The Pulpit Commentary on Psalms 8:5

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels; rather, thou hast made him but a little lower than God ( אלהים). There is no place in the Old Testament where Elohim means "angels;" and, though the LXX.

so translate in the present passage, and the rendering has passed from them into the New Testament (Hebrews 2:7), it cannot be regarded as critically correct. The psalmist, in considering how man has been favoured by God, goes back in thought to his creation, and remembers the words of Genesis 1:26, Genesis 1:27, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him" (compare the still stronger expression in Psalms 82:6, "I have said, Ye are gods").

And hast crowned him with glory and honour; i.e. "and, by so doing, by giving him a nature but a little short of the Divine, hast put on him a crown of glory such as thou hast given to no other creature."

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