God's Good Pleasure, Part II

And David praised the Lord in Psalm 8 for how He looked favorably upon mankind:

3 When I observe Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which You set in place, (E)
4 what is man that You remember him,
the son of man that You look after him? (F)
5 You made him little less than God [c] [d]
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You made him lord over the works of Your hands;
You put everything under his feet: (G) [e]
7 all the sheep and oxen,
as well as animals in the wild,
8 birds of the sky,
and fish of the sea
passing through the currents of the seas. (H)
9 LORD, our Lord,
how magnificent is Your name throughout the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9, HCSB)

Now, studying both Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 within the biblical languages is a cool thing. I will give the Greek of Genesis 1:28 here:

“kai eulogesen autous ho theos legon auxanesthe kai plethunesthe kai plerosate ten gen kai katakurieusate autes…”

The word “kai” means “and”; “eulogesen” means “blessed”; “autous” is “them”; “ho theos” is “God”; “legon” means “saying”; “auxanesthe” means “grow”; “kai plethunesthe” means “and multiply”; “kai plerosate” means “and fill”; “ten gen” refers to “the earth”; “kai KATAKURIEUSATE autes” is translated, “and SUBDUE it.”
Translated smoothly, the phrase reads, “and God blessed them saying, ‘Grow, and multiply and fill the earth and HAVE DOMINION, SUBDUE, RULE OVER it”…

The word “katakurieusate” means “to have dominion,” as the King James Bible reveals. But there is a more literal meaning to the word. The prefix “kata” is a preposition, meaning “down upon,” or “over.” The word “kurieusate” is an imperative, which means that the word is a command. The word “kurieusate” comes from the word “kurios,” which means “lord or Lord.” So, when God gives the imperative, He is telling Adam and Eve to “be lord” over the earth.

Notice that, in Genesis 1:26, what I call “The Great Council of God” deemed it good to give man His image and His likeness. And then, the next words out of God’s mouth were, “and LET THEM HAVE DOMINION over the earth, to rule it and subdue it.” Man was created in God’s image; but then, with this decision of God, man was made LIKE GOD, after His likeness by his rule over the earth (a microcosm compared to God’s rule over all of time and space). And God did this out of His own good pleasure.

Psalm 8 gives us greater detail into what God did when He placed man in the Garden of Eden. I’ll reprint Psalm 8 here from the Apologetics Study Bible (Holman Christian Standard) so everyone can read it:

1 LORD, our Lord, how magnificent is Your name throughout the earth! (B)
You have covered the heavens with Your majesty. (C) [a] 2 Because of Your adversaries, You have established a stronghold [b] from the mouths of children and nursing infants, (D) to silence the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I observe Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You set in place, (E) 4 what is man that You remember him, the son of man that You look after him? (F) 5 You made him little less than God [c] [d] and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You made him lord over the works of Your hands; You put everything under his feet: (G) [e] 7 all the sheep and oxen, as well as animals in the wild, 8 birds of the sky, and fish of the sea passing through the currents of the seas. (H) 9 LORD, our Lord, how magnificent is Your name throughout the earth! (Psalm 8:1-9, HCSB)

Verses 5 and 6 give us the parallel account to Genesis 1:26-28—

“You made him little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor. YOU MADE HIM LORD OVER THE WORDS OF YOUR HANDS…”

The word for “lord” here in Psalm 8 in the Hebrew is “tam(e)shilehu,” from the Hebrew word “mashal,” meaning “to rule.” It is in the Hiphil form, which means that it is causative (the Hiphil form means that something causes or brings about an event or action). Since the “You” in Psalm 8 is God, then it is God who “causes” man to rule. The word “mashal” also means “to make someone lord.” As we can see, by virtue of man’s ruling over the earth, he was acting as “lord” for the “LORD.”
God gave man rule over the earth; but in no shape, form, or fashion was God bound to do it. This is why David wrote in Psalm 8,

“3 When I observe Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You set in place, (E) 4 what is man that You remember him, the son of man that You look after him? (Psalm 8:3-4, HCSB)

David was awe-struck by the fact that God even cared for human beings. And this thought came when he looked at all that God had made—for everything in the sky looks so much larger than life than tiny-sized humanity. David’s account, then, doesn’t sound like someone who believed God was BOUND BY NECESSITY to create man with the power he was given; instead, David seemed to praise God because it was of God’s OWN GOOD PLEASURE that man was given the glory and honor that he was.

Contra David Griffin and John Cobb, free will is a good thing; Hitler’s abuse just shows us what happens when a good thing is employed wrongfully.