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.]

Matthew 7:17-19

A few weeks ago, I watched the Daily Dose of Greek videos on Matthew 7:17-19:

17 οὕτως πᾶν δένδρον ἀγαθὸν καρποὺς καλοὺς ποιεῖ, τὸ δὲ σαπρὸν δένδρον καρποὺς πονηροὺς ποιεῖ.  18 οὐ δύναται δένδρον ἀγαθὸν καρποὺς πονηροὺς ποιεῖν οὐδὲ δένδρον σαπρὸν καρποὺς καλοὺς ποιεῖν.  19 πᾶν δένδρον μὴ ποιοῦν καρπὸν καλὸν ἐκκόπτεται καὶ εἰς πῦρ βάλλεται.

In the ESV, these verses are:

17 'So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.  18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.  19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.'

In each of these verses, the phrase "good fruit" alliterates and has a balanced number of syllables, even though it's plural in verses 17 and 18 (καρποὺς καλοὺς) but singular in verse 19 (καρπὸν καλὸν).  These features provide a euphony that matches the description "good."

Psalm 119:125

A few weeks ago, I read the Ayin section (verses 121-128) of Psalm 119.  I was thinking about the underlying Hebrew as I read, and I correctly deduced that part of verse 125 was inverted in translation and that in the original Hebrew, the word for servant (עֶ֫בֶד) comes first.  (Each verse in this section starts with an ayin.)

In the NKJV, the verse is

I am Your servant, give me understanding, that I may know Your testimonies.

In Hebrew, it's

עַבְדְּךָ־אָנִי הֲבִינֵנִי וְאֵדְעָה עֵדֹתֶֽיךָ׃

In the original word order, the first clause is something like "Your servant [am] I."

Then I realized that, perhaps coincidentally, the word order of the Hebrew matches the outlook of a good servant:  the word servant (עַבְדְּךָ, with the possessive suffix "your") comes before the pronoun I (אָנִי) in the same way that the duties of the position take precedence over personal interests.

I referenced the Latin Vulgate and found that it follows the Hebrew word order and thus also has this feature:

servus tuus ego instrue me et cognoscam testimonia tua

1 Chronicles 16:26, Psalm 96:5

About a month ago, I read some of 1 Chronicles 16 and noticed a couple contrasting features in verse 26:  "For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens."  In the first clause, there's only a stative verb, which is actually merely implied in the Hebrew (it's just "For all the gods of the peoples - idols":  כִּי כָּל־אֱלֹהֵי הָעַמִּים אֱלִילִים), but in the second clause, there's an active verb ("made" עָשָֽׂה).  The different qualities of these verbs (absent or present and stative or active) distinguish between the "idols" and "the Lord" and highlight the inactivity of the idols.

This verse seemed familiar to me, and after some searching, I discovered that it appears verbatim as Psalm 96:5.

The same features are present in the Vulgate, although there's a slight difference in that "idols" is translated as "idola" in 1 Chronicles but as "sculptilia" ("sculpted things") in the Psalm:

omnes enim dii populorum idola Dominus autem caelos fecit 

omnes enim dii populorum sculptilia Dominus autem caelos fecit

Matthew 7:3

A couple weeks ago, I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video on Matthew 7:3:

"'Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?'" [ESV]

Even before Dr. Plummer mentioned it in the video, I noticed that the verse has a chiastic structure:

τί δὲ βλέπεις

τὸ κάρφος

τὸ ἐν τῷ ὀφθαλμῷ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σου,

τὴν δὲ ἐν τῷ σῷ ὀφθαλμῷ

δοκὸν

οὐ κατανοεῖς;

Something like:

Why do you see

the speck

that is in your brother's eye,

but that is in your own eye

the log

you do not notice?

Since the words in the two clauses appear in an inverted order, this structure highlights the contrast between βλέπεις ("you do see") and οὐ κατανοεῖς ("you do not notice") and perhaps also between the sizes of τὸ κάρφος ("the speck") and τὴν δοκὸν ("the log").

Joshua 5:1

Last month, I read Joshua 5 in the NIV, and I noticed a feature in verse 1 that's related to what I noticed in the ESV translation of Jeremiah 4:9 last year.

The entire verse is "Now when all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how the LORD had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until we had crossed over, their hearts melted and they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites."

The Hebrew clause וְלֹא־הָיָה בָם עוֹד רוּחַ is translated as "and they no longer had the courage," although it's literally something like "and there was no longer any spirit in them," which is how the ESV translates it.  Because the word courage is related to cor, the Latin word for heart, the NIV translation actually exhibits a sort of parallelism between "their hearts melted" and "they no longer had the courage."

Genesis 1:18

About a month ago, I watched the Daily Dose of Aramaic video on Genesis 1:18 in Targum Onkelos:

"to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.  And God saw that it was good" [ESV]

I had a small realization about the phrase בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ and its Aramaic equivalent.  In English, it's translated as "the light from the darkness," but in Hebrew and Aramaic the preposition בֵּין is repeated, so it's actually "between the light and between the darkness."  I'm not sure a native Hebrew or Aramaic speaker would see it this way, but compared to the English, at least, there's a greater sense of that separation because there are two distinct phrases.  Each object has its own preposition.

John 8:44

Last month, I watched the Daily Dose of Latin video on John 8:44:

In the ESV, this is "'You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.'"

I don't know how significant this is, but it occurred to me that parts of this contrast with John 1 in a way that seems deliberate.  In this verse, Satan, "your father the devil," is described as "a murderer from the beginning" who "has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him."  John 1 starts with "In the beginning was the Word" (verse 1), Who is "the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (verse 14).  An establishment from "the beginning" is common to both passages, but one describes "the father of lies," who "has nothing to do with the truth," and the other describes "the only Son from the Father," who is "full of... truth."

Psalm 25:6-7

On the Worship Anew program for 18 February, the First Sunday of Lent last month, the Psalm reading was Psalm 25:1-10.  I was following along in the Latin Vulgate and noticed a chiastic structure in verses 6-7:

6 recordare

miserationum tuarum Domine et misericordiarum tuarum quia ex sempiterno sunt 

7 peccatorum adulescentiae meae et scelerum meorum

ne memineris...

This is roughly the same structure the Hebrew has.

In the ESV, this section is translated as "6 Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions..." although adhering more closely to the original word order, it's something like "Remember your mercy, LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.  The sins of my youth and my transgressions do not remember."

The chiastic structure highlights the contrast between "Remember" ("recordare" זְכֹר) and "Remember not" ("ne memineris" אַל־תִּזְכֹּר) and between God's "mercy" and "steadfast love" and the Psalmist's "sins" and "transgressions."

Psalm 88:18

A few weeks ago, I read Psalm 88 in the NKJV, where verse 18 is translated as "Loved one and friend You have put far from me, and my acquaintances into darkness."  I noticed that "Loved one and friend" and "me" are at opposite ends of the first clause, lending a sense of the distance of having been "put far."  This structure seems unique to the NKJV, though; none of the other translations I referenced nor the Hebrew has it.

Daniel 5:23

Last month, I read Daniel 5 (in the ESV) after running across a reference to it in an Emily Dickinson poem ("Belshazzar had a letter"), and I noticed a chiasm highlighting opposites in a section of verse 23 where Daniel tells Belshazzar:

You have praised

the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, 

but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways,

you have not honored.

When I lookt up the Aramaic in the Step Bible, however, I discovered that this structure isn't original; both clauses have the same structure, with the direct object preceding the verb.  Here are the two Daily Dose of Aramaic videos on this section of the verse:

In the NIV, this section is translated as "You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or undersatnd.  But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways."