Proverbs 1:13

Although I'm about two weeks behind, I've been following along in the Daily Dose of Hebrew's diversion into Proverbs as the series takes a break from Deuteronomy.  A couple weeks ago, I noticed some significance of the structure of Proverbs 1:13:

There's something of a chiastic structure:  "All precious goods we shall find; we shall fill our houses with plunder."  While the subjects are inflected into the verbs, they're literally surrounded by "precious goods" and "plunder," so in their description of themselves, the enticing sinners are exactly where they want to be:  in the midst of wealth.

Matthew 4:10-11

A couple weeks ago, I found an old note I'd made about Matthew 4:10-11 back when I was following along in the lectionary in my German New Testament.  This is at the end of the account of the temptation of Jesus:  "10 Da sprach Jesus zu ihm:  Weg mit dir, Satan! denn es steht geschrieben:  »Du sollst anbeten den Herrn, deinen Gott, und ihm allein dienen.«  11 Da verließ ihn der Teufel.  Und siehe, da traten Engel zu ihm und dienten ihm."

"10 Then Jesus said to him, 'Be gone, Satan!  For it is written, "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve."'  11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him."

I was curious about "him only shall you serve" and "angels... were ministering to him."  These are different verbs in English, but the same verb in German (albeit with different inflections).  Jesus says, "Du sollst... deinen Gott... dienen," and then, "Engel... dienten ihm."  Immediately after Jesus quotes, "You shall serve your God," the angels do serve their God.  The range of meaning of the verb dienen is wide enough to cover both of these uses.

The same is true of the French translation I'm following along in now:  "10 Jésus lui dit:  Retire-toi, Satan! Car il est écrit:  Tu adoreras le Seigneur, ton Dieu, et tu le serviras lui seul.  11 Alors le diable le laissa.  Et voici, des anges vinrent auprès de Jésus, et le servaient."

I lookt up the Greek to find that it uses different verbs (λατρεύω and διακονέω), so this is a feature specific to these German and French translations.

Psalm 121:6-8

Psalm 121 was the appointed Psalm last Sunday (the Second Sunday in Lent), and while following along in my French New Testament while watching Worship Anew, I noticed some significant anaphora in verses 7 and 8:

7 Le Seigneur te gardera de tout mal, il gardera ta vie.  8 Le Seigneur te gardera, au départ et au retour, maintenant, à jamais.

 I like the New King James Version:

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.

The repeated "shall preserve" illustrates God's constancy of care while the variety of direct objects ("you," "your soul," and "your going out and your coming in") demonstrates the breadth.  As in Psalm 91, the you here ("te" in French) is singular (as it is in the Hebrew), which indicates God's individualized protection.

About a year ago, I noticed that there's a merism in verse 6:  "The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night."  There are also merisms in verse 8 ("your going out and your coming in" and "this time... forevermore"), and all of these provide an idea of the range of God's care.

Psalm 2:9

The Psalm reading for last Sunday (Transfiguration) was a section of Psalm 2.  This doesn't appear in Liturgies et cantiques Luthériens, so I followed along in my German Bible and noticed again something I discovered three years ago.  In verse 9, the parallelism is emphasized by alliteration:

Du sollst sie mit einem eisernen Zepter zerschlagen, wie Töpfe sollst du sie zerschmeißen.

In English, this is:  "You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."  The alliteration between zerschlagen and zerschmeißen highlights the parallelism of break and dash.