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Psalm 8 · a question people ask

"From the lips of babes and infants you have established strength" (8:2). What does that mean?

In the text

The psalm doesn't explain it. It sets babes and infants beside "your adversaries" and "the enemy and the avenger" (8:2), and says the LORD has established strength "from the lips" of the little ones (8:2). In Hebrew babes is olel, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "child" (tap babes), and infants is from yanaq, which it gives as "suck". In the New Testament, Jesus gives the verse as his answer about children crying out in the temple (Matthew 21:15-16; see the line to Jesus). There the WEB words it differently: "Out of the mouth of children and nursing babies, you have perfected praise" (Matthew 21:16). Matthew doesn't explain the difference, and these notes don't either.

The verses

“From the lips of babes and infants you have established strength, because of your adversaries, that you might silence the enemy and the avenger.”
Psalm 8:2 · World English Bible
“But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children who were crying in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the son of David!” they were indignant, and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes. Did you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of children and nursing babies, you have perfected praise’?””
Matthew 21:15-16 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Psalm 8

Psalm 8: How majestic is your name

The psalm's last line is its first line, word for word (8:1, 8:9). The LORD's glory "above the heavens" (8:1) is hod, and the honor a mortal is crowned with (8:5) is hadar: Psalm 104:1 says the two together of the LORD, and Psalm 45:3 to a king. And Hebrews quotes the psalm, then says, "we see … Jesus" (Hebrews 2:9).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions