’s goodness, that He combined in association with His dignity such a lowly and insignificant nature. It therefore is clear enough that it is God the Word who was mindful, who paid the visit, who made man a little lower than the angels, and who crowned him with glory and honor.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Psalms 8
But when the divine Word assumed our human first-fruits, declared it His own temple, named it His own flesh, and achieved the ineffable union, He took his seat above every principality, authority, and domination, and every name which is named, not only in this age but in the age to come; He put everything under his feet, not only sheep and all cattle but all creation, visible and invisible. The divine Apostle witnesses to this in his explicit cry, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor on account of the suffering of death”; and a little above, he says, “putting all things under His feet”; and in the letter to the Corinthians, “But when it says, ‘All things are put in subjection,’ it is clear that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection to Him.” Uncreated nature alone, you see, is separate from this subjection as something free. The nature, which receives existence from it, however, is subject whatever it be—visible or invisible—to Christ the Lord, both as God and as man. Such is the honor human nature received from the God of all. Hence, as a conclusion he used the same verse as at the beginning: O Lord our Lord, how wondrous is your name in all the earth!
Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on the Psalms 8.7
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