Friday, April 24, 2009

What is man, that You should take thought of him?



LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! Or the son of man, that thou makest account of him!


What a contrast between Jehovah and man! The Psalmist turns from the glorious all-sufficiency of God to the insignificance and nothingness of man. He sees Jehovah to be everything, and then cries, “Lord, what is man!” What is man in the presence of the Infinite God? What can he be compared to? He is too little to be described at all, only God, who knows the most minute object, can tell what man is. Certainly he is not fit to be the rock of our confidence, he is at once too feeble and too fickle to be relied upon. The Psalmist's wonder is that God should stoop to know him, and indeed it is more remarkable than if the greatest archangel should make a study of emmets [ants - ed.], or become the friend of mites. God knows his people with a tender intimacy, a constant, careful observation: he foreknew them in love, he knows them by care, he will know them is acceptance at last.

Why and wherefore is this? What has man done? What has he been? What is he now that God should know him, and make himself known to him as his goodness, fortress, and high tower? This is an unanswerable question. Infinite condescension can alone account for the Lord stooping to be the friend of man. That he should make man the subject of election, the object of redemption, the child of eternal love, the darling of infallible providence, the next of kin to Deity, is indeed a matter requiring more than the two notes of exclamation found in this verse.

From The Treasury of David, exposition of Psalm 144:3. Image by Matt McGee under Creative Commons License.

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