Psalms 45:10-16

45:10 Listen, O princess! ¹ 

Observe and pay attention! ² 

Forget your homeland ³  and your family! ⁴ 

45:11 Then ⁵  the king will be attracted by ⁶  your beauty.

After all, he is your master! Submit ⁷  to him! ⁸ 

45:12 Rich people from Tyre ⁹ 

will seek your favor by bringing a gift. ¹⁰ 

45:13 The princess ¹¹  looks absolutely magnificent, ¹² 

decked out in pearls and clothed in a brocade trimmed with gold. ¹³ 

45:14 In embroidered robes she is escorted to the king.

Her attendants, the maidens of honor who follow her,

are led before you. ¹⁴ 

45:15 They are bubbling with joy as they walk in procession

and enter the royal palace. ¹⁵ 

45:16 Your ¹⁶  sons will carry ¹⁷  on the dynasty of your ancestors; ¹⁸ 

you will make them princes throughout the land.

Isaiah 54:5

54:5 For your husband is the one who made you –

the Lord who commands armies is his name.

He is your protector, ¹⁹  the Holy One of Israel. ²⁰ 

He is called “God of the entire earth.”

Isaiah 62:5

62:5 As a young man marries a young woman,

so your sons ²¹  will marry you.

As a bridegroom rejoices over a bride,

so your God will rejoice over you.

Zephaniah 3:17

3:17 The Lord your God is in your midst;

he is a warrior who can deliver.

He takes great delight in you; ²² 

he renews you by his love; ²³ 

he shouts for joy over you.” ²⁴ 

Matthew 22:2

22:2 “The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.

John 3:29

3:29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens for him, rejoices greatly ²⁵  when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. This then is my joy, and it is complete. ²⁶ 

John 3:2

3:2 came to Jesus ²⁷  at night ²⁸  and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs ²⁹  that you do unless God is with him.”

Colossians 1:2

1:2 to the saints, the faithful ³⁰  brothers and sisters ³¹  in Christ, at Colossae. Grace and peace to you ³²  from God our Father! ³³ 

Ephesians 5:25-27

5:25 Husbands, love your ³⁴  wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her 5:26 to sanctify her by cleansing her ³⁵  with the washing of the water by the word, 5:27 so that he ³⁶  may present the church to himself as glorious – not having a stain or wrinkle, or any such blemish, but holy and blameless. ³⁷ 

[45:10]  ¹ tn Heb “daughter.” The Hebrew noun בת (“daughter”) can sometimes refer to a young woman in a general sense (see H. Haag, TDOT 2:334).

[45:10]  ² tn Heb “see and turn your ear.” The verb רָאָה (ra’ah, “see”) is used here of mental observation.

[45:10]  ³ tn Heb “your people.” This reference to the “people” of the princess suggests she was a foreigner. Perhaps the marriage was arranged as part of a political alliance between Israel (or Judah) and a neighboring state. The translation “your homeland” reflects such a situation.

[45:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “and the house of your father.”

[45:11]  ⁵ tn After the preceding imperatives, the jussive verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive is best understood as introducing a purpose (“so that the king might desire your beauty”) or result clause (see the present translation and cf. also NASB). The point seems to be this: The bride might tend to be homesick, which in turn might cause her to mourn and diminish her attractiveness. She needs to overcome this temptation to unhappiness and enter into the marriage with joy. Then the king will be drawn to her natural beauty.

[45:11]  ⁶ tn Or “desire.”

[45:11]  ⁷ tn Or “bow down.”

[45:11]  ⁸ sn Submit to him. The poet here makes the point that the young bride is obligated to bring pleasure to her new husband. Though a foreign concept to modern western culture, this was accepted as the cultural norm in the psalmist’s day.

[45:12]  ⁹ map For location see Map1 A2; Map2 G2; Map4 A1; JP3 F3; JP4 F3.

[45:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and a daughter of Tyre with a gift, your face they will appease, the rich of people.” The phrase “daughter of Tyre” occurs only here in the OT. It could be understood as addressed to the bride, indicating she was a Phoenician (cf. NEB). However, often in the OT the word “daughter,” when collocated with the name of a city or country, is used to personify the referent (see, for example, “Daughter Zion” in Ps 9:14, and “Daughter Babylon” in Ps 137:8). If that is the case here, then “Daughter Tyre” identifies the city-state of Tyre as the place from which the rich people come (cf. NRSV). The idiom “appease the face” refers to seeking one’s favor (see Exod 32:11; 1 Sam 13:12; 1 Kgs 13:6; 2 Kgs 13:4; 2 Chr 33:12; Job 11:19; Ps 119:58; Prov 19:6; Jer 26:19; Dan 9:13; Zech 7:2; 8:21-22; Mal 1:9).

[45:13]  ¹¹ tn Heb “[the] daughter of a king.”

[45:13]  ¹² tn Heb “[is] completely glorious.”

[45:13]  ¹³ tc Heb “within, from settings of gold, her clothing.” The Hebrew term פְּנִימָה (pÿnimah, “within”), if retained, would go with the preceding line and perhaps refer to the bride being “within” the palace or her bridal chamber (cf. NIV, NRSV). Since the next two lines refer to her attire (see also v. 9b), it is preferable to emend the form to פְּנִינִיהָּ (“her pearls”) or to פְּנִינִים (“pearls”). The mem (מ) prefixed to “settings” is probably dittographic.

