What Does Psalm 110:3 Mean?
Your people come forward freely in the day of your strength, in set-apart adornments, from the womb of the dawn; yours is the dew of your youth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.THE KEY
The people gathered in power are themselves freewill offerings, pictured as dew newly born from the womb of dawn.
THE MEANING
Power gathers a people whose readiness is voluntary, and their presence shines in holy splendor. Their youth is pictured as dew from the womb of morning: fresh and arriving with the dawn.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that strength can gather people only through compulsion: here, the people are willing offerings.
THE ROOT
נְדָבֹת
nedavot
GROWS FROM
נדב
n-d-b
To volunteer, offer freely, or act generously.
“come forward freely” in this verse is nedavot. נְדָבֹת carries the sense of freewill giving: the people are described through the language of what is offered freely. Their readiness is self-given, woven into the image of power.
ALSO GROWS
nedavah: A freewill offering.
נְדָבָה
This branch makes the verse’s willingness concrete: readiness belongs to the same word family as a gift freely brought.
nadiv: Generous, noble, or freely giving.
נָדִיב
This branch shows willingness as a quality of character, illuminating the people’s readiness as an open-handed response.
hitnadev: To volunteer or offer oneself freely.
הִתְנַדֵּב
This verb gives the verse’s people an active form: they freely offer themselves.
רֶחֶם
rechem
GROWS FROM
רחם
r-ḥ-m
Womb; the same root is shared by words for compassion.
“womb of the dawn” in this verse is rechem. The morning is pictured as a womb, holding the image of life emerging at dawn. The same consonants also form the Hebrew words for compassion, giving the image an undertone of tender, life-bearing care.
ALSO GROWS
raḥamim: Compassion or tender mercy.
רַחֲמִים
This branch shares the womb’s root and lets the dawn image carry a sense of life held with compassion.
raḥam: To show compassion or have mercy.
רָחַם
The verb keeps the root’s association with compassionate care present alongside the morning’s image of emergence.
THE PATTERN
The people gathered in divine power appear through freely offered readiness.
In the loosing of locks in Israel, when the people freely give themselves, bless the LORD.The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman whose heart made them free-hearted to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.Each one, as his heart has taken hold, so let him give, not from grief or from pressure, for God loves a glad giver.THE THREAD
In the loosing of locks in Israel, when the people freely give themselves, bless the LORD.Both verses use נדב (nadav, to volunteer or offer freely). Judges names the people’s willing self-offering directly, opening Psalm 110:3’s image of readiness as something freely given.
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