John 8:34

I read John 8:34 in German last week before watching the corresponding Daily Dose of Greek video, and I noticed a small feature about it.  In English, it's "Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin.'"  The word order is a bit different in German, however:  "Jesus antwortete ihnen und sprach:  Wahrlich, wahrlich, ich sage euch:  Wer Sünde tut, der ist der Sünde Knecht."  Instead of "a slave to sin," the German has "of sin a slave" ("der Sünde Knecht").  The genitive precedes the predicate nominative it modifies, and this word order illustrates the subordinate position of the slave.

Isaiah 1:4

A couple weeks ago, I read Isaiah 1.  Part of verse four stuck out to me:  "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly!  They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged."

Almost the entirety of the chapter exhibits either pairs of related items or parallel clauses.  In this verse, "sinful nation" parallels with "a people laden with iniquity," "offspring of evildoers" with "children who deal corruptly," and "they have forsaken the LORD" with "they have despised the Holy One of Israel."  The clause "they are utterly estranged," however, isn't paired or paralleled with anything, and this lack of a complement emphasizes the meaning.

1 Corinthians 13:7

I read 1 Corinthians 13 recently and noticed epistrophe (the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses or sentences) in verse 7:  "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."  That "all things" is repeated gives a sense of the entirety of that "all."

Matthew 7:24-27

Near the beginning of the month, I read a few chapters from Matthew.  Matthew 7:24-27 contains Jesus' explanation that those who hear and follow His words are like a man who built his house on a rock, "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" (verse 25).  After I read this, I realized that the house is assaulted from all sides:  the rain descends from above; flood waters rise up from beneath; and the winds come from lateral directions.  While the house built on a rock is contrasted with the house built on sand, which "fell, and great was the fall of it" (verse 27), the fortitude of the house built on a rock is also illustrated simply in the elements it withstands and the various directions from which they come.

Psalm 63:8-9

Near the end of last month, I was reading through some Psalms, and I noticed something in Psalm 63 that may be obvious but that I hadn't realized before.

8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.  9 But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth.

There's a contrast between these two verses, plainly indicated by the "but" at the beginning of verse 9.  Additionally, though, this contrast is illustrated by the opposite directions.  God's "right hand upholds" the Psalmist in verse 8, but verse 9 says that those opposed to the Psalmist "shall go down into the depths."

Romans 11:33

Last month, I read a few verses from Romans 11 and noticed a small feature in verse 33:  "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!"  There's polysyndeton (the repeated "and") in "the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God," and this indicates that abundance.

John 10:12

I wrote about a small feature in John 10 after Good Shepherd Sunday last year, but when I was following along in my French translation during Worship Anew last week, I noticed something else, in verse 12 this time:  

Mais le mercenaire, qui n'est pas le berger, et à qui n'appartiennent pas les brebis, voit venir le loup, abandonne les brebis, et prend la fuite; et le loup les ravit et les disperse.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

Where the English and the Greek each have a single word ("flees" "φεύγει"), the French has the phrase "prend la fuite" ("takes flight").  Because the verbs here are opposites ("leave" and "take"), there's a stronger sense of the hired hand's abandoning the sheep.  To some degree, the structural parallelism (verb + direct object) between "abandonne les brebis" and "prend la fuite" also highlights this.

Mark 10:44

I'm still working my way through Mark.  A little over a week ago, I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video for Mark 10:44 and noticed a small feature in the word order.

καὶ ὃς ἂν θέλῃ ἐν ὑμῖν εἶναι πρῶτος, ἔσται πάντων δοῦλος.

"and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all."

As if to reflect this idea of being "slave of all" and in the lowest position, the word for "slave" (δοῦλος) is placed last in the sentence.

James 3:10-11

For the last six months, I've been watching Concordia University Wisconsin chapel services on YouTube.  Recent services are uploaded sporadically (if at all), so I went back to the oldest ones available and have been working my way forward.  Last week, I watched the service from 19 September 2012*, where Pastor Smith reads one of his fictional letters from Jane:

The reading is James 3:1-12.  I was following along in my French New Testament and noticed that the word choice emphasizes the distinctions in verses 10 and 11:  "10 De la même bouche sortent la bénédiction et la malédiction.  Il ne faut pas, mes frères, qu'il en soit ainsi.  11 La source fait-elle jaillir par la même ouverture l'eau douce et l'eau amère?"

The ESV:  "10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.  My brothers, these things ought not to be so.  11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?"

Blessing and cursing are exact opposites in French (bénédiction and malédiction) because they're built on the same root.  It's no surprise then that this feature is also present in the Latin Vulgate:  "ex ipso ore procedit benedictio et maledictio."

Where the ESV implies a "water" in verse 11 ("fresh [water] and salt water"), it's explicit in the French:  "l'eau douce et l'eau amère."  "Fresh water and salt water" or even "sweet water and bitter water."  (In Greek, these are substantive adjectives:  "τὸ γλυκὺ καὶ τὸ πικρόν.")  Repeating the "water" emphasizes the difference.

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*There are actually two services dated 19 September 2012; one is probably from the 18th and simply mislabeled.

Jonah 1:3

I recently started reading Jonah, and I noticed a small feature in the third verse of the first chapter, specifically in the sentence "But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD" (ESV).  As if to reflect the distance that Jonah wants to put between himself and God, "Jonah" and "the LORD" are at opposite ends of the sentence.

From what I can tell, this feature is also present in the original Hebrew text, although it's not quite as extreme.  The Latin Vulgate has a comparable structure:  "et surrexit Iona ut fugeret in Tharsis a facie Domini."  "וַיָּקָם" in Hebrew and "et surrexit" in Latin ("and/but rose") are all that prevent "Jonah" from being at the beginning of the sentence and "the LORD" at the end.

This sort of structure isn't present in the NIV, however, where this sentence is rendered as "But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish."

Mark 9:14-29 (Jesus Heals a Boy with an Unclean Spirit)

I've been working through Mark 9 in the archives of the Daily Dose of Greek, and a couple weeks ago, I realized that the account in verses 14-29 (where Jesus heals a boy with an unclean spirit) provides something of a foreshadowing of the resurrection of the dead.

This is clearest in verses 26 and 27:  "26 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it [the unclean spirit] came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them [the people in the crowd] said, 'He is dead.'  27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose."  After a deathlike state, the boy arises.  The verb here is ἀνίστημι, and this is the same verb that's used to refer to the resurrection of the dead in John 11 (where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead).

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.