Tim’s Blog

Out of the Mouth of Babes…

January 6, 2025

In Hebrew, Psalm 8:2 says, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have ordained strength.” The LXX (which Jesus cites in Matthew 21:16) has that as ainos — “praise.”

Without getting into how on earth the LXX translators got from strength to praise, two things are certainly true:

1) The immediate context underscores strength: “to silence/destroy the enemy and the avenger.” The Hebrew reading is natural and expected.

2) The LXX rendering is legitimate, or Jesus would not have appealed to it in the manner he did.

Somewhat ironically, it is the variation which has “praise” which also has “to destroy the enemy and the avenger,” whereas it is the variation that has strength which has “to silence the enemy and the avenger.” I.e. it could be argued that the LXX variation of the following clause actually fits with the Hebrew of the first clause better, and vice versa.

In any case, Psalm 8 presents, not young men of strength, but infants, as the paragon of Yahweh’s strength over against the enemy. In the Greek variation, in particular, this strength is tied to praise. In both variations, however, this link is contextually appropriate, given that the preceding verse is itself effusive praise (“O Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens”).

The question is, how does the statement make sense? Primarily, it makes sense when we understand it as a riff on Genesis 3. Yahweh places enmity between the woman and the serpent, and her seed and his. Since the only way the serpent gets seed is by stealing it from the woman, infant praise is intrinsically a display of Yahweh’s victory over the enemy.

Put simply, infant praise is Yahweh’s show of strength.