Psalm 113:1-2

A little over a month ago, my daily psalm was Psalm 113.  In the NIV, the first two verses are:

1 Praise the LORD.

Praise, O servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD.

2 Let the name of the LORD be praised, both now and forevermore.

The same sentiment is in both verses, but in verse 1, it's in active voice ("praise the name of the LORD") and in verse 2, it's in passive voice ("let the name of the LORD be praised").  In a way, this is a merism of verb voices, and it emphasizes this command.  Additionally, it mirrors the temporal merism at the end of the second verse ("now and forevermore") and the spatial/temporal merism in verse 3, which I wrote about a few years ago.

This feature is also present in my German Psalter ("lobet den Namen des HERRN!  Gelobt sei der Name des HERRN"), but it's not in any of the other translations I referenced nor in Hebrew, where these are two different verbs.  Most of the other translations have some version of "Blessed be the name of the LORD" in the second verse.

Galatians 6:14

Last month, a footnote in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II led me to Galatians 6, where I found an interesting feature in verse 14:  "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

The clauses "the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" exhibit a chiastic structure, so it's almost as if Paul's boasting in the cross suffuses even how he talks about it.

When I lookt up the Greek text, however, I found that this structure isn't present there:

ἐμοὶ κόσμος ἐσταύρωται κἀγὼ κόσμῳ

nor it is present in the Latin Vulgate or my German translation, but it is in the NIV and the NKJV, both of which also render this as "the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

It's also in my French New Testament:

le monde est crucifié pour moi, comme je le suis pour le monde

Psalm 101:4

Last month, in my daily Psalm reading (in the NIV), I read Psalm 101, and I noticed the same sort of feature that I'd found in Psalm 119:29 a few days before.  The first half of verse 4 is "Men of perverse heart shall be far from me."  As if to reflect this distance, the "men of perverse heart" and "me" are at opposite ends of the clause.

This is also true in the Hebrew:

לֵבָב עִקֵּשׁ יָסוּר מִמֶּנִּי

In the ESV:

A perverse heart shall be far from me

In the NKJV:

A perverse heart shall depart from me

And in the Latin Vulgate

cor pravum recedet a me [according to the Hebrew]

cor pravum declinante a me [according to the Septuagint]

The only translation I lookt at that doesn't have this feature is my German Psalter, where this part of the verse is:

Ein falsches Herz muß von mir weichen

Psalm 119:29

About a month ago, as I was reading the Daleth part of Psalm 119, I noticed something about verse 29 that may be pretty obvious.  In the Hebrew, it's:

דֶּֽרֶךְ־שֶׁקֶר הָסֵר מִמֶּנִּי וְֽתוֹרָתְךָ חָנֵּֽנִי׃

In the ESV, this is:

Put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law!

In the NIV:

Keep me from deceitful ways; be gracious to me through your law.

In all of these, "me" (the נִּי suffix) is about as far from "false ways"/"deceitful ways" (it's singular in Hebrew:  דֶּֽרֶךְ־שֶׁקֶר) as it can be in the clause, illustrating the separation that the Psalmist wishes for.

The Latin Vulgate is similar, whether according to the Hebrew:

viam mendacii aufer a me et legem tuam dona mihi

Or according to the Septuagint:

viam iniquitatis amove a me et lege tua miserere mei

Both of these actually follow the Hebrew word order more closely than the English translations do, with דֶּֽרֶךְ־שֶׁקֶר ("viam mendacii" or "viam iniquitatis") preceding מִמֶּנִּי ("a me").

This distance isn't present in all of the translations I lookt at, though.  In the New King James Version, this verse is:

Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me Your law graciously.

And in my German Psalter:

Halte fern von mir den Weg der Lüge und gib mir in Gnaden dein Gesetz.

In both of these, "me" ("mir") and "the way of lying" ("den Weg der Lüge") are side by side.

Psalm 95:4-5

A couple weeks ago, in my daily Psalm reading, I read Psalm 95.  I'd noted this before, but I realized again that verses 4 and 5 contain merisms and chiasms.  In the NIV, the verses are:

4 In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him.

5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

The ESV is very similar:

4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.

5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

I had two realizations about these features.

Obviously, there's quite a difference between the two elements in the merisms.  There's a great distance between "depths" and "mountain peaks," and the wetness of "the sea" is the direct opposite of "the dry land."  Because there's a variety in the structure of these verses (the chiasms) and these elements are placed in opposite positions in their clauses, these differences of space and wetness are further emphasized.

This is true only of verse 4 in the Hebrew, though:

4אֲשֶׁר בְּיָדוֹ מֶחְקְרֵי־אָרֶץ וְתוֹעֲפוֹת הָרִים לֽוֹ׃

5אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ הַיָּם וְהוּא עָשָׂהוּ וְיַבֶּשֶׁת יָדָיו יָצָֽרוּ׃

My other realization was that because of the chiastic structure of verse 4, with references to God at the beginning and end ("in his hand" [בְּיָדוֹ] and "to him"/"his" [לֽוֹ]) and the entirety of the earth (from "the depths" to "the mountain peaks") in the middle, there's a picture of God's complete control.  As the old song puts it, "He's got the whole world in His hands."

Psalm 140:10

A few weeks ago, a footnote in the Norton Critical Edition of The Canterbury Tales led me to Psalm 140 (although since the citations were keyed to the Vulgate, the reference was actually to Psalm 141).  In any case, I realized a minor point about Psalm 140:10:  "Let burning coals fall upon them!  Let them be cast into fire, into miry pits, no more to rise!"

