When expositors would get through a difficult passage, their readers have, not unfrequently, the vexation of finding that a word of some importance has been ignored. Such has been the case here with the little word
כן
, which introduces the clause. Its ordinary meaning is so; and the office of the word so, in such a position, is to lead the remind to revert to what has been previously said, as necessary to the proper application of what follows. Now, the Psalmist's theme was the vanity of all care and labour, unless the Lord both provide for and watch over His people; for so He will give His beloved sleep—that happy, confiding repose which the solicitude of the worldly cannot procure. This is, surely, intelligible enough and even if
כן
may be translated for (which Noldius, in his Concordantia Particularum, affirms that it here may, adducing however but one dubious instance of its being so used elsewhere, viz. Jeremiah xiv. 10.), or if the various reading,
כי
, be accepted, which would mean for, our version of the clause will be quite compatible with either alteration.
In this concentrated proposition are contained, the mode of giving, so; the character of the recipient, his beloved; and we reasonably expect to be next told what the Lord will give, and the text accordingly proceeds to say, sleep. Whereas, if either Mr. Trench's or Mr. Margoliouth's version of the clause could properly be accepted, the gift would remain entirely unmentioned; after attention had been called to the giver, to his mode of giving, and to the recipient who might expect his bounty. But whilst Mr. Trench is constrained to interpolate in their, apparently unconscious that the Hebrew requires beloved to be in the singular number, Mr. Margoliouth translates
שׁנא
as if it were a participle, which Luther seems also to have heedlessly done. Yet unless