A Canonical Exegesis of the Eighth Psalm

Psalm 8 asks what the human is, and Hubert James Keener argues that the answer depends on reading the psalm within the whole of the Christian canon. Taking up the canonical approach Brevard Childs proposed in the late 1960s, he first sets out the theological foundation that makes such exegesis workable. He then tests it on a psalm whose many intertextual links with the rest of the Bible have long made it difficult ground.

His reading traces two Old Testament threads meeting in the psalm: YHWH upholding creation by raising the weak and humble, and humanity shown as troubled, failing and at times set against God. The New Testament adds a third, the redeeming Christ, through whom conflicted humanity is restored. This is a rigorous, closely argued monograph for students and scholars of the Psalms, biblical theology and canonical criticism.