In reading 1 Kings in the NIV a couple months ago, I found an-other chiasm that highlights opposites. In verses 25-26, Nathan says to David, "25 Today he [Adonijah] has gone down and sacrificed great numbers of cattle, fattened calves, and sheep. He has invited all the king's sons, the commanders of the army and Abiathar the priest. Right now they are eating and drinking with him and saying, 'Long live King Adonijah!' 26 But me your servant, and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and your servant Solomon he did not invite."
The sentence structure is inverted between "He has invited all the king's sons, the commanders of the army and Abiathar the priest" and "But me your servant, and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and your servant Solomon he did not invite," highlighting this contrast.
A couple months ago, I read Psalm 132 in the ESV and noticed an interesting feature in verse 18: "'His enemies I will clothe with shame, but on him his crown will shine.'" The phrases "clothe with shame" and "crown will shine" resemble each other visually, and to some degree, this superficial resemblance draws attention to their opposite nature.
On Worship Anew a couple months ago, the Gospel reading was Mark 12:38-44. In all of the English translations I referenced (ESV, NIV, and NKJV), there's a chiastic structure in verse 44. Here's the ESV:
"For they all contributed
out of their abundance,
but she out of her poverty
has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."
Such a structure highlights the opposite natures of "abundance" (the NIV has "wealth") and "poverty" and perhaps even the different manners in which the rich people and poor widow gave their offerings.
This structure isn't in the Greek, though, where this verse is: πάντες γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ περισσεύοντος αὐτοῖς ἔβαλον, αὕτη δὲ ἐκ τῆς ὑστερήσεως αὐτῆς πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν ἔβαλεν, ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς. The two clauses have roughly the same structure here, something like "All out of their abundance contributed, but she out of her poverty put in...."
On Worship Anew a couple months ago (10 November, Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost), the Old Testament reading was 1 Kings 17:8-16, and I noticed a way in which the vocabulary sort of mirrors the meaning of the text.
Initially, the widow at Zarephath has "only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die." Elijah asks her for some food and tells her "thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain upon the earth.'" By the providence of God, "she and he and her household ate for many days."
"Her household" (בֵיתָהּ) here is really just her son, but the multitude of people that this term could imply matches the abundance of the provisions that don't run out.
Last month, I read Psalm 125 in the ESV, and I noticed a sort of chiastic structure highlighting opposites in verses 4-5:
4 Do good, O LORD,
to those who are good, and to those who are upright in their hearts!
5 But those who turn aside to their crooked ways
the LORD will lead away with evildoers! Peace be upon Israel!
The structure is delineated more by meaning than strict grammatical form, though, since the phrases "those who are good" and "those who are upright in their hearts" are in the dative case where the phrase "those who turn aside to their crooked ways" is in the accusative. The verbs are slightly different, too: "do good" is an imperative, but "will lead away" is a future indicative (in the English, at least).
Last month, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from the 6th:
The reading was Hebrews 9:11-14, and part of verse 14 caught my attention: "how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" [ESV].
There's a sort of contrast between "from dead works" and "to serve the living God," and this is heightened by the different forms of the modifiers. "Dead" (νεκρῶν) is just an adjective, but "living" (ζῶντι) is a participle, and since participles are verbal adjectives, there's some of the dynamic action of a verb here rather than just the static nature of a plain adjective.
The same distinction is also in the Latin Vulgate ("quanto magis sanguis Christi qui per Spiritum Sanctum semet ipsum obtulit inmaculatum Deo emundabit conscientiam vestram ab operibus mortuis ad serviendum Deo viventi"), my German New Testament ("um wieviel mehr wird dann das Blut Christi, der sich selbst als Opfer ohne Fehl durch den ewigen Geist Gott dargebracht hat, unser Gewissen reinigen von den toten Werken, zu dienen dem lebendigen Gott!"), and my French New Testament ("combien plus le sang de Christ, qui, par un esprit éternel, s'est offert lui-même sans tache à Dieu, purifiera-t-il votre conscience des œuvres mortes, afin que vous serviez la Dieu vivant!").
