Psalm 121:5

Of course, after I already published a post about Psalm 121, I find something else to write about it.

When the Daily Dose of Hebrew went over verse 5 about two weeks ago, I learned that the word that my Bible translates as "keeper" is actually a participle from the verb שָׁמַר:

A participle is a verbal adjective, and some of the other translations I follow along in side more with the verbal part and simply translate it as a verb.  Latin:  "Dominus custodiet te."  German:  "Der HERR behütet dich."  My French translation, on the other hand, renders it as a noun:  "Le Seigneur, ton gardien," which is the same as the ESV:  "The LORD is your keeper."

I prefer translating this participle as a verb, however, because it more clearly illustrates God's active protection.

Psalm 139:5

The Psalm reading on Worship Anew last week was part of Psalm 139.  I was following along in my French translation and found an interesting feature in verse 5:  "Tu me devances et me poursuis, tu m'enserres, tu as mis la main sur moi."  The ESV translation, which doesn't correspond exactly to this French translation, is "You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me."

I've written about this sort of feature before, but because of French word order, "me" (in bold) is somewhat literally "hem[med]... in" by the subject and verb in this clause:  "Tu m'enserres."

Psalm 121:2

The Daily Dose of Hebrew has been going through some Psalms lately.  While following along in the Latin Vulgate, I noticed an interesting feature in Psalm 121:2:

"My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth."

"Auxilium meum [venit] a Domino qui fecit caelum et terram."

I don't think "heaven and earth" is technically a merism, but there is a sense of opposites here.  Because caelum (second declension neuter) and terram (first declension feminine) are in different declensions and have different grammatical genders, these opposites are highlighted.

John 6:41

Last week, I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video on John 6:41:

Dr. Plummer mentions that "Ἐγόγγυζον" (which can mean "grumbled" or "murmured," among other things) is "an onomatopoetic word."

I don't have any particularly significant comment about this; I just found it interesting that in the three foreign language translations that I follow along in, this onomatopoetic quality is retained.

German:  "Da murrten die Juden über ihn, weil er sagte:  Ich bin das Brot, das vom Himmel gekommen ist,"

French:  "Les Juifs murmuraient à son sujet, parce qu'il avait dit:  Je suis le pain qui est descendu du ciel."

Latin:  "Murmurabant ergo Iudaei de illo quia dixisset ego sum panis qui de caelo descendi"

The French murmure and the Latin murmurare both mean "to murmur," but the German murren means "to complain about."

Joel 2:3

I've been reading Joel lately (although by the time this post is published, I'll have finished it and moved on to Amos).  A couple weeks ago, I noticed a nice feature in the first part of 2:3:  "Fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns."  There's a chiasm here, so even in the structure of the sentence, fire is both in front of and behind the people.  From what I can tell, however, this feature isn't present in the original Hebrew.

Mark 8:31

I'm still working my way through Mark in the Daily Dose of Greek archives.  A little over a week ago, I watched the video for Mark 8:31:

I noticed polysyndeton among the infinitives:  καὶ ἤρξατο διδάσκειν αὐτοὺς ὅτι δεῖ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου πολλὰ παθεῖν καὶ ἀποδοκιμασθῆναι ὑπὸ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καὶ τῶν ἀρχιερέων καὶ τῶν γραμματέων καὶ ἀποκτανθῆναι καὶ μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας ἀναστῆναι·

This repetition gives some sense of amount, reflecting that πολλὰ.

1 Corinthians 15:24

I forgot to write about this earlier, but when I watched Worship Anew last month (22 November - the Last Sunday of the Church Year), I noticed a small feature in the epistle reading from 1 Corinthians 15.  Verse 24 is "Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power."  "εἶτα τὸ τέλος, ὅταν παραδιδῷ τὴν βασιλείαν τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρί, ὅταν καταργήσῃ πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ πᾶσαν ἐξουσίαν καὶ δύναμιν·"  There's polysyndeton (the repeated "and" or "καὶ"), and this - along with "every" (πᾶσαν) - gives a sense of completeness.

Hosea 1:7

I recently started reading Hosea and noticed a small feature in 1:7:  "'But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God.  I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.'"  The second sentence exhibits polysyndeton (the repeated conjunction "or"), and this emphasizes the contrast between the one who will save them and the many things that will not.

Proverbs 13:16

While reading Proverbs 13 last month, I noticed a small feature in verse 16:  "In everything the prudent acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly."  As if to highlight that "flaunt[ing]," that half of the verse has both alliteration and consonance ("a fool flaunts his folly").  I lookt at some other translations, but of what I have, this feature is unique to the ESV.

John 4:14

I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade last month, and I started wondering whether the Latin inscription on the Grail tablet ("Quisquid bibit aquam...") had any similarity to John 4 in the Latin Vulgate.  I lookt it up and found that the Vulgate has different indefinite pronouns.

While looking this up, though, I noticed an error in verse 14 in the NIV translation.  "ὃς δ᾽ ἂν πίῃ ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος οὗ ἐγὼ δώσω αὐτῷ, οὐ μὴ διψήσει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, ἀλλὰ τὸ ὕδωρ ὃ δώσω αὐτῷ γενήσεται ἐν αὐτῷ πηγὴ ὕδατος ἁλλομένου εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον" is rendered as "but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  If I understand my Greek correctly, αὐτῷ is singular, but the NIV translates it as "them" (three times!).  Not only is this an inaccurate translation, but it also creates a grammatical problem in the English translation:  there's a disagreement in number between the plural "them" and the singular antecedent "whoever."

Proverbs 6:20-22

At the end of September, I started reading a chapter of Proverbs before I go to bed.  I noted before that there's a similarity between Proverbs 1:8-9 and Deuteronomy 6:4-9, but I found an even stronger resemblance between that same passage in Deuteronomy and Proverbs 6:20-22:  "20 My son, keep your father's commandment, and forsake not your mother's teaching.  21 Bind them on your heart always; tie them around your neck.  22 When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you."

Here's Deuteronomy 6:4-9:  "4 'Hear, O Israel:  The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.'"

Both passages talk about "bind[ing]" these commandments to one's self, but the strongest similarity is between Deuteronomy 6:7 and Proverbs 6:22:  "when you walk... when you lie down... and when you rise/awake."

Psalm 22:13

A section of Psalm 32 was one of the readings on Worship Anew a couple weeks ago.  I was following along in the Psalms portion of my French hymnal, and half of verse 7 ("de chants de délivrance, tu m'as entouré") made me realize that a specific feature of French almost mirrors the meaning.  It doesn't quite work in Psalm 32:7 (because there's an ablative of means), but I found a better example in Psalm 22:13.  In French, it's "Des fauvres nombreux me cernent, des taureaux de Basan m'encerclent" ("Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me").  Because French has a subject-object-verb word order*, "me" (in bold) is literally "surround[ed]" by the noun and verb (in italics):  "Des fauvres nombreux me cernent, des taureaux de Basan m'encerclent."

I lookt in my German Psalter and found a similar feature there.  In the German translation, the verbs are perfects ("they have surrounded me"), but because of German word order, the "me"s here are literally surrounded too:  "Gewaltige Stiere haben mich umgeben, mächtige Büffel haben mich umringt."

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*In this instance, at least.  If I remember aright, French uses subject-object-verb word order only if the object is a pronoun.