I am in the grasp of thy hand (in thy closed hand) i.e., I give myself up entirely to thee.”[1]
Verses 8-9
The covenant relationship towards Himself in which Jahve has placed David, and the relationship of love in which David stands to Jahve, fully justified the oppressed one in his extreme request. The apple of the eye, which is surrounded by the iris, is called אישׁון, the man (Arabic insân), or in the diminutive and endearing sense of the termination on: the little man of the eye, because a picture in miniature of one's self is seen, as in a glass, when looking into another person's eye. בּת־עין either because it is as if born out of the eye and the eye has, as it were, concentrated itself in it, or rather because the little image which is mirrored in it is, as it were, the little daughter of the eye (here and Lam 2:18). To the Latin pupilla (pupula), Greek κόρη, corresponds most closely בּבת עין, Zec 2:12, which does not signify the gate, aperture, sight, but, as בּת shows, the little boy, or more strictly, the little girl of the eye. It is singular that אישׁון here has the feminine בּת־עין as the expression in apposition to it. The construction might be genitival: “as the little man of the apple of the eye,” inasmuch as the saint knows himself to be so near to God, that, as it were, his image in miniature is mirrored in the great eye of God. But (1) the more ozdinary name for the pupil of the eye is not בּת עין, but אישׁון; and (2) with that construction the proper point of the comparison, that the apple of the eye is an object of the most careful self-preservation, is missed. There is, consequently, a combination of two names of the pupil or apple of the eye, the usual one and one more select, without reference to the gender of the former, in order to give greater definition
- ↑ Cognate in meaning to חסה ב are Arab. ‘sttr b and tadarrâ b, e.g., Arab. tḏrrâ b - 'l - ḥâ'ṭ mn 'l - rı̂ḥ he shelters (hides) himself by the wall from the wind, or Arab. bâl‛ḍât mn 'l - brd, by a fire against the cold, and Arab. ‛âḏ, which is often applied in like manner to God's protection. Thus, e.g., (according to Bochâri's Sunna) a woman, whom Muhammed wanted to seize, cried out: Arab. a‛ûḏu b - 'llh mnk, I place myself under God's protection against thee, and he replied: Arab. ‛uḏti bi - ma‛âḏin, thou hast taken refuge in an (inaccessible) asylum (cf. Job, i. 310 n. and ii. 22 n. 2).
