Word Order and Emphasis

In English, word order does most of the grammatical work. 'The dog bit the man' and 'the man bit the dog' contain the same words and say opposite things, because English knows who did what by where each word stands. Greek knows who did what by the ending on each word. You met this in Module 3: the nominative case marks the subject, the accusative the object, and so on. Because the endings carry the grammar, the order is freed up to carry something else.

That something else is, broadly, how the writer wants the reader to take the information: what is the scene, what is new, what is being set against what. Ephesians 2:8 opens τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι (tē gar chariti este sesōsmenoi), literally 'by the for grace you are saved'. The dative χάριτι, by grace, has been brought forward ahead of its verb. The BSB carries this into English with a construction English uses for exactly that purpose: 'For it is by grace you have been saved'. The words it is are English's way of putting one phrase in the spotlight (a cleft sentence, with the that left unspoken), and the translators reached for them because the Greek had done the same thing by order.

Free word order does not mean random word order. Writers had habits, and grammarians have spent a great deal of effort describing them. What they have not done is agree on a single default order for New Testament Greek. Stephen Levinsohn, in Discourse Features of New Testament Greek (second edition 2000), and Steven Runge, in Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament (2010), argue that in many kinds of clause the verb tends to come early, so that material placed in front of the verb is marked, that is, placed there for a reason. Other grammarians are more cautious, pointing out that patterns vary by author, by genre and by the kind of clause, so that what is normal in Mark's narrative may not be normal in the carefully built sentences of Hebrews. Both sides would accept a modest working rule: when something stands earlier than you would expect, especially ahead of its verb, ask why, and let the context answer.

There is a reason this skill belongs in a tools-first course. Emphasis is one of the things translations most often lose, because English has fewer ways to show it. An interlinear shows you the order the writer chose. You do not need to memorise rules of Greek style to notice that a word has been pulled to the front of its clause, or that a pronoun has been added where the verb did not need one. Those are the two signals this lesson teaches you to see.

The first tool is fronting: placing a word or phrase ahead of where it would otherwise stand, usually ahead of its verb. Ephesians 2:8 is one example. Hebrews 4:12, the anchor of this module's last lesson, is another: it begins Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ (zōn gar ho logos tou theou), living for is the word of God, with the participle meaning living set at the very head of the sentence before even the subject. The BSB's 'For the word of God is living and active' is good English, and in good English the first word of Hebrews 4:12 has moved to the middle.

John 1:1 has the most famous fronting in the New Testament. Its last clause is θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (theos ēn ho logos), God was the Word, with θεός placed before the verb. You met this clause in Module 1, with Colwell's rule. The fronting is part of why the clause has been so argued over. Philip Harner's article in the Journal of Biblical Literature (1973) argued that a noun without the article placed before the verb in this way tends to describe what something is, its nature or quality, rather than to identify it as a particular individual. On Harner's reading, that is how the clause can say that the Word was fully God without saying that the Word was the same person as the God he was with. Word order is doing theological work there, and it is work careful grammarians on all sides of the Christological debates have had to reckon with.

The second tool is the added pronoun. A Greek verb already tells you its person and number: λέγω is 'I say', λέγετε is 'you say'. So when a writer adds ἐγώ (egō, I), σύ (sy, you), ἡμεῖς (hēmeis, we) or ὑμεῖς (hymeis, you plural) as the subject, he has used a word the grammar did not require. The usual reason is contrast. In Matthew 5:21 Jesus recalls what 'was said to the ancients'. In 5:22 he says ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν (egō de legō hymin), and the added ἐγώ puts his own word against the received one: 'But I tell you'.

Paul does the same in Romans 8:9: Ὑμεῖς δὲ οὐκ ἐστὲ ἐν σαρκί (hymeis de ouk este en sarki), and the BSB catches the contrast with 'You, however, are controlled not by the flesh'. The ὑμεῖς marks the readers off from the people described in 8:5-8. And in Ephesians 1:13 the words καὶ ὑμεῖς, and you also, mark a turn that the fourth lesson of this module will look at closely.

The pronoun signal comes with one important limit. Some pronouns are there because the sentence has no verb to carry the person. John 15:5 reads ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἄμπελος, ὑμεῖς τὰ κλήματα, 'I am the vine and you are the branches'. The second clause has no verb at all in Greek, so the ὑμεῖς is needed simply to say who the branches are. There is certainly a contrast between vine and branches, but it is carried by the whole balanced sentence, not by the bare fact that a pronoun is present. Before you call a pronoun emphatic, check whether the sentence could have done without it.

