1 Corinthians 13:7

I read 1 Corinthians 13 recently and noticed epistrophe (the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses or sentences) in verse 7:  "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."  That "all things" is repeated gives a sense of the entirety of that "all."

Matthew 7:24-27

Near the beginning of the month, I read a few chapters from Matthew.  Matthew 7:24-27 contains Jesus' explanation that those who hear and follow His words are like a man who built his house on a rock, "and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock" (verse 25).  After I read this, I realized that the house is assaulted from all sides:  the rain descends from above; flood waters rise up from beneath; and the winds come from lateral directions.  While the house built on a rock is contrasted with the house built on sand, which "fell, and great was the fall of it" (verse 27), the fortitude of the house built on a rock is also illustrated simply in the elements it withstands and the various directions from which they come.

Psalm 63:8-9

Near the end of last month, I was reading through some Psalms, and I noticed something in Psalm 63 that may be obvious but that I hadn't realized before.

8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.  9 But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth.

There's a contrast between these two verses, plainly indicated by the "but" at the beginning of verse 9.  Additionally, though, this contrast is illustrated by the opposite directions.  God's "right hand upholds" the Psalmist in verse 8, but verse 9 says that those opposed to the Psalmist "shall go down into the depths."

Romans 11:33

Last month, I read a few verses from Romans 11 and noticed a small feature in verse 33:  "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!"  There's polysyndeton (the repeated "and") in "the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God," and this indicates that abundance.

John 10:12

I wrote about a small feature in John 10 after Good Shepherd Sunday last year, but when I was following along in my French translation during Worship Anew last week, I noticed something else, in verse 12 this time:  

Mais le mercenaire, qui n'est pas le berger, et à qui n'appartiennent pas les brebis, voit venir le loup, abandonne les brebis, et prend la fuite; et le loup les ravit et les disperse.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

Where the English and the Greek each have a single word ("flees" "φεύγει"), the French has the phrase "prend la fuite" ("takes flight").  Because the verbs here are opposites ("leave" and "take"), there's a stronger sense of the hired hand's abandoning the sheep.  To some degree, the structural parallelism (verb + direct object) between "abandonne les brebis" and "prend la fuite" also highlights this.