Sunday, July 18, 2021

Psalm 119:29-30

The Daily Dose of Hebrew has been going through Psalm 119 lately.  While following along in the Latin Vulgate, I noticed a feature in verses 29 and 30 that's obscured in the English translation and that I didn't catch either in watching the videos or while copying out the verses (because I turned pages in my notebook, these verses weren't next to each other).


In the ESV, these verses are translated as:  "29 Put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law!  30 I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I set your rules before me."

In the Vulgate, however, these verses appear as:
29 viam iniquitatis amove a me et lege tua miserere mei
30 viam veritatis elegi iudicia tua non sum oblitus
The formatting and word order here help to emphasize the contrast between the "false ways" (as in the Hebrew, it's singular in the Latin:  viam iniquitatis) in verse 29 and "the way of faithfulness" (viam veritatis) in verse 30.