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.