Psalms 110:3

From the womb of the morning, &c.— Thou hast shone like the morning from thy very birth; thy youth has been covered with dew. Ross. 98: sed vid. Hiller, part 2: p. 26. Nold. p. 1029. Or, The dew of thy youth is as from the womb of the morning. Mr. Mann in his Critical Notes, after a variety of observations, gives us the second and third verses thus: A sceptre of might will Jehovah deliver thee out of Sion; reign thou in the midst of thine enemies; Psalms 110:3 and with thee, O prince, in the day of thy power, thy saints, through mercy clothed with splendour. Before the morning-star I begot thee, my Son. Houbigant renders the latter clause somewhat similar: Before the morning-star I have begotten thee from the womb. According to the first exposition of the words, the meaning must be, that quickly after the morning or beginning of Christ's kingdom, it should over-spread the earth as the morning dew. According to the second exposition, the multiplicity of Christ's seed, or the faithful, is foretold: "Thy seed will not be less numerous "or fruitful than the morning dew." And according to that of Mann and Houbigant, with which many of the ancient versions agree, the eternal generation of the Son is declared. Bishop Reynolds explains it agreeably to the second exposition. "Thy children shall be born in as great abundance unto thee, as the dew which falleth from the womb of the morning;" and I cannot help adding, that this interpretation appears to me not only most agreeable to the context, but the most natural and easy interpretation of the Hebrew. "The dew of thy youth is [as the dew] from the womb of the morning." See Song of Solomon 5:3.Isaiah 26:19. Job 8:22; Job 8:22. Bishop Lowth, speaking of the intermixture of metaphor with allegory in Genesis 49:9 observes, that the case is the same with regard to that memorable prophesy which foretold the surprising growth of the gospel; where, indeed, the metaphor being blended with the simile, and the principal word not being repeated, causes some obscurity: The dew of thy progeny is more than the womb of the morning; meaning, "The dew of thy progeny is more abundant than the dew which proceeds from the womb of the morning." See his 10th Lecture.