Sunday, January 24, 2021

Psalm 139:5

The Psalm reading on Worship Anew last week was part of Psalm 139.  I was following along in my French translation and found an interesting feature in verse 5:  "Tu me devances et me poursuis, tu m'enserres, tu as mis la main sur moi."  The ESV translation, which doesn't correspond exactly to this French translation, is "You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me."

I've written about this sort of feature before, but because of French word order, "me" (in bold) is somewhat literally "hem[med]... in" by the subject and verb in this clause:  "Tu m'enserres."