| 2. Linguistic Exegesis The verse begins with the circumstantial participle legōn {λέγων | lé-gōn} ‘saying’, which links this clause to the preceding narrative and introduces the direct quotation. The subject kritēs tis {Κριτής τις | kri-tḗs tis} ‘a certain judge’ uses the indefinite pronoun in postpositive position to indicate a non-specific official. The imperfect verb ên {ἦν | ên} ‘was’ functions as the main verb in past narrative. The setting is defined by the prepositional phrase en tini pólei {ἔν τινι πόλει | en ti-ní pó-lei} ‘in a certain city’, with the dative governed by en. Two parallel participial phrases, tòn theón mḕ phoboúmenos {τὸν θεόν μὴ φοβούμενος | tòn the-ón mḕ pho-boú-me-nos} ‘not fearing God’ and kai ánthrōpon mḕ entrepómenos {καὶ ἄνθρωπον μὴ ἐντρεπόμενος | kaí án-thrō-pon mḕ en-tre-pó-me-nos} ‘and not showing regard for man’, characterize the judge. Both participles agree with kritēs and function attributively without an explicit relative pronoun. The sequence highlights the judge’s failure first toward divine obligation and then toward human relationships. In translation, the formal version renders the participles as relative clauses, while the dynamic version employs the correlative neither…nor to mirror the Greek emphasis and parallel structure. |