sweeping down from the north over Hermon. We know, indeed, from our own experience how far off a cold air coming from the Alps is perceptible and produces its effects. The figure of the poet is therefore as true to nature as it is beautiful. When brethren bound together in love also meet together in one place, and in fact when brethren out of the north unite with brethren in the south in Jerusalem, the city which is the mother of all, at the great Feasts, it is as when the dew of Mount Hermon, which is covered with deep, almost eternal snow,[1] descends upon the bare, unfruitful - and therefore longing for such quickening - mountains round about Zion. In Jerusalem must love and all that is good meet. For there (שׁם as in Psa 132:17) hath Jahve commanded (צוּה as in Lev 25:21, cf. Psa 42:9; Psa 68:29) the blessing, i.e., there allotted to the blessing its rendezvous and its place of issue. את־הבּרכה is appositionally explained by חיּים: life is the substance and goal of the blessing, the possession of all possessions, the blessing of all blessings. The closing words עד־העולם (cf. Psa 28:9) belong to צוּה: such is God's inviolable, ever-enduring order.
Psalm 134
Night-Watch Greeting and Counter-Greeting
- ↑ A Haraunitish poem in Wetzstein's Lieder-Sammlungen begins: Arab. - - 'l - bâriḥat habbat ‛lynâ šarârt mn ‛âliya 'l - ṯlj, “Yesterday there blew across to me a spark | from the lofty snow-mountain (the Hermon),” on which the commentator dictated to him the remark, that Arab. šarârt, the glowing spark, is either the snow-capped summit of the mountain glowing in the morning sun or a burning cold breath of air, for one says in everyday life Arab. ‘l - ṣaqa‛ yaḥriq, the frost burns [vid. note to Psa 121:6].
