| 34. Linguistic Exegesis The sentence begins with the emphatic subject autoi {αὐτοὶ | au-toì} placed before the verb ginōskete {γινώσκετε | gi-nṓ-ske-te} to stress the hearers’ personal awareness: “you yourselves know.” The conjunction hoti {ὅτι | HÓ-ti} introduces the content clause that explains what they know. Within this clause, two coordinated dative phrases, tais chreiais mou {ταῖς χρείαις μου | taîs khreí-ais mou} and kai tois ousi met’ emou {καὶ τοῖς οὖσι μετʼ ἐμοῦ | kaí toîs oû-si met’ e-mou}, function as datives of advantage, indicating those for whom the action was performed: Paul’s own needs and those of the people who were with him. The participial phrase tois ousi {τοῖς οὖσι | toîs oû-si} “those who are” with the preposition met’ emou {μετʼ ἐμοῦ | met’ e-mou} forms a descriptive group, effectively “those who were with me,” identifying companions or coworkers. The verb hupēretēsan {ὑπηρέτησαν | hu-pē-RÉ-tē-san} is aorist active indicative, presenting the service as a completed course of action viewed as a whole. Its grammatical subject is the nominative phrase hai cheires hautai {αἱ χεῖρες αὗται | hai kheí-res haû-tai}, “these hands,” which appears after the verb in Greek, a word order that gives the subject a climactic, focal position. In English, the subject is moved before the verb (“these hands have served”) for natural syntax, while still retaining the emphasis on Paul’s own manual labor. The dative structure is rendered with possessive language (“my needs” and “the needs of those who were with me”) to make explicit the beneficiaries implied by the datives. |