| 5. Linguistic Exegesis The sentence begins with hoi de apelthon {οἱ δὲ ἀπῆλθον | hoi dè apêl-thon} ‘they went away’, where the article hoi functions substantivally as the subject “they,” and the particle de marks narrative continuation. The aorist verb apelthon views the laborers’ departure as a single completed action. The adverb palin {πάλιν | pá-lin} ‘again’ introduces a new iteration in the storyline. This is followed by the circumstantial participial clause exelthon peri hekten kai enaten horan {ἐξελθών περὶ ἕκτην καὶ ἐνάτην ὥραν | ex-el-thṓn perì hék-tēn kai e-ná-tēn hṓ-ran}, where the aorist participle exelthon is temporally subordinate to the main verb, indicating “after going out” or “when he went out,” and the prepositional phrase peri + accusative expresses approximate time (“about the sixth and ninth hour”). The main finite verb epoiesen {ἐποίησεν | e-poí-ē-sen} ‘he did’ resumes the narrative action with an implicit third person singular subject already known from the context (the householder). The adverb hosautos {ὡσαύτως | hō-sau-tōs} ‘likewise’ links this hiring event back to the earlier ones, signaling that the same arrangement and action are repeated. In English, the formal rendering preserves the participial structure with “having gone out,” while the dynamic version converts the participle into a finite verb clause (“he went out again”) to make the temporal sequence more explicit for contemporary readers. |