Ver 6. διεμαρτύρατο δὲ πού τις λέγων: ‘but some one ina certain place solemnly testifies, saying”’. The indefinite formula of quotation is used not because doubt existed regarding the authorship of the psalm, nor because the writer was citing
ἄνθρωπος, ὅτι μιμνήσκῃ αὐτοῦ: ἢ υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου, ὅτι ἐπισκέπτῃ
262 Ps. viii. 6; Matt. Χανια. 18;
αὐτόν; 7. ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ᾽ νο. δόξῃ καὶ
bey XV. τιμῇ ἐστεφάνωσας αὐτὸν, καὶ κατέστησας αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὰ ἔργα τῶν
Eph ize, χειρῶν σου: 8. *
1” πάντα ὑπέταξας ὑποκάτω τῶν ποδῶν αὐτοῦ.
1This clause καὶ κατέστησας is omitted from B, and the sense favours the
Omission.
from memory, but rather as a rhetorical mode of suggesting that his readers knew the passage well enough. So Chrysostom : δεικνύντος ἐστίν, αὐτοὺς σφόδρα ἐμπείρους εἶναι τῶν γραφῶν. Philo frequently uses an indefinite form of quotation: this identical form in De Ebriet., 14 (Wendland, ii. 181) εἶπε “γάρ πού tis. Cf. Longinus, De Sub., ix. 2 γέγραφά που. Here only in the Epistle is a quotation from Scripture referred to its human author. τί ἐστιν ἄνθρω- mos... . The quotation is from Ps. viii. and extends to ποδῶν αὐτοῦ in ver. 8. It illustrates the greatness of man in three particulars.
I. ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ᾽ ἀγγέλους.
2. δόξῃ καὶ τιμῇ ἐστεφάνωσας αὐτόν.
3. πάντα ὑπέταξας ὑποκάτω τῶν ποδῶν αὐτοῦ. And the author goes on to say that in Jesus the two former elements of man’s greatness are seen to be fulfilled (He is made a little lower than the angels, and He is crowned with glory and honour), while the third is guaranteed because Jesus has tasted death for every man and so subdued even it, the last enemy, and therefore all things, under his feet.
In Ps. viii. as in so many other poets and prose writers (see Pascal’s chapter on The Greatness and Littleness of Man, A. R. Wallace’s Man’s Place in the Universe and Fisk’s Destiny of Man), it is the dignity put upon man which fills the writer with astonishment. When Sophocles in the Antigone celebrates man’s greatness, πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει, he excepts death from subjection to man, “Aida μόνον φεῦξιν οὐκ ἐπάξεται. Here the Hebrew poet excepts nothing. But only by Christ was he justified. Ae 5 real place is first won by Christ. µιμν σκῃ avtTov Thouart mindful οὔ μέτα Ὁ τ for good as in xiii. 3. Man, the subject of satire and self-contempt, is the object of God’s thought. υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου Ξ ἄνθρωπος of the first clause. In
the Heb. 1 and OTN ἘΣ ἐπισκ-
ἔπτῃ ‘‘visit,” generally as a friend (Mat. xxv. 36, James i. 27) frequently of phy- sician visiting sick; in judgment, Jer. v. 9, 29. “The day ‘of visitation,” ἡμέρα ἐπισκοπῆς; in good sense, Luke xix. 44; for chastisement, Isa. x. 3; “of. 1 ῬΈΕΙ το. In Jer. xv. 15 we have the two words μνήσθητί pov καὶ ἐπίσκεψαί pe.
Ver. 7. That God has been mindful of man and visited him is apparent in the three particulars now mentioned. βραχύ τι is “a little,”’ either in material, or in space, Or in time. In 1z Sam. xiv. 29, ἐγευσάμην βραχύ τι τ. μέλιτος. In Isa. lvii. 17, of time, δι᾿ ἁμαρτίαν βραχύ τι ἐλύπησα αὐτον. So in Ν.Τ., οἵ at- erial, Jo. vi. 7; of space, Acts xxvii. 28; of time Acts, v. 34. So in classics, v. Bleek. The original of the psalm points to the translation : “ Thou didst make him little lower than the angels” [in the Heb.
DWT Syn “than God”]. There
seems no reason to depart from this meaning either in this verse or in ver. 9. So Alford and Westcott, but Davidson and Weiss and several others are of opinion that as the words are in ver. 9 applied to the Messiah, whose superiority has been so insisted upon, an allusion to His inferiority would be out of place; ‘‘and that the phrase should be used of degree in one place and time in another, when the point of the passage lies in the identity of the Son’s history with that of man, is an idea only puerile”’ (Davidson). But on any rendering the inferiority of Jesus to angels so far as dying goes is granted, and there is πο reason why the sense of degree should not be kept in both clauses. δόξῃ καὶ τιμῇ frequently conjoined, Rev. xxi. 26; τ Dime π. τη; Dhucyd:, ivi) δδ- Ῥπο Num., 51; Lucian Somn., 13.