A sentence commonly said during prayer is "בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד". How do we interpret it? What does it mean?
It sounds like it means:
Blessed is/be the name of the glory/honor of His kingdom forever and ever.
(Note: "מַלְכוּת" can mean "the area under the control of a king", in this case the universe etc., or "the status or quality of being king". I'm translating it ambiguously as "kingdom", but ideally an answer explaining what the sentence means will clarify which meaning "מַלְכוּת" has.)
However, that doesn't make much sense to me. That would mean God's kingdom has glory. And the glory has a name. And we're blessing the name of the glory, or saying it's blessed. That seems very… odd.
So what does the sentence really mean?
The above is my question. More details follow, but you can skip it.
Thanks to Isaac Moses and Monica Cellio (in chat), I have a few other translations handy:
A slightly more palatable (to me) translation makes "כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ" into "His glorious kingdom", as follows:
Rabbi N. Scherman (ArtScroll):
Blessed is the Name of His glorious kingdom for all eternity.
Rabbi J. Sacks (Koren):
Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.
It's more palatable, I say, because at least we're not claiming His kingdom's glory has a name — just that the kingdom itself does. It's still odd to me (that God's kingdom has a name), though, and that we're saying the name is blessed, or blessing it. Plus, we have the grammatical objection that "כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ" shouldn't mean "His glorious kingdom": that'd be "מַלְכוּת כְּבוֹדוֹ".
There is an even more palatable translation:
Rabbi J. Hertz:
Blessed be His Name, Whose Glorious Kingdom is for ever and ever.
Rabbi A. Davis (Metsudah):
Blessed [is His] Name, Whose glorious kingdom is forever and ever.
That makes the entire end of the sentence, "כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד", into a description of God; "Him whose glorious kingdom is forever" (or, one could even say, "Him whose kingdom's glory is forever", to avoid the "מַלְכוּת כְּבוֹדוֹ" issue). This, as I say, is the most palatable of the bunch: we're not saying a name is or should be blessed, nor glory, nor a kingdom, but God. But if this is the correct interpretation of the sentence, I seek a source for it (besides Rabbis Hertz and Davis).