Sunday, January 12, 2025

Mark 12:44

On Worship Anew a couple months ago, the Gospel reading was Mark 12:38-44.  In all of the English translations I referenced (ESV, NIV, and NKJV), there's a chiastic structure in verse 44.  Here's the ESV:
"For they all contributed
out of their abundance,
but she out of her poverty
has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."
Such a structure highlights the opposite natures of "abundance" (the NIV has "wealth") and "poverty" and perhaps even the different manners in which the rich people and poor widow gave their offerings.

This structure isn't in the Greek, though, where this verse is:  πάντες γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ περισσεύοντος αὐτοῖς ἔβαλον, αὕτη δὲ ἐκ τῆς ὑστερήσεως αὐτῆς πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν ἔβαλεν, ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς.  The two clauses have roughly the same structure here, something like "All out of their abundance contributed, but she out of her poverty put in...."