Page:The Emphasised Bible - Vol 1.djvu/21

Rh which, is it not sometimes welcome to hurried eyes to have pointed out to them what might have been discovered by unaided vision?

11. Now for a few, before submitting which the hint is given that a glance at the Table of Signs placed at the end of this Introduction will here be found convenient.

The A.V. rendering of this passage leaves much to be desired; partly because of the wrong impression which the word "offend" conveys, as though Jesus feared He had hurt His disciples' feelings to the degree of provoking their resentment; and partly because it leaves the point of the question uncertain. The R.V. obviates the wrong impression, by substituting "cause to stumble" for "offend," but it fails to bring out the fine point seen by laying a little stress on "you." "Doth THIS cause you to stumble"—you, My disciples, who might have known better? It is a clear case; for the Greek sets the noun governed before the verb that governs it (cp. post, Synopsis, A, b).

How the point of Cain's defence of his professed ignorance leaps to his lips! The arrangement, "Am I my brother's keeper?" is tameness itself in comparison.

In this place both A.V. and R.V. preserve the inversion which opens the verse, and for that we are thankful: "That which is altogether just shalt thou follow." But why not have given it with the greater simplicity and vivacity of the original?—ẓédhek ẓédhek tirdôf'—it is all there. And why not have given the full force of the verb "pursue"—"pursue" with determination, and not merely "follow" with halfheartedness or from a dull sense of duty?

Note here how parallelism and emphasis enhance the effect of each other. There being two synonymous couplets, constituting a duplicate expression for each thought (viz., first the Divine visitation, then the effect on the sufferer), emphasis steps in at the second line of each couplet, and strongly accentuates the closing word of the preceding line: "dreams—visions"; "strangling—death." Note also how well the sharp expression which the word "death" draws to itself, prepares the way for the lingering and piteous lament over "these my bones."

It would be difficult to name a passage more studded with the beauties of combined parallelism and emphasis than this. Observe that, here again, there are two couplets; then, that an emphatic inversion leads off in the first line of the first couplet—an accusative before its verb (Synopsis, A, b); next, that the thought of "clothing" oneself, given in the first line, is emphatically and rhetorically amplified in the second line,