Anon Lil 51VII/5 — lófum ‘hands’
Yfirmeistarinn allra lista,
Jésús góðr, er lífgar þjóðir,
veittu mier að stilla og stýra,
steflig orð megi tungan efla.
Æfinliga með lyftum lófum,
lof ræðandi, á knie sín bæði
skepnan öll er skyld að falla,
skapari minn, fyrir ásjón þinni.
Yfirmeistarinn allra lista, Jésús góðr, er lífgar þjóðir, veittu mier að stilla og stýra, tungan megi efla steflig orð. Æfinliga með lyftum lófum er öll skepnan, ræðandi lof, skyld að falla á bæði knie sín, skapari minn, fyrir ásjón þinni.
Highest master of all arts, good Jesus, who gives people life, grant me to compose and arrange, [that] my tongue might be able to command words for a stef. Unceasingly, with lifted hands, uttering praise, all creation should fall on both its knees, my Creator, before your face.
notes
[5] með lyftum lófum ‘with lifted hands’: Lit. ‘with lifted palms’, lófi being the hollow or palm of the hand. The gesture was associated with prayer and would have been familiar from Scripture (Pss. XXVII.2, LXII.5, CXXXIII.3; Lam. III.41; 1 Tim. II.8). The psalmist’s formula appears in a l. from the widely-used matins hymn Rerum creator optime: Mentes manusque tollimus ‘we lift up our minds and our hands’ (AH 51, 28; Brev. Nidr., d.iiir). Liturgical books commonly use the rubric manus elevans ‘with hands upraised’ to indicate the proper posture for the priest during prayer. Cf. Geisl 9/5: Hefjum hendr ‘we lift up our hands’. These associations make lyftum preferable to the variant lyktum ‘folded’, adopted by Skj B.