dew: the fine moisture that settles on the ground overnight when no rain falls, a small but vital summer water source
In the land of the Bible roughly seven out of ten inches of rain fall between late autumn and early spring, leaving the growing season for grapes, olives, and figs nearly rainless. The quiet moisture that condenses overnight fills that gap, so dew is not the trivial thing a modern reader pictures on a lawn: it is a real and sometimes life-or-death water supply, and possibly at times a light drizzle. That is why biblical writers reach for it so often as a picture of God-given life.
Because dew arrives silently, everywhere, and cannot be traced to any human hand, it becomes a natural symbol of blessing freely given. It heads the list of fertility gifts in the blessings of Isaac and of Moses, and its withholding is one of the harshest curses in the Bible, on a level with a total drought. The same silent, uncontrollable quality lets writers turn the image in other directions:
- dew that is gone by mid-morning pictures loyalty that does not last
- a numerous army pictures itself settling over the land like dew
- in one striking passage dew even becomes the power that revives the dead
Across all these uses the word itself means one steady thing, the overnight moisture. The rich range is carried by the settings in which writers place it, not by any shift in what the word denotes.
Nuances
Whether the word for dew belongs in this verse at all. The traditional Hebrew vowels read "the dew of your youth," but the same consonants can be revocalized as the verb "I have begotten you," the reading behind the Greek Old Testament, in which case the word for dew is not present.
- contestedThe received Hebrew is original: the line reads "the dew of your youth," so the word for dew genuinely stands here as a picture of the king's fresh young warriors. It is defended as the harder and better-attested reading.; Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC 21); Goldingay, Psalms, Volume 3 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament); Gentry, 'Psalm 110', Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 25.3 (2021)
- contestedThe consonants should be revocalized toward the Greek Old Testament's "I have begotten you," taken to preserve the earlier text; on this reading the word for dew does not appear in the verse.; Kraus, Psalms 60-150 (Continental Commentary); Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3 (Hermeneia)
What kind of dew is meant. The phrase reads "a dew of orot," and the word orot can mean "lights" or, as in 2 Kings 4:39, edible field plants ("herbs").
- majorityA dew of lights: radiant, heavenly light-dew, fitting Isaiah's theme that light is life.; Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39 (NICOT)
- minorityA dew of herbs: a dew that revives vegetation, and so figuratively raises the dead, on the analogy of 2 Kings 4:39.; Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament: Isaiah
Whether the verse promises literal bodily resurrection or is a figure for the national revival of Israel.
- majorityA genuine promise of bodily resurrection, among the earliest in the Hebrew Bible alongside Daniel 12:2.; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39 (Anchor Bible 19); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God
- minorityA metaphor for national restoration, like the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, not the raising of individuals.; Johnson, From Chaos to Restoration (JSOTSup 61); Watts, Isaiah 1-33 (WBC 24)