| 25. Linguistic Exegesis The verse is structured as two parallel prepositional clauses introduced by im {עִם־ | ʿim} ‘with’. Each clause pairs a noun phrase—chasid {חָסִיד | ḥā-sîḏ} ‘merciful one’ and gever tamim {גְּבַר תָּמִים | gə-ḇar tā-mîm} ‘blameless man’—with a Hitpael imperfect verb—tit-ḥas-sā-ḏ {תִּתְחַסָּד | tit-ḥas-sā-ḏ} and tit-tam-mām {תִּתַּמָּֽם | tit-tam-mām}—that conveys reciprocal action. This chiastic parallelism emphasizes that God’s response mirrors human character. The reflexive nuance of the Hitpael stem is rendered in English by phrases like ‘act kindly’ and ‘show Yourself blameless,’ and the implied subject is supplied as the pronoun You to reflect the original direct address. |