Psalm 13:1-2

A couple weeks ago, I heard Psalm 13 and discovered a small feature in the first two verses:

1 How long, O LORD?  Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

The repeated "how long" is an example of anaphora, and in its use here, it gives a sense of duration.  Things have been going on in this same way for some time, and the Psalmist wonders when there will be a change.

Psalm 113:3

Last month, Concordia University Wisconsin tweeted Psalm 113:3:

#PassageOfTheDay "From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised!" - Psalms 113:3 pic.twitter.com/aPZQ4cocmc

— Concordia University (@CUWisconsin) March 19, 2020

I'd realized before that "from the rising of the sun to its setting" is a merism, but I had been thinking about it merely temporally:  from morning to night.  The paraphrase "from east to west" made me realize that it can also be taken spatially:  all over the world.

Psalm 28:7

Within the span of one week last month, I ran across references to Psalm 28:7 in two different hymns:  "Be Thou still my strength and shield" in LSB #918 "Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer" and "You are my strength, my shield, my rock" in LSB #734 "I Trust, O Lord, Your Holy Name" (which KFUO posted on Instagram).  Psalm 28:7 is "The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him."

I noticed that there's a bit of alliteration:  "my strength and my shield."  While only slight, this illustrates that God is steadfast and immovable.

For what it's worth, the same feature is present in German:  "Der HERR ist meine Stärke und mein Schild; auf ihn hofft mein Herz, und mir ist geholfen.  Nun ist mein Herz fröhlich, und ich will ihm danken mit meinem Lied."

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.