2 Corinthians 11:26

While flipping through the Vulgate months ago, I happened upon 2 Corinthians 11:26.  The formatting (in my edition, anyway) made it very obvious that this verse exhibits anaphora:

in itineribus saepe

periculis fluminum

periculis latronum

periculis ex genere

periculis ex gentibus

periculis in civitate

periculis in solitudine

periculis in mari

periculis in falsis fratribus

This structure is also in the Greek:

ὁδοιπορίαις πολλάκις, κινδύνοις ποταμῶν, κινδύνοις ληστῶν, κινδύνοις ἐκ γένους, κινδύνοις ἐξ ἐθνῶν, κινδύνοις ἐν πόλει, κινδύνοις ἐν ἐρημίᾳ, κινδύνοις ἐν θαλάσσῃ, κινδύνοις ἐν ψευδαδέλφοις,

My German New Testament:

Ich bin oft gereist, ich bin in Gefahr gewesen durch Flüsse, in Gefahr unter Räubern, in Gefahr unter Juden, in Gefahr unter Heiden, in Gefahr in Städten, in Gefahr in Wüsten, in Gefahr auf dem Meer, in Gefahr unter falschen Brüdern

And my French New Testament:

Fréquemment en voyage, j'ai été en péril sur les fleuves, en péril de la part des brigands, en péril de la part de ceux de ma nation, en péril de la part des païens, en péril dans les villes, en péril dans les déserts, en péril sur la mer, en péril parmi les faux frères.

Here's the ESV translation:

on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers

There's a parity between the frequency indicated by πολλάκις (often) and the inherent repetition of anaphora, and the combination of these two (the temporal adverb and repetitive structure) may even create a greater sense of the constancy of this peril.

Psalm 1

Back in the spring, I started over in my daily cycle of reading Psalms and Proverbs, but this time, I'm reading them in German (and I'm going column by column, not necessarily chapter by chapter).  When I read Psalm 1, I noticed some contrasts in the verbs.

Verses 2-3 contain active verbs of which the blessed man is the subject (meditates, yields, does, and prospers), but in verse 4, there are only stative verbs to describe the wicked:  "The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away."  The different qualities of these verbs heighten the contrast between the blessed man and the wicked.

Furthermore, the stative verbs in verse 4 are merely implied in the Hebrew:

לֹא־כֵן הָרְשָׁעִים כִּי אִם־כַּמֹּץ אֲֽשֶׁר־תִּדְּפֶנּוּ רֽוּחַ׃

not so the wicked but like chaff that the wind blows away

while the comparable simile in verse 3 ("He is like a tree") does have an explicit stative verb:

וְֽהָיָה כְּעֵץ

Even when the verbs are of the same type, there's a contrast in whether they're explicit or implied.

---&---

In mid-June, I read the Psalm in Esperanto (just because) and noticed something else, this time in verses 1-2:

1 Feliĉa estas la homo, kiu ne iras laŭ konsilo de malpiuloj, nek staras sur vojo de pekuloj, nek sidas en kunsido de blasfemantoj; 2 sed li nur havas deziron por la leĝo de la Eternulo, kaj pri Lia leĝo li pensas tage kaj nokte.

1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

The nur (only), which I think is drawn (along with the adversative sed) from the Hebrew כִּי אִם, made me realize that there are two contrasts here, one of number (malpiuloj, pekuloj, and blasfemantoj [wicked, sinners, and scoffers] are all plural, but leĝo [law] is singular) and one of variety (there's a diversity in malpiuloj, pekuloj, and blasfemantoj, but a constancy in the repeated leĝo).  In the law of the LORD, this blessed man has a singular focus.

---&---

More recently, Psalm 1 was the Psalm on Worship Anew (7 September, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost).  I was following along in the Latin Vulgate, and the suum in verse 3 caught my attention:

et erit tamquam lignum transplantatum iuxta rivulos aquarum quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo et folius eius non defluet et omne quod fecerit prosperabitur

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.  In all that he does, he prospers.

