Mark 1:18, 20

Although I'm a couple weeks behind, I've been following the "re-runs" of Daily Dose of Greek videos on Mark as they're posted on YouTube.  (When I subscribed to the Daily Dose of Greek emails back in October 2016, they were in Mark 10; so far, these "re-runs" are new to me.)

I noticed the same feature in Mark 1:18 and Mark 1:20:

Mark 1:18:  "And immediately they left their nets and followed him."

Mark 1:20:  "And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him."

Dr. Plummer says one could translate the participle ἀφέντες (leaving) "like another main verb," and all of the translations I lookt at do this (although my French New Testament does render it as a participle in verse 20:  "Aussitôt, il les appela; et, laissant leur père Zébédée dans la barque avec les ouvriers, ils le suivirent.").

I would argue that it should be translated not as a finite verb but as a participle, partially because it's a participle in the original Greek but mostly because this leaves only a single verb in each sentence and those verbs are the most significant action:  following Jesus.

(For what it's worth, here's a link to the interlinear.)

Psalm 91:11

Last month, I started translating a German book published by CPH about a century ago (my edition is from 1902).

Although the title Kirchen-Gesangbuch translates to Church Songbook, the book actually seems to be a collection of antiphons, prayers, selected Bible passages for specific days, the Augsburg Confession, and other things I have yet to discover.

So far, I've made my way through two pages of the antiphons (translating one pair [Intonation and Responsorium] every day [although occasionally falling behind]).  Recently, a verse from Psalm 91 appeared:

I.  Er hat seinen Engeln befohlen über dir.  Halleluja.
R. Daß sie dich behüten auf allen deinen Wegen.  Halleluja.

This is only slightly different from what my German Bible (Luther's translation) has:  "Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen, daß sie dich behüten auf allen deinen Wegen."  In the ESV, this is "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways."

English doesn't differentiate between 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural (at least not anymore), so until reading the German, I hadn't realized that the "you" here is singular.  (Or maybe I had, but this certainly drew my attention to it.)  I referenced the Hebrew to confirm this (although I had to look up the forms):

כִּי מַלְאָכָיו יְצַוֶּה־לָּךְ לִשְׁמָרְךָ בְּכָל־דְּרָכֶֽיךָ׃

(Here's a link to the interlinear.)

The significance here is that God's care is specific to the individual.

La lumière de mes pas

Since the lectionary started over with series A, I'm entering a new phase of a project I started three years ago.  I'd been following along with the readings in German, but now I'm switching to French.  The three-language (German, French, and English) edition of the Bible I've been using has only the New Testament (translated by a Louis Segond), so - as with the German - I'll be missing out on the Old Testament readings.  I'll probably be able to read most of the Psalms though because I also have a copy of Concordia Publishing House's Liturgies et cantiques Luthériens, which is essentially the French version of The Lutheran Service Book and which contains some Psalms.

My original plan was to move on to the next language I started learning every time the lectionary starts over.  If I continue to follow this, I'll be starting the Latin Vulgate three years from now, but first I have to obtain a copy.

Psalm 121:4

In following along (in German) with the readings on Worship Anew last week, I found an-other instance where the German emphasizes parallelism by using alliteration (only after which did I realize that this is also true in the English).  Psalm 121:4 is "Siehe, der Hüter Israels schläft und schlummert nicht."  In the ESV, this is "Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep."  Schläft and schlummert (and slumber and sleep) both mean pretty much the same thing, and the repeated schl (or sl) highlights this.

Luke 16:19-31 (The Rich Man and Lazarus)

One of the readings for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels last month was Luke 16:19-31.  That's not the reading from the lectionary, but it's an appropriate text because after Lazarus died, he "was carried by the angels to Abraham's side."

This reading reminded me of the song "Dives and Lazarus" (drawn from this text), which I wrote about here.  After writing that, I kept thinking about the Biblical text, and I realized that while the song provides a fitting name for the rich man, it's significant that he's not named in the text.

In John 10, Jesus says that the Good Shepherd "calls his own sheep by name" and that "I know my own and my own know me," and in Matthew 10, He says, "So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven."  Because of his faith, Lazarus' name is known; because of his lack of faith, the rich man's name isn't.

Ezekiel 4:16

I read Ezekiel 4 a couple weeks ago, and I noticed something interesting about verse 16:  "Moreover he [God] said to me, 'Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem.  They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay.'"  At first, I noticed only that the second sentence features zeugma:  while "by weight" and "with anxiety" are both adverbial prepositional phrases that modify "eat," "by weight" describes how in a physical sense and "with anxiety" describes how in an emotional sense.  Same for "drink water by measure and in dismay" because the sentence also features structural parallelism.

When I lookt up the definition of zeugma to confirm that I'd correctly identified it, Merriam-Webster's observation that "Zeugma... is economical: it contracts two sentences into one" made me realize something else.  This verse describes how people will have to ration their food and water, and zeugma's reuse of sentence elements illustrates this saving in a grammatical way.  Rather than two clauses ("They shall eat bread by weight, and they shall eat it with anxiety"), they're combined into one.

Then I started wondering whether this structure is in the original Hebrew.  I've been reading The Lutheran Study Bible, which uses the English Standard Version.  The New International Version has the more prosaic "The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair."  When I referenced the STEP Bible, I discovered that the Hebrew text does have zeugma:

וְאָכְלוּ־לֶחֶם בְּמִשְׁקָל וּבִדְאָגָה וּמַיִם בִּמְשׂוּרָה וּבְשִׁמָּמוֹן יִשְׁתּֽוּ׃

Here's a link to the interlinear.

