Proverbs 27:6

Last month, I read Proverbs 27 in the NKJV and noticed some significance in the structure of verse 6:

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

The clauses' structures are inversions of each other:  [adjective][implied copulative verb][noun + prepositional phrase] in the first but [noun + prepositional phrase][implied copulative verb][adjective] in the second.  This inversion highlights the opposites "faithful" and "deceitful," "wounds" and "kisses," and "friend" and "enemy."

None of the other translations I referenced have this structure, though, and some even differ in meaning, which I can't account for.  My German translation of Proverbs and the Latin Vulgate have the same basic meaning as the NKJV, but the ESV and NIV go in an-other direction.  In the ESV, this verse is:  "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy," and in the NIV:  "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses."

Proverbs 24:11

Last month, I read Proverbs 24 in the NKJV and noticed some interesting features in verse 11:

Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.

There's parallelism (of both structure and meaning) between "drawn toward death" and "stumbling to the slaughter," and this is highlighted by the alliteration in each phrase and by the balanced number of syllables in the principal words within each phrase ("drawn" and "death" have one syllable each; "stumbling" and "slaughter" two).

I referenced some other translations and the Hebrew text, but these features seem specific to the NKJV.

Matthew 8:27, Mark 4:41

When I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video on Matthew 8:27 last month, I remembered my comments on Mark 4:41, which is a very similar verse, and I had a few more thoughts.

Οἱ δὲ ἄνθρωποι ἐθαύμασαν λέγοντες· ποταπός ἐστιν οὗτος ὅτι καὶ οἱ ἄνεμοι καὶ ἡ θάλασσα αὐτῷ ὑπακούουσιν;

And the men marveled, saying, "What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?" [ESV]

Because καὶ... καὶ... can also be the correlative "both... and..." (as in Matthew 10:28:  καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα, "both body and soul"), the last part of the verse could be translated as "What sort of man is this that both the winds and the sea obey him?" which provides a sense of the breadth of Jesus' command over nature.  (I'll reiterate what I said about Mark 4:41, though:  "Even the winds and the sea" is probably a better translation.)

This may be (and probably is) overanalyzing the text, but there's an additional sense of breadth because there's a variety in the grammatical gender and number of the direct objects:  ἄνεμοι is masculine plural, and θάλασσα is feminine singular.  Of course, there's also a range just because the sea is beneath and the winds are around and above.

Nearly all the same can be said for this text in the Latin Vulgate:  "porro homines mirati sunt dicentes qualis est hic quia et venti et mare oboediunt ei."  "Et... et..." can be the correlative "both... and..." or even and and individually; venti (winds) is masculine plural; but mare (sea) is neuter singular.

Of what features I noted, the German text has only different grammatical genders for wind (masculine Wind) and sea (neuter Meer):  "Die Menschen aber verwunderten sich und sprachen:  Was ist das für ein Mann, daß ihm Wind und Meer gehorsam sind?"

In French, there's something of a sense of breadth between masculine plural vents (winds) and feminine singular mer (sea):  "Ces hommes furent saisis d'étonnement:  Quel est celui-ci, disaient-ils, à qui obéissent même les vents et la mer?"

John 10:4-5

About a month ago, I read John 10 in the ESV after having run across a reference to it in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, and I noticed a contrast between parts of verses 4 and 5.  Talking about a shepherd, Jesus says, "'the sheep follow him...  A stranger they will not follow.'"  The structure is inverted in the second clause (with the direct object coming first), emphasizing this difference.

I doubt that the word order in the original Greek holds this significance, though, because Greek is a more inflected language than English and word order doesn't matter as much.  In Greek, these clauses are:  τὰ πρόβατα αὐτῷ ἀκολουθεῖ (the sheep him follow) and ἀλλοτρίῳ δὲ οὐ μὴ ἀκολουθήσουσιν (a stranger but not they will follow).

The NIV and NKJV both translate these clauses with the same basic structure:  "his sheep follow him... they will never follow a stranger" and "the sheep follow him... they will by no means follow a stranger," respectively, but this inverted word order is present in my German New Testament, where these clauses are "die Schafe folgen ihm nach" and "Einem Fremden aber folgen sie nicht nach."