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of the night. The omission of any reference to the sun in Psa 8:4 shows that Psa 8:1-9 is a hymn of this kind composed in the night, or at least one in which the writer transfers himself in thought to the night season. The poet has the starry heavens before him, he begins with the glorious revelation of Jahve's power on earth and in the heavens, and then pauses at man, comparatively puny man, to whom Jahve condescends in love and whom He has made lord over His creation. Ewald calls it a flash of lightning cast into the darkness of the creation.
Even Hitzig acknowledges David's authorship here; whereas Hupfeld is silent, and Olshausen says that nothing can be said about it. The idea, that David composed it when a shepherd boy on the plains of Judah, is rightly rejected again by Hitzig after he has been at the pains to support it. (This thought is pleasingly worked out by Nachtigal, Psalmen gesungen vor David's Thronbesteigung, 1797, after the opinion of E. G. von Bengel, cum magna veri specie.) For, just as the Gospels do not contain any discourses of our Lord belonging to the time prior to His baptism, and just as the New Testament canon does not contain any writings of the Apostles from the time prior to Pentecost, so the Old Testament canon contains no Psalms of David belonging to the time prior to his anointing. It is only from that time, when he is the anointed one of the God of Jacob, that he becomes the sweet singer of Israel, on whose tongue is the word of Jahve, 2Sa 23:1.
The inscription runs: To the Precentor, on the Gittith, a Psalm of David. The Targum translates it super cithara, quam David de Gath attulit. According to which it is a Philistine cithern, just as there was (according to Athenaeus and Pollux) a peculiar Phoenician and Carian flute played at the festivals of Adonis, called γίγγρας, and also an Egyptian flute and a Doric lyre. All the Psalms bearing the inscription על־הגּתּית (Psa 8:1-9, 81, Psa 84:1-12) are of a laudatory character. The gittith was, therefore, an instrument giving forth a joyous sound, or (what better accords with its occurring exclusively in the inscriptions of the Psalms), a joyous melody,