Matthew 13:46

Near the end of April, the Daily Dose of Greek went over Matthew 13:46:

εὑρὼν δὲ ἕνα πολύτιμον μαργαρίτην, ἀπελθὼν πέπρακεν πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν καὶ ἠγόρασεν αὐτόν.

'who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.'  [ESV]

I've been following along in my French New Testament, where this verse is:

Il a trouvé une perle de grand prix; et il est allé vendre tout ce qu'il avait et l'a achetée.

I noticed that (simply because of French syntax) there's a chiasm in the second half:

il est allé vendre (he went to sell)

tout ce qu'il avait (all that he had)

et l' (and it)

a achetée (bought)

This structure emphasizes the opposite nature of vendre (to sell) and a achetée (bought) and, in a way, even illustrates the exchange.  It also highlights the contrast between "all that he had" and the single pearl, here referred to with the pronoun la, which is further shortened by elision to just l'.

Psalm 46:10

While flipping through the Psalms months ago (to find Psalm 62:11 and confirm its resemblance to portions of Proverbs 30, which I was reading at the time), I happened to glance at a section of Psalm 46, and I noticed that the imperative verbs in the first part of verse 10 are stative:

'Be still, and know that I am God.'

The static nature of these verbs (especially in contrast to active voice verbs) matches the tranquility that they encourage in this context.

Isaiah 65:17

Isaiah 65:17-25 was one of the readings in a church service I attended back in the spring, and I noticed a small feature in verse 17:  "'For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.'" [ESV]

"Be remembered" and "come into mind" are parallel expressions, but this combination of passive voice and active voice provides a degree of emphasis or even a sense of totality.

I think there's a similar distinction in the Hebrew, although I'm still not very knowledgeable about the verb forms:

וְלֹא תִזָּכַרְנָה הָרִאשֹׁנוֹת וְלֹא תַעֲלֶינָה עַל־לֵֽב

John 3:16

At a church service I attended back in the spring, the pastor mentioned John 3:16 in his sermon.  Later, I had a small realization about the scope of the verse.

'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.'  [ESV]

In a way, the verse demonstrates both a macro view and micro view.  There's a breadth in "'whoever believes in him,'" but since this verse was originally directed to an individual person (as the verses at the beginning of the chapter make clear:  "1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  2 This man came to Jesus by night..."), there's also a sort of specificity, similar to the intimate familiarity that God has with each person, as described in Psalm 139.

Proverbs 10:6

When I was flipping to Proverbs 14 in order to reference verse 35 and write this post about it, I ran across an-other significant chiastic structure, this time in Proverbs 10:6.  In the ESV, it's:

Blessings

are on the head of the righteous,

but the mouth of the wicked conceals

violence.

As with the last few chiasms in Proverbs that I've written about, the elements here are a bit more loosely equated, but the structure does highlight the contrasts between "blessings" and "violence" and between "the head of the righteous" and "the mouth of the wicked."

This chiasm is also in the Hebrew:

בְּרָכוֹת

לְרֹאשׁ צַדִּיק

וּפִי רְשָׁעִים יְכַסֶּה

חָמָֽס׃

and the Latin Vulgate:

benedictio

super caput iusti

os autem impiorum operit

iniquitatem

It's also in my German translation of Proverbs, but the meaning is a bit different:

Segen ruht

auf dem Haupt des Gerechten;

aber auf die Gottlosen

wird ihr Frevel fallen.

Something like:

Blessing rests

on the head of the righteous,

but on the wicked

will their iniquity fall.

The second half of this echoes Psalm 7:16:  "His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends."

Proverbs 29:3

Several months ago, I read Proverbs 29 in the ESV and noticed an ambiguity in verse 3:

He who loves wisdom makes his father glad, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.

It's unclear whether the antecedent of "his" in the second half of the verse ("his wealth") is the father of this "companion" (similar to how the first half mentions the father of "he who loves wisdom") or the "companion" himself.

The connection between this verse and the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, where the son does squander the father's wealth, suggests that the antecedent is an implied father.  Additionally, in this reading, the two halves of the verse parallel each other:  "he" with "companion," "wisdom" with "prostitutes" (in an inverted sort of way), and "father" with "his."

Alternatively, this "his" could indicate the "companion" himself ("his [own] wealth"), and this understanding results in an-other contrast between these two men.  The first half ("he who loves wisdom makes his father glad") contains three characters:  "he," personified "wisdom," and "father."  If "companion" is the antecedent of "his" in the second half, there are only two entities there (although, admittedly, one is plural):  "companion"/"his" and "prostitutes."  The first man ("he who loves wisdom") maintains his familial relationships, but the second (the "companion of prostitutes") lacks them.

I lookt up this verse in languages that have distinct forms for "his" and "his own" (reflexive possessive) and discovered that both follow this second reading ("his own").

Norwegian:

En mann som elsker visdom, gleder sin far; men den som holder vennskap med skjøger, øder sitt gods.

Esperanto:

Homo, kiu amas saĝon, ĝojigas sian patron; sed kiu komunikiĝas kun malĉastulinoj, tiu disperdas sian havon.

I'm not sure to what degree (if any) all of this applies to the original Hebrew text, though, because it has no "his" in the second clause; it's just "a companion of prostitutes squanders wealth":

אִֽישׁ־אֹהֵב חָכְמָה יְשַׂמַּח אָבִיו וְרֹעֶה זוֹנוֹת יְאַבֶּד־הֽוֹן׃

Proverbs 28:19

A few months ago, I read Proverbs 28 in the ESV and noticed a small feature in verse 19:

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.

