O Adonai (18th December)
O Adonai, et dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi
apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in
brachio extento.
O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the bush
to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the Law in Sinai: Come and
deliver us with an outstretched arm.
"Adonai" means "Lord" and is the name used in the Jewish tradition for
God. The divine name, spelt with the consonants JHWH, was probably
pronounced "Yahweh"; however, it came to be considered too holy to
pronounce at all, and the Masoretic vowel-signs for the word Adonai
were attached to the consonants. This was a signal for the reader to
say "Adonai" rather than "Yahweh" when reading aloud. The convention
was misunderstood by some (though not all) of the reformers, who
combined the consonants of JHWH and the vowels of Adonai to create the
quite novel word Jehovah.
Our antiphon, then, identifies Christ very directly with the God of the
Old Testament, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3) and
gave him the Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 20).
The phrase 'domus Israel', 'house of Israel'; is used many, many times
in the OT as a name for the Hebrew people, and also a few times in the
NT.
The phrase 'in brachio extento', 'with outstretched arm' is
characteristic of the Book of Deuteronomy in describing God's mighty
act of delivering Israel from bondage to the Egyptians; cf. Deut.
26:8, 'et eduxit nos de Aegypto in manu forti, et brachio extento.'
The O-Antiphons therefore begin by associating Christ with God in
Creation: he is the Sapientia, Wisdom, who was with God and was God in
the beginning, without whom nothing was made; in other words, with the
God of Genesis. Then they move on to associating him with the God of
the Exodus, which in the NT itself is regarded as a type of Christ's
redeeming passion (cf. Luke 9:30-31, the Transfiguration: 'And behold,
two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and
spoke of his Exodus, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.')
Several more of the antiphons compare the redemption wrought by Christ
with deliverance from situations of imprisonment or slavery mentioned
in the OT. Curiously, none mentions the Exile in Babylon, which is
alluded to so plainly in the first verse of our Latin hymn:
Veni, veni, Emmanuel, O come, O come, Emmanuel,
captivum solve Israel, Redeem thy captive Israel,
qui gemit in exilio, That into exile drear is gone
privatus Dei Filio. Far from the face of God's dear Son.
That allusion is down to our hymnographer; and a happy and creative
enough allusion, it seems to me.
Oriens.
So last year; if I may add a further observation, observe the
translation by T.A. Lacey of today's antiphon:
O come, O come, Adonai,
Who in thy glorious majesty
Fom that high mountain clothed with awe
Gavest thy folk the elder law.
Lacey was constrained to find a rhyme for 'Adonai'; not an easy task,
you will agree. However he had, as it were a gift, the word 'Sinai' in
his Latin text. In a remarkable display of the independence of his
mind, he refused to use it, choosing instead the paraphrase 'that high
mountain'.
J.M. Neale, on the other hand, in an equally bravura tour de force,
used 'Sinai' but preferred to paraphrase 'Adonai' as 'Lord of might':
O come, O come, thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times didst give the Law
in cloud and majesty and awe.
How easily a lesser man might have written:
O come, O come, Adonai,
Who to thy tribes on Sinai . . .
The Supple Doctor.
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