When I am singing a TLM wedding, or a New Rite wedding with the Proper from the Graduale Romanum, I am not singing in Hebrew. Nor am I singing the Lectionary text of Psalm 127/8.
In consequence, whatever arguments there may be on those grounds for describing the wife as a "fruitful vine in the recesses of one's home" seem irrelevant. The text being proclaimed is the Vulgate text, and the Vulgate presents the image of the wife as a fructiferous vine covering the walls of a house, not hidden in its depths. (The Proverbial wife, made famous by nearly every New Rite funeral of a woman, doesn't seem to have cared much about the 'recesses' of the home, either).
Taking that image, and the beautiful image of children not "at" but "in the circuit of" the table (let him who hath children understand)*, I have made a (necessarily short) direct translation of the wedding Gradual, poetic but not obnoxiously so (there is Hopkins-esque alliteration, phrasal tmesis, some deliberate chiasmic arrangment, all hopefully subtle) with which, I think, I am happy.
Are you?
Gone is the woman hidden away in childbearing and the mannerly children squaring their meals. Here is a picture of the rich wonder of a beautiful family, teeming with life that brings to life and color and fullness the house fortunate to contain it. "Running" for "circuitu" of course does not, as the Latin, necessarily imply "in motion." Things "run the full length of the building" without moving all the time. But it is a word, unlike "around", that contains a principle of motion with in it. A word alive and energized and energizing, like a child. So I like it better. (The LXX has εν κυκλω, which sounds even more spinning to me - the Hebrew seems tamer).
___________________
*[circuitus is a word quite lively with motion. See its dictionary entry: "going round; patrol/circuit; way/path round; circumference; outer surface/edge; revolution, spinning, rotation; (recurring) cycle;" -- as a father of four, 10 and under, I was particularly attracted to "spinning, rotation," frankly.]
In consequence, whatever arguments there may be on those grounds for describing the wife as a "fruitful vine in the recesses of one's home" seem irrelevant. The text being proclaimed is the Vulgate text, and the Vulgate presents the image of the wife as a fructiferous vine covering the walls of a house, not hidden in its depths. (The Proverbial wife, made famous by nearly every New Rite funeral of a woman, doesn't seem to have cared much about the 'recesses' of the home, either).
Taking that image, and the beautiful image of children not "at" but "in the circuit of" the table (let him who hath children understand)*, I have made a (necessarily short) direct translation of the wedding Gradual, poetic but not obnoxiously so (there is Hopkins-esque alliteration, phrasal tmesis, some deliberate chiasmic arrangment, all hopefully subtle) with which, I think, I am happy.
Are you?
Thy wife shall be like an abundant vine
adorning the walls of thy home:
℣. Thy children like shoots of the olive
running thy table round.
Gone is the woman hidden away in childbearing and the mannerly children squaring their meals. Here is a picture of the rich wonder of a beautiful family, teeming with life that brings to life and color and fullness the house fortunate to contain it. "Running" for "circuitu" of course does not, as the Latin, necessarily imply "in motion." Things "run the full length of the building" without moving all the time. But it is a word, unlike "around", that contains a principle of motion with in it. A word alive and energized and energizing, like a child. So I like it better. (The LXX has εν κυκλω, which sounds even more spinning to me - the Hebrew seems tamer).
___________________
*[circuitus is a word quite lively with motion. See its dictionary entry: "going round; patrol/circuit; way/path round; circumference; outer surface/edge; revolution, spinning, rotation; (recurring) cycle;" -- as a father of four, 10 and under, I was particularly attracted to "spinning, rotation," frankly.]