O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is your name in all the earth,
because your magnificence was lifted up far above the heavens.
From the mouth of infants and nursing babies you created praise,
on account of your enemies,
to destroy the enemy and the avenger.
Because I will see the heavens,
the works of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you laid down.
What is a man that you remember him?
Or a son of a man that you observe him?
You made him somewhat less than angels;
you crowned him with glory and honor.
And you appointed him over the works of your hands.
You arranged all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and even still the livestock of the plains,
the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,
the creatures that go through the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is your name in all the earth. (Psalm 8:1–10 LXX)
Even the elements are sufficient, he is saying, to demonstrate your magnificence, O Lord—sky, earth, moon, sun, both the order and the beauty of them. Providence, which reaches to lowly human beings, however, proclaims your ineffable lovingkindness to a greater degree. Now, this has to do not with creation but with providence: he did not say “for you to form” but for you to be mindful and have regard. Elsewhere, on the other hand, he deplores with greater clarity the lowliness of our nature: “Man was made like futility, his days pass away like a shadow”; and again, “Man is like grass, his days like a flower of the field blossoming: a wind passed over him and he will not survive, nor will a trace of him be recognized any longer.” And you can find countless other such remarks in the divine Scripture to restrain human conceit. In this verse, accordingly, the inspired word expresses loud amazement, What is man for you to be mindful of him, or the son of man for you to have regard for him? After all, it is not simply that you brought them into being, but that you presented them with a privileged existence, you continue to keep them in mind and keep an eye on those badly disposed.
You have brought him a little lower than the angels. Here he adverted to the sentence following the Fall: by his mortality he was brought lower than the angels. With glory and honor you crowned him, and appointed him over the works of your hands. Now, it was after the Incarnation of our God and Savior that our nature received these privileges: “By grace it is, in fact, that you have been saved,” as the divine Apostle says, “and he raised us up with him and seated us in the heavenly places through Christ Jesus.”
You put all things under his feet, sheep and all cattle, and also the beasts of the field, birds of the air and fish of the sea, the creatures that travel the ways of the seas. And this is a precise demonstration of your loving-kindness and power, he is saying, imbuing the lowly nature of human beings with wisdom so that they might have control over not only the land creatures but those that fly and that swim and that do both, use their skills to hunt those in the heights and in the depths, and keep under control those that pass through the air and those hidden in the water.
You have therefore regaled all human beings with a common lordship over these creatures. 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 wonderful is your name in all the earth!
Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on the Psalms 8.4–7
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