Psalms 24:7-10

24:7 Look up, ¹  you gates!

Rise up, ²  you eternal doors!

Then the majestic king ³  will enter! ⁴ 

24:8 Who is this majestic king? ⁵ 

The Lord who is strong and mighty!

The Lord who is mighty in battle!

24:9 Look up, you gates!

Rise up, you eternal doors!

Then the majestic king will enter!

24:10 Who is this majestic king?

The Lord who commands armies! ⁶ 

He is the majestic king! (Selah)

The Song of Songs 3:6

The Royal Wedding Procession

The Speaker: ⁷ 

3:6 Who is this coming up from the desert

like a column of smoke,

like ⁸  a fragrant billow ⁹  of myrrh and frankincense, ¹⁰ 

every kind of fragrant powder ¹¹  of the traveling merchants? ¹² 

The Song of Songs 6:10

6:10 “Who ¹³  is this who appears ¹⁴  like the dawn? ¹⁵ 

Beautiful as the moon, ¹⁶  bright ¹⁷  as the sun,

awe-inspiring ¹⁸  as the stars in procession?” ¹⁹ 

The Song of Songs 8:5

The Awakening of Love

The Maidens about His Beloved:

8:5 Who is this coming up from the desert,

leaning on her beloved?

The Beloved to Her Lover:

Under the apple tree I aroused you; ²⁰ 

there your mother conceived you,

there she who bore you was in labor of childbirth. ²¹ 

Matthew 21:10

21:10 As he entered Jerusalem the whole city was thrown into an uproar, ²²  saying, “Who is this?”

[24:7]  ¹ tn Heb “lift up your heads.” The gates of the Lord’s dwelling place are here personified. The idiom “lift up the head” often means “be confident, bold” (see Judg 8:28; Job 10:15; Ps 83:2; Zech 1:21).

[24:7]  ² tn Heb “lift yourselves up.”

[24:7]  ³ tn Or “king of glory.”

[24:7]  ⁴ tn Following the imperatives of the preceding lines, the prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.

[24:8]  ⁵ sn Who is this majestic king? Perhaps the personified gates/doors ask this question, in response to the command given in v. 7.

[24:10]  ⁶ tn Traditionally, “the Lord of hosts,” a title which here pictures the Lord as a mighty warrior-king who leads armies into battle.

[3:6]  ⁷ sn It is not certain whether the speaker here is the Beloved or not.

[3:6]  ⁸ tn The comparative “like” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[3:6]  ⁹ tn The proper nuance of מְקֻטֶּרֶת (mÿqutteret, Pual participle fs from קָטַר, qatar, “to make a sacrifice, go up in smoke”) is illusive. The lexicons take the participle adjectivally and translate מְקֻטֶּרֶת מוֹר (mÿqutteret mor) as “completely filled with fragrance or incense” (HALOT 1094 s.v. I קטר) or “fumigated with myrrh” (BDB 883 s.v. קָטַר). Most translations take it adjectivally: “perfumed with myrrh” (KJV, NASB, NIV); however, NJPS takes it as a substantive: “clouds of myrrh.” It is better to take the participle as a substantive and to nuance מְקֻטֶּרֶת מוֹר as “billow of myrrh,” as suggested by its parallelism with כְּתִימֲרוֹת עָשָׁן (kÿtimarot ’ashan, “like a column of smoke”). While this is the only usage of the Pual stem of the verb, the root קטר appears frequently in other stems, all of which connote smoke, e.g., Piel: “to make a sacrifice, to go up in smoke” and Hiphil: “to cause to go up in smoke” (HALOT 1094-95 s.v. I קתר). In Middle Hebrew the root קִטְרָא (qitra’) meant “to steam, smell” (Qal) and “to smoke” (Hiphil). The Hebrew root is related to Ugaritic qtr “smoke, incense” (UT 19.2220; WUS 1404); Akkadian qataru “to billow (of smoke)” (AHw 2:907; CAD Q:166); Old South Arabic mqtr “incense; Ethiopic qetare “fragrance, spice”; Arabic qatara “to smell, smoke”; and Syriac `etar “vapour, fume, incense” (HALOT 1094). Due to the rarity of the Pual stem of this root, the Targum mistakenly vocalized the form as Piel participle מִקְּטֹרֶת (miqqÿtoret, “going up in smoke”).

[3:6]  ¹⁰ tn The term לְבוֹנָה (lÿvonah, “frankincense”) refers to fragrant incense (Exod 30:34; Lev 2:1, 15; 5:11; 6:8; 24:7; Num 5:15; Isa 43:23; 66:3; Jer 6:20; 17:26; 41:5; Neh 13:5, 9; 1 Chr 9:29; Song 3:6; 4:6, 14). It is composed of the white (sometimes yellow) resin of Boswellia Carteri and Frereana from Hadramawt and Somaliland (HALOT 518 s.v. לְבֹנָה).

[3:6]  ¹¹ tn The term אַבְקַת (’avqat, “fragrant-powder”) means “scent-powders” (HALOT 9 s.v. אַבָקָה) or “ground spice” (HALOT 1237 s.v. I רכל 2.a). The noun אֲבָקָה (’avaqah) is from the root אָבָק (’avaq, “dust, powder”) (HALOT 9 s.v.).

[3:6]  ¹² tn The singular form of רוֹכֵל (rokhel, “merchant”) may be classified as a generic singular, representing the genus of the merchant guild of which there are many. The term רוֹכֵל means “trader, vendor,” as small retailer (HALOT 1237 s.v. I רכל) distinct from סָתַר (satar) “shopkeeper, dealer” as large wholesaler (HALOT 750 s.v. סתר). It may refer to a traveling merchant, as in Middle Hebrew רוֹכְלָה (rokhÿlah) “traveling merchant” and Old South Arabic rkl “to go about as a trader” (Conti 242a). The general nuance appears in Judean Aramaic רוֹכְלָא (rokhÿla’, “hawker, peddler”) and Syriac rakkala “merchant.”

[6:10]  ¹³ sn This rhetorical question emphasizes her position among women (e.g., Mic 2:7; Joel 2:1).

[6:10]  ¹⁴ tn Alternately, “rises” or “looks forth.” Delitzsch renders הַנִּשְׁקָפָה (hannishqafah) as “who rises,” while NIV opts for “who appears.” The verb means “to look down upon [something] from a height” and is derived from the related noun “ceiling, roof, sky” (BDB 1054 s.v. שָׁקַף; HALOT 1645 s.v. שׁקף). The verb is used of looking down over a plain or valley from the vantage point of a mountain-top (Num 21:20; 23:28; 1 Sam 13:18); of God looking down from heaven (Ps 14:2); or of a person looking down below out of an upper window (Judg 5:28; 2 Sam 6:16; Prov 7:6). M. H. Pope (The Song of Songs [AB], 571-72) suggests that this verb implies the idea of her superiority over the other women, that is, she occupies a “higher” position over them due to his choice of her. But another interpretation is possible: The verb creates personification (i.e., the dawn is attributed with the human action of looking). Just as the dawn is the focus of attention during the morning hours and looks down upon the earth, so too she is the focus of his attention and is in the privileged position over all the other women.

[6:10]  ¹⁵ sn The common point in these four comparisons is that all are luminaries. In all four cases, each respective luminary is the focus or center of attention at the hour at hand because it dwarfs its celestial surroundings in majesty and in sheer brilliance. All other celestial objects pale into insignificance in their presence. This would be an appropriate description of her because she alone was the center and focus of his attention. All the other women paled into the background when she was present. Her beauty captured the attention of all that saw her, especially Solomon.

[6:10]  ¹⁶ tn The term לְבָנָה (lÿvanah) literally means “the white one” (BDB 526 s.v. לְבָנָה) and is always used in reference to the moon. It is only used elsewhere in the OT in parallelism with the term used to designate the sun (Isa 24:23; 30:26), which likewise is not the ordinary term, but literally means “the hot one,” emphasizing the heat of the sun (Job 30:28; Ps 19:6). Both of these terms, “the white one” and “the hot one,” are metonymies of adjunct in which an attribute (i.e., color and heat) are substituted for the subject itself. The white moon in contrast to the dark night sky captures one’s attention, just as the red-hot sun in the afternoon sky is the center of attention during the day. The use of the figurative comparisons of her beauty to that of the dawn, sun, moon, and stars is strikingly similar to the Hebrews’ figurative comparison of Simon the high priest coming out of the sanctuary to the morning star, moon, sun, and rainbow: “How glorious he was when the people gathered round him as he came out of the inner sanctuary! Like the morning star among the clouds, like the moon when it is full; like the sun shining upon the temple of the Most High, and like the rainbow gleaming in glorious clouds” (See G. Gerleman, Ruth, Das Hohelied [BKAT], 171).

[6:10]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “pure as the sun.”

[6:10]  ¹⁸ tn The adjective אָיֹם (’ayom) has been nuanced “terrible” (KJV, RSV), “frightful, fear-inspiring” (Delitzsch), “majestic” (NIV), “awesome” (NASB). In the light of its parallelism with יָפָה (yafah, “beautiful”) and נָאוָה (na’vah, “lovely”) in 6:4, and יָפָה (“fair”) and בָּרָה (barah, “bright”) in 6:10, it should be nuanced “awe-inspiring” or “unnervingly beautiful.”

[6:10]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “as bannered armies.” The term כַּנִּדְגָּלוֹת (kannidgalot, “as bannered armies”) is used figuratively (hypocatastasis) in reference to stars which are often compared to the heavenly armies. This nuance is clear in the light of the parallelism with the dawn, moon, and sun.

[8:5]  ²⁰ sn The imagery of v. 6 is romantic: (1) His mother originally conceived him with his father under the apple tree, (2) his mother gave birth to him under the apple tree, and (3) the Beloved had now awakened him to love under the same apple tree. The cycle of life and love had come around full circle under the apple tree. While his mother had awakened his eyes to life, the Beloved had awakened him to love. His parents had made love under the apple tree to conceive him in love, and now Solomon and his Beloved were making love under the same apple tree of love.

[8:5]  ²¹ tn Or “went into labor.” The verb חָבַל (khaval, “become pregnant”) is repeated in 8:6b and 8:6c, and has a two-fold range of meaning: (1) transitive: “to conceive [a child]” and (2) intransitive: “to be in travail [of childbirth]” (HALOT 286 s.v. IV חבל). In 8:6b it denotes “to conceive,” and in 8:6c it is “to be in travail [of childbirth].”

[21:10]  ²² tn Grk “was shaken.” The translation “thrown into an uproar” is given by L&N 25.233.