Psalm 8 — the Back Parts of God

As you see the grace of the Savior extended everywhere, so many being saved, if you wish to raise your voice to the Lord, sing Psalm 8; or you can use the same psalm as well as 84 in thanksgiving for the vintage harvest.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

Did David, the shepherd, compose this after being out with the sheep all night and seeing the glory of the night sky?

This psalm gives us so many quotes that are part of Western culture, such as "what is man that thou art mindful of him?". I love this one and it has clearly touched so many deeply that they wanted to give the context of its joy and praise in their own writing.

Thierry Legault, The Veil nebula (NGC 6992) in Cygnus,
with permission
See more images and this one larger at Mr. Legault's website.

Here is the insight that I love the most.

8:1 The Lord's Name is Majestic

Only the Back Parts of God. Gregory of Nazianzus: The Majesty, or as holy David calls it, the Glory, is manifested among the creatures that it has produced and governs. These are the back parts of God, which he leaves behind him, as tokens of himself like the shadows and reflections of the sun in the water, which show the sun to our weak eyes, because we cannot look at the sun himself, for by his unmixed light he is too strong for our power of perception.  On Theology, Theological Oration

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

This is just the best, referring back to Moses in Exodus 33:19–23 when he asks to see God's face and is told that he'd be overcome and so will get to see the back of God. Here we are with creation, as Gregory tells us, seeing God's back parts. Just wonderful.

Now on to some of the other great insights inspired by this psalm.

Balancing Deity and Humanity

It seems to me that I seldom meet any strong or exultant sense of the continued, never-to-be-abandoned, Humanity of Christ in glory, in eternity. We stress the Humanity too exclusively at Christmas, and the Deity too exclusively after the Resurrection; almost as if Christ once became a man and then presently reverted to being simply God. We think of the Resurrection and Ascension (rightly) as great acts of God; less often as the triumph of Man. The ancient interpretation of the Psalm 8, however arrived at, is a cheering corrective.

C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

What is mankind ...?

The dignity of human beings is stressed in this passage in a way unparalleled in the ancient Near East. According to Mesopotamian sources, men and women were created to relieve the workload on the lesser gods who were forced to cultivate land in order to feed the gods. When the growing human population became too noisy, the gods thought to extinguish human existence through the great flood. As a result of the flood, food offerings to the gods were no longer forthcoming. Only then did the gods find that humans were nonexpendable after all. Although humanity survived the flood, the gods decreed certain afflictions to keep the population from ever growing out of control again. According to Ps 8, far from being expendable slaves to the gods, human beings are the special objects of the Creator's care in the vast universe.

NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

8:3 The Work of God's Fingers

Makes One Wonder. John Chrysostom: "What is it about human beings?" ... Taking full account of such marvelous care and such wonderful providence on God's part, and the arrangements he put in place for the salvation of the human race, [the psalmist] is struck with complete wonder and amazement as to why on earth God considered them worthy of attention. Consider, after all, that all the visible things were done for their sake. For them the design implemented from the time of Adam up to his coming; for them paradise, commandments, punishments, miracles, retribution, kindnesses after the Law; for them the Son of God became human. What could anyone say of the future they are intended to enjoy? So all those things are going through his mind when he says, to be thought worthy of such wonderful privileges, what must the human being be? I mean, if you consider what was done and is being done for their sake, and what they will enjoy afterwards, you will be stricken with awe, and then you will see clearly how this being is an object of such attention on God's part. Commentary on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

I also love this connection to Genesis and God's creation.

Sheep and oxen / ... birds of the heavens and fish of the sea.

The language of this compact but embracing catalogue is  a deliberate recasting in somewhat different words of the first Creation story ever, but the audience of the poem is surely meant to hear in all this a beautiful poetic reprise of Genesis 1. The eye moves downward vertically in the poem from the heavens to the divine beings who are God's entourage to man's feet and, below those, to the beasts of the field and then to what swims through the sea (which no longer harbors a primordial sea beast).

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Lord, our Master, / how majestic Your name in all the earth.

Although biblical literature, in poetry and prose, exhibits considerable fondness for envelope structures, in which the end somehow echoes the beginning, this verbatim repetition of the first line as the last, common in other poetic traditions, is unusual. It closes a perfect circle that celebrates the harmony of God's creation. ...

Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: The Writings

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here.