Psalm 89/Notes/Grammar.v. 8.273344
From Psalms: Layer by Layer
- Another issue in v. 8 is whether אֵל is in apposition to ליהוה from the previous line, the subject of a new clause, or a vocative. Contrast, for example, the following three translations:
- "Who... is like the LORD, a God greatly to be feared..." (ESV) (see the alternative reading in the vv. 7-8 preferred diagram).
- "Who is like the LORD...? ...God is greatly feared" (NIV; cf. LXX) (see vv. 7-8 preferred diagram)
- "Who is like the Lord...? O God (θεὲ), fearsome one..." (cf. Symmachus) (see v. 8 alternative diagram).
- The apposition interpretation (so ESV) seems unlikely, not only because there is an intervening constituent between the two phrases (לַ֝יהוָ֗ה בִּבְנֵ֥י אֵלִֽים׃ אֵ֣ל), but also because לַיהוָה is a prepositional phrase and אֵל is a noun phrase. If אֵל were in apposition to לַיהוָה, then we might have expected לְאֵל. The vocative interpretation is possible, but this would be a very long vocative phrase (all of v. 8), and there is no clear signal in the text that it should be understood as such. By contrast, the third-person references to YHWH in the previous line (לַיהוָה) make it more natural to read v. 8 as a third-person statement about God, rather than a vocative.