τοῦ

Alphabet Analysis

The word

1. word🔊 τοῦ

   TOU

   of the
2. phraseyour reading level🔊 καὶ τοῦ μὲν πρώτου κατέαξαν τὰ σκέλη καὶ τοῦ ἄλλου τοῦ συσταυρωθέντος αὐτῷ·

   KAI TOU MEN PRÔ-tou ka-TE-a-ksan TA SKE-lê KAI TOU AL-lou TOU sy-stau-rô-THEN-tos au-TÔ

   and broke the legs of the indeed first and of the other of the having been crucified with him
3. sentence🔊 ἦλθον οὖν οἱ στρατιῶται, καὶ τοῦ μὲν πρώτου κατέαξαν τὰ σκέλη καὶ τοῦ ἄλλου τοῦ συσταυρωθέντος αὐτῷ·

   ÊL-thon OUN hoi stra-ti-Ô-tai KAI TOU MEN PRÔ-tou ka-TE-a-ksan TA SKE-lê KAI TOU AL-lou TOU sy-stau-rô-THEN-tos au-TÔ

   therefore the soldiers {They} came and broke the legs of the indeed first and of the other of the having been crucified with him

Exegesis

The genitive construction tou men protou {τοῦ μὲν πρώτου | tou men prō-tou} ‘of the first’ employs the particle men {μὲν | men} to establish the first in a pair, anticipating the corresponding tou allou {τοῦ ἄλλου | tou ál-lou} ‘of the other’, so that the two crucified men are treated in deliberate sequence.

The final genitive phrase tou systaurothentos autō {τοῦ συσταυρωθέντος αὐτῷ | tou sys-tau-rō-thén-tos au-tō} ‘of the one who had been crucified with Him’ uses the participle systaurothentos {συσταυρωθέντος | sys-tau-rō-thén-tos} adjectivally to identify the “other” by his shared crucifixion alongside Jesus, while the dative pronoun autō {αὐτῷ | au-tō} ‘with Him’ signals Jesus as the central figure to whom this companionship in death is related. In translation, the Greek genitive chains are rendered as English possessive and relative clauses (“the legs of the first man,” “the other who had been crucified with Him”) in order to preserve the sequential contrast between the two men while maintaining natural subject–verb–object word order.

Root and etymology

osteon🔊 ὀστέονomicron–sigma–tau–epsilon–omicron–nu

“bone”

• 🔊 ὀστέαo-sté-abonesEzekiel 37:4 LXX
• 🔊 ὀστοῦνo-stoûnboneHebrews 11:22 LXX context