"The Lord Is My Strength and My Glory"

Abstract

The verse ;'r ninn 'tY appears for the first time in the Song of Moses (Ex. xv2), a psalm of thanksgiving. It reappears verbatim in Ps. cxviii 14, a psalm of the same literary genre and again in Is. xii 2, a chapter recognized for its hymn-like quality, with the secondary addition of the Tetragram after ;r 1). Therefore the formula seems to be a standard feature of hymn writing which has been in existence from very early times since the fossilized pair of words mlTn t1w has been preserved in this set context only. The interpretation of this expression is known to present difficulties. Prima facie nt means 'my strength', nmla 'song' (not my song!), the suffix of the first person found in 'Tv being conspicuously absent in nAmt. Moreover the ideas of strength and song seem to be utterly disparate: they are neither synonymous nor even congeneric. To a certain extent the solution of this second problem depends upon the solution of the first. Scholars emending mlt to read 'nlnt 2) maintain the traditional rendering of ti as 'my strength' and its derivation from the well-known root 'Z, 'to be strong' On the other hand those who would retain the suffixless form mlt, deny that the 'tT' in 'Tv is suffixed personal pronoun, and consequently explain this r'r, as the third radical of a supposed Hebrew root ''T, relating 't1 to Arabic gdgin 'warrior', gaad 'go forth to war' 3) or to Arabic 'aad 'patience, consolation' 4) A higher degree of unanimity has been reached in the interpretation of the root of the noun ntVT. The opinion clearly prevailing to-day

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