[45:14]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “virgins after her, her companions, are led to you.” Some emend לָךְ (lakh, “to you”) to לָהּ (lah, “to her,” i.e., the princess), because the princess is now being spoken of in the third person (vv. 13-14a), rather than being addressed directly (as in vv. 10-12). However, the ambiguous suffixed form לָךְ need not be taken as second feminine singular. The suffix can be understood as a pausal second masculine singular form, addressed to the king. The translation assumes this to be the case; note that the king is addressed once more in vv. 16-17, where the second person pronouns are masculine.

[45:15]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “they are led with joy and happiness, they enter the house of the king.”

[45:16]  ¹⁶ tn The pronoun is second masculine singular, indicating the king is being addressed from this point to the end of the psalm.

[45:16]  ¹⁷ tn The prefixed verbal form could be taken as jussive and the statement interpreted as a prayer, “May your sons carry on the dynasty of your ancestors!” The next line could then be taken as a relative clause, “[your sons] whom you will make princes throughout the land.”

[45:16]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “in place of your fathers will be your sons.”

[54:5]  ¹⁹ tn Or “redeemer.” See the note at 41:14.

[54:5]  ²⁰ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[62:5]  ²¹ tc The Hebrew text has “your sons,” but this produces an odd metaphor and is somewhat incongruous with the parallelism. In the context (v. 4b, see also 54:5-7) the Lord is the one who “marries” Zion. Therefore several prefer to emend “your sons” to בֹּנָיִךְ (bonayikh, “your builder”; e.g., NRSV). In Ps 147:2 the Lord is called the “builder of Jerusalem.” However, this emendation is not the best option for at least four reasons. First, although the Lord is never called the “builder” of Jerusalem in Isaiah, the idea of Zion’s children possessing the land does occur (Isa 49:20; 54:3; cf. also 14:1; 60:21). Secondly, all the ancient versions support the MT reading. Thirdly, although the verb בָּעַל (ba’al) can mean “to marry,” its basic idea is “to possess.” Consequently, the verb stresses a relationship more than a state. All the ancient versions render this verb “to dwell in” or “to dwell with.” The point is not just that the land will be reinhabited, but that it will be in a relationship of “belonging” to the Israelites. Hence a relational verb like בָּעַל is used (J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah [NICOT], 2:581). Finally, “sons” is a well-known metaphor for “inhabitants” (J. de Waard, Isaiah, 208).

[3:17]  ²² tn Heb “he rejoices over you with joy.”

[3:17]  ²³ tc The MT reads, “he is silent in his love,” but this makes no sense in light of the immediately preceding and following lines. Some take the Hiphil verb form as causative (see Job 11:3) rather than intransitive and translate, “he causes [you] to be silent by his love,” that is, “he soothes [you] by his love.” The present translation follows the LXX and assumes an original reading יְחַדֵּשׁ (yÿkhaddesh, “he renews”) with ellipsis of the object (“you”).

[3:17]  ²⁴ tn Heb “he rejoices over you with a shout of joy.”

[3:29]  ²⁵ tn Grk “rejoices with joy” (an idiom).

[3:29]  ²⁶ tn Grk “Therefore this my joy is fulfilled.”

[3:2]  ²⁷ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:2]  ²⁸ tn Or “during the night.”

[3:2]  ²⁹ sn The reference to signs (σημεῖα, shmeia) forms a link with John 2:23-25. Those people in Jerusalem believed in Jesus because of the signs he had performed. Nicodemus had apparently seen them too. But for Nicodemus all the signs meant is that Jesus was a great teacher sent from God. His approach to Jesus was well-intentioned but theologically inadequate; he had failed to grasp the messianic implications of the miraculous signs.

[1:2]  ³⁰ tn Grk “and faithful.” The construction in Greek (as well as Paul’s style) suggests that the saints are identical to the faithful; hence, the καί (kai) is best left untranslated (cf. Eph 1:1). See ExSyn 281-82.

[1:2]  ³¹ tn Grk “brothers,” but the Greek word may be used for “brothers and sisters” or “fellow Christians” as here (cf. BDAG 18 s.v. ἀδελφός 1, where considerable nonbiblical evidence for the plural ἀδελφοί [adelfoi] meaning “brothers and sisters” is cited).

[1:2]  ³² tn Or “Grace to you and peace.”

[1:2]  ³³ tc Most witnesses, including some important ones (א A C F G I [P] 075 Ï it bo), read “and the Lord Jesus Christ” at the end of this verse, no doubt to conform the wording to the typical Pauline salutation. However, excellent and early witnesses (B D K L Ψ 33 81 1175 1505 1739 1881 al sa) lack this phrase. Since the omission is inexplicable as arising from the longer reading (otherwise, these mss would surely have deleted the phrase in the rest of the corpus Paulinum), it is surely authentic.

[5:25]  ³⁴ tn The Greek article has been translated as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[5:26]  ³⁵ tn The direct object “her” is implied, but not found in the Greek text. It has been supplied in the English translation to clarify the sense of the passage.

[5:27]  ³⁶ tn The use of the pronoun αὐτός (autos) is intensive and focuses attention on Christ as the one who has made the church glorious.

[5:27]  ³⁷ tn Grk “but in order that it may be holy and blameless.”