Should "A Psalm of David" be written as "A Psalm to David"?

Question

It has recently been said to me that the Hebrew phrase for "A Psalm to David", which appears at the beginning of many Psalms, should actually be translated "A Psalm to David".

The Hebrew text for "A Psalm of David" is, לְדָוִד מִזְמֹור. The person said that the lamed (לְ) in front of David's name (דָוִד) indicates that the phrase means "To David", and not "Of David"; in other words, the phrase is not indicating that the Psalm was written by David (though whether or not it actually was written by David is irrelevant to the discussion; I believe that the relevant Psalms were, and I believe that that person believes so as well), but are speaking to David.

In other words, if לְדָוִד מִזְמֹור means "To David, a Psalm", then one could say that, although David was the author, he was not the speaker, but was writing to himself from the perspective of someone else. If לְדָוִד מִזְמֹור means "Of David, a Psalm", then there is no good reason to deny that David himself is the one speaking. Consider the importance of this when interpreting Psalm 110, for example.

Is there any good reason to say that the lamed in front of the Hebrew for David does not mean "to", but rather "of", or that it indicates possession? I myself can say that certain of those passages which begin with לְדָוִד מִזְמֹור don't seem to address David at all, but instead seem to be written from his perspective.

Thank you.

Answer 1

In Hebrew, ל as a prefix can mean "to" in the sense of "I am walking to the park." But it can also be used to make a noun the indirect object (i.e. beneficiary) of a sentence, in the sense of "I gave the cookie to David" or "I opened the door for David."

By attaching ל to a noun, we can make it the indirect object of a sentence. (If we want to do this in Latin or Greek, we would instead inflect the noun into its dative case.) So, if we wanted to say "God gave the bread to David," we would write נתן אלהים את הלחם לדוד. Natan (gave) is the verb, Elohim (God) is the subject, ha-lechem (the bread) is the direct object, and David is the indirect object. Note that word order isn't so important in Hebrew, so we could write לדוד נתן אלהים את הלחם and it would mean the exact same thing.

Unlike English, however, Latin and Greek and Hebrew often use the indirect object to show possession. In layman's terms, we write "The house is to Peter" (Domus est Petro/ בית לפטרוס) when we really mean "The house belongs to Peter."

So, to answer the question, the text is ambiguous as the grammar doesn't specify whether לדוד means "to/for David" or "belongs to David."

Thus, if the translator chooses to write "a psalm of David" the translator is injecting his own (possibly true, possibly false) interpretation into the text. No translation is perfect. If I was forced to translate the text into English, however, I would translate לְדָוִד מִזְמֹור as "a psalm to David," so that a reader who knows some basic Hebrew or Latin or Greek will be able to recognize that David is the indirect object in the original text, leaving it up to the reader to decide whether or not it really means "belongs to David."

Answer 2

It is true that the "le" as a prefix to David's name on many Psalms does not either prove his authorship as this prefix could mean, "belonging to", or "by", or "for". However, since ancient times these have been attributed to David, at least in the sense that they were part of a collection belonging to David.

However, most of those that bear this superscription certainly appear to have been authored by David because:

• David was a poet and musician and well known as such (1 Sam 16:15-23, 2 Sam 23:1, Amos 6:5)
• David was a very sensitive man of great faith and deep feeling (2 Sam 1:19-27, 3:33, 34, etc)
• A number of the Psalms reflect directly the experiences of David such as Ps 3 (flight from Absalom), Ps 51 (repentance after Bathsheba incident), Ps 23 (shepherd's experience), Ps 18 (escape from Saul), Ps 34 (experience with Abimelech), etc.
• Many of "David's Psalms" are sent to the director of Music of David's orchestra and choir which he established in preparation for the temple.
• The NT (Jesus and others) directly attribute the authorship of some psalms to David (Matt 22:45-45), Mark 12:36, 37, Luke 20:42-44, Acts 2:25, 4:25, Rom 4:6-8, 11:9, 10, Heb 4:7, etc.