John 10:9

A couple weeks ago, the Daily Dose of Latin went over John 10:9:

ego sum ostium per me si quis introierit salvabitur et ingredietur et egredietur et pascua inveniet

"I am the door.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture." [ESV]

The foreignness of "ingredietur et egredietur" caught my attention, and I realized that there's an echo of Psalm 121 here.  Although the order is reversed, "go in and out" also appears in Psalm 121:8:  "The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore" [ESV].  There's also a similarity between "be[ing] saved" and the repeated יִשְׁמֹר in the last two verses of Psalm 121, which the NKJV translates as "shall preserve":  "7 The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.  8 The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore."

Psalm 69

Last month, I read Psalm 69 in the ESV and noticed a few features.  The Psalm starts with some water imagery that recurs in later verses:

1 Save me, O God!  For the waters have come up to my neck.  2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.  3 I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched.  My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

14 Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.  15 Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me.

There are waters both above and below the Psalmist, so there's something of the same effect as a merism here, and the degree of the Psalmist's peril is emphasized.

There's a similar effect with the wetness of the water that threatens to drown him and the dryness of his throat as he calls out for help.  Both qualities cause him discomfort.

Verse 8 exhibits a sort of parallelism:

I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons.

While "my brothers" and "my mother's sons" refer to the same people, the second expression describes the relationship in more distant terms, so even in the language, there's a sense of this ostracism.

Isaiah 40:30-31

A couple weeks ago, I read Isaiah 40:30-31:  "30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." [ESV]

I noticed that the contrast between the faltering strength of the "youths" and "young men" and the sustained strength of "they who wait for the LORD" is highlighted by the different number of verbs used to describe them.  The first group has three ("shall faint," "[shall] be weary," and "shall fall exhausted"), but the second group has four ("shall renew their strength," "shall mount up," "shall run," and "shall walk") (plus a further two if you include the negated "not be weary" and "not faint").  That those in the second group are able to do more illustrates the greater strength that they have because they "wait for the LORD."

Psalm 65:11

I read Psalm 65:11 in the ESV last week and noticed that the clause "your wagon tracks overflow with abundance" contains a sort of redundant description ("overflow" and "abundance" have similar meanings) and that this redundancy matches this surfeit.

This is also the sense in the NIV ("your carts overflow with abundance") and the Latin Vulgate (translated from the Septuagint, at least:  "campi tui replebuntur ubertate," "your fields will be overflowed with fertility"), but I'm not sure that this is quite the sense in the Hebrew:

עִטַּרְתָּ שְׁנַת טוֹבָתֶךָ וּמַעְגָּלֶיךָ יִרְעֲפוּן דָּֽשֶׁן׃

According to the STEP Bible, the word translated as "overflow" (יִרְעֲפוּן) means drip or trickle.  This is the sense in the NKJV ("Your paths drip with abundance"), the Vulgate translated from the Hebrew ("vestigia tua rorabunt pinguidine," "Your tracks will drip with fertility"), and my German Psalter ("deine Fußtapfen triefen von Segen," "Your footsteps drip with blessing").

I can't account for this difference in meaning, but in at least some of the translations, the abundance is mirrored by the redundant description.

Matthew 9:37

A couple weeks ago, I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video on Matthew 9:37:

Τότε λέγει τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ· ὁ μὲν θερισμὸς πολύς, οἱ δὲ ἐργάται ὀλίγοι·

Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few" [ESV]

I noticed that in my German New Testament, the word order is altered so that the structure is inverted between "the harvest is plentiful" ("die Ernte ist groß") and "the laborers are few" ("wenige sind der Arbeiter"), highlighting the opposite nature of "plentiful" ("groß") and "few" ("wenige"):

Da sprach er zu seinen Jüngern:  Die Ernte ist groß, aber wenige sind der Arbeiter.

Psalm 51:4

I read Psalm 51 in the ESV last week, and I noticed a feature that's similar to what I found in Isaiah 1 a number of years ago.  Initially, every verse exhibits a sort of parallelism:

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin!

3 For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

This structure is broken in the fourth verse, though:

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgement.

There's no reiteration or doubling of the same sentiment here, and this more singular focus matches the exclusivity in the verse itself:  "against you, you only, have I sinned."

Proverbs 29:27

While reading Proverbs in the NKJV a couple months ago, I found yet an-other significant chiasm, this time in Proverbs 29:27:

An unjust man

is an abomination to the righteous,

and he who is upright in the way

is an abomination to the wicked.

The same structure is present in the ESV:

An unjust man

is an abomination to the righteous,

but one whose way is straight

is an abomination to the wicked.

And, very bluntly, in the NIV:

The righteous

detest the dishonest;

the wicked

detest the upright.

It's also in my German translation of Proverbs:

Ein ungerechter Mensch

ist dem Gerechten ein Greuel;

und wer recht wandelt,

ist dem Gottlosen ein Greuel.

This structure is in the Hebrew but inverted from the above:

תּוֹעֲבַת צַדִּיקִים אִישׁ עָוֶל וְתוֹעֲבַת רָשָׁע יְשַׁר־דָּֽרֶךְ׃

The word order in the Latin Vulgate is comparable:

Abominantur iusti

virum impium

et abominantur impii

eos qui in recta sunt via

Something like:

An abomination to the righteous

is an unjust man

and an abomination to the wicked

are those who are in the straight way.

In the English and German translations, the order is [unjust | righteous || upright | wicked], where in the Hebrew and the Latin Vulgate, it's [righteous | unjust || wicked | upright], but in both, the structure highlights the mutual animosity.

