| 27. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the coordination kai tote {καί τότε | kaí tó-te} ‘and then’, which links this action temporally and logically to the preceding eschatological discourse. The two future indicative verbs apostelei {ἀποστελεῖ | a-po-ste-leî} ‘he will send’ and episynaxei {ἐπισυνάξει | e-pi-sy-ná-xei} ‘he will gather together’ are both third person singular and share the same implied subject, the Son of Man (Jesus), presenting two decisive, sequential acts. The direct objects are marked by the accusative with the article: tous angelous {τοὺς ἀγγέλους | toûs ag-gé-lous} ‘the angels’ and tous eklektous {τοὺς ἐκλεκτούς | toûs ek-lek-toús} ‘the chosen ones’, highlighting both the agents whom He sends and the people He gathers. The prepositional phrase ek ton tessaron anemon {ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων ἀνέμων | ek tôn tes-sá-rōn a-né-mōn} ‘from the four winds’ uses the genitive after ek to express origin or source and functions idiomatically for the four cardinal directions, emphasizing worldwide scope. The following construction ap’ akrou ges heos akrou ouranou {ἀπʼ ἄκρου γῆς ἕως ἄκρου οὐρανοῦ | ap á-krou gês hé-ōs á-krou ou-ra-noû} links two parallel genitival phrases with heos ‘as far as’, creating a merism (earth–heaven) that conveys totality: from the extremity of the earthly realm to the extremity of the heavenly. In translation, the coordination of futures is preserved with repeated “will,” and the merism is rendered as “from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven” to maintain both the parallelism and the sense of exhaustive inclusion. |