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There is no need to apologize, I do realize that few people read Hebrew. The reason I have broken the text down in the way that I did was to try and make the Hebrew text accessible to someone who couldn't read Hebrew and couldn't follow the grammatical argument without some help.

The reason I posted the information on the grammar references and the link to the page about the grammatical issue I was addressing was to provide you with ways to verify the grammatical rule I spoke about truly does exist.

The last thing I looked for was an online version of the Westminster Hebrew Morphology, but I could not find one available online. It is availble in many software bible study packages like Logos, Bibleworks, Olive Tree, etc... It gives you the grammatical break down of each word in the bible. I will include the morphology below, you can verify it with any number of s/w packages.

גלמי noun common masculine singular construct suffix 1st person common singular
ראו verb qal perfect 3rd person common plural
עיניך noun common both dual construct suffix 2nd person masculine singular
ועל particle conjunction, particle preposition homonym
ספרך noun common masculine singular construct suffix 2nd person masculine singular
כלם noun common masculine singular construct suffix 3rd person masculine plural
יכתבו verb niphal imperfect 3rd person masculine plural
ימים noun common masculine plural absolute homonym 1
יצרו verb pual perfect 3rd person common plural
ולא particle conjunction kethib, particle negative kethib
אחד numeral cardinal masculine singular absolute
בהם particle preposition suffix 3rd person masculine plural

Two things that require extra explanation because they don't exist in English.

1) dual - refers to a special kind of plural that represents something that comes in pairs i.e. hands, feet, eyes, etc..
2) kethib - refers to the written text, when there is a qere (marginal correction of the text).

The qere in this verse is:

ולו particle conjunction qere, particle preposition suffix 3rd person masculine singular qere


This, combined with the grammar rule I cited in the previous post, should provide you with enough information to evaluate the grammar claim I made.

I am not saying that "days" all by itself means "lifetime" but that "the days of a person" means "lifetime" it is the context that leads to that interpretation. The "days of ..." is typically understood as the "duration of ..." in the case of Job 30:27 we are not speaking of the "days of Job" but of the "days of anguish"

Note: normally the idea of "days of..." is expressed through the Hebrew construct..., but because of the way the sentence is formed the construct is not used in Ps. 139:16. This is why the plural/singular grammar issue I described is so critical to understanding this passage.

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at the Cross,

Nelson

First, Hebrew yom[im] or days is in the text of Psalm 139:16. As well as the idea of "ordain" as has been explained by Benelchi. Have you considered the LXX where Hebrew scholars from about 500 B.C. rendered the Greek for "days" in that Greek translation of the OT. I would say that they were at least 2,500 years closer to the Biblical Hebrew and a good bit more conversant with it and it's meanings.

I disagree as do the translators of the NIV. I would also say that the translators of the ESV (who used "formed for me" rather than "ordained") and the NKJV (which used "fashioned for me" rather than "ordained"). All carry the same basic meaning and are being true to the text.

In many cases with translation different is really not that different and not really wrong (per se) as well. Please provide the translation you think most correctly provides the intended meaning of the author of this Psalm (David) and how it is contecxtually better than the NET.


The fact is that this text and the wooden translation given by Benelchi (noted above) gives the understanding that God "ordained" (planned or wrote ahead of time) every one of the days (or "time" in your NJV) of the author of this work.

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Blessings,
Randy
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The Net Bible Online

גלמי ׀ ראו עיניך ועל־ספרך כלם יכתבו ימים יצרו ולו‪*‬ אחד בהם
‪*‬[ולא כ]

The difficult text of verse 16 has challenged interpreters throughout the centuries. The LXX renders almost word for word, yielding a translation not much better than the standard English versions:

While LXX doesn't make a whole lot of sense here, they did, in my opinion, get one thing right: they took ימים (yamim, 'days') adverbially rather than parsing it as the subject of the verbs יכתבו (yikkatebu, 'were written') and יצרו (yussaru, 'were formed'). LXX doesn't supply a clear subject for its renderings of these verbs (γραφησονται and πλασθησονται), merely picking up "all" (παντες) from the כל in כלם. But I believe we can find a subject for those verbs with a little innovation.