Jeremiah 4:9

I've been following along with the weekend edition of The Daily Dose of Hebrew as it goes through Jeremiah.  Yester-day, the verse was Jeremiah 4:9.  I always read the verse in my Bible before watching the video, and I noticed a slightly interesting thing in the ESV:  "'In that day, declares the LORD, courage shall fail both king and officials.  The priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded."

In the second sentence, where the Hebrew has a chiasm, the English translation has parallel structure (with the ellipsis of "shall be," even).  As if to emphasize that parallel structure, there's consonance between priests and prophets and assonance between appalled and astounded.

Psalm 91:5-6

Psalm 91 was the Psalm this week (for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels), and I was reminded of something I noticed about it a couple years ago (in December 2016), specifically in these verses:  "5 You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, / 6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday."  Both of these verses contain a merism relating to time:  "night" and "day" in verse 5 and "darkness" and "noonday" in verse 6.  Taken individually, each verse gives a sense of God's protecting us during the course of a single day.  But if they're taken together and each temporal element is understood as a different day, there's a sense of God's ongoing and continual protection.

1 Corinthians 1:18

Last Friday, there was an installation service for various LCMS leaders.  I saw some clips of this (on Instagram stories, of all places), including some of the readings.  I noticed something about 1 Corinthians 1:18:  "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

I realized that this is in the form of a chiasm:

A. For the word of the cross is folly
B. to those who are perishing 

B. but to us who are being saved
A. it is the power of God.

As a word, chiasm comes from the Greek letter chi (χ), which is shaped like a (tilted) cross.  I don't know if there's really anything theological to this, but I thought it interesting (and a bit amusing) that this description of what "the word of the cross" is has a structure named after a cross-shaped letter.

Luke 24:5

I had to do a bit of research for this, but now I'm finally getting around to writing about something I noticed in the Gospel reading for Easter, Luke 24:1-12.

In addition to attending church services pretty regularly, I watch Worship Anew every week, during which I follow along with the readings (but in German).  While watching the Easter program of Worship Anew, I noticed something about Luke 24:5, specifically:  "Was sucht ihr den Lebenden bei den Toten?" ("Why do you seek the living among the dead?").  In both German and English, there's a participle (Lebenden, living) acting as a substantive (the living [one]).  I think it's significant that this is a participle, not just a regular adjective.  A participle is defined as a verbal adjective, and since it's "part verb" (so to speak), it has something of the action qualities of a verb.  This contrasts with the static nature of "den Toten" ("the dead"), which is merely an adjective (and also used as a substantive).  Even in just the parts of speech, then, there's a picture of the resurrection.

I lookt up the original Greek in the STEP Bible from Tyndale House, which I recently learned about via the Daily Dose of Greek.  Although my knowledge of Greek is still insufficient, I think living is a participle there too:  "τι ζητειτε τον ζωντα μετα των νεκρων;"

Psalm 23:4

For Good Shepherd Sunday, the Psalm reading was Psalm 23.  Following along in the German, I noticed some significant alliteration in verse 4:  "Und ob ich schon wanderte im finstern Tal, fürchte ich kein Unglück; denn du bist bei mir, dein Stecken und Stab trösten mich."  In English, this is "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

The rod and staff are what the shepherd uses to guide the sheep and to maintain order.  In the German, this order is emphasized through that alliteration:  "dein Stecken und Stab trösten mich."

Looking just at the English, it occurs to me that "your rod and your staff, they comfort me" is pleonastic.  Grammatically, the "they" is redundant, but the restatement of "your rod and staff" (even if it's only as a pronoun) illustrates the assurance that their presence provides.

Matthew 27:59

A couple years ago, I noticed that in the recitative "Und Joseph nahm den Leib" in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, there's internal rhyme in the first sentence:  "Und Joseph nahm den Leib und wickelte ihn in ein' rein Leinwand."  In May (the 7th, to be specific), I realized that there's significance to this.

First of all, translated, this is: "And Joseph took the body [of Jesus] and wrapt it in a clean linen."  My German Bible is only slightly different from the text in the Bach oratorio: "Und Josef nahm den Leib und wickelte ihn in ein reines Leinentuch" (Matthew 27:59).

The internal rhyming of "ein' rein Leinwand" or "ein reines Leinentuch" ("a clean linen cloth") illustrates the purity and cleanliness of the linen cloth.

Psalm 72:1

For Epiphany, the Psalm was Psalm 72:1-11.  In English, the first verse is: "Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son!"  Like many parts of the Psalms, this exhibits parallel structure.  It could be rephrased as "give your justice to the king, and give your righteousness to the royal son."  Each clause is [imperative verb][direct object][indirect object].

In German, this parallel structure is highlighted by the initial letter of each word:  "Gott, gib dein Gericht dem König / und deine Gerechtigkeit dem Königssohn."

Introduction

In mid-November 2016, I started following along with the weekly lectionary readings in my German New Testament (along with Psalms and Proverbs).  It was an opportune time to start doing this because a few weeks later, the church year started over and series A began.  Although I think I missed a few weeks here and there, for the most part, I've been following along since then.  At first, I lookt up the appointed readings in my Lutheran Study Bible and my German New Testament, but then I found it was much easier simply to look over the German text while listening to the weekly readings on Worship Anew.

Even in just these past few years of reading the Bible in German (and studying the original Hebrew and Greek via The Daily Dose of Hebrew and The Daily Dose of Greek), I've noticed a number of interesting features, so I started this blog mostly as a personal record of these things.

The title (The Footlamp) is adapted from Psalm 119:105, which is my confirmation verse: "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."