Sunday, June 29, 2025

Ruth 2:4

Months ago, the Daily Dose of Aramaic went over Targum Ruth 2:4:


As I follow along in the series, I've been referencing the Vulgate, in which this verse is:
et ecce ipse veniebat de Bethleem dixitque messoribus Dominus vobiscum qui responderunt ei benedicat tibi Dominus
In the ESV, it's:
And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem.  And he said to the reapers, "The LORD be with you!"  And they answered, "The LORD bless you."
In the Vulgate, I found an-other instance of a feature I've noted a few other times.  As usual, the prepositional phrase "cum vobis" ("with you") is inverted and condensed into one word (vobiscum).  Because this immediately follows "Dominus," the words for "the LORD" and "you" are directly next to each other, lending a slightly greater sense of this accompaniment.

Sunday, June 22, 2025

Psalm 1:2

Months ago, I watched the Worship Anew program for 16 February (Sixth Sunday after Epiphany).  The Psalm was Psalm 1, and in verse 2, I found the same sort of feature that I'd previously noticed in Psalm 145:5:  the object of the man's meditation comes first in the clause, and to some degree, this placement illustrates its importance for him:
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.  [ESV]
This structure is also in the Hebrew:
כִּי אִם בְּתוֹרַת יְהוָה חֶפְצוֹ וּֽבְתוֹרָתוֹ יֶהְגֶּה יוֹמָם וָלָֽיְלָה׃
and the Latin Vulgate:
sed in lege Domini voluntas eius et in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte
I'd previously noticed (but didn't think it significant enough to note on its own) that "day and night" is a temporal merism.

Sunday, June 15, 2025

Luke 6:17

When I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from 18 February, I found the same feature that I'd noticed in the reading from Luke 5 the previous week.


The reading for this service was Luke 6:17-26.  I was following along in the Vulgate, where verse 17 is:
Et descendens cum illis stetit in loco campestri et turba discipulorum eius et multitudo copiosa plebis ab omni Iudaea et Hierusalem et maritimae Tyri et Sidonis
In the ESV, this is:
And he [Jesus] came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon
In the Latin, the phrase "multitudo copiosa" (translated as "a great multitude" in the ESV) is redundant (something like "an abundant multitude"), but this redundancy lends a greater sense of the large number of people.

Again like Luke 5:6, the phrase alliterates in Greek (πλῆθος πολὺ), and the repetition involved also suggests a great quantity.  Here's the full verse:
καὶ καταβὰς μετ᾽ αὐτῶν ἔστη ἐπὶ τόπου πεδινοῦ. καὶ ὄχλος πολὺς μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ πλῆθος πολὺ τοῦ λαοῦ ἀπὸ πάσης τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ Ἱερουσαλὴμ καὶ τῆς παραλίου Τύρου καὶ Σειδῶνος

Sunday, June 8, 2025

John 12:6

Months ago, I watched the Daily Dose of Latin video on John 12:6:

dixit autem hoc non quia de egenis pertinebat ad eum sed quia fur erat et loculos habens ea quae mittebantur portabat
In the ESV, this is:
He [Judas Iscariot] said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.
Where the ESV has "not because he cared about the poor," the Latin has "non quia de egenis pertinebat ad eum."  This is something like:  "not because about the destitute, it pertained to him."  The Greek text is comparable:
εἶπεν δὲ τοῦτο οὐχ ὅτι περὶ τῶν πτωχῶν ἔμελεν αὐτῷ, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι κλέπτης ἦν καὶ τὸ γλωσσόκομον ἔχων τὰ βαλλόμενα ἐβάσταζεν.
Like the Latin pertinēre, the Greek verb μέλω is impersonal.  I'm not sure if a native speaker of either of these languages would take it this way, but it seems to me that this sort of construction (where Judas isn't the subject of the verb) lends a greater sense of the distance between him and the poor.  Even grammatically, there's less of a relationship between them.

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Ruth 1:21

A few months ago, I watched the two Daily Dose of Aramaic videos on Targum Ruth 1:21:



I was following in the Latin Vulgate and noticed a feature specific to that translation:
Egressa sum plena et vacuam reduxit me Dominus cur igitur vocatis me Noemi quam humiliavit Dominus et adflixit Omnipotens
In the ESV, this is:
"I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty.  Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?"
In the Vulgate, there's a chiasm that highlights the opposites "went away" and "brought back" ("egressa sum" and "reduxit") and "full" and "empty" ("plena" and "vacuam"):
Egressa sum
plena et
vacuam
reduxit me Dominus
Following this word order, an English translation of this section of the verse would be something like:  "I went away full, and empty brought me back the LORD."