The usual approach, of course, is to take ימים ('days') as the subject — quite reasonable in light of ימים being apparently the only plural noun in the sentence. But this makes no sense in my opinion in the context. It's odd that the suffix on כלם would be anticipatory to its antecedent (postcedent?) noun. The verb יצר ('form') normally describes the shaping of a physical substance, and only rarely the formulation of an idea or such (and the notion of 'forming days' is unattested in Scripture). Further, the verb is used in Genesis to describe the formation of Adam from the soil, and is used in Isaiah 49:5 to refer to God's formation of His servant 'from the womb' — both of which lead me to associate it here with גלמי ('my fetus'). And the notion of the divine formation of the fetus is quite consonant with such texts as Ecclesiastes 11:5 ("Just as you do not know the way of the wind, or how the bones develop in the pregnant woman’s womb, so you do not know the action of God who does it all") and Job 10:8-11 ("Your hands fashioned and made me altogether — yet now You destroy me! Remember that You made me out of clay and to the dust You will return me. Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh and knitted me with bones and muscles"), as well as with David's preceding description of this process ("my bones were not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place, [when] I was woven in the lowest parts of the earth").

So, how can גלמי be the subject of יצרו? Since גלמי is a hapax legomenon, it's hardly a stretch to question the word's vocalization. I propose that MT's גָּלְמִי (golmi) be revocalized as גָּלְמַי (golmay), a plural form representing the diversity of elements in the embryonic human body. The form would then be understood in English as a sort of collective noun. By way of analogy I would cite the frequently used noun פנים (panim, 'face'), which “always occurs in the plural, perhaps indicative of the fact that the face is a combination of features” (TWOT:727). One might object that פנים takes singular verbs and adjectives. True, it usually does; but there are exceptions, both with verbs (פָּנָיו יֶחֱוָֽרוּ, Isaiah 29:22, referring unambiguously to the face of a single person) and adjectives (וּפָנִים נִזְעָמִים, Proverbs 25:23). A plural גָּלְמַי would also parallel nicely with the plural עצמי in the preceding verse.

In this light, my proposed translation of Psalm 139:16 —

(The second clause is understood as somewhat parenthetical; the third clause is subordinate to the first. The final clause is a bit abrupt, but such transitions — including the shift from second to third person — occur earlier in the composition and are well documented in Psalms generally.)

What does it mean that David’s features were written in God’s book? This is usually taken as a reference to the book of life, which is then understood (in the light of Revelation 21:27) to mean that God determined David’s eternal destiny at the moment of his conception. However, the book of life is not the only divine book mentioned in Scripture. Revelation 20:12 refers in the plural to “the books,” echoing Daniel 7:10. In addition to the book of life, God has other books in which He records people’s deeds and also the experiences of His people (Psalm 56:8). There is even a “book of HaShem” concerning the natural activities of the animals (Isaiah 34:16). I believe that David is referring to God’s careful record keeping concerning His beloved, even numbering the hairs on our heads.

What then is the sense of the final clause? What “feature” of the fetus pertains especially to God? In the standard take where "days" is the subject, you'd have to find a particular day in David's life that would be especially God's. (Or make sense of the negation in the alternative textual reading.) In my take, I believe this refers to the inner man, the soul or spirit. HaShem is “the God of the spirits of all flesh” (Numbers 16:22 & 27:16). (Certainly the spirit of every child of Israel would be His in a special way simply by virtue of the covenant.) “The spirit (נשׁמה) of man is HaShem’s lamp, searching the chambers of the belly” (Proverbs 20:27).

There is simply no need to understand this verse as teaching that all the details of our lives are pre-ordained. The thought is completely intrusive in this psalm of David's awestruck wonder of God's care for him.

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All translations of Scripture and other sources are my own unless otherwise noted.

“All of them” can come before its antecedent. Isaiah 45:16, “They will be put to shame and disgraced, all of them, they will go into reproach together, the makers of idols.”

The idea that golem might be plural doesn’t make much sense. It’s the fact that it doesn’t have parts, that it is one unformed blob, that makes it a golem. And even if a face can be plural because it has parts, would Hebrew speak about one face by saying, “all of them.”
You cite Isaiah 29:22 as an example of a single face taking a plural verb, but “Jacob” in that verse refers to the house of Jacob, to all the people, “his faces” means all of their faces won’t turn pale. And Proverbs 25:23 probably also refers to faces, “a sly tongue (gossiping) brings angry faces.” It could be “an angry face” I suppose. It could also be “An angry face brings a sly tongue.” But the plural faces makes a lot of sense. To say “all of them” referring to a single face doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make sense for body parts to be written in his book.
It doesn’t make sense to insert “these processes” or to suggest there’s any reason to write the processes in his book.
It doesn’t make sense to say that only one of them belongs to him.