Suum is the its of "that yields its fruit," and it got me wondering about the underlying Hebrew.  There, fruit has a masculine third person singular pronominal suffix:  פִּרְיוֹ.  The reflexive possessive in Latin and the neuter its in English both refer back to the tree, but I think this pronominal suffix could also refer to God, in whose law this tree-like man constantly meditates.  It's God's fruit that this man bears.  In this reading, there's a connection between the tree in Psalm 1 and the vine and branches in John 15.  The fruit in Psalm 1 is ultimately God's because - as Jesus explains in John 15:5 - "'apart from me you can do nothing.'"

---&---

Still more recently, this Psalm was covered in the newly launched Daily Dose of Septuagint, and I noticed something else significant.

I'd heard before that the verbs in the first verse (walks, stands, and sits) outline a progression.  It's basically the same observation as part of Proverbs 13:20 ("Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise"), just regarded from the opposite direction:  the man who does walk, stand, and sit with the wicked becomes like them and increasingly fixed in his way.  When I lookt at the Greek of the Septuagint, I noticed that to a degree, the words here also demonstrate this process of becoming alike since at the end, there's a resemblance between καθέδραν (seat) and ἐκάθισεν (sits).  The same is true of the underlying Hebrew words מוֹשָׁב (seat) and יָשָֽׁב (sits).

Matthew 13:30

When the Daily Dose of Greek went over Matthew 13:30 a few months ago, I noticed some significance in the structure.

The text I referenced from the STEP Bible (the Tyndale House Greek New Testament) is slightly different (μέχρι instead of ἕως):

ἄφετε συναυξάνεσθαι ἀμφότερα μέχρι τοῦ θερισμοῦ· καὶ ἐν καιρῷ τοῦ θερισμοῦ ἐρῶ τοῖς θερισταῖς· συλλέξατε πρῶτον τὰ ζιζάνια καὶ δήσατε αὐτὰ εἰς δεσμὰς πρὸς τὸ κατακαῦσαι αὐτά· τὸν δὲ σῖτον συναγάγετε εἰς τὴν ἀποθήκην μου.

This is Jesus giving the dialogue of the master of the house in the Parable of the Weeds.  In the ESV, it's:

"'Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

The direct object follows the verb in the phrase συλλέξατε πρῶτον τὰ ζιζάνια, but it precedes the verb in the phrase τὸν δὲ σῖτον συναγάγετε, forming a sort of chiasm:

συλλέξατε ("gather")

τὰ ζιζάνια ("the weeds")

τὸν δὲ σῖτον ("but the wheat")

συναγάγετε ("gather")

Such a structure highlights the different values that the weeds and the wheat have for the master of the house.

This structure is also present in the Latin Vulgate:

sinite utraque crescere usque ad messem et in tempore messis dicam messoribus colligite primum zizania et alligate ea fasciculos ad conburendum triticum autem congregate in horreum meum

My German New Testament has this structure, too, but it translates the two verbs (συλλέξατε and συναγάγετε) as the same word ("sammelt"), like the ESV does with "gather."  That this element in the chiasm is exactly the same lends even more emphasis to the contrasting nature of the inner elements (the weeds and the wheat):

Laßt beides miteinander wachsen bis zur Ernte; und um die Erntezeit will ich zu den Schnittern sagen:  Sammelt zuerst das Unkraut und bindet es in Bündel, damit man es verbrenne; aber den Weizen sammelt mir in meine Scheune.

John 15:5

Months ago, I lookt up John 15 in order to confirm a similarity to verses 4-5 in a hymn text I was translating ("Du Lebensbrod, Herr Jesu" by Johann Rist).  Specifically, I referenced the NKJV, in which verse 5 appears as:

"I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

The italics indicate a word that's supplied in the NKJV translation that's not in the Greek:

ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἄμπελος, ὑμεῖς τὰ κλήματα. ὁ μένων ἐν ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ, οὗτος φέρει καρπὸν πολύν· ὅτι χωρὶς ἐμοῦ οὐ δύνασθε ποιεῖν οὐδέν.

