Ps. 8 (Pt. 2) insignificance

When / I see / your heavens / the work / of your fingers  the moon /  and / the stars / which you have / established 
what is man / that you / are mindful / of him? 
And / the son of man / that you / attend / to him?

The “heavens" have already been mentioned in our opening. There, the psalmist said he would “worship your majesty above the heavens”. It may seem odd that here, then, he is looking directly at the heavens, except for the fact that they are described as “works of your fingers”. This deserves some reflection: in the opening Yhwh’s name was described as ‘majestic’, as commanding a type of regal authority throughout the earth. This majesty was then seen as even extending not to the heavens but above the heavens. We saw, in our reflection on that passage, that ‘above’ probably carried within the same meaning it has had throughout our psalms: it is not as much a geographical term as a term of authority. The ‘higher’ one is the more one has control—in the same way that a king is the ‘highest’ in his realm when he ‘ascends to his throne’. Here this ‘above’ the heavens has reference to his creative power—the heavens are but the ‘work of your fingers’. This is an important point and one we have already made: Yhwh’s ability to create is not to separated from his royal rule. We tend to think of ‘creation’ and then deliverance or righteousness. I think, however, that Yhwh as “King” is understood, here at least, to also mean Yhwh as Creator and they are not separate realities. This, of course, stands at the heart of Genesis—Genesis is not as much the story of ‘creation’ as the story of Yhwh’s creating a realm, or a kingdom, a place wherein he will rule through man as his vice-regent. In other words, to create is to establish a throne. It cannot be overemphasized, however, that this understanding could not have emerged prior to the giving of the name. I am convinced that it was upon reflecting on the name that the story of Genesis emerged. Genesis flows from the Divine Name. To fully understand this I need to digress a bit: a name is inherently a relational term in that it identifies the individual apart from other individuals (I’m a male, but my name is Brad, and it is that name that identifies me from other males). In this way a name is both a way of separating an individual from a community but also enabling that community to address the individual. When God identifies himself at the burning bush to Moses he does so in two ways: 1) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and 2) “I am who I am (will be, etc…)”. The first mode of identification is profound in that he is not identified with a place or a thing. He is identified with a people. He moves with those people and is not geographically bound like every other God. He is, in biblical terms, identified by his covenant with them, and covenant means ‘kinship’; he is, in essence, their ‘father’. So the first is this incredible intimacy. And yet, it is not a “name”. The second is a name, but it rebuffs every understanding of what a name should do/be. While a name is supposed to identify communion amongst others, this name simply refers back to itself. It is a name, for sure, but it is a name that hides as much (if not more) than it reveals. This is a “name” that will stand “above (or behind?) every name”. It will be a “name” that reveals a profound depth that controls and shapes every mode of existence that previously was understood to be a god (whether political, sexual, geographic, monetary, etc….). It stands as the source of all of those ‘powers’ and, in that, we see the roots, I think, of Genesis 1 (the more Israel meditated on the Divine Name the more they came to see how that name reveals the very nature of creation itself; Genesis is a liturgical enactment, so to speak, of the divine name, as it sees him as the source of all of those powers previously identified as gods: sun, moon, stars, waters, beasts, light, darkness, etc…). In this way we see how it is through understanding the divine name that one comes to understand the first of the ten commandments: “you shall have no other god beside me”. Isaiah’s reflection on this name will reveal something even further; this God stands as the shaping hand behind every political power, and to such an extent that Cyrus himself will be but an (unknowing) tool in the hand of God’s providential care for Israel. How does this help us understand this psalm? It is through meditating upon the Divine Name that one comes to see the heavens (what in most other religious systems are gods) as (merely) the “work of Yhwh’s ‘fingers’”. The sense of overwhelming awe at the heavens is only heightened through a reflection on the divine name. It is crucial to emphasize this as well: that reflection upon the divine name is also what engenders in this psalmist a deep sense of irrelevance (‘what is man that you are mindful of him’). It is much like the experience of the prophets upon seeing Yhwh: they are immediately and utterly convinced of their unworthiness. In other words, one aspect of the divine name (as reflected in creation) is to create an almost unbridgeable distance between man and Yhwh. This sense of total insignificance is not to be understood as some ‘lower’ form of response but a fully called for, almost demanded, response to seeing the divine name in creation; yes, as we will see, there is a type of ‘answer’ to this question, but the question itself is not thereby negated. It is, in fact, in understanding (and inhabiting) the question that the answer becomes so startling. One final observation that confirms, I think, what we have been saying: the moon and the stars are described as “established”; this term was also used when describing the strength of Yhwh as proceeding from the mouths of ‘babes’—their pronouncing of the divine name “established” Yhwh’s strength on account of his enemies. I believe one can anticipate the answer to the question in this word “established”: as we saw in our reflection there, Yhwh’s establishing of his strength was intimately associated with the deliverance of his people; it was, therefore, anything but ‘ignorant’ of man or the ‘son of man’. Here, the heavens are described as ‘established’, but this causes a sense of utter insignifance. However, by using the same word we are aware that for Yhwh to establish the heavens is somehow related to his establishing himself within his people.