Jonah 3:6

Near the end of March, I started going through Jonah in the archives of the Daily Dose of Hebrew.  A couple weeks ago, I went over Jonah 3:6:  "The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes."  I think there's some significant word choice in the Hebrew here.  "Word" (דָּבָר) and "arose" (from the verb קוּם) also appear at the beginning of the book, in Jonah 1:1-3a:  "1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.'  3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD."

Using the same words in these two sections highlights the contrast between Jonah in chapter 1 and the king of Nineveh in chapter 3.  When the word of the LORD comes to Jonah, he rises to try to avoid it, but when the word reaches the king of Nineveh, he rises to take action.

John 6:2, 5

Recently, the Daily Dose of Latin started John 6.  I noticed that in John 6:2 and 6:5, the Greek word ὄχλος is translated in the Vulgate as multitudo.

This struck me as a bit unusual.  Most of the time, ὄχλος is translated as turba.  I did a search with the STEP Bible, and while my numbers might not be entirely accurate, it seems that out of 171 occurrences of a form of ὄχλος, 155 of them are translated as a form of turba.

These instances in particular seem odd because "multitudo magna" and "multitudo maxima" are redundant; both mean something like "a great multitude."  (Maxima is the superlative form of magna.)  Perhaps this is intended to indicate the exceedingly great size of the crowd.

As I've been following along with the Daily Dose of Latin, I've been reading the New King James Version.  There, both of these phrases are translated as "great multitude."  In the ESV, they're both "large crowd," and in the NIV, "great crowd."

Hebrews 4:12

Recently, I was thinking about Hebrews 4:12:  "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."  I had to look up the Greek text to make sure, but "living" is a participle there too:  "ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐνεργὴς..."  I think this is significant.  Because a participle is a verbal adjective, there's some of the dynamic nature of a verb here, and this goes well with the meaning of the word "living."