The verb is explicit in the first clause ("'I am the vine'"), but it's merely implied in the second ("'you [are] the branches'").  The same is true of the Latin Vulgate:

ego sum vitis vos palmites qui manet in me et ego in eo hic fert fructum multum quia sine me nihil potestis facere

By itself, "you the branches" is just a phrase.  Semantically, it can't stand by itself (formally speaking, at least).  The preceding "I am the vine" sets up an instance of ellipsis, indicating that the copulative verb is implied and that this is, in fact, a complete clause.  Grammatically, then, the second clause has a sort of dependence on the first to make its meaning clear, and this matches the broader idea behind the metaphor here ("'without Me you can do nothing'").

According to my Greek textbook (New Testament Greek for Laymen: An Introductory Grammar by Michael A. Merritt, which I got as a .pdf for free from the Daily Dose of Greek website), "Greek differs from English in that the verb εἰμί (to be) may be omitted from a sentence if it is understood from the context" (p. 54), so I'm not sure how applicable my comments are to the Greek (or to the Latin, which I think is comparable in this regard).

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

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.

Luke 5:6

A few months ago, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from 11 February:

The reading was Luke 5:1-11, and while following along in the Vulgate, I noticed a small feature in verse 6:

et cum hoc fecissent concluserunt piscium multitudinem copiosam rumpebatur autem rete eorum

In the ESV, this is:

And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.

The phrase "multitudinem copiosam" is redundant (something like "an abundant multitude"), but this redundancy does heighten the sense of this large amount.

This feature is also present in the Greek:

καὶ τοῦτο ποιήσαντες συνέκλεισαν πλῆθος ἰχθύων πολύ· διερρήσσετο δὲ τὰ δίκτυα αὐτῶν.

Additionally, the words πλῆθος (multitude) and πολύ (much) alliterate.  To a small degree, the repetition in this alliteration contributes to this sense of abundance even further.

Hebrews 13:8

A few months ago, I read Hebrews 13:8 in my German/English catechism (cited under "Who is Jesus Christ?" in the explanation to the second article of the creed) and noticed that there's no explicit verb in the German translation:

Jesus Christus, gestern und heute und derselbe auch in Ewigkeit.

It's something like:  "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and also in eternity."

The Greek text also has no verb:

Ἰησοῦς χριστὸς ἐχθὲς καὶ σήμερον ὁ αὐτὸς καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας.

Likewise the Latin Vulgate:

Iesus Christus heri et hodie ipse et in saecula

I think it may be significant that a form of "to be" is merely implied here.  All tenses equally apply (Jesus was, is, and will be the same, as the different time elements in the verse indicate), so it's almost as if any one form would be too temporally specific.

Matthew 12:30

When the Daily Dose of Greek went over Matthew 12:30 a couple months ago, I noticed a small feature in the Latin Vulgate.

Ὁ μὴ ὢν μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ κατ᾽ ἐμοῦ ἐστιν, καὶ ὁ μὴ συνάγων μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ σκορπίζει.

'Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.' [ESV]

qui non est mecum contra me est et qui non congregat mecum spargit

Because Latin inverts the prepositional phrase "cum me" ("with me") and combines the two words into one, there's a chiastic structure in the sequential prepositional phrases "with me" and "against me" ("mecum contra me").  This structure emphasizes these opposites.

In looking at the text more closely in order to write this post, I realized that there's also a chiasm in the Greek, just with different elements and on a broader scale:

Ὁ μὴ ὢν (the one not being)

μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ (with me)

κατ᾽ ἐμοῦ (against me)

ἐστιν (is)

With a slightly different form (a relative clause instead of a participle), this is also in the Latin:

qui non est (who is not)

mecum (with me)

contra me (against me)

est (is)

Matthew 11:30

I had a realization about Matthew 11:30 when the Daily Dose of Greek went over it a few months ago.