As for the LXX version, I would translate it, “Your eyes saw my unworked form, in your book all were written, days were formed, and no one among them.”
It gives no indication what “all” refers to. But since “unworked form” is definitely singular in Greek, that can’t be the antecedent. But "all were written, days were formed," reads as a poetic parallelism, suggesting both phrases are speaking about the same thing. And they're both plural. (There is much more parallelism between these two phrases than between the first two, "Your eyes saw my unworked form, in your book all were written").
“Days” is very likely a nominative, the subject of “were formed.” It could be accusative, "(for) days they were formed," but putting an unarticulated accusative that is identical to a nominative right before a verb that has no other subject, would seem a very poor choice. It looks like the subject to me. Days were formed.
And “no one among them” doesn’t support your alternate reading.

It does make perfect sense that what you write in a book are days (and all the contents of those days, a life story). And in poetic imagery, when speaking of an embryo, it is quite reasonable that the poet thought of those days being formed, just like an embryo, before he was born, even if that’s not an expression that would have been used in any other context.

I wouldn’t insist that this is the only way it can be translated. But it still seems the best way to me, not because of theology, just making sense of the Hebrew.

Thanks for the critique, Booker. I appreciate your thoughtful reading of my off-the-beaten-path idea.

Just a couple of nitpicks:

• As I said above, I find it "odd" (not impossible) that an antecedent should follow its pronoun. But in your example, I wouldn't take "the makers of idols" as the antecedent of כלם in Isaiah 45:16. I think v.15 is parenthetical and the "them" in כלם refers to those who will bow down to the Jews in v.14. The "makers of idols" is then a fuller description of the conquered Gentiles.

• In your rendering of Psalm 139:16 LXX you make ημερας the subject of the verbs, but ημερας is in the accusative.

• As for the sense of גלמי as 'one unformed blob', I'm wondering if you're importing the postbiblical sense of Golem into the word here. It's hard to tell precisely what the h.l. גלמי actually means in this verse. Could it not simply mean 'embryo' or 'fetus' here without reference to formlessness?

• Your reading of Isaiah 29:22 is tenable, although when "Jacob" is the subject the verb יֵבֹושׁ and the suffix in בִרְאֹתֹו are singular; when the subject switches to "his children" the verbs become plural. It's possible that the use of number is inconsistent, but the switch from singular to plural looks precise to me.

Ack, you're right about hemeras being accusative. My Logos software has it mistakenly listed as nominative, and I didn't think to second guess it. The computer is always right, didn't you know that?

As for Golem, I just transliterated it that way because I like the word. I understand the word, from the verb to fold or roll up like a ball, like the Greek "unworked" or "unformed" to refer primarily to the embryo before any features are formed. The NET Bible notes say, "In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing”
Perhaps it can still be applied to its later development, when the fetus has arms and legs, but it really doesn't make much sense that those parts would be so central to its identity that they would use a plural, like face, to describe the lump.

Surprised Logos would misidentify the form. I've heard consistently good reports on the program.

I'm not so sure the sense of golem is 'undifferentiated mass' or such. The Targum renders it as 'my body' (going by Cook's translation as I lack access to the Aramaic; I should also note that the Targum takes "days" as the subject of "were written"). Genesis Rabbah 24 (taking the speaker here as Adam rather than David) sees God explaining the future of his descendants to the golem Adam; it's hard to figure out how an amorphous blob could comprehend God's explanation. Neither Targum nor Midrash is authoritative, of course, but both shed light on how the ancient readers understood the word.

Assuming David understood what he wrote in this psalm, I'd have to figure that the in utero גלמי was not an undifferentiated embryo (which those of David's time could hardly have observed and named) but at least a fetus with discernible features. Even at 12 weeks, as any pro-lifer will affirm, it looks like a human being, not a shapeless mass. About all we can say for sure on golem, I think, is that it refers to an in utero human being.