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'esse), and beyond this the innumerable stars which are lost in infinite space (כּוכבים = כּבכּבים prop. round, ball-shaped, spherical bodies) to which Jahve appointed their fixed place on the vault of heaven which He has formed with all the skill of His creative wisdom (כּונן to place and set up, in the sense of existence and duration): so often does the thought “what is mortal man...?” increase in power and intensity. The most natural thought would be: frail, puny man is as nothing before all this; but this thought is passed over in order to celebrate, with grateful emotion and astonished adoration, the divine love which appears in all the more glorious light, - a love which condescends to poor man, the dust of earth. Even if אנושׁ does not come from אנשׁ to be fragile, nevertheless, according to the usage of the language, it describes man from the side of his impotence, frailty, and mortality (vid., Psa 103:15; Isa 51:12, and on Gen 4:26). בּן־אדם, also, is not without a similar collateral reference. With retrospective reference to עוללים וינקים, בּן־אדם is equivalent to ילוּד־אשּׁה in Job 14:1 : man, who is not, like the stars, God's directly creative work, but comes into being through human agency born of woman. From both designations it follows that it is the existing generation of man that is spoken of. Man, as we see him in ourselves and others, this weak and dependent being is, nevertheless, not forgotten by God, God remembers him and looks about after him (פּקד of observing attentively, especially visitation, and with the accus. it is generally used of lovingly provident visitation, e.g., Jer 15:15). He does not leave him to himself, but enters into personal intercourse with him, he is the special and favoured object whither His eye turns (cf. Psa 144:3, and the parody of the tempted one in Job 7:17.).
It is not until Psa 8:6 that the writer glances back at creation. ותּחסּרהוּ (differing from the fut. consec. Job 7:18) describes that which happened formerly. חסּר מן signifies to cause to be short of, wanting in something, to deprive any one of something (cf. Ecc 4:8). מן is here neither comparative (paullo inferiorem eum fecisti Deo), nor negative (paullum derogasti ei, ne esset Deus), but partitive (paullum