ὁ γὰρ ζυγός μου χρηστὸς καὶ τὸ φορτίον μου ἐλαφρόν ἐστιν.

'For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.' [ESV]

The verse contains two clauses with the same basic structure:  article, noun, possessive pronoun, adjective, copulative verb (implied in the first clause).  Partially because of the nature of copulative sentences, the grammatical elements in this verse are fairly simple (the only case here is the nominative, and the verb is in the present tense), and this simplicity matches the characteristics mentioned in the verse ("easy" and "light").

Hebrews 9:14

Last month, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from the 6th:

The reading was Hebrews 9:11-14, and part of verse 14 caught my attention:  "how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" [ESV].

In the Greek, it's:  πόσῳ μᾶλλον τὸ αἷμα τοῦ χριστοῦ, ὃς διὰ πνεύματος αἰωνίου ἑαυτὸν προσήνεγκεν ἄμωμον τῷ θεῷ, καθαριεῖ τὴν συνείδησιν ὑμῶν ἀπὸ νεκρῶν ἔργων εἰς τὸ λατρεύειν θεῷ ζῶντι;

There's a sort of contrast between "from dead works" and "to serve the living God," and this is heightened by the different forms of the modifiers.  "Dead" (νεκρῶν) is just an adjective, but "living" (ζῶντι) is a participle, and since participles are verbal adjectives, there's some of the dynamic action of a verb here rather than just the static nature of a plain adjective.

The same distinction is also in the Latin Vulgate ("quanto magis sanguis Christi qui per Spiritum Sanctum semet ipsum obtulit inmaculatum Deo emundabit conscientiam vestram ab operibus mortuis ad serviendum Deo viventi"), my German New Testament ("um wieviel mehr wird dann das Blut Christi, der sich selbst als Opfer ohne Fehl durch den ewigen Geist Gott dargebracht hat, unser Gewissen reinigen von den toten Werken, zu dienen dem lebendigen Gott!"), and my French New Testament ("combien plus le sang de Christ, qui, par un esprit éternel, s'est offert lui-même sans tache à Dieu, purifiera-t-il votre conscience des œuvres mortes, afin que vous serviez la Dieu vivant!").

James 1:1

Last month, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from the 23rd:

The reading was James 1:1-12.  I was following along in the Vulgate and noticed a small feature in the first verse, specifically in the phrase "Iacobus Dei et Domini nostri Iesu Christi servus."  In the ESV, this is translated as "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," and every other translation I lookt at has a similar rendering in terms of word order.  In the Latin, though, the word for "servant" ("servus") comes last in the phrase, and this mirrors a servant's subordinate position.  This is also true of the Greek:  Ἰάκωβος θεοῦ καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ δοῦλος.

Matthew 10:39

A couple weeks ago, the Daily Dose of Greek went over Matthew 10:39:

I noticed that there's a chiastic structure, and that this highlights the opposites "find" and "lose."

ὁ εὑρὼν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ

ἀπολέσει αὐτὴν

καὶ ὁ ἀπολέσας τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ

εὑρήσει αὐτήν.

Here's the ESV translation:

'Whoever finds his life

will lose it,

and whoever loses his life for my sake

will find it.'

This structure is also in the Latin Vulgate:

Qui invenit animam suam

perdet illam

et qui perdiderit animam suam propter me

inveniet eam

My German New Testament:

Wer sein Leben findet,

der wird's verlieren;

und wer sein Leben verliert um meinetwillen,

der wird's finden.

And my French New Testament:

Celui qui conservera sa vie

la perdre,

et celui qui perdra sa vie à cause de moi

la retrouvera.

