Language Studies

Aramaic Thoughts

Digging into the Peshitta! - Part 3

Continuing our investigation of verse 3, the Peshitta punctuates the verse differently than either the Hebrew or the Septuagint. It connects "from the womb" with the "your people" that opens the verse. Then, "from of old" connects with "I have begotten you." Taking the easier part first, the Peshitta (and the Septuagint) have "I have begotten you" instead of the Hebrew "your youth." Since both the Septuagint and the Peshitta were doubtless working from an unpointed Hebrew text (that is, the vowels were not indicated), such a translation would be feasible and, given that "I have begotten" probably occurs more frequently than "your youth," it would be the reasonable translation. However, it seems to make less sense in the context, as the focus of the verse is on the people, not on the one being addressed.

However, the Peshitta translator has also taken the Hebrew tal (dew) and read it as if it were cognate to the Syriac tal (boy or child). This is a case where the translator has been led astray by a false cognate. There is no Hebrew word tal meaning boy or child. Here also the Septuagint is no help, since it has entirely excised "dew" from the verse, perhaps due to not knowing what to do with it in the larger context of the verse.

The more difficult part of the Peshitta to explain is "from of old." It translates the Hebrew "dawn" (mishchar) which is a hapax legomenon (a word occurring only once in the Hebrew Bible). It is related to the Hebrew word shachar, which also means "dawn." The phenomenon of adding the consonant mem to the beginning of a Hebrew verb root to create a noun is common enough in Hebrew that the unusual word mishchar is not difficult to explain. Furthermore, the Septuagint translator has translated it accurately enough as "morning." That makes it more difficult to explain the Peshitta’s choice of qedim (from of old, from the beginning). There is a cognate Hebrew word qedem meaning "of old" or "of before" (thus being used temporally) or "before" or "in front of" (being used spatially). This work of the Peshitta translator may suggest Christian influence in the translation (whether the Peshitta originated in Jewish or Christian circles is a question that has never been adequately answered). If that is the case, the translator seems to have connected the "I have begotten you" (see Psalm 2:7) with the doctrine of the eternality of the Son (compare Micah 5:2, where qedem does occur, a verse understood as messianic even before the birth of Jesus, see Matthew 2:1-6). Thus the Peshitta translator appears to have moved in the verse from a consideration of the people assigned to the Lord, to a consideration of the Lord himself—his messianic character and his eternal origins.

That concludes the first half of the psalm, and prepares us next week for an examination of the connection between this psalm and the mysterious Melchizedek of Genesis 14.

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