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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 8:5, 6

This passage comes from the wider catalog — a broader, more lightly curated list than the core set. Both readings are shown as peers; GEBible takes no side.

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Psalms 8:5, 6

For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet:

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Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens!

From the lips of babes and infants you have established strength, because of your adversaries, that you might silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained;

what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?

For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor.

You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet:

All sheep and cattle, yes, and the animals of the field,

the birds of the sky, the fish of the sea, and whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

In the messianic-fulfillment reading, Hebrews applies Psalm 8:5-6 to Jesus as the representative human who attains the glory and dominion intended for humankind. The author observes that although humanity was granted dominion, everything is not yet seen in subjection, and argues that this unrealized destiny calls for a representative figure who achieves it. Jesus, as the second Adam made lower than the angels for a season and then crowned with glory, is read as fulfilling the psalm's vision of human exaltation. Proponents hold that the Septuagint's 'lower than the angels' opens a legitimate interpretive pathway that the epistle develops, mapping a pattern of humiliation-then-exaltation onto Christ's death and glorification.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

In the critical reading, Psalm 8:5-6 concerns humankind in general, echoing the Genesis creation theology of the image of God and human dominion over the created order. Hebrews reassigns the psalm's referent from all humanity to one individual and takes 'a little lower than the angels' as the incarnation's temporary humiliation. On this view the christological anthropology, however sophisticated, is a hermeneutical decision rather than the recovery of a hidden prediction. Critics also note that the argument leans on the Septuagint's 'angels' for the Hebrew 'elohim,' making the reading dependent on a translation choice rather than the Hebrew original.

How the New Testament uses this passage

Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.

  • Hebrews 2:5-9 Direct quotation

    Hebrews 2:6-8 quotes Psalm 8 (LXX) verbatim before applying it christologically; the citation itself is an explicit direct quote.