Thursday, January 9, 2025

TDOT on Psalm 110:3 (LXX: 109:3)

  

The text of Ps. 110:3 is undoubtedly corrupt and requires emendation. Here we shall discuss the reference to dew. The passage in question can be read: mēreḥem šaḥar lēḵ keṭal yeliḏtîḵā, “go forth from the womb of the dawn, I have given birth to you like the dew.” This statement is addressed to the king of Judah, probably at his enthronement and speaks of his birth—understood from the perspective of cultic ideology—in mythological language. The question is how the king, the dew, and the dawn are related. Widengren makes a radical proposal: the royal ceremony reflected in Ps. 110 dates from the Canaanite period of Jerusalem. Citing the Ugaritic text SS, he interprets v. 3 as follows: in KTU, 1.23, El begets the two deities Šaḥar and Šalem; the former (fem. according to Widengren) can be identified with the dawn, the latter with sunset and also with El Elyon of Jerusalem. Thus the Jerusalem king was thought of as the child of these two divine figures and himself identified with the dew (Widengren translates: “From the womb of the dawn, as dew I have begotten you”). Bentzen has a different interpretation of the prepositional phrase: “On holy mountains I have begotten him, from the womb, before the morning star and the dew.” It is probably best to take keṭal as nothing more than a simile, so that in its original (“Canaanite”) form the passage means that the Jerusalem king is the child of El and Šaḥar, just as the dew is the daughter of Baʿal (and the dawn Šaḥar?). In the royal cult of Israel and in Ps. 110, these mythological notions are quite veiled (although Isa. 14:12 can be very direct in saying much the same thing about the Babylonian king).

 

The names of two Judahite queens, Abital and Hamutal (cf. the masc. name yhwṭl), may contain the element ṭal, “dew.” Usually, however, they are taken as aramaizing forms (ṭl = ṣl, “shadow”). (Benedikt Otzen, “טַל,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 17 vols. [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986], 5: 329-30)

 

 

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