Mark 10:21

A couple weeks ago (13 October, Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost), the Gospel reading was Mark 10:17-22.  While watching Worship Anew, I was following along in the Latin Vulgate and noticed a significant difference in verse 21.  In the ESV, Jesus tells the rich young man, "You lack one thing" (the NIV and NKJV simply invert this:  "One thing you lack"), but in the Vulgate, He says, "Unum tibi deest" ("One thing is lacking from you," although technically, "tibi" is in the dative case).  The Greek is similar:  ἕν σε ὑστερεῖ.

The rich young man is too concerned about his own efforts in acquiring eternal life, apparently not understanding that whatever they are, they would be insufficient and that eternal life is given to him freely (just like an earthly inheritance).  The accusative σε in the Greek (and dative "tibi" in the Latin) stands in contrast to the nominative "you" in the English translations, and, coincidentally, this matches the lesson (or a lesson) that the man needs to learn:  he doesn't have to be the subject or the one doing the action.  It's done for him.  

For what it's worth:  in my German New Testament, this clause is "Eines fehlt dir" (with the dative "dir"), and in my French New Testament, it's "Il te manque une chose" (with the accusative "te").

Matthew 10:28

A couple weeks ago, the Daily Dose of Greek went over Matthew 10:28:

καὶ μὴ φοβεῖσθε ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποκτεννόντων τὸ σῶμα, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν μὴ δυναμένων ἀποκτεῖναι· φοβεῖσθε δὲ μᾶλλον τὸν δυνάμενον καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα ἀπολέσαι ἐν γεέννῃ.

'And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.'  [ESV]

I noticed that there's a chiastic structure between ἀποκτεννόντων τὸ σῶμα (in which the direct object comes last) and τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν μὴ δυναμένων ἀποκτεῖναι (in which the direct object comes first), and this inversion highlights the sort of opposite nature of "killing" and "not being able to kill."

This same structure is also in the Latin Vulgate:  "et nolite timere eos qui occidunt corpus animam autem non possunt occidere sed potius eum timete qui potest et animam et corpus perdere in gehennam."

Matthew 6:21

A couple weeks ago, I happened to read Matthew 6:21 in Middle English:  "For where thi tresoure is, there also thin herte is."  In Greek, it's ὅπου γάρ ἐστιν ὁ θησαυρός σου, ἐκεῖ ἔσται καὶ ἡ καρδία σου, and in the ESV, it's "'For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.'"  In the Middle English version, ἔσται is translated in the present tense ("is") rather than the future ("will be"), but maybe it was because of this that I realized that structurally, the two clauses have much in common.  In the Greek, it's:

[form of "to be"] [article] [noun] [possessive pronoun]

ἐστιν ὁ θησαυρός σου ("is the treasure of you")

ἔσται... ἡ καρδία σου ("will be... the heart of you")

The sort of parallelism between ἐστιν and ἔσται isn't as clear in Modern English because the single word is doesn't correspond to the two-word phrase "will be" as neatly.

To some degree, this structural similarity mirrors the meaning; the treasure and heart are in the same place, and the clauses have a parity, too.

This feature is also present in the Latin Vulgate, perhaps even a bit more strongly, since the relative pronoun ubi ("where") is only one letter different from the adverb ibi ("there"):

Ubi enim est thesaurus tuus ibi est et cor tuum

And in my French New Testament:

Car là où est ton trésor, là aussi sera ton cœur.

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?"

Luke 16:13

Earlier this month, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from 25 September 2019.

The reading was Luke 16:1-15, and I noticed verse 13 in particular:  "'No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.'"  This verse is nearly identical to Matthew 6:24 and contains the same feature that I noticed there about a year ago.  There's a chiastic structure to highlight the opposites:

He will hate the one

and love the other, 

or he will be devoted to the one

and despise the other.

