| 3. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the exclamatory sequence ʾatohi kema rabrevin {אָתוֹהִי כְּמָה רַבְרְבִין | ʾāṯôhî kəmā rabrebîn} ‘His signs, how great’, where the adverb kema {כְּמָה | kəmā} ‘how’ combines with the plural adjective rabrevin {רַבְרְבִין | rabrebîn} ‘great’ to express strong admiration rather than a genuine question. This pattern is repeated in vetimehohi kema taqqipin {וְתִמְהוֹהִי כְּמָה תַקִּיפִין | wə-timhôhî kəmā taqqîpîn} ‘and His wonders, how mighty’, producing synonymous parallelism: ʾatohi ‘signs’ corresponds to timhohi ‘wonders’, and rabrevin ‘great’ corresponds to taqqipin ‘mighty’. The next clause, malkuteh malkut ʿalam {מַלְכוּתֵהּ מַלְכוּת עָלַם | malkûtêh malkût ʿālam}, consists of two juxtaposed nominal phrases. The first, malkuteh ‘His kingdom’, is followed by a construct chain malkut ʿalam ‘kingdom of eternity’, so that the implied copula yields the sense ‘His kingdom is a kingdom of eternity’, i.e., ‘an everlasting kingdom’. The final clause veshaltaneh ʿim-dar vedar {וְשָׁלְטָנֵהּ עִם־דָּר וְדָר | wə-šālṭānêh ʿim-dār wə-dār} is another nominal clause without an explicit verb. The phrase šaltan ‘dominion’ with suffix forms the subject, and the prepositional phrase ʿim-dar vedar ‘with generation and generation’ functions adverbially, conveying duration across time. English supplies the preposition ‘from’ and repeats ‘generation’ in a coordinated prepositional phrase (‘from generation to generation’) to represent the idiomatic Aramaic repetition while preserving the sense of continual rule across all ages. |