Scripture & Theology

The crux interpretum of the second psalm has been the four words that span the end of the eleventh verse and the beginning of the twelfth. A “straight” reading of the MT for these words yields: “Rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son” (cf. ASV, ESV, KJV, NIV). However, the “straight” reading is questioned from a variety of angles. Semantically, the meanings of both sentences as they stand are obscure. Further, from a textual perspective, if the Hebrew text communicates the meaning “son,” the word used there, bar, would have to be an Aramaic loanword, which, though it may have been in use in Israel as early as the 9th century BCE,¹ only appears in the Hebrew of the MT in one other verse, Proverbs 31:2. Even more strikingly, the psalmist has used the Hebrew word for “son,” ben, a mere five verses earlier.

The struggle to understand what these words mean stretches from the LXX to modern interpreters. The LXX translates the second clause as “Lay hold of instruction.” The Targum is similar: “And pray with trembling. Receive instruction.” Symmachus and Jerome translate the last phrase “Worship purely.” Later, Erasmus would conflate both possibilities with “Kiss the son in purity.” In the modern period, Dahood emends the text to “and live in trembling, O mortal men.” Holladay follows this sense, revocalizing the text to produce “you who forget the grave.”² Craigie opts for the traditional interpretation, pointing to the early use of bar, the avoidance of dissonance with ben before pen (“lest”; following Delitzsch’s suggestion), and the fact that the words are addressed to foreign kings, who may be Aramaic-speaking. He claims that kissing the son should be taken as an act of homage by the foreign kings.

Another modern commentator, A. A. Anderson, follows the emendation proposed by Bertholet, rendering the text “with trembling kiss his feet” (cf. NRSV). Here, in contrast to Craigie, the idea of homage prompts a change to the received text. Anderson states, “The kissing of feet is a well-known act of self-humiliation and homage (cf. [Ps.] 72:9; Isa. 49:23; Mic. 7:17; Lk. 7:38, 45).”³ However, the OT texts Anderson cites all use a different Hebrew word, “lick,” and the direct object is the dust, not feet. In fact, the word for “kiss” in Ps 2:12 appears 31 times in the OT, but nowhere else does it appear as a sign of homage, and it never has “feet” as its object. The word is used in almost every case in the context of heartfelt greeting or farewell. The exceptions closest to the meaning Anderson and Bertholet have proposed are Samuel’s kissing of Saul when he anoints him as king (1 Sam 10:1), the people kissing the Baals in Elijah’s complaint (1 Kings 19:18), and the obscure statement in Hosea 13:2, “Those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves,” which may be referring to some type of worship of calf idols.

Based on the use of the word elsewhere in the OT, therefore, “kiss” may have a meaning more akin to “worship” than “pay homage.” Though Jerome’s translation of bar as “purely” may be incorrect, and though the meaning he draws from nashaq (“kiss”) is already an interpretation (possibly not even have based on the Hebrew), he may come closer to the meaning of the word than the concept of homage generally found in modern translations.

1. Craigie 1983:64 [↩]
2. Holladay, VT 28 [1978] 110-112, cf. Craigie 1983:64 [↩]
3. Anderson 1983:70 [↩]