Psalms 8:4
what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?
WEB
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
KJV
What Psalms 8:4 means
Looking up at a vast night sky, the psalmist asks why a maker so immense would give a single thought to a creature as small as a human being, then marvels that God has crowned that small creature with glory and honor.
Psalm 8 opens and closes by praising the majesty of God's name, and in between it looks up. The psalmist considers the heavens, the moon and the stars that God "set in place," and feels his own smallness against them. Out of that comes the question: "What is man, that you think of him?" It is the ancient version of standing under a clear night sky and feeling, all at once, tiny and strangely moved.
The psalm does not answer with flattery or with despair. It says something stranger: this small, short-lived creature has been "crowned with glory and honor" and handed responsibility over the works of God's hands. Humanity is set only a little lower than the heavenly beings, dignified far past its size. The wonder is not that human beings are large or lasting, since they plainly are neither. The wonder is that something so small is noticed, valued, and entrusted with so much.
The verse holds two truths that are usually felt as opposites: human smallness and human worth. The sky says we are minor. The psalm says we are loved anyway. It does not so much resolve the tension as worship inside it, astonished that the one who made the stars also keeps us in mind. The question "what is man?" is left open on purpose, less a problem to be solved than an astonishment to stand in.