Martin Luther wrote of Psalm 110: “It is worthy to be set in a frame of gold and diamonds” and the Pulpit Commentary notes: “It is wholly Messianic. David has had revelation made to him concerning his kingdom, the priesthood and the ultimate victory of the Messiah over the entire power of evil . . . It is a grand burst of song, rough and rugged, no doubt, but full of energy and genius, he addresses Messiah and sets forth his praise and glory, the mighty offices which he holds and the wonderful triumph which awaits him.”
In these notes we are concerned only with verse 3: “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, thou has the dew of thy youth.” It is difficult to decide precisely the meaning of this verse. The RV has five marginal notes on the one verse, giving us an indication of the difficulty experienced by the translators with it. Reference to other versions gives us the following –
RSV: “Your people will offer themselves freely on the day you lead your host upon the holy mountains. From the womb of the morning like dew your youth will come to you” (the margin suggests ‘in holy array” in place of “upon the holy mountains”).
Rotherham: “Thy people will freely offer themselves in the day of thine army, In the splendors of holiness, out of the womb of the dawn To thee shall spring forth the dew of thy youth.” (As an alternative for “splendorous of holiness” he suggests “In or on the mountains of holiness” and an alternative for “To thee shall spring forth the dew of thy youth” he suggests: “Out of thy womb before the morning-star I begat thee.”)
RV margin (a composite) : “Thy people are freewill offerings in the day of thy army, in holy attire (or: on the mountains of holiness) from the womb of the morning, Thy youth are to thee as the dew.”
Septuagint: “With thee is dominion in the day of thy power, in the splendors of thy saints; I have begotten thee from the womb before morning.”
Dr. Thomas: “Thy nation shall be willing in the day of thy might; in the splendors of holiness the Dew of thy birth (shall be) to thee from the womb of the dawn.”
We are left to ponder whether our title should be “The Beauties of Holiness” or “Upon the holy mountains” or “in holy array or attire” or “the splendors of holiness”! And what is the significance of “like dew your youth will come to you” ?
The subject of the verse is “thy people.” Dr. Thomas defines them as “those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice” (Psa. 50:5), that is, the saints. These will offer themselves willingly in the day that “the LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion” (Psa. 110:2) and when the LORD shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath” (vs. 5). This is the day of the establishment of the Melchizedek kingdom as the dominion of the Father’s kings and priests.
The Beauties of Holiness
In verse 3 the word “morning” is mischar in the Hebrew and it occurs nowhere else in the Bible. It means the day-breaking dawn (as Rotherham and Dr. Thomas) and this gives us the time element for the verse — that glorious dawn of a new day when the Sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings, and the saints shall be clothed upon with immortality.
The Womb of the Dawn
The Hebrew word for “womb” in the phrase “out of the womb of the dawn” is most interesting. There are two main words for womb in the Old Testament: The most common is beten which means simply belly, womb or body. But the word we are considering in Psalm 110 comes from a prime root: to love, especially to be compassionate, to show mercy. Gesenius says of this word, which is rechem, “The primary idea appears to be in cherishing, soothing, and in a gentle emotion of the mind . . . to behold with tenderest affection, compassionate . . . used of the love of parents toward their children and of the compassion of God towards men.” We have an excellent example of both words for womb in Isa. 49:15 where God replies to Zion’s cry that he has forsaken and forgotten her: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” In this verse ‘womb” is beten, simply the physical organ; but the verb “have compassion on” is the prime root racham, from which the word “womb” is taken in Psa. 110:3.
And so “out of the womb of the dawn” — the place and time at which God’s loving compassion for those who are in covenant relation with him will be demonstrated in a mighty act of power as they are raised from the dead — “out of the womb of the dawn” will come the “dew of thy youth.”
The word “youth” comes from a prime root meaning to bear young, to beget, hence the Septuagint rendering: “I have begotten thee from the womb” in place of the Authorized: “thou hast the dew of thy youth”; or Dr. Thomas’s rendering: “the Dew of thy Birth shall be to thee from the womb of the dawn.” Dr. Thomas goes on to comment in Eureka, Vol. I, pg. 141 (1959 Dawn printing) : “the birth given to the saints from the grave will be by Jesus through the Spirit . . . begotten of the Spirit the subjects of it are as dew from the womb of the dawn.”
