Blog by Rob Vandeman
C. S. Lewis called Psalm 8 a “short, exquisite lyric.” Derek Kidner, in his excellent two-volume study of the Psalms, says, “This psalm is an unsurpassed example of what a hymn should be, celebrating as it does the glory and grace of God, rehearsing who He is and what He has done, and relating us and our world to Him, all with a masterly economy of words, and in a spirit of mingled joy and awe.” He adds rightly, “The range of thought takes us not only ‘above the heavens’ (v. 1) and back to the beginning (v. 3, 6-8) but, as the New Testament points out, on to the very end.” The psalms theme is the greatness of God and the place of man (mankind) within God’s universe.
The hymn has four obvious parts: