Tell the Truth About the Iron Teeth

This sermon was first preached in Boyd Chapel on Shaw University Divinity School's campus on Saturday, November 12, 2016.  A hermeneutical strategy I'm using here is to take a new look at the heroic figure of Daniel and the confounding images of his visions with a demystifying and humanizing lens.  What if Daniel is a young adult person not so different from us, with real world anxieties and problems as a refugee, an enslaved person from a minority ethnic group? What if Daniel is a person who has complicated vivid dreams (like my sister Jerene and my daughter Naomi), and who in addition to that receives revelation from God through some of them?  My strategy is for the listener, or you the reader, to be able to find yourself close to or even identified with the character Daniel.  Maybe it worked--you be the judge.

Daniel 7:1-20

In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream:

I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human mind was given to it.

Another beast appeared, a second one, that looked like a bear. It was raised up on one side, had three tusks in its mouth among its teeth and was told, “Arise, devour many bodies!” After this, as I watched, another appeared, like a leopard. The beast had four wings of a bird on its back and four heads; and dominion was given to it.

After this I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that preceded it, and it had ten horns. I was considering the horns, when another horn appeared, a little one coming up among them; to make room for it, three of the earlier horns were plucked up by the roots. There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly.

As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.

I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me. I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter:

"As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever--forever and ever."

Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped what was left with its feet; and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and concerning the other horn that came up, and to make room for which three of them fell out—the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and that seemed greater than the others.

Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;

  the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;

  for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,

   and its people as a delight.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,

  and delight in my people;

no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

  or the cry of distress.

No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days,

  or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;

for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,

  and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;

  they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit;

  they shall not plant and another eat;

for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,

  and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labor in vain,

  or bear children for calamity;

for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—

  and their descendants as well.

Before they call I will answer,

  while they are yet speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,

  the lion shall eat straw like the ox;

   but the serpent--its food shall be dust!

They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,

  says the LORD.

“Tell the Truth About the Iron Teeth”

            I have rarely taught or preached about Daniel.  I grew up in an age and location that overused the book of Daniel.  At every turn, we heard traveling end-times preachers, quoting text after text from Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, filling our minds with horrible images to scare the hell out of us.  Literally.

            Their specialty was to link the images to very specific current events.  One symbol was Russia.  Another symbol was the Chinese Red Army.  Another symbol was the European Common Market.  Some images were nuclear weapons.  They loved to try to count up the numerologies and prove that whatever year we were living in was being predicted in the Bible. They loved grossing us out and scaring us with the idea of blood flowing so deep it was up to the horses’ bellies.

            I eventually theologized my way out of that terroristic preaching.  It was kind of like the boy crying wolf.  How many preachers are going to tell me exactly how history must happen before I start doubting whether they have even a thimbleful of knowledge of God?  How is it that in the story of God’s calling of Israel, it seems like America is turning out to be God’s heroic champion?  Too much sensationalism led eventually, to borrow an image from Daniel, to the handwriting on the wall—they didn’t know what they were talking about.

            So I have avoided Daniel mostly.  I certainly know the stories and remember many of the images.  Yet, it has seemed to me to be a minor book among many giants, and I still hold that to be mostly true.  Even with that judgment, I was drawn to this text as it came up in the lectionary this month.  No small contributor to that interest came because my pastor, Rev. Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., took us into this text last Sunday.  I freely admit that some of what I will say today is shaped by his exposition of the text, as I give it my own slant and perspective.  But I also want to bring to your attention this Sunday’s text from Isaiah 65:17-25.  They are two parts of a single story about this season at the end of the Christian year. 

In these final Sundays, the texts point us to the Reign of Christ, our one true ruler and savior.  That theme is highly relevant in an age of many unworthy rulers and false saviors.  At the midpoint of reading these two texts is a young man shaking with fear.  He has seen in a vision the unfolding of horrific events, monsters destroying whole nations, and that last one seems especially arrogant and cruel, and it has teeth of iron.

I would love to work this text in my usual detail, but we have to get out of here in time for your next class.  So I am going to hold back and try to hit the highlights. 

Daniel is a seer, a dreamer of visions, and he is a devoted worshiper who does not neglect his time of prayer.  He is also a refugee, a forced immigrant, who has been enlisted into forced labor in a high level job under the emperor.  Local people resent him, and they look for ways to do him harm.  Since his youth, he has had a commitment to remember who his momma and daddy are.  He shows an unusual discipline to hold to living the way they raised him.  But we should not be surprised that this vision disturbed him.  He had already survived a horrific invasion and destruction of his homeland.  He was now living among enemies under constant surveillance. 

He didn’t dress, talk, or eat like the people around him. They probably thought his food smelled bad.  They resented his speaking another language.  They thought the way he wore his hair and clothes was an affront.  The least harmful interactions were the side eye and sneer.  Many were outwardly insulting.  People threatened him.  He knew his life was always on an edge.

When he woke up from this dream he was disturbed.  In fact, he was already shaking while he was a character in the dream.  Four great beasts symbolizing four great empires.  The winged lion of Babylon who rose up and walked on two feet like a human.  Then came the bear of Medea, whose usual teeth were not scary enough, but had to have three additional tusks in that mouth to devour many bodies of the nations.  A winged leopard of Persia had four heads, four sets of teeth to devour its prey, and it had dominion over everything.

Those were enough.  They represent the empires Daniel himself would experience.  Babylon would soon fall, and the Medes and Persians would follow one upon the other.  The young man Daniel would grow to be an old man as a captive servant of these conquering empires. 

I’m your professor, so I need to take an aside here to teach.  Some scholars find the book of Daniel to be closely linked to the era of the Maccabean revolt, and they associate the stories of Daniel and the three Hebrew children as exemplary of the discipline the holy rebels will need to overthrow their Greek overlords.  From this point of view, the stories of Daniel are being told by those who look back to his time as an inspiration and guide.  That would mean the writer already knows the history of the four empires, including the Greek empire which came after the book of Daniel comes to an end.  It’s a reasonable theory and one you should study and think about.  But overall, it does not change the impact of what we are examining in this text today.  Whether a vision of future events or a retelling of past events, the theological import is the same.

That fourth monster is almost beyond imagining.  A dragon, crashing its feet as it moves, destroying everything in its path.  It has teeth of iron and ten horns.  The horns start doing some funny stuff, and it really does seem like a dream when a horn on the dragon starts talking.  If I had the time, I would talk with you about Antiochus Epiphanes and the abomination of desolation.  I guess you will have to go look that up in a reputable scholarly work of biblical commentary and criticism.

The parade of monsters is finally interrupted by the appearance of great thrones, and a great, Ancient being enters wearing bright white clothes and having hair all big and wooly.  The throne, well I guess it’s a throne, is made out of fire, and it’s on wheels.  A kind of river of fire flows out, and all around are thousands and ten thousands serving this great one.  Apparently, they are gathering to cast judgment, and the books of the courtroom are being prepared.  The judgment is quick and severe.  The last, most terrifying and loudmouthed monster is destroyed.  The other three monsters lose all their power and dominion.

This is one of those long dreams.  It still isn’t over.  A giant cloud bank is coming, and on it is someone.  It’s someone that looks like a human being.  A plain old human being.  No monster.  No fire chair on wheels.  No giant teeth or horns.  A human figure is riding on the clouds to stand before the Ancient One.  All the power over all things, including all that was taken from the four beasts, gets handed to this human one.  And Daniel learns that this human one will retain dominion forever.

In the dream, all these events had Daniel shook up.  He was troubled in his spirit.  He was terrified by the visions.  So he went to one of the many attendants of the Ancient One to ask what in the heavens was going on.  Especially, Daniel was worried about that fourth beast with iron teeth and ten horns and the new talking horn with eyes.

In this vision of Daniel we get a glimpse into the imagination of another era.  How did they depict great evil and violence?  Huge, powerful, malformed, superpowered beasts, monsters leaving a swath of destruction and death, even eating people, as they move across the land.  For older ones here, it may remind us of the early monster movies about King Kong or Godzilla.  If Daniel were dreaming in our day, he might imagine a giant transformer machine fighter, or a hoard of zombie killers, or vampire armies.  In either era, we find human beings overwhelmed and terrified by the extent of evil and destruction that can occur in our world.  Emperors and armies are depicted as giant monstrous beasts in Daniel’s vision.

There is good reason to display evil in graphic terms.  People’s lives are destroyed by the monsters of lynching.  Mass killings are routine across our country.  Warfare over oil wells and other natural resources bring saturation bombing of towns, improvised explosive devices, and even bombs strapped to the bodies of young people.  Bombs in city streets destroy human bodies and send body parts in all directions.  Drones emerge from nowhere and blow up weddings and hospitals with their targeted missiles.  The violence of conquest and counter-conquest is brutal and monstrous.

Daniel lived on edge in a world of competing empires.  The fall of Jerusalem was one small moment in a centuries-long battle for regional domination.  Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon would soon come under domination of a new world order with succession of destroying armies from Medea, Persia, and Greece.  Off on the distant horizon loomed the most consuming power of all—Rome.  But they aren’t part of Daniel’s vision.

Such strong language to depict evil is not confined to Daniel.  The New Testament brings much of this language into regular use through Paul’s theological depiction of the forces of evil.  We have let bad theology take the iron teeth out of the very real, material evil that devours people’s lives.  Empires and their military might are devastating powers.  The worship of violence as saving power and its ritual enactment of dehumanizing and killing the enemy fuels the fervor of warfare.  Monstrous thirst and lust for blood feeds the sacrosanct idolatrous gods of nationhood.  Paul spoke in ways that should be clear to us—evil becomes structurally embodied in thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, and authorities.  These are words for the ways that human beings organize power in their societies.  But we empty them of this meaning and try to turn them into invisible spirits secretly teasing at our heartstrings.  Thrones are the seats of rulers—rulers who can become tyrants.  Principalities are the regions controlled by princes, who may be despotic and murderous.  Authorities of all sorts exercise domination in our world.

God has made humanity to live orderly lives, and structures of authority are part of God’s good creation.  But there is no assumption in biblical theology that every political structure and every existing ruler is put in place by the hand of God.  Despotic rulers are the enemies of God’s peace and God’s people.  Violent systems of death and domination are opposing God’s purposes for humanity and creation.  Just because someone got appointed king or got elected president does not mean that God put that person there.  God leaves freedom for humanity to seek our own way, and far too often we choose to ignore God’s ways and pursue worldly power and domination rather than shalom and beloved community.  The rise of great and monstrous evil is a turning away from God and a distortion of humanity’s creation and purpose.

Daniel’s vision tells us more than about the dragon with iron teeth.  A crucial element of the vision appears also in the unexpected and vague character who appears at the end.  With so much wild monstrosity coming wave after wave, there appears an image of ultimate power in the Ancient One.  Then, one “like a son of man,” really one who looked like anybody or nobody, a human person, showed up.  Somehow, no doubt equally puzzling to Daniel, all the power and authority of all of these deadly empires, all their territory and peoples, all the language groups and ethnicities, came to be under this nondescript, plain human being.  No one is excluded.  No group is tossed out because of the tint of their skin or the curl of their hair.  No language is deemed unofficial, no artificial boundary is honored, no group is classified as an alien or refugee.  One ruler embraces and welcomes all.  And the new dominion of this one would not be quickly replaced by the next monster.  According to the vision, it would be forever.  Nothing could destroy or defeat this human being’s rule granted by the Ancient One.

Daniel’s vision of a meek and lowly ruler, one with not remarkable features or fancy superpowers, reveals an insight into the work of God that is rooted in the long history of God’s presence in the world and calling of Israel.  God’s election is often surprising in using the less admired person, the smaller or weaker or younger one, even the outsider.  God turns the tables on human ambitions for power and honor.  From Jacob to Joseph to Rahab to Ruth to David, no one would have scripted God’s plan in the way God did it.  Choosing an enslaved people to be the sign of God in the world is not what we would have anticipated. 

Did Daniel have access to the scroll of Isaiah?  Scholars claim that the Book of Isaiah had become one of the most used sacred writings among the Jews in the era of the second temple.  If some of the later portions of Isaiah were still being composed in exile, then the ideas and themes of the book may have been familiar.  The themes of the servant songs of Isaiah show some kinship to this vision of Daniel.  Isaiah 53 says of the servant of God, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”  A human person who does not stand out in any particular way.

So in all his experience of tenuous existence and anxiety under imperial power, Daniel probably also had a sense of divine activity to bring an end to the evil machinations of human domination systems.  The Babylonian empire was already showing signs of its demise.  Other empires in the distance were threatening to rise in conquest.  The vision drives home the theological understanding that humanity’s self-made gods are short-lived.  Their days are numbered.  Their compromises with injustice, their inherent viciousness, their deals made with the devil will ultimately bring them down under their own weight of sin.  As the North African theologian Augustine describes in his great volume, The City of God, empires undergo constant revolutions and coups d’etat as one band of robbers comes and defeats another band of robbers to take control.  Evil crops up in human society like weeds, and any show of weakness by one regime will likely be met by an upstart challenger.

The vision offers hope that God will bring an end to this churning and grinding of humanity in the clash of empires.  God will judge the evil that nations and powerful people do.  Their destructive greed will come to an end.  And the one who will replace them all shares with all of us the weakness of a human being.  Through the marvelous and frail human creation, this treasure in earthen vessels, God will bring salvation.  What a wonder!  What a joke on the mighty!  What a flip-flop of human expectation!  What a reversal of all our plans!

Human beings and human societies love power.  We love to follow the toughest football team, the fightingest hockey team, the homerun hitting and strikeout pitching baseball team, the three-point shooting and dunking basketball team.  We admire powerful ships and airplanes, and stand in fearful awe before tanks and cannons.  But it is a misguided awe and admiration.  No giant bear or winged leopard will win in the end.  The iron-toothed dragon, able to chew up even the toughest things in its path, will be put down and replaced by one in appearance as a human being.  A soft-skinned, furless, armorless, easily fatigued, eminently killable creature is the one God elevates to rule in virtue and love.  What a strange and wondrous and mighty God we serve!

Daniel does not have much else to say about what is coming.  The shock of his crazy dream ends with the vision of the human being on the clouds.  If we stretch a bit to look at this week’s text from the prophet Isaiah, we get another imagistic piece of the story of Christ’s Reign.  For Daniel, it is a dramatic reversal, an unexpected elevation of the one who seems least likely to hold dominion and authority, after the world’s all-star team of organized evil does their worst.  Daniel doesn’t try to ask what will be next, or what it will be like.  Maybe he scared himself awake.  The end of the chapter says he could not get it out of his mind.

Isaiah 65:17-25 describes another prophetic vision of a new creation.  The world of violence and domination will pass away.  Where there was destruction and sorrow, there will be joy and flourishing.  Those horrible effects of war, oppression, and poverty will end.  Children won’t die of starvation.  The elderly will see their days extended and enhanced.  The vulnerable are precious to God, and God will act on their behalf.

Moreover, the new creation will bring justice.  People will build houses and grow food in their gardens.  But the emperor or terrorist won’t steal or destroy it.  They will live in the houses they build and eat the food they produce.  They won’t have to fear to bring children into the world.  God is making things right so that we may live with hope and joy.  It will be a time of peace.  The previously monstrous and scary beasts will become peaceful.  Wolves and lambs will play and rest together—this is not a wolf from the horrifying world of Daniel’s dream.  A lion that is hungry will eat vegetation rather than kill.  It is the opposite of the world that Daniel saw coming to an end.  No need for teeth of iron in a world of justice and peace.  None will hurt or destroy.

I’m drawn here to the medieval Latin liturgy and it's recognition of how prophecies like this one in Isaiah anticipate the incarnation:

O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum (Oh, great mystery and wonderful sacrament)

ut animalia viderent Dominum natum jacentem in praesepio! (that animals should see the newborn Lord placed in a manger!)

Isaiah proclaims to the returning exiles that they can hope for a restoration, a better life than even before, if they will unite themselves to God’s ways.  Jesus, deeply influenced in his theology by the book of Isaiah, embraces this vision of a new creation in which God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  Moreover, Jesus adopts as his own path Isaiah’s depiction of the servant of God, the lowly one who cares for those who suffer and joins them in their struggle.  One has to wonder whether Jesus intentionally linked these two prophetic images when he chose the name son of man or human being to describe himself in his public ministry.  Mortal one, one like us, one with appearance as a human being—that is the one that the Ancient of Days elevates to the highest glory, honor, and power.

With Daniel, we find ourselves living in this in-between place.  Around us we see organized evil of monstrous proportions.  Hate, division, and killing are the coin of the realm.  We live in the world’s most powerful nation, an imperial power with client states and manufacturing colonies all over the world.  What sort of beast would Daniel have seen if the USA were in his dream?  An eagle with the body of a grizzly bear?  A panther with wings of a vulture?  It’s pointless to speculate, but the truth we must recognize is that we live in a nation destined to pass away.  This empire will fall, as all other have, under the weight of its own violence, its genocide, its weapons of mass destruction, and its constant warfare.  Demagogues rise up to stir the base passions of a nation built on white supremacy and slavery.  Hateful men laud their own debasing behavior toward women.  Before the throne of the Ancient One, every tyrant will be judged, found wanting, and brought down.  The momentary victories of unjust powers and dominions will ultimately find their end under the justice of God. 

In the meantime, we wait under the shadow of empire.  We seek the peace of the city where we live, that in its welfare we will also find peace.  We speak truth to power and say, “No,” to the unjust demands of empire.  We live as resident aliens, not of this world, but loving those in the world where, by God’s grace, we take another breath today.  And we rest in the hope of a new creation.  Our destiny is not destruction, but houses, gardens, joyous life together in a land of justice and peace.  Come, Lord Jesus.  May we see your peace and justice break forth anew, even in our lifetimes.  And may we walk in your way of love and care and standing with and for the ones the world has cast aside, as the songwriter Rick Elias says,

For now, we live on these streets,

Forbidding and tough,

Where push always comes to shove,

And it’s said, “Love’s never enough.”

Where a prophet in rags gave hope to a fearful world.

No injustice, no heart of darkness

Will keep this voice from being heard.

He was a man of no reputation,

And by the wise, considered a fool

When he spoke about faith and forgiveness

In a time when the strongest arms ruled.

But this man of no reputation

Loves the weak with relentless affection.

And he loves all us poor in spirit, just as we are.

He was a man of no reputation.

One like a human being, like a son of man, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him, homeless and with no place to lay his head, one you might pass on the street and never notice.  He is our salvation—whom then shall we fear?  If God is for us, who can stand against us?  This one truly reigns, and in Jesus Christ, and in no one else, we place our trust on this day and forevermore.  Amen.

 

An Ironic Reading of Psalm 8: Is Humanity All That Much?

Psalm 8

To the leader: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

O Lord, our Sovereign,
  how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouths of babes and infants
  you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
to silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
  the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
  mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
  and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
  you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen,
  and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
  whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Sovereign,
  how majestic is your name in all the earth!

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I recently attended Emmaus Way community's Sunday worship gathering.  The preaching at Emmaus Way usually takes the form of a conversation, or at least a dialogical sermon.  Pastor Tim Conder led the conversation on Psalm 8, calling on persons in the congregation to read the Psalm aloud, then launching some open-ended questions for the gathered community to ponder and discuss.  If you are not familiar with Emmaus Way and Conder, then you may be interested to check out a book written by Conder and fellow pastor Dan Rhodes, Free for All:  Rediscovering the Bible in Community.  Dan and Tim and their congregation have developed a way of reading in community that seeks to embody what numerous theologians and church trendspotters have been describing in theory.  Now that I've given Emmaus Way and Free for All a plug, I'm going to shift away from that event and do some of my own reflections.

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I have been thinking about the reading and misreading of this Psalm for many years.  At the heart of it is the phrase that the Authorized Version (KJV) translates "a little lower than the angels."  "Angels" translates the Hebrew plural of the generic term for God:  Elohim.  Thus most recent translations have changed the sense of the text to say that humans are a little less than God.

Perhaps it is in part the reference to the angels that leads to the problem I have with common readings of the text.  I am not a person who rejects the notion of hierarchy in all of its possibilities, although I do reject the idea that systems of domination are a necessary part of human existence.  So theories of hierarchy always evoke a sharper scrutiny when I find them imposed upon or derived from biblical texts.  In conversations about this text, I usually hear the construction of a vast hierarchy of being.  This assumption rightly understands that God is that than which no greater can be conceived.  Then the ranks get assigned from higher to lower:  angels, humans, various land, air, and sea animals.  The heritage of dominion theology finds its way into Christian theology, to a great extent, from this passage linked to other biblical texts.

But is this Psalm an effort to assert the rank of humanity within the great chain of being?  Certainly we know that has been a common reading of it through many different eras and in many different places.  Perhaps that ought to be enough to convince me to just "leave it alone."  I can't do that.  The concept of dominion as domination has too great a corrupting influence for me to leave it alone.  

Churches teaching dominion as domination, combined with Americanized pre-millenialism, is what led former U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Watt to claim that industries should be allowed to rapidly use up the earth's resources without regard to pollution or damage to ecological systems.  For Watt and his fellow-travelers, God gave humans the earth to use, and since the world would end soon humans must get to work and use it up fast.  Dominion as domination is what led European Christian leaders, theologians, bishops, popes, kings, and speculators to theorize an Imperial World Order under domination of the white races, in which all other peoples of the world find their value and meaning in serving the good of the superior white Europeans.

If dominion as domination corrupts Christian theology and practice so horribly, then it seems incumbent on readers to think again about constructing an extensive hierarchical metaphysics behind, around, and in front of this Psalm.  There are other possibilities here.  Issues of empire, of environmental degradation, and of the potential for human damage to one another all may help the reader raise questions about received interpretations of this text.

One thing a reader has to remember about reading the Psalms is that they are the outcries of God's people in lament, praise, thanksgiving, fear, and longing.  They are not necessarily statements of divine ordering, even if they often do give insight into the divine order.  They are written as the words of Israel to God, not as divine decrees.  This characteristic of the Psalms helps to explain statements such as the one in Psalm 137 which proclaims a blessing upon those who "take your little ones and dash them against the rocks."  Infanticide, although it may serve to display an exaggerated or distorted anger toward enemies, will not bring a blessing from God.  The prayer of Psalm 137 expresses the vengeful orientation of some of the Jewish exiles.  It is not any kind of divine decree.  Elsewhere, the Psalms call on God to destroy enemies and other self-centered acts.  Just because someone, even someone as prestigious as King David, prayed such a prayer does not mean that the prayer expresses the will of God.

With that caveat in mind, Psalm 8 offers a vision of humanity's place in the grand scheme of things without necessarily revealing a divinely decreed ranking of species.  It says that humanity has been made a little less than divine, made to be the dominant force among species on earth.  It need not be interpreted to say that God made everything to be under humans, or made humans to dominate everything else.  Any of us could observe, without the need of a theory of hierarchical status, that in the grand scheme of this planet's existence, human beings are capable of great and fearful acts.  Our species, just short of the divine power of God, can burn down a forest, pollute a lake, wear out fertile land, poison waters, and more. 

I have heard some people say this Psalm can't be about environmental degradation because that is a modern concept that ancient peoples would not understand.  I disagree.  Archaeologists tell a history of the Greek islands which hosted prosperous communities only to have their soil eroded by deforestation, overpopulation, and overcultivation, leaving only bare rocky crags jutting out of the sea.  The ancient cities of Babylon were eventually abandoned and buried in sand, in part from the deforestation and overcultivation of land which became barren and underwent desertification.  In the wealthy city-states of the Maya, in fertile and productive regions, silting of rivers from deforestation and overpopulation led to the decline of highly civilized communities.  Ancient farmers of China, India, and Peru developed sophisticated methods of combating soil erosion, recognizing how it occurs and what its results would be.  So environmental degradation caused by human activity is not anew idea.  People of ancient times, before and after the Israel of the Psalmists, knew of this human possibility.  Human beings are capable of building up and destroying great life on vast tracts of land, across great empires.  Why else would we find existing in ancient Israelite law a plan for letting land lie fallow?  They knew that human activity can destroy productive farmland.

It is not uncommon in biblical interpretation to identify a statement as ironic, as representative of a view to be upheld for ridicule.  With that in mind, it is worth considering whether some of the latter portion of Psalm 8 might be rhetorically ironic.  Are there any textual clues that might make us alert to potential ironic language?  I think there may be more than one.

Clearly the Psalm displays a primary theme of the majesty and sovereignty of God over all creation.  The opening and closing lines bracket all else with this affirmation.  After the initial affirmations of God's greatness, the Psalm takes a surprising turn (in a text that scholars say is very difficult to translate) by saying that the cries of infants and babes protect the people from the enemies of God.  Hmmm... That is not an image of human might.  It is not elevating human cleverness to near divinity.  As we move beyond this difficult verse, the next part reverts to the majesty of God as the context to offer an inquiry of perplexity.  God's works are so great, who are we scrawny human beings?  Why would God even notice us?  Here we find an acknowledgment of the incapacity of humanity to approach the greatness of God's works.

Then comes the passage that many use to justify a divinely sanctioned hierarchy of beings.  "You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor."  It is not hard to imagine such words coming from the mouth of the emperor, or from the official mouthpiece charged with praising the emperor.  We know that this sort of praise of imperial power was widespread in the era of biblical writings, lasting even into the era of Eusebius's praise of Constantine in the post-canonical era.  Could it be that the Psalmist, who has been belittling human capacity in order to evoke humility before the majesty of God has now put these ironic words into the mouths of arrogant humanity?  We are just a little less than divine (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).  We can run this world (into the ground).  King Soandso is the head man in charge of this world and day by day everything is getting better and better (oh, yeah, right!).

To say that all creation is "under their feet" is to acknowledge that it is far too easy to crush and stomp God's good creation to death.  It is to acknowledge that walking softly, leaving a light footprint, is necessary in this world.  Other species can disappear and be destroyed because of the power of humanity.  It is not to say that ever living thing and every non-living thing is our underling.  It is to say that we are capable of sustaining the good of all, or of destroying all of it, including ourselves.  The cattle and sheep, the wild creatures, birds, fish and sea creatures, are all also God's good creation.  An overestimate of human importance is another attempt to do what the first humans in the Garden did--an attempt to become like God.  Thus, the final line returns to the first.  It is God, not arrogant humanity, who is great.

I recognize that I am swimming upstream with this proposed interpretation.  Many doctrinal questions arise concerning the imago Dei, human uniqueness, visions of creation, and probably more.  Of course, this literary interpretation faces many possible objections from other literary readings, along with other types of textual analysis.  But I've chewed on it long enough and lived with it long enough to think that it at least deserves some conversational scrutiny.  I have, as always, plenty more to say.   But for now, have at it.