Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 110:3

"Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power, in holy array: Out of the womb of the morning Thou hast the dew of thy youth." — Psalms 110:3 (ASV)

This difficult verse runs, literally, Your people willingnesses (or , willing offerings) in the day of your force in holy attire, from the womb of morning dew of your youth.

The first clause is tolerably clear. The word rendered force means either “strength” or “an army;” and the noun willingnesses appears as a verb in Judges 5:9, to express the alacrity with which the northern clans mustered for battle. We may therefore translate: Your people will be willing on your muster-day.

As to the next two words, there is a variation in the text. Many manuscripts read, by the slightest change of a Hebrew letter, “on the holy mountains” (this was also, according to one version, the reading of Symmachus and Jerome). Adopting this reading, we have a picture of the people mustering for battle with alacrity on the mountains around Zion, under the eye of Jehovah Himself, and in obedience to the outstretched sceptre.

The second clause is not so clear. By themselves, the words “from the womb of morning dew of your youth,” would naturally be taken as a description of the vigour and freshness of the person addressed: “yours is the morning dew of youth.” With the image compare:

“The meek-eyed morn appears; mother of the dews.”

THOMSON.

(Compare to Job 38:28.)

But the parallelism directs us still to the gathering of the army, and the image of the dew was familiar to the language as an emblem at once of multitude (2 Samuel 17:11–12), of freshness and vigour (Psalms 133:3; Hosea 14:5), and was especially applied to Israel as a nation in immediate relation to Jehovah, coming and going among the nations at His command (Micah 5:7). Here there is the additional idea of brightness—the array of young warriors, in their bright attire, recalling the multitudinous glancing of the ground on a dewy morning: your young warriors come to you thick and bright as the morning dew.

Milton has the same figure for the innumerable hosts of angel warriors:—

“An host
Innumerable as the stars of night
Or stars of morning, dewdrops, which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower.”