The words plenty and poverty alliterate and rhyme, and since these sounds recur, there's a sense of this great degree (although the phrase actually describes a lack).  Of the translations I referenced, this is unique to the ESV.

Matthew 13:30

When the Daily Dose of Greek went over Matthew 13:30 a few months ago, I noticed some significance in the structure.

The text I referenced from the STEP Bible (the Tyndale House Greek New Testament) is slightly different (μέχρι instead of ἕως):

ἄφετε συναυξάνεσθαι ἀμφότερα μέχρι τοῦ θερισμοῦ· καὶ ἐν καιρῷ τοῦ θερισμοῦ ἐρῶ τοῖς θερισταῖς· συλλέξατε πρῶτον τὰ ζιζάνια καὶ δήσατε αὐτὰ εἰς δεσμὰς πρὸς τὸ κατακαῦσαι αὐτά· τὸν δὲ σῖτον συναγάγετε εἰς τὴν ἀποθήκην μου.

This is Jesus giving the dialogue of the master of the house in the Parable of the Weeds.  In the ESV, it's:

"'Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

The direct object follows the verb in the phrase συλλέξατε πρῶτον τὰ ζιζάνια, but it precedes the verb in the phrase τὸν δὲ σῖτον συναγάγετε, forming a sort of chiasm:

συλλέξατε ("gather")

τὰ ζιζάνια ("the weeds")

τὸν δὲ σῖτον ("but the wheat")

συναγάγετε ("gather")

Such a structure highlights the different values that the weeds and the wheat have for the master of the house.

This structure is also present in the Latin Vulgate:

sinite utraque crescere usque ad messem et in tempore messis dicam messoribus colligite primum zizania et alligate ea fasciculos ad conburendum triticum autem congregate in horreum meum

My German New Testament has this structure, too, but it translates the two verbs (συλλέξατε and συναγάγετε) as the same word ("sammelt"), like the ESV does with "gather."  That this element in the chiasm is exactly the same lends even more emphasis to the contrasting nature of the inner elements (the weeds and the wheat):

Laßt beides miteinander wachsen bis zur Ernte; und um die Erntezeit will ich zu den Schnittern sagen:  Sammelt zuerst das Unkraut und bindet es in Bündel, damit man es verbrenne; aber den Weizen sammelt mir in meine Scheune.

John 15:5

Months ago, I lookt up John 15 in order to confirm a similarity to verses 4-5 in a hymn text I was translating ("Du Lebensbrod, Herr Jesu" by Johann Rist).  Specifically, I referenced the NKJV, in which verse 5 appears as:

"I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

The italics indicate a word that's supplied in the NKJV translation that's not in the Greek:

ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἄμπελος, ὑμεῖς τὰ κλήματα. ὁ μένων ἐν ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ, οὗτος φέρει καρπὸν πολύν· ὅτι χωρὶς ἐμοῦ οὐ δύνασθε ποιεῖν οὐδέν.

The verb is explicit in the first clause ("'I am the vine'"), but it's merely implied in the second ("'you [are] the branches'").  The same is true of the Latin Vulgate:

ego sum vitis vos palmites qui manet in me et ego in eo hic fert fructum multum quia sine me nihil potestis facere

By itself, "you the branches" is just a phrase.  Semantically, it can't stand by itself (formally speaking, at least).  The preceding "I am the vine" sets up an instance of ellipsis, indicating that the copulative verb is implied and that this is, in fact, a complete clause.  Grammatically, then, the second clause has a sort of dependence on the first to make its meaning clear, and this matches the broader idea behind the metaphor here ("'without Me you can do nothing'").

According to my Greek textbook (New Testament Greek for Laymen: An Introductory Grammar by Michael A. Merritt, which I got as a .pdf for free from the Daily Dose of Greek website), "Greek differs from English in that the verb εἰμί (to be) may be omitted from a sentence if it is understood from the context" (p. 54), so I'm not sure how applicable my comments are to the Greek (or to the Latin, which I think is comparable in this regard).

Luke 15:11-32

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 (the Parable of the Prodigal Son) was the reading for the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service on 1 April:

I'm not sure if these are very significant, but I noticed some parallels between this parable and the account of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.  The most obvious is that each story is about two brothers who have contrasting qualities.  Also in both, the elder brother becomes angry with the younger brother, who - in the older brother's view, at least - receives preferential treatment (Abel's sacrifices are accepted by God, but Cain's aren't; the prodigal son is honored by a party upon his return, but his older brother never received even a young goat), and each younger brother deals with livestock of a sort:  Abel kept sheep, and the prodigal son fed pigs.

Matthew 13:20

Back in March, I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video on Matthew 13:20:

ὁ δὲ ἐπὶ τὰ πετρώδη σπαρείς, οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τὸν λόγον ἀκούων καὶ εὐθὺς μετὰ χαρᾶς λαμβάνων αὐτόν.

In the ESV, this is:

"As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy"

In both my German and French translations of the New Testament, the pronoun referring to the word is drawn forward in the clause:

Bei dem aber auf felsigen Boden gesät ist, das ist, der das Wort hört und es gleich mit Freuden aufnimmt

Celui qui a reçu la semence dans les endroits pierreux, c'est celui qui entend la parole et la reçoit aussitôt avec joie

As far as I can tell, this placement is just because of the syntax of each of these languages, not a sort of inversion to create some emphasis, but to some degree, it does indicate the eagerness with which the word is received.

Proverbs 24:4

When I read Proverbs 24 in the ESV months ago, I noticed a small feature in verse 4:  "by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches."  The words precious and pleasant alliterate, and they have the same number of syllables (with the emphasis falling on the same syllable in each).  To some degree, the euphony of these features matches the meaning.