| 17. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the exclamatory particle ouai {οὐαί | ou-aí} “woe,” which functions as a dative-of-disadvantage style lament over the groups that follow. The connective de {δὲ | dè} links this saying to the surrounding discourse while allowing a slight contrastive nuance. The dative feminine plural article tais {ταῖς | taîs} introduces the first group, further specified by the prepositional participial phrase en gastri echousais {ἐν γαστρὶ ἐχούσαις | en gas-trí e-khoú-sais} “having in the womb,” a periphrasis for “pregnant women.” The second group is parallel: kai tais thelazousais {καὶ ταῖς θηλαζούσαις | kai taîs thē-la-zóu-sais} “and the nursing ones,” again a dative feminine plural participial phrase coordinated with the first, reinforcing the focus on vulnerable women with dependent children. The temporal prepositional phrase en ekeinais tais hemerais {ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις | en e-keí-nais taîs hē-mé-rais} “in those days” anchors the lament in a particular eschatological period already described in the discourse, with the demonstrative ekeinais giving a deictic, future-distress perspective. In translation, the Greek word order, which foregrounds the lament “woe” and then the indirect objects, is preserved in the formal version for rhetorical effect, while the dynamic version reshapes the sentence into a more typical subject–verb–complement structure (“How terrible it will be…”) to sound natural in contemporary English, yet still keeps the two groups and the temporal phrase tightly linked. |