Psalm 110/Notes/Phrasal.V. 3.698728

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  • The adverbial prepositional phrase on the day of your power (בְּיוֹם חֵילֶךָ) specifies the time of the people's willingness as future: "your people will be willing on the day of your power."[1] The phrase as a whole refers to the time when the king will go to war against his enemies.
  • On the holy mountains, at the break of dawn, the dew comes into your possession. In Hebrew, there is no verb ("comes"), and thus some translations translate the clause as "the dew of your youth will be yours" (ESV, cf. KJV, JPS, REB, NET, RVR95).[2] However, the preceding prepositional phrases ("on holy mountains... from the womb of dawn...") seem to imply a verb (e.g., בוא): "the dew, your youth, will come to you."[3] And, in Hebrew, coming to someone (בוא ל) means to come into that person's possession.[4][5]
  • The word young men (lit.: "youth", יַלְדוּת), which in Ecclesiastes 11:9 is an abstract noun meaning "youthfulness," here refers to " young men" (= ילדים).[6] As Delitzsch writes, "the punctuation, which makes the principal caesura at חילך with Olewejored, makes the parallelism of חילך and ילדותך distinct... Just as גלות signifies both exile and the exiled ones, so ילדות, like νεοτης, juventus, juventa, signifies both the time and age of youth, youthfulness, and youthful, young men (the youth)."[7] If ילדות refers to "young men" and "dew" is an image of the willing volunteers, then טל and ילדות, two constituents in a construct chain, stand in an "equalizing relationship" (BHRG 25.4.4): "the dew (viz.) your young men."
  1. ↑ So Jerome: erunt.
  2. ↑ So Jenni 2000, 69; cf. Gen. 31:16; Ex. 32:24; Deut. 33:8; etc.
  3. ↑ Cf. RSV, NRSV, ZÜR; cf Targum: יסתרהבון לך ["will hasten to you"]). So Radak; Waltke 2010, 497; cf. Baethgen 1904, 338; Briggs 1908.
  4. ↑ E.g., 2 Sam. 12:4; ; Isa. 49:18; Amos 6:1; Zech. 9:9. According to Jenni, this kind of construction serves "as passive voice to an expression of giving" (Jenni 2000:102). In other words, the event הוא נתן לו טל can be restated (with the omission of the agent) בוא לו טל. "The preposition remains a lamed dativum and it only appears (in translation) to have a local/directional meaning" (Jenni 2000, 102). Jenni himself (2000, 69), however, categorizes the lamed in Ps. 110:3 as a lamed of possession (lamed ascriptionis): "The dew of your youth will be yours."
  5. ↑ Another option for interpreting טל would be to read לך as adverbial modifying טל (interpreted as a 3ms qal of טלל, cf. קל as 3ms qal of קלל). Cf. Ug. denom. ṭll to drop (dew) (1 Aqht 41, Gordon Ugaritic Textbook). According to DCH, two possible occurrences of this verb in the Hebrew Bible are in Hag. 1:10 and Deut. 33:13, though both require revocalization of the vowels). This view is unlikely because ילדות is a feminine noun.
  6. ↑ So BDB, DCH.
  7. ↑ Delitzsch 1871, 191; cf. Calvin; Hupfeld 1871, 199; Baethgen 1904, 338