There is much beauty and force in this explanation: and accordant with it is the version of Henderson. But that of Newcome is somewhat different—
The sun and the moon stood still in their habitation:
By their light thine arrows went abroad;
By their brightness, the lightning of thy spear.
To avoid the insertion of so many words in italics which are not in the original, I would render the verse thus—
The sun! the moon! — it stood — she remained stationary,
For light to thine arrows which went forth,
For brightness to the flashing of thy spear.
The genitive case is often to be rendered as a dative, as in Jeremiah 31:35, [לאור לילה], “for the light of the night;” that is, “for light to the night.”
There are twelve MSS. which have “and,” [ו], before “moon:” but it is not wanted, the verb “stood” being singular; and it is followed, as I conceive, by another verb in the singular number, and in the feminine gender, while “stood” is in the masculine, and refers to the moon, and the last refers to the sun; which
is sometimes feminine, while moon is ever the masculine. The verb [זבל] is not properly to dwell, but to continue fixed, or to remain stationary. The order in our language would be this—
The sun remained stationary, the moon stood.
—Ed.