As with Matthew 6:24, this structure is also present in the Greek:

Οὐδεὶς οἰκέτης δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν· ἢ γὰρ τὸν ἕνα μεισήσει καὶ τὸν ἕτερον ἀγαπήσει, ἢ ἑνὸς ἀνθέξεται καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου καταφρονήσει. οὐ δύνασθε θεῷ δουλεύειν καὶ μαμωνᾷ.

the Latin Vulgate:

Nemo servus potest duobus dominis servire aut enim unum odiet et alterum diliget aut uni adherebit et alterum contemnet non potestis Deo servire et mamonae

my German New Testament:

Kein Knecht kann zwei Herren dienen; entweder er wird den einen hassen und den andern lieben, oder er wird an dem einen hängen und den andern verachten.  Ihr könnt nicht Gott dienen und dem Mammon.

and my French New Testament:

Nul serviteur ne peut servir deux maîtres.  Car, ou il haïra l'un et aimera l'autre; ou il s'attachera à l'un et méprisera l'autre.  Vous ne pouvez servir Dieu et Mamon.

Matthew 7:29

I think it was even before the Daily Dose of Greek got to Matthew 7:29 that I noticed that it has the same feature that I noted in Mark 1:22 a few months ago.  (I'd lookt ahead after watching the Daily Dose video on verse 28.)

ἦν γὰρ διδάσκων αὐτοὺς ὡς ἐξουσίαν ἔχων καὶ οὐχ ὡς οἱ γραμματεῖς αὐτῶν.

In the ESV, this is translated as "For he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes," but ἔχων is a participle, so it's actually more like "he was teaching them as one having authority...."  Because participles are verbal adjectives, there's some of the dynamic element of a verb here, and it contrasts with the more static nature of the noun γραμματεῖς (scribes).

As with Mark 1:22, the participial ἐξουσίαν ἔχων is retained in the Vulgate ("potestatem habens") and my French New Testament ("ayant authorité"), but it's rendered as a prepositional phrase ("mit Vollmacht") in my German New Testament.

Matthew 7:25, 27

A few weeks ago, I watched the Daily Dose of Greek videos on Matthew 7:25 and Matthew 7:27:

καὶ κατέβη ἡ βροχὴ καὶ ἦλθον οἱ ποταμοὶ καὶ ἔπνευσαν οἱ ἄνεμοι, καὶ προσέπεσαν τῇ οἰκίᾳ ἐκείνῃ, καὶ οὐκ ἔπεσεν· τεθεμελίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν.

καὶ κατέβη ἡ βροχὴ καὶ ἦλθον οἱ ποταμοὶ καὶ ἔπνευσαν οἱ ἄνεμοι, καὶ προσέκοψαν τῇ οἰκίᾳ ἐκείνῃ, καὶ ἔπεσεν· καὶ ἦν ἡ πτῶσις αὐτῆς μεγάλη.

In the ESV, these verses are:

And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

It wasn't until looking at the Vulgate that I realized that both of these verses exhibit polysyndeton (the repeated καὶ, translated as "and").  In my copy of the Vulgate, the first part of each of these verses is formatted as:

et descendit pluvia

et venerunt flumina

et flaverunt venti

et inruerunt in domum illam

which makes the polysyndeton obvious.  Here, it highlights the multitude of forces assaulting the houses.  In the Greek and the Latin, the verbs (the first three, at least) precede their respective nouns, and this structure may also heighten the sense of action.

Additionally, the formatting of the Latin suggests (to me, anyway) that "flaverunt" (ἔπνευσαν, blew) and "inruerunt" (προσέπεσαν/προσέκοψαν, beat) have different subjects (the explicit "venti," ἄνεμοι, "winds" and an inflected "they," respectively), resulting in a slightly different translation:  "And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they [all three forces!] beat on that house."  Like the polysyndeton and the inverted structure, this reading also highlights the intensity of the elements' assault on the houses.

[For what it's worth, I also wrote about this passage a few years ago.]