One night King David was admiring the creation
when he wrote this poem to God.
“When I consider your heavens,
the works of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have ordained;
what is man that you take thought of him?
And the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than God,
and crown him with glory and majesty.
You make him to rule
over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes through the paths of the seas.”
Psalm 8:3-8
David’s son, Solomon, saw a pessimistic side
to man’s existence.
“I said to myself concerning the sons of men,
‘God has surely tested them in order for them
to see that they are but beasts.’
. . . As one dies, so dies the other;
indeed they all have the same breath,
and there is no advantage
for man over beast,
for all is vanity.
All go to the same place.
All came from the dust, and all return to the dust.
Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward
and the breath of the beast descends downward
to the earth?”
Ecclesiastes 3:18-20
