Psalm 31:23,24–“Exegetical Matters”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³Love the LORD, the all of His loved ones. The LORD guards faithful ones and repays abundantly one doing pride. ²⁴Be strong and He will strengthen your heart, all of ones hoping to the LORD.

I’ve posted several times regarding v23. Now I want to move on to v24, however, I think the two need to be kept together as they together form the conclusion to the whole Psalm.

First the exegetical matters: This is another verse (24) where translations will vary. Some will say “Be strong and take heart…” Others will say something like, “Be strong and He will strengthen your heart…” In the first, essentially we do it all. In the second, we make an effort and are assured He’ll complete it.

This is a case where I don’t see the basis for the “Be strong and take heart” translation. With all due respect to the translators who are far greater Hebrew scholars than I’ll ever be, I just don’t see whatever it is they’re seeing. The first verb “Be strong” is, as all agree, a masculine plural imperative. “Be strong” is a very good translation.

But the second is a 3^rd person verb, which would naturally be translated “He will strengthen” or “It will strengthen.” The 3^rd person verb begs the question, “Who?” “Who or what will strengthen?” Then the next thing I note is that the word translated “Your heart” is preceded by a direct object marker. In other words, whatever we do with the 3^rd person verb, its object is the heart. To then translate it, “He will strengthen your heart” is so natural, I would think it would be first choice on all accounts.

It seems to me that, in order to render it, “Be strong and take heart” requires some form of grammatical torture of the 3^rd person verb and its object. Once again, I acknowledge that the people coming up with this other translation are way more capable than me; however, until someone explains whatever it is I’m not seeing, I’ll stick with what I perceive to be the most natural translation, which in this case is, “Be strong and He will strengthen your heart.”

One interesting twist is that the words “your heart” are actually “your (pl.) heart (sing.). That is odd to me. Obviously, from the first word, “Be strong” being a masculine plural, you would think everything that follows would be plural. You’d think it would read, “[All of you] Be strong and He will strengthen your hearts.” Why would it be a 2^nd person plural possessive pronoun with a singular noun? That doesn’t really make sense to me.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that what we’re reading is poetry. Even in English, we’ll sometimes sacrifice perfect grammar to keep up a cadence or rhyme.

Or we could consider, it’s almost like he’s saying to the Israelite believers as a group, “Be strong, and He will strengthen your [collective] heart” – the heart of your nation. Certainly, with his radio broadcasts, Winston Churchill strengthened the collective national heart of England’s people; and no doubt it is true that FDR did the same for America with his “Fireside Chats” through the Depression. So, it can be done. I’m just not sure that is what is going on here. I suppose in the end it doesn’t really make any difference. I just want to be sure I’ve pondered irregularities like this and not just rushed by. Sometimes they can be significant. Maybe David, being a king, is, in his own heart, writing to the Israelites as a people. Hmmmmm?

Finally, I would like to record an observation from the last half of the verse, the words variously translated, “You who hope in the Lord,” “You who wait for the Lord,” or perhaps, “You who trust in the Lord.” Is it “hope” or “wait” or “trust?” The answer is “Yes.” The Hebrew word is a masculine plural participle of a root that would transliterate as something like “yaqal.” Yaqal is a word that paints a picture of a person who is confidently expecting something to happen, confidently waiting, basing his current behavior on the assured hope that it will in fact come to pass, like a child looking forward to Christmas morning.

In English, since we are obsessed with technical precision, we would insist that “waiting,” “hoping, “ and “trusting” are three different things, and I suppose they are; but in a Hebrew picture-painting language they really aren’t. As usual, the Hebrew words don’t mean anything different than their English translations – just so much more. I suppose, in order to be the most accurate, we’d have to translate it, “Ones waiting and hoping and trusting” in the Lord. Of course to do that in every case would turn our English Bibles into a five-volume set, so we just have to pick one of these English words and understand the others go with it.

In the end, we get a verse that follows “Love the Lord,” with something like, “Be strong and He will strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the Lord.”