Deuteronomy 4:35

I've been following along in the Daily Dose of Hebrew series on Deuteronomy, and I noticed a small feature in Deuteronomy 4:35:

אַתָּה הָרְאֵתָ לָדַעַת כִּי יְהוָה הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים אֵין עוֹד מִלְבַדּֽוֹ׃

"To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him."

In English, there's merely "the LORD is God," but in Hebrew there are three words referring to God:  "the LORD," "He," and "God."  Because there are three, there's a picture of the Trinity.

Matthew 4:20, 22; Luke 5:11

A couple weeks ago (the Third Sunday after Epiphany), one of the readings was Matthew 4:12-25.  Part of this (verses 18-22, Jesus' calling the first disciples) is paralleled in Mark 1:16-20, and - after looking up the Greek text - I discovered that what I wrote about two of the verses from Mark 1 is applicable to this too.

Matthew 4:20:  οἱ δὲ εὐθέως ἀφέντες τὰ δίκτυα ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ.

"Immediately they [Simon and Andrew] left their nets and followed him [Jesus]."

Matthew 4:22:  οἱ δὲ εὐθέως ἀφέντες τὸ πλοῖον καὶ τὸν πατέρα αὐτῶν ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ.

"Immediately they [James and John] left the boat and their father and followed him [Jesus]."

In both verses, the participle ἀφέντες (leaving) is translated as a finite verb (left) in all of the translations I referenced.  As with Mark 1:18, 20, I would argue that it should be translated as a participle because this leaves only a single verb in each verse and that verb is the most significant:  following Jesus.

The account in Luke (5:1-11) has not only ἀφέντες but also καταγαγόντες and - aside from my French translation, which keeps καταγαγόντες as a participle ("ayant ramené") - all of the translations I lookt at translated these as finite verbs too.

Luke 5:11:  καὶ καταγαγόντες τὰ πλοῖα ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν, ἀφέντες πάντα ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ.

"And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him."

With just ἠκολούθησαν as a finite verb and the participles as participles, the focus is kept on following Jesus:  "And having brought their boats to shore and leaving everything, they followed him."

Revelation 1:8, 22:13

I'm getting to the end of the Daily Dose of Greek series on Revelation and probably will have finished by the time this post is published.  I noticed that in Revelation 22:13 (and also in Revelation 1:8) there are seven nominatives (excepting the speech tag in Revelation 1:8):

Revelation 22:13:  ἐγὼ [εἰμι] τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τὸ ὦ, ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ὁ ἔσχατος, ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ τέλος.

"I [am] the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

Revelation 1:8:  Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τὸ ὦ, λέγει κύριος ὁ θεός, ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος, ὁ παντοκράτωρ.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "Who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."

Seven is a significant number in the Bible (the number of days in creation, the number of petitions in the Lord's Prayer, &c.), so I think it's significant that each of these verses has seven nominatives, but I'm not quite sure what that significance is.

Mark 2:3

Although still behind, I'm continuing along in the Daily Dose of Greek series on Mark.  Recently, I watched the video for Mark 2:3:

I think it's significant that αἰρόμενον is a passive participle.  Because it's not a finite verb, the sense of action isn't as strong (it's more incidental than a focus), and because it's passive there's obviously the meaning of the paralytic's being acted upon rather than his acting himself.  Both of these grammatical features illustrate his paralysis.

Psalm 103:20

While translating an-other Intonation and Responsorium pair from the Kirchen-Gesangbuch, I discovered something I thought interesting.

Here's the text from the Kirchen-Gesangbuch:

I.  Lobet den HErrn, ihr seine Engel, ihr starken Helden.  Halleluja.
R. Die ihr seinen Befehl ausrichtet.  Halleluja.

This is most of Psalm 103:20:  "Bless the LORD, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, [obeying the voice of his word!]"

Where the ESV has "you mighty ones," the German has "ihr starken Helden," which I would translate as either "you mighty heroes" or "you mighty champions."  In French, it's "invincibles porteurs de ses ordres," which combines this with "who do his word" ("die ihr seinen Befehl ausrichtet") and which I would translate as "invincible carriers of His commands."

When I lookt up this passage in the STEP Bible, I discovered that the Hebrew simply uses the adjective "mighty" as a substantive.  The ESV follows this, but both the German and French translations provide a noun for "mighty" (or "invincible") to modify.

Mark 1:18, 20

Although I'm a couple weeks behind, I've been following the "re-runs" of Daily Dose of Greek videos on Mark as they're posted on YouTube.  (When I subscribed to the Daily Dose of Greek emails back in October 2016, they were in Mark 10; so far, these "re-runs" are new to me.)

I noticed the same feature in Mark 1:18 and Mark 1:20:

Mark 1:18:  "And immediately they left their nets and followed him."

Mark 1:20:  "And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him."

Dr. Plummer says one could translate the participle ἀφέντες (leaving) "like another main verb," and all of the translations I lookt at do this (although my French New Testament does render it as a participle in verse 20:  "Aussitôt, il les appela; et, laissant leur père Zébédée dans la barque avec les ouvriers, ils le suivirent.").

I would argue that it should be translated not as a finite verb but as a participle, partially because it's a participle in the original Greek but mostly because this leaves only a single verb in each sentence and those verbs are the most significant action:  following Jesus.