This verse contains something of a merism.  In the first sentence, the burning coals fall from above, and while the second sentence describes "them be[ing] cast into fire," if the "them" is understood as stationary, it would be as if that fire is coming up to meet them.  Basically, the burning is coming from both above (as coals) and beneath (as fire), and the opposite directions in these descriptions provide a sense of totality.

Psalm 119:105

Since the church year started over, I've been following along with the readings in the Latin Vulgate, moving on from my French New Testament, which I'd followed along in for the last three years.

The title of this blog is adapted from Psalm 119:105, which is my confirmation verse and which I put in the blog description.  Earlier this month, I finally got around to replacing the French translation with the Latin, and when I did this, I noticed something about the structure of the verse.  The Latin closely follows the Hebrew:

נֵר־לְרַגְלִי דְבָרֶךָ וְאוֹר לִנְתִיבָתִֽי׃

Lucerna pedi meo verbum tuum et lux semitae meae

In English, this is "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path," but the word order in the Hebrew and Latin is such that "Your word" (דְבָרֶךָ and "verbum tuum") is in the middle of the verse.  A literal translation would be something like "A lamp to my feet [is] Your word and a light to my path."  In English, this is rearranged so that the two parts of the compound predicate nominative are on the same side of the copulative verb (which is merely implied in Hebrew and Latin).

Because "Your word" is placed in the middle in the Hebrew and Latin versions, though, there's a sense of its centrality and importance.

Matthew 2:10

The Gospel reading on Worship Anew a couple weeks ago was Matthew 2:1-12.  After I watched the program, I was thinking about verse 10:  "When they [the wise men] saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy."  (ἰδόντες δὲ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐχάρησαν χαρὰν μεγάλην σφόδρα)

It doesn't come across in English this way, but "they rejoiced with joy" is a cognate accusative in Greek (ἐχάρησαν χαρὰν), literally something like "they rejoiced a joy."  This pleonastic construction and the redundancy of both "exceedingly" and "great" (in the opposite order in the Greek:  μεγάλην σφόδρα) illustrate the high degree of the wise men's emotion.  Even just one of these pairs would indicate this, but using both compounds the effect.

Psalm 85:10-11

For almost three months now, I've been reading a Psalm a day, in the NIV translation for a change.  Last week, I read Psalm 85, and I noticed all of the directions in verses 10-11:  "10 Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.  11 Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven."

"Meet[ing] together" and "kiss[ing] each other" seem to imply horizontal movement, and "spring[ing] forth from the earth" and "look[ing] down from heaven" describe vertical directions, so within these two verses, there are left and right and up and down.  Referring to all of these various directions provides a sense of the abundance of these qualities, which the next verse also seems to describe:  "The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest."

John 6:60

Last week, I watched the Daily Dose of Latin video on John 6:60 and noticed a grammatical ambiguity that I'd missed when I watched the corresponding Daily Dose of Greek video about two years ago.

Multi ergo audientes ex discipulis eius dixerunt durus est hic sermo quis potest eum audire

πολλοὶ οὖν ἀκούσαντες ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ εἶπον· σκληρός ἐστιν ὁ λόγος οὗτος· τίς δύναται αὐτοῦ ἀκούειν;

Of the English translations I have, I like the NIV the best:  "On hearing it, many of his disciples said, 'This is a hard teaching.  Who can accept it?'"

Almost all of the translations I lookt at understand this in the same way and take "sermo" (λόγος in the Greek) as the antecedent of "eum" (αὐτοῦ), but the antecedent could also be Jesus since, grammatically, Jesus is also a masculine singular.  Consequently, "eum" (αὐτοῦ) could be translated as "Him" instead of "it," resulting in:  "Who can hear Him?" or "Who can accept Him?"

In the immediate context, "sermo" (or λόγος) does seem to be a more likely antecedent, but taking Jesus as the antecedent results in a reading that's similar to verse 41, where the Jews grumble about Jesus because of what He said.  Verse 60 could express something similar and show the crowd dismissing Jesus because it is unable to accept this particular point of His teaching.

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In my French translation, the antecedent is ambiguous:  "Plusieurs de ses disciples, après l'avoir entendu, dirent:  Cette parole est dure; qui peut l'écouter?"  The pronoun is elided into "écouter," and it could be either the feminine la, referring to "cette parole" or the masculine le, referring to Jesus.

Matthew 27:46-47

Recently, I was thinking about the part in Matthew 27 where Jesus calls out, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" and some in the crowd think that He is calling Elijah.  In the same way that they miss the source of Jesus' words (Psalm 22:1) and don't recognize "Eli" as אֵלִי, the Hebrew word for "my God," they also don't recognize Jesus as the Word of God.

Isaiah 5:7

Since the beginning of October, I've been working through the videos on Jeremiah in the archives of the Daily Dose of Hebrew, trying to catch up to the current weekend editions (in chapter 9).  A couple weeks ago, I watched the video on Jeremiah 2:21, which directed me to Isaiah 5, where I found the same sort of feature that I discovered in Isaiah 13 last month.  Part of verse 7 says, "The men of Judah are his [the LORD's] pleasant planting."  The phrase "pleasant planting" exhibits both alliteration and syllabic balance, and this euphony mirrors the description "pleasant."