Singer's siddur commentary, and how to translate בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳

[lethargic_man]

I'm currently reading the commentary volume to the first edition of the Singer's Prayer Book. Why I like it, and dislike the ArtScroll, may be summed up by what both siddurim have to say about the origins of בָּרוּךְ שֶׁאָמַר. The commentary to the Singer's says:

The whole passage, much as we have it, is, apparently, at least as old as Moses Gaon (about 820) and in germ is much older. (See Vitry, p. 5, and commentaries on Shulḥan Aruch, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, §51, 1.) Several of its most characteristic phrases are already cited in the Mishnah and Talmud.)

Whereas the ArtScroll says:

The commentators record an ancient tradition that this prayer was transcribed by the Men of the Great Assembly approximately 2400 years ago from a script that fell from heaven.

Here's one interesting thing I've learned from this volume. How do you translate בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳? In English, the pretty much universal translation is "Blessed are You, Lord." But in German, the standard translation is gelobst seist du, Ewige, "Praised be You, Eternal," using a subjunctive that I don't really see the Hebrew supporting. I did a little experiment with aviva_m the other day and discovered that how she translated the phrase depended on which language she was translating it into!

Actually, it's not just the first two words that the two languages differ translating, but the third one as well. I've already blogged about how the Reform movement translates the Tetragrammaton as "the Eternal", based on the traditional interpretation of it as encapsulating הָיָה, הוֹוֶה, יִהְיֶה "[God] was, is, and will be".

However, something I recently learned from the Plaut chumash commentary, which neither the Hertz nor Etz Chayim mention, is that if the pronunciation scholars say was the most likely for the Tetragrammaton, viz. "Yahweh", is correct, then the Tetragrammaton ceases to be something looking vaguely like the verb "to be", from which we have to extrapolate a meaning, but becomes, very simply and regularly, the third person future imperfect of the הִפְעִיל of the verb stem הוה, and thus can be assigned an unambiguous meaning, "[the One Who] will cause to be".

I'm surprised (but also unsurprised) that this isn't better known amongst Jews.