Proverbs 1:13

Although I'm about two weeks behind, I've been following along in the Daily Dose of Hebrew's diversion into Proverbs as the series takes a break from Deuteronomy.  A couple weeks ago, I noticed some significance of the structure of Proverbs 1:13:

There's something of a chiastic structure:  "All precious goods we shall find; we shall fill our houses with plunder."  While the subjects are inflected into the verbs, they're literally surrounded by "precious goods" and "plunder," so in their description of themselves, the enticing sinners are exactly where they want to be:  in the midst of wealth.

Matthew 4:10-11

A couple weeks ago, I found an old note I'd made about Matthew 4:10-11 back when I was following along in the lectionary in my German New Testament.  This is at the end of the account of the temptation of Jesus:  "10 Da sprach Jesus zu ihm:  Weg mit dir, Satan! denn es steht geschrieben:  »Du sollst anbeten den Herrn, deinen Gott, und ihm allein dienen.«  11 Da verließ ihn der Teufel.  Und siehe, da traten Engel zu ihm und dienten ihm."

"10 Then Jesus said to him, 'Be gone, Satan!  For it is written, "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve."'  11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him."

I was curious about "him only shall you serve" and "angels... were ministering to him."  These are different verbs in English, but the same verb in German (albeit with different inflections).  Jesus says, "Du sollst... deinen Gott... dienen," and then, "Engel... dienten ihm."  Immediately after Jesus quotes, "You shall serve your God," the angels do serve their God.  The range of meaning of the verb dienen is wide enough to cover both of these uses.

The same is true of the French translation I'm following along in now:  "10 Jésus lui dit:  Retire-toi, Satan! Car il est écrit:  Tu adoreras le Seigneur, ton Dieu, et tu le serviras lui seul.  11 Alors le diable le laissa.  Et voici, des anges vinrent auprès de Jésus, et le servaient."

I lookt up the Greek to find that it uses different verbs (λατρεύω and διακονέω), so this is a feature specific to these German and French translations.

Psalm 121:6-8

Psalm 121 was the appointed Psalm last Sunday (the Second Sunday in Lent), and while following along in my French New Testament while watching Worship Anew, I noticed some significant anaphora in verses 7 and 8:

7 Le Seigneur te gardera de tout mal, il gardera ta vie.  8 Le Seigneur te gardera, au départ et au retour, maintenant, à jamais.

 I like the New King James Version:

7 The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.  8 The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.

The repeated "shall preserve" illustrates God's constancy of care while the variety of direct objects ("you," "your soul," and "your going out and your coming in") demonstrates the breadth.  As in Psalm 91, the you here ("te" in French) is singular (as it is in the Hebrew), which indicates God's individualized protection.

About a year ago, I noticed that there's a merism in verse 6:  "The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night."  There are also merisms in verse 8 ("your going out and your coming in" and "this time... forevermore"), and all of these provide an idea of the range of God's care.

Psalm 2:9

The Psalm reading for last Sunday (Transfiguration) was a section of Psalm 2.  This doesn't appear in Liturgies et cantiques Luthériens, so I followed along in my German Bible and noticed again something I discovered three years ago.  In verse 9, the parallelism is emphasized by alliteration:

Du sollst sie mit einem eisernen Zepter zerschlagen, wie Töpfe sollst du sie zerschmeißen.

In English, this is:  "You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."  The alliteration between zerschlagen and zerschmeißen highlights the parallelism of break and dash.

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.