In catching up on reading the entire chapter of some Biblical references in the introduction to my copy of The Bhagavad Gita last month, I found yet an-other small feature to write about. I read Psalm 102 in the ESV, in which verse 11 is: "My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass." (The NIV is basically the same: "My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.") There's a sort of redundancy in the phrase "an evening shadow" ("evening" and "shadow" both imply a degree of darkness), and this results in an imbalance between the two halves of the clause: there's a single element as the subject ("days") but an adjective and noun pair with overlapping meanings as the predicate nominative ("evening shadow"). This unevenness with more weight placed on "an evening shadow" emphasizes the darkness of the Psalmist's plight.
This doesn't apply to the Hebrew, though, where the verse is:
יָמַי כְּצֵל נָטוּי וַאֲנִי כָּעֵשֶׂב אִיבָֽשׁ׃
The ESV and NIV translate נָטוּי as "evening" in this context, but the word actually means something like "stretched out" or "extended." This is how the NKJV translates it: "My days are like a shadow that lengthens, and I wither away like grass."
About a month ago, I read Isaiah 30 after having run across a citation of Isaiah 30:15 in the introduction to my edition of The Bhagavad Gita, and I noticed some significance in the diction in verses 9-13:
9 For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the LORD; 10 who say to the seers, "Do not see," and to the prophets, "Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, 11 leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel." 12 Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, "Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, 13 therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant [ESV]
In verse 10, there are nouns and negated verbs built on the same roots: "who say to the seers, 'Do not see,' and to the prophets, 'Do not prophesy...'" This is also true of the Hebrew:
Bridging verses 11 and 12, there's a similar construction: "'Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.' Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel...." Unlike the words in verse 10, the phrases "let us hear no more" and "therefore thus says" don't have the same verbal roots, but they're still related in meaning. Significantly, the order is reversed here. First, it's "to the seers, 'Do not see'" and "to the prophets, 'Do not prophesy,'" but now, it's "hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel...." Altogether, then, the language here gives a sense of God's turning the tables on the rebellious people and doing precisely the opposite of what they want.
Just over a month ago, I read 1 Corinthians 10 after having found a citation of it (verse 31 specifically) in the introduction to my edition of The Bhagavad Gita. I noticed a couple rhetorical devices in the first four verses:
1 For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. [ESV]
This passage exhibits both anaphora (the repeated "all") and polysyndeton (the repeated "and"), and these devices provide a sense of entirety.
Last month, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from the 23rd:
The reading was James 1:1-12. I was following along in the Vulgate and noticed a small feature in the first verse, specifically in the phrase "Iacobus Dei et Domini nostri Iesu Christi servus." In the ESV, this is translated as "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," and every other translation I lookt at has a similar rendering in terms of word order. In the Latin, though, the word for "servant" ("servus") comes last in the phrase, and this mirrors a servant's subordinate position. This is also true of the Greek: Ἰάκωβος θεοῦ καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ δοῦλος.
About a month ago, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from 17 October:
The reading was Amos 5:6-7, 10-15, and I noticed a small feature that I'd missed earlier that week when the same reading was on Worship Anew.
Here's Amos 5:12: "For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins - you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate."
There's parallelism between "how many are your transgressions" and "how great are your sins," and this provides a sense of that large amount.
A few weeks ago, I finally got back to my practice of reading the whole chapter of any Biblical citations I run across, after having neglected it for months. In catching up, I read Matthew 6 because of a reference to it in a C.S. Lewis letter (writing to Owen Barfield in September 1945, Lewis alludes to verse 3). Jesus' comment "'will he not much more clothe you'" (in verse 30) caught my attention, and I realized that it may have a wider scope than I'd originally thought (also the parallel in Luke 12:28).
In its immediate context, the comment refers merely to physical clothing. I hadn't considered before that what God does for Adam and Eve at the end of Genesis 3 (verse 21: "And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them") is a specific example of this, probably the epitome. The phrase "'much more clothe you'" reminded me of 2 Corinthians 5:4, though, which seems to refer to clothing in a different way: "For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened - not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." In light of that context, I think the clothing in Matthew 6:30 and Luke 12:28 can also be viewed more metaphorically, as it is in Isaiah 61:10: "He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness." God clothes us physically, as He does the lilies of the field, but He also clothes us metaphorically by giving us that salvation and righteousness.
