are of importance for their effect on the sense.
Verses 17-20
Instead of the words האדם תּורת וזאת (2Sa 7:19), the Chronicle has המּעלה האדם כּתור וּראיתני, and sawest me (or, that thou sawest me) after the manner of men; תּור being a contraction of תּורה = תּורה. ראה, to see, may denote to visit (cf. 2Sa 13:5; 2Ki 8:29), or look upon in the sense of regard, respicere. But the word המּעלה remains obscure in any case, for elsewhere it occurs only as a substantive, in the significations, “the act of going up” (or drawing up) (Ezr 7:9), “that which goes up” (Eze 11:5), “the step;” while for the signification “height” (locus superior) only this passage is adduced by Gesenius in Thes. But even had the word this signification, the word המּעלה could not signify in loco excelso = in coelis in its present connection; and further, even were this possible, the translation et me intuitus es more hominum in coelis gives no tolerable sense. But neither can המעלה be the vocative of address, and a predicate of God, “Thou height, Jahve God,” as Hgstb. Christol. i. p. 378 trans., takes it, with many older commentators. The passage Psa 92:9, “Thou art מרום, height, sublimity for ever, Jahve,” is not sufficient to prove that in our verse המּעלה is predicated of God. Without doubt, המּעלה should go with וגו ראיתני, and appears to correspond to the למרחוק of the preceding clause, in the signification: as regards the elevation, in reference to the going upwards, i.e., the exaltation of my race (seed) on high. The thought would then be this: After the manner of men, so condescendingly and graciously, as men have intercourse with each other, hast Thou looked upon or visited me in reference to the elevation of myself or my race, - the text of the Chronicle giving an explanation of the parallel narrative.[1]
The divergence in 1Ch 17:18, את־עבדּך לכבוד אליך
- ↑ This interpretation of this extremely difficult word corresponds in sense to the not less obscure words in 2nd Samuel, and gives us, with any alteration of the text, a more fitting thought than the alterations in the reading proposed by the moderns. Ewald and Berth. would alter וראיתני into והראיתני (hiph.), and המעלה into למעלה, in order to get the meaning, “Thou hast caused me to see like the series of men upwards,” i.e., the line of men who stretch from David outward into the far future in unbroken series, which Thenius rightly calls a thoroughly modern idea. Böttcher's attempt at explanation is much more artificial. He proposes, in N. k. Aehrenlese, iii. S. 225, to read למעלה...וּראיתני, and translates: “so that I saw myself, as the series of men who follow upwards shall see me, i.e., so that I could see myself as posterity will see me, at the head of a continuous family of rulers:” where the main idea has to be supplied.
