God's Glory and Man's Dignity (Psalms 8) The Message and Good News Translations

THE MESSAGE TRANSLATION

1    God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name.

2    Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs  That drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble.

3-4  I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry,  Moon and stars mounted in their settings.  Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,  Why do you bother with us?  Why take a second look our way?

5-8  Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden’s dawn light.  You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge,  Made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild,  Birds flying and fish swimming, whales singing in the ocean deeps.

9    God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.

GOOD NEWS TRANSLATION

1  O Lord, our Lord, your greatness is seen in all the world!  Your praise reaches up to the heavens;

2  it is sung by children and babies.  You are safe and secure from all your enemies;  you stop anyone who opposes you.

3  When I look at the sky, which you have made, at the moon and the stars, which you set in their places—

4  what are human beings, that you think of them;  mere mortals, that you care for them?

5  Yet you made them inferior only to yourself;  you crowned them with glory and honor.

6  You appointed them rulers over everything you made;  you placed them over all creation:

7  sheep and cattle, and the wild animals too;  

8  the birds and the fish and the creatures in the seas.

9  O Lord, our Lord, your greatness is seen in all the world!