Psalm 20/Notes/Grammar.v. 1.723290
From Psalms: Layer by Layer
- See our discussion of לַמְנַצֵחַ and the Translation Challenges.[1]
- See our discussion of לְדָוִד.
- ↑ In brief: לַמְנַצֵחַ belongs to a group all its own. There is some debate as to the exact meaning of לַמְנַצֵחַ, but most think it means “to the chief musician/director of music/conductor”. Although both לַמְנַצֵחַ and לְדָוִד begin with lamed, the preposition has different functions in these two cases: we can read לַמְנַצֵחַ as “TO or FOR the musical director”, and לְדָוִד as “BY David”. The presence of לַמְנַצֵחַ often comes before technical musical and liturgical terms–the words that give translators the most trouble! This makes sense, as the musical director would have been a specialist in first Temple liturgy and would have been familiar with these words. It’s possible that the 55 psalms which include לַמְנַצֵחַ were meant to be performed only by Temple musicians, probably due to reasons of musical complexity or use in specific festivals.