Start with the verse number. In the SBLGNT, the words Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι (Christō synestaurōmai, with Christ I have been crucified) are the end of Galatians 2:19, and 2:20 begins with ζῶ δέ. The BSB, following the usual English division, starts 2:20 with 'I have been crucified with Christ'. Verse numbers were added to the Greek New Testament by the printer Robert Estienne in his 1551 edition, centuries after Paul, and editions do not always place them in the same spot. A verse division is a reference tool, not part of the text. When your interlinear and your English Bible disagree about where a verse starts, that is the reason.

Now read Galatians 2:19 and the opening of 2:20 as Paul wrote them. νόμῳ ἀπέθανον, to the law I died. ἵνα θεῷ ζήσω, so that to God I might live. Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι, with Christ I have been crucified. Three times a dative, law, God, Christ, stands before its verb. συνεσταύρωμαι is perfect passive indicative, first person singular, of συσταυρόω: I have been crucified together with, and that crucifixion stands as a settled fact. Notice that because all three datives are fronted, the effect is less a single spotlight than a series: the three names are lined up against one another, law, God, Christ, and the reader hears the movement of Paul's life from the first to the third.

Then the contrast. ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός: I live no longer I; lives in me Christ. ζῶ already means I live, so the ἐγώ is not grammatically needed. Paul adds it, and puts it at the end of the clause, and then puts Χριστός at the end of the next. The two words stand facing each other, the old self and the Christ who now lives in its place. Several modern translations show this with an English construction along the lines of it is no longer I who live, which puts the stress on the I. The BSB's 'I no longer live, but Christ lives in me' leaves the stress to the reader's voice, and reads well aloud if you lean on I and on Christ.

The King James Version divides the same words differently: 'nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me'. It takes ζῶ alone as an affirmation, I do live, and οὐκέτι ἐγώ as a correction, yet it is no longer I. The more common modern reading takes ζῶ οὐκέτι together, as the BSB does. Both readings are attempts to hear the same contrast, and both rest on the same word order. They differ in how they group the words and in whether the δέ is a mild and or a firmer nevertheless, which is exactly the kind of decision the first lesson of this module prepared you to see.

The second half of the verse uses order in two different ways in quick succession. ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί (ho de nyn zō en sarki), what I now live in the flesh, comes first. That relative clause is not the point of the sentence; it sets the scene. Runge's term for this is a frame: material placed early to tell the reader what the next statement is about. As for the life I now live in the flesh, says Paul. Then comes the point: ἐν πίστει ζῶ (en pistei zō), by faith I live, with ἐν πίστει placed ahead of its verb. The BSB catches the shape well: 'The life I live in the body, I live by faith'. The BSB renders ἐν σαρκί as 'in the body', which is right for this verse: σάρξ here is ordinary bodily existence, not the sinful flesh of Galatians 5.

Then a small piece of Greek craftsmanship. After ζῶ comes τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ. The article τῇ is dative feminine singular, and nothing near it is dative feminine singular except πίστει, back before the verb. So τῇ reaches back over the verb to pick up the noun: by faith, the faith of the Son of God. Agreement of endings lets Greek split a phrase in two and still be clear. Whether that genitive means faith in the Son of God, as the BSB has it, or the faithfulness of the Son of God, which is close to the King James wording 'the faith of the Son of God', is the debate you met in Module 3 in The Genitive, and this lesson leaves it where that lesson left it.

The verse ends τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντός με καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ. ἀγαπήσαντος and παραδόντος are aorist active participles, genitive masculine singular, agreeing with υἱοῦ: of the one who loved me and gave himself for me. The whole verse has moved from law to Christ, from I to Christ, and now from Christ to me, and it ends on the cross seen as personal. That is the force of the verse, and it comes from its words and their order together.

Here is where a student must be warned, because emphasis is probably claimed more often from the pulpit than any other feature of Greek, and much of the time the claim is larger than the evidence. It is easy to see why. To say that in the Greek this word is emphatic sounds learned, cannot easily be checked by the congregation and seems to add authority to whatever point the preacher was already making. The honest preacher will want to know the main ways the claim goes wrong.

The first is assuming that the first word of a Greek sentence is the most important. Often it stands first because something else cannot. γάρ, δέ and οὖν must come second, so whatever comes before them is first by necessity. Romans 12:1 begins Παρακαλῶ οὖν; the verb I urge is first, but no one should preach that Paul is shouting I urge. Many clauses simply begin with their verb, and καί, when it joins clauses, always comes first. The first word of a clause is a place where emphasis can happen, not a place where it always does.

The second is treating every longer pronoun form as emphatic. Greek has short and long forms of the first-person pronoun: με and ἐμέ, μου and ἐμοῦ, μοι and ἐμοί. The longer forms are often called emphatic, but they are also the forms Greek normally uses after a preposition. In Galatians 2:20, ἐν ἐμοί and ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ both follow prepositions, while με, after the participle meaning who loved, is the short form. So a preacher who says that Paul uses the emphatic me to shout that Christ died for him personally has mistaken a rule of grammar for a cry of the heart. The verse is personal; the forms do not prove it.

The third is calling everything placed early emphasis. As Galatians 2:20 shows, a writer may put something first to set the scene, the frame, or to make it the point, the focus (Levinsohn's term; Runge calls this emphasis), and these are different jobs. ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί is early because it is the topic; ἐν πίστει is early because it is the point. Preach the frame as if it were the point and you will get the verse backwards, telling people that Paul is emphasising life in the flesh. Levinsohn and Runge disagree with some other grammarians on details here, but the distinction between setting the scene and making the point is widely accepted.

The fourth is forgetting style and pattern. When a writer fronts every item in a series, as Paul does with law, God and Christ in Galatians 2:19, the effect is parallelism and contrast among the items, not a single word shouting above the rest. Some writers, Hebrews above all, arrange words with great care throughout, so that unusual order is their normal voice. And Greek writers sometimes split phrases apart, as with τῇ πίστει in 2:20, for elegance or rhythm as much as for emphasis. Grammarians call this separation hyperbaton, and they disagree about how much meaning to load onto it in any given case.

The fifth is the most serious: building doctrine on emphasis alone. Emphasis tells you what a writer is highlighting among the things he says. It never adds to what he says. If the point of a sermon would collapse once the claim of emphasis were removed, the point was not in the text. The honest way to speak is the modest way: the word order seems to highlight this, or Paul has gone out of his way to set these two words against each other. That is a claim a congregation can check with a free tool, and it is usually enough.

English has its own tools for emphasis, and good translators use them. The cleft sentence is one: the BSB uses it in Ephesians 2:8, 'it is by grace you have been saved'. Setting a word off with commas is another: 'You, however, are controlled not by the flesh'. Moving a phrase to the front of an English sentence is a third, and English can do this more than people think: 'The life I live in the body, I live by faith' is fronting in English that mirrors fronting in Greek. When you compare translations, as you learned to in Module 2, watch for these devices; they are often the trace of something the Greek did with order.

The simplest tool of all is the voice. Scripture in the first century was heard far more than it was read, and the most natural way to carry Greek emphasis into a modern congregation is to read the verse aloud with the stress where the Greek put it. Read Galatians 2:20 aloud leaning on I and Christ in the first sentence and on faith in the second. You will have taught the word order without ever mentioning it, and you will have claimed nothing the text cannot bear.

In the study, use three questions on any word that seems to be emphasised. First, is its position or form required by the grammar? A postpositive, a preposition taking a long pronoun form, or a verbless clause that needs a pronoun all answer yes, and then the emphasis case is weak. Second, is it the frame or the focus? Does it set the scene for what follows, or is it the point being made? Third, is there a contrast partner nearby? Real emphasis in Greek is very often contrastive, and the partner is usually within a clause or two: I and Christ, law and God, what was said and what I say.

A word about reading commentaries, since you will meet the word emphatic in them constantly. Good commentators use it carefully and usually tell you why: the pronoun is not needed, the phrase stands ahead of its verb, a contrast follows. Weaker ones use it as a kind of underlining, to mark whatever the writer thinks is important. When a commentary calls a word emphatic, look for the reason. If it gives one, test it with the three questions above. If it gives none, open the interlinear and see whether you can find one yourself. If you cannot, treat the claim as the commentator's opinion about what matters in the verse, which may be wise, rather than as a fact about the Greek.

Your step this week: go back to the passage you used for the Connectives page in the last lesson. In the STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible interlinear, find every nominative pronoun the verb did not need (ἐγώ, σύ, ἡμεῖς, ὑμεῖς, or αὐτός used as subject) and every word or phrase that stands ahead of its verb. On a notebook page headed Order, list each with its verse and run the three questions on it. Mark the ones that survive with a star. Then read the passage aloud with the stress on the starred words, and write one sentence on what the stress helps you hear. The starred words will matter when you phrase the passage at the end of this module.