Proverbs 27:6

Last month, I read Proverbs 27 in the NKJV and noticed some significance in the structure of verse 6:

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

The clauses' structures are inversions of each other:  [adjective][implied copulative verb][noun + prepositional phrase] in the first but [noun + prepositional phrase][implied copulative verb][adjective] in the second.  This inversion highlights the opposites "faithful" and "deceitful," "wounds" and "kisses," and "friend" and "enemy."

None of the other translations I referenced have this structure, though, and some even differ in meaning, which I can't account for.  My German translation of Proverbs and the Latin Vulgate have the same basic meaning as the NKJV, but the ESV and NIV go in an-other direction.  In the ESV, this verse is:  "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy," and in the NIV:  "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses."

Proverbs 24:11

Last month, I read Proverbs 24 in the NKJV and noticed some interesting features in verse 11:

Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.

There's parallelism (of both structure and meaning) between "drawn toward death" and "stumbling to the slaughter," and this is highlighted by the alliteration in each phrase and by the balanced number of syllables in the principal words within each phrase ("drawn" and "death" have one syllable each; "stumbling" and "slaughter" two).

I referenced some other translations and the Hebrew text, but these features seem specific to the NKJV.

Matthew 8:27, Mark 4:41

When I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video on Matthew 8:27 last month, I remembered my comments on Mark 4:41, which is a very similar verse, and I had a few more thoughts.

Οἱ δὲ ἄνθρωποι ἐθαύμασαν λέγοντες· ποταπός ἐστιν οὗτος ὅτι καὶ οἱ ἄνεμοι καὶ ἡ θάλασσα αὐτῷ ὑπακούουσιν;

And the men marveled, saying, "What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?" [ESV]

Because καὶ... καὶ... can also be the correlative "both... and..." (as in Matthew 10:28:  καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα, "both body and soul"), the last part of the verse could be translated as "What sort of man is this that both the winds and the sea obey him?" which provides a sense of the breadth of Jesus' command over nature.  (I'll reiterate what I said about Mark 4:41, though:  "Even the winds and the sea" is probably a better translation.)

This may be (and probably is) overanalyzing the text, but there's an additional sense of breadth because there's a variety in the grammatical gender and number of the direct objects:  ἄνεμοι is masculine plural, and θάλασσα is feminine singular.  Of course, there's also a range just because the sea is beneath and the winds are around and above.

Nearly all the same can be said for this text in the Latin Vulgate:  "porro homines mirati sunt dicentes qualis est hic quia et venti et mare oboediunt ei."  "Et... et..." can be the correlative "both... and..." or even and and individually; venti (winds) is masculine plural; but mare (sea) is neuter singular.

Of what features I noted, the German text has only different grammatical genders for wind (masculine Wind) and sea (neuter Meer):  "Die Menschen aber verwunderten sich und sprachen:  Was ist das für ein Mann, daß ihm Wind und Meer gehorsam sind?"

In French, there's something of a sense of breadth between masculine plural vents (winds) and feminine singular mer (sea):  "Ces hommes furent saisis d'étonnement:  Quel est celui-ci, disaient-ils, à qui obéissent même les vents et la mer?"

John 10:4-5

About a month ago, I read John 10 in the ESV after having run across a reference to it in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, and I noticed a contrast between parts of verses 4 and 5.  Talking about a shepherd, Jesus says, "'the sheep follow him...  A stranger they will not follow.'"  The structure is inverted in the second clause (with the direct object coming first), emphasizing this difference.

I doubt that the word order in the original Greek holds this significance, though, because Greek is a more inflected language than English and word order doesn't matter as much.  In Greek, these clauses are:  τὰ πρόβατα αὐτῷ ἀκολουθεῖ (the sheep him follow) and ἀλλοτρίῳ δὲ οὐ μὴ ἀκολουθήσουσιν (a stranger but not they will follow).

The NIV and NKJV both translate these clauses with the same basic structure:  "his sheep follow him... they will never follow a stranger" and "the sheep follow him... they will by no means follow a stranger," respectively, but this inverted word order is present in my German New Testament, where these clauses are "die Schafe folgen ihm nach" and "Einem Fremden aber folgen sie nicht nach."

Luke 16:13

Earlier this month, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from 25 September 2019.

The reading was Luke 16:1-15, and I noticed verse 13 in particular:  "'No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.'"  This verse is nearly identical to Matthew 6:24 and contains the same feature that I noticed there about a year ago.  There's a chiastic structure to highlight the opposites:

He will hate the one

and love the other, 

or he will be devoted to the one

and despise the other.

As with Matthew 6:24, this structure is also present in the Greek:

Οὐδεὶς οἰκέτης δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν· ἢ γὰρ τὸν ἕνα μεισήσει καὶ τὸν ἕτερον ἀγαπήσει, ἢ ἑνὸς ἀνθέξεται καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου καταφρονήσει. οὐ δύνασθε θεῷ δουλεύειν καὶ μαμωνᾷ.

the Latin Vulgate:

Nemo servus potest duobus dominis servire aut enim unum odiet et alterum diliget aut uni adherebit et alterum contemnet non potestis Deo servire et mamonae

my German New Testament:

Kein Knecht kann zwei Herren dienen; entweder er wird den einen hassen und den andern lieben, oder er wird an dem einen hängen und den andern verachten.  Ihr könnt nicht Gott dienen und dem Mammon.

and my French New Testament:

Nul serviteur ne peut servir deux maîtres.  Car, ou il haïra l'un et aimera l'autre; ou il s'attachera à l'un et méprisera l'autre.  Vous ne pouvez servir Dieu et Mamon.