Luke 17:12ExegesisTAB

Luke 17 : 12 Approach | Impurity | Separation
12. Linguistic Exegesis
The verse begins with kai {καὶ | kaí} linking this scene to the preceding narrative. The genitive absolute construction eiserchomenou autou {εἰσερχομένου αὐτοῦ | eis-er-kho-mé-no-u au-toû} provides temporal and circumstantial background, best rendered with an English temporal clause (“as He was entering”). The prepositional phrase eis tina komen {εἰς τίνα κώμην | eis tí-na kṓ-mēn} introduces motion into an unspecified village, with the indefinite pronoun tina indicating that the exact location is not central to the story. The main verb apentesan {ἀπήντησαν | a-pḗn-tē-san} introduces the subject, deka leproi andres {δέκα λεπροὶ ἄνδρες | dé-ka le-pró-i án-dres}, a group of ten men characterized by leprosy, forming a unified nominative plural subject. The relative clause hoi estesan {οἳ ἔστησαν | hoi és-tē-san} further describes these men, with the verb modified by the adverb porrothen {πόρρωθεν | pór-rō-then} to depict their standing “far off.” Syntactically, the Greek uses a relative clause where English can either retain a relative formulation (“who stood at a distance”) or separate into an additional clause. The translations preserve the temporal nuance of the genitive absolute and the spatial emphasis of porrothen while reshaping the clauses into smooth narrative English.

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