(For what it's worth, here's a link to the interlinear.)

Psalm 91:11

Last month, I started translating a German book published by CPH about a century ago (my edition is from 1902).

Although the title Kirchen-Gesangbuch translates to Church Songbook, the book actually seems to be a collection of antiphons, prayers, selected Bible passages for specific days, the Augsburg Confession, and other things I have yet to discover.

So far, I've made my way through two pages of the antiphons (translating one pair [Intonation and Responsorium] every day [although occasionally falling behind]).  Recently, a verse from Psalm 91 appeared:

I.  Er hat seinen Engeln befohlen über dir.  Halleluja.
R. Daß sie dich behüten auf allen deinen Wegen.  Halleluja.

This is only slightly different from what my German Bible (Luther's translation) has:  "Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen, daß sie dich behüten auf allen deinen Wegen."  In the ESV, this is "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways."

English doesn't differentiate between 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural (at least not anymore), so until reading the German, I hadn't realized that the "you" here is singular.  (Or maybe I had, but this certainly drew my attention to it.)  I referenced the Hebrew to confirm this (although I had to look up the forms):

כִּי מַלְאָכָיו יְצַוֶּה־לָּךְ לִשְׁמָרְךָ בְּכָל־דְּרָכֶֽיךָ׃

(Here's a link to the interlinear.)

The significance here is that God's care is specific to the individual.

La lumière de mes pas

Since the lectionary started over with series A, I'm entering a new phase of a project I started three years ago.  I'd been following along with the readings in German, but now I'm switching to French.  The three-language (German, French, and English) edition of the Bible I've been using has only the New Testament (translated by a Louis Segond), so - as with the German - I'll be missing out on the Old Testament readings.  I'll probably be able to read most of the Psalms though because I also have a copy of Concordia Publishing House's Liturgies et cantiques Luthériens, which is essentially the French version of The Lutheran Service Book and which contains some Psalms.

My original plan was to move on to the next language I started learning every time the lectionary starts over.  If I continue to follow this, I'll be starting the Latin Vulgate three years from now, but first I have to obtain a copy.

Psalm 121:4

In following along (in German) with the readings on Worship Anew last week, I found an-other instance where the German emphasizes parallelism by using alliteration (only after which did I realize that this is also true in the English).  Psalm 121:4 is "Siehe, der Hüter Israels schläft und schlummert nicht."  In the ESV, this is "Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep."  Schläft and schlummert (and slumber and sleep) both mean pretty much the same thing, and the repeated schl (or sl) highlights this.

Luke 16:19-31 (The Rich Man and Lazarus)

One of the readings for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels last month was Luke 16:19-31.  That's not the reading from the lectionary, but it's an appropriate text because after Lazarus died, he "was carried by the angels to Abraham's side."

This reading reminded me of the song "Dives and Lazarus" (drawn from this text), which I wrote about here.  After writing that, I kept thinking about the Biblical text, and I realized that while the song provides a fitting name for the rich man, it's significant that he's not named in the text.

In John 10, Jesus says that the Good Shepherd "calls his own sheep by name" and that "I know my own and my own know me," and in Matthew 10, He says, "So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven."  Because of his faith, Lazarus' name is known; because of his lack of faith, the rich man's name isn't.

Ezekiel 4:16

I read Ezekiel 4 a couple weeks ago, and I noticed something interesting about verse 16:  "Moreover he [God] said to me, 'Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem.  They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay.'"  At first, I noticed only that the second sentence features zeugma:  while "by weight" and "with anxiety" are both adverbial prepositional phrases that modify "eat," "by weight" describes how in a physical sense and "with anxiety" describes how in an emotional sense.  Same for "drink water by measure and in dismay" because the sentence also features structural parallelism.

When I lookt up the definition of zeugma to confirm that I'd correctly identified it, Merriam-Webster's observation that "Zeugma... is economical: it contracts two sentences into one" made me realize something else.  This verse describes how people will have to ration their food and water, and zeugma's reuse of sentence elements illustrates this saving in a grammatical way.  Rather than two clauses ("They shall eat bread by weight, and they shall eat it with anxiety"), they're combined into one.

Then I started wondering whether this structure is in the original Hebrew.  I've been reading The Lutheran Study Bible, which uses the English Standard Version.  The New International Version has the more prosaic "The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair."  When I referenced the STEP Bible, I discovered that the Hebrew text does have zeugma:

וְאָכְלוּ־לֶחֶם בְּמִשְׁקָל וּבִדְאָגָה וּמַיִם בִּמְשׂוּרָה וּבְשִׁמָּמוֹן יִשְׁתּֽוּ׃

Here's a link to the interlinear.

Jeremiah 4:9

I've been following along with the weekend edition of The Daily Dose of Hebrew as it goes through Jeremiah.  Yester-day, the verse was Jeremiah 4:9.  I always read the verse in my Bible before watching the video, and I noticed a slightly interesting thing in the ESV:  "'In that day, declares the LORD, courage shall fail both king and officials.  The priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded."

In the second sentence, where the Hebrew has a chiasm, the English translation has parallel structure (with the ellipsis of "shall be," even).  As if to emphasize that parallel structure, there's consonance between priests and prophets and assonance between appalled and astounded.