A Dew of Light
Before we come to the meaning of the phrase “the beauties of holiness” we still have one more word in this verse to examine, the word “dew.” Besides Psalm 110, there are two other significant passages in the Old Testament where we find the word dew: one is the resurrection passage in Isa. 26:19 and the other is the giving of the manna to the nation of Israel in the wilderness, Ex. 16:13-14. There is only one word in the Hebrew of the Old Testament for dew and this is tal and it is translated only into English in our scripture in the word dew. It comes from a root to strew over, by implication, to cover; hence dew: a covering. In Isa. 26:19 we read: “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs and the earth shall cast out the dead.”
The Beauties of Holiness
The Authorized “dew of herbs” is perhaps not as helpful as the more literal translation of the RSV: “Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. 0 dwellers in the dust awake and sing for joy! For thy dew is a dew of light . . .” The translation is “light” rather than “herbs” because the Hebrew is orah, or luminousness, and translated ‘light” in Psa. 139:12: “the darkness and the light (orah) are both alike to thee.” Orah is from the prime root or which is the common Hebrew word for light as in Gen. 1:3: “Let there be light and there was light.”
Eureka again has a very helpful comment on the symbolism of dew: “Herbs are figuratively styled lights because of their appearance when loaded with dew. Hence the light belongs to the dew and therefore . . . the fitness of the expression as a similitude for the resurrected saints in the star-like splendor of holy spirit nature.” (Vol. I, page 142). We can only describe as inspirational an earlier quote by Dr. Thomas in Eureka, page 140 of Vol. I where we find a beautiful passage expounding the symbolism of the dew as a figure for each resurrected saint; we quote only in part: “Every resurrected saint will be a dew-drop, sparkling in the star-like glory of a divine refraction . . . Before the sun rises all nature is concealed in the womb of the night; and although the herbage is wet with dew, yet it is invisible by means of the darkness . . . As soon as the eastern portals of the sky begin to open to the light, which is the life of dew, its drops begin to sparkle with the prismatic glory of its refraction. The apocalypse, or appearing of the dew, is its birth from the womb of the dawn.”
In Exodus 16:13-15 we read that the children of Israel did not see the manna until the dew “was gone up.” That is, the dew lay as a covering to the manna, which is the meaning we noted for dew in the foregoing. The manna was hidden in the dew. In the Christadelphian Expositor, pg. 192, Bro. H. P. Mansfield writes: “The dew covered the manna and reflected the glory of the early morning sun. Millions of gems would flash forth from the heavy fall of dew as the sun of a new day appeared over the horizon . . In the morning of the new day, when the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings’, the reflection of his glory shall be seen in those who arise out of the dust to a resurrection unto life.” In Exodus 16 the dew and the manna represent two different aspects of the immortal saints: the dew “gone up” is a symbol of their resurrection and the manna represents the gift of immortality. Once again, we refer the reader to Dr. Thomas in Eureka, Vol. I page 313 where he writes on the “hidden manna” of Rev. 2:17.
In a recent Canadian wildlife periodical there were some fascinating color photographs of dew drops greatly enlarged. The photographs, done with close-up lenses, showed dew drops hanging from the edge of leaves and from a spider’s web. Behind the dew drops in the pictures were flowers. In each dew drop was a perfect image of the flowers behind. The flowers were not reflected from the dew as from a mirror; but refracted through the drops as in light passing through a camera lens. In fact, the photographer concluded that each dew drop acted like a concave camera lens giving a perfect example of the Scriptural symbolism of the dew. Every brother or sister in Christ, who has refracted — not simply reflected — the glory of the character of the Father in his or her walk in this life (a light emanating from within exhibiting the character of the Father and demonstrating the true individual — not just a mirror-like reflection of what we would like people to see and which may not necessarily reveal the inner man) shall be resurrected to immortality. “We shall be as Morning Stars — stars that come forth as dew from the womb of the morning, shining in all the glory of the resurrection state” (Eureka, Vol. I, page 351). This is Dr. Thomas’s summary of verse 3 Psalm 110 and this takes us back there to continue our study.
Our final consideration will be to decide which of “the beauties of holiness” or “upon the holy mountains” or “in holy attire (or array)” or “in the splendorous of holiness” is the correct translation and then its meaning.
The reason for the confusion is that the Hebrew words for “beauty” and “mountains” are so similar. Beauty is hadar and mountains is harar and the consonant d is almost identical to the consonant r. The pointing on the two words is identical (see Strong’s or Englishman’s concordance, or Gesenius’ Lexicon). It is easy to see how the two words could be easily confused in the early hand-written manuscripts. The phrase “the beauty of holiness” is found in four other Old Testament passages and these confirm that the correct word is beauty and not mountains. The context of these four passages is extremely significant and we must look briefly at these, but first, the meaning of beauty or hadar.
Hadar comes from a prime root meaning to swell up, and by implication to favor of honour, magnificence. Gesenius says it is used of an ornament, adorning, specially used of the majesty of God. It
means to ornament (the most costly Oriental garments being very large); hence to decorate, to adorn, to honour, The usage of the word is very revealing. It is constantly used of the glory, honour, and majesty of the power and dominion of God; or of Christ as King. In 13 usages in the Old Testament, principally the Psalms, it is used in the context of God or Christ as King, describing their honor, majesty or glory. It is significant we find the same word in Psalm 110:3 used to describe the saints who will be kings and priests with Christ in his kingdom.
A brief look at the context of the four other passages where we find the phrase “the beauties of holiness” is most helpful. In these, the original word for beauty is hadarah, the feminine of hadar.
1 Chr. 16:29: David has brought the Ark to Jerusalem ( a type of the future entry by Christ as King) and he “appointed certain of the Levites . . . to record and to thank and praise the LORD God of Israel”. As part of the praise of Yahweh, and the song, David then writes Psalms 105 and 96; and in 1 Chr. 16:29 we read: “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name . . worship the Lord In The Beauty Of Holiness.”
Psalm 96:9: is a quotation from 1 Chr. 16:29, but first note vs. 1: “Sing unto the LORD all the earth” — praise in singing to God for his majesty in reigning over the earth; and then verse 9: “0 worship the Lord In The Beauty Of Holiness: fear before him all the earth.”
2 Chr. 20: Moab and the Ammonites come against Judah. Jehoshaphat prays “in the house of the LORD, before the new court” (vs. 5): “thy name is in this house” —”rulest thou not over all the kingdoms of the heathen?” (vs. 9, 6). Note: He appeals to God as King! The Holy Spirit then comes upon Jahaziel the Levite: “for the battle is not yours, but God’s” (vs. 15). Jehoshaphat appoints singers (vs. 21) “that should Praise The Beauty of Holiness, as they went out before the army”. The children of Ammon, Moab and Mt. Seir are destroyed. The theme is again the power and might of God over the inhabitants of the earth and the phrase “the beauty of holiness” is again incorporated in song and praise.
Psa. 29: verse 10:”yea, the LORD sitteth as King for ever” — the theme again is the glory and strength and power of God reigning over the earth. Verse 2: “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name, worship the LORD in The Beauty Of Holiness.” The phrase we are considering is again incorporated in a psalm of praise to God.
Worship the LORD in the Beauty of Holiness
We see now, from the context and phrasing of these four Old Testament passages, the deep spiritual significance of the beauty of holiness. It is true that the saints will be clothed upon with the glory of immortality when their Lord returns to reign as King and this shall be the holy array of garments of their priesthood.
But in the four passages we have just considered God’s people sang unto the Lord, they praised their God, they worshiped him IN (present tense) the beauty of holiness. This was a condition of acceptable worship before Yahweh—a condition which is equally applicable to brethren and sisters in Christ today. The saints of old worshiped God as we must do today: in the Beauty Inherent In Holiness Itself!
“I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me” (Lev. 10:3) our God says to us. “I am the LORD your God, ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). Peter quotes these words in his epistle: “Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16). That is the only basis of acceptable worship before our God: holiness of character. Holiness of character is a beautiful thing in our God’s sight.
To worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness is for brethren and sisters in Christ to come before him with characters unsullied by the effects of sin and by the effects of the world upon them. In Prov. 31:25 we read of the Virtuous Woman’s “strength and honour (hadar) are her clothing.” This describes the beauty of moral splendor found in this mother in Israel. We will be clothed upon with holy array when Jesus comes; that is, our nature shall be changed and made immortal and our characters ultimately purged of all sin — but only if today we worship him in the beauty of holiness—we come before him with characters untainted by sin and the world. “The beauty of holiness must, like holiness itself, be spiritual — inward. Yet also manifest; for beauty is something we can behold, if not with the eyes, with the mind. Not a beauty we confer, by clothing, adorning . . . but a beauty it confers on us, by purifying and exalting. If the heart is consecrated, the life that flows from it will be beautiful”—The Pulpit Commentary.
And so, when this Gentile night is over, in the dawn of a new day when the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings, we will be healed forever from the effects of sin. The saints will be begotten from the womb of the earth and shall be taken up as the dew of the early morning. Each saint, like a dew drop, will refract the glory of the Father when clothed upon with immortality. With this our goal and our hope, when we come before our God today to worship him in praise and in song, we must ensure that our characters, in our daily walk, have reflected the beauty that is inherent in holiness itself.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One