Stylistic Compactness in Matthew 7
The opening lines of Matthew 7 are a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and in the ESV He says,
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.
Obviously the ideas are really powerful. I think that they’re even more powerfully expressed in the original Greek, a language more equipped to match the impact than English can. (I am reminded, as I often am, of the languid line from Tom Stoppard’s 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: “We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.”)
After all, here is how Jesus speaks in Greek:
Μὴ κρίνετε, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε: ἐν ᾧ γὰρ κρίματι κρίνετε κριθήσεσθε, καὶ ἐν ᾧ μέτρῳ μετρεῖτε μετρηθήσεται ὑμῖν.
Ok, so, you probably can’t read that. But you can probably notice that the first trio of bolded words all begin with what looks like “kpi.” All of those are forms of words meaning “judge”: “with the judgement,” “you judge,” and finally “you will be judged.” Similarly, the “metp” trio of words are all about measuring: “with which measure,” “you measure,” “it will be measured [unto you].”
The stylistic impact is almost self-explanatory: a trio of consecutive words that are all hammering home the same theme, with the third and final of each being the real kicker: communicating that they, the audience, will be judged and measured, and in the same way. (There’s actually a rhetorical term for the technique of having a trio that ascends to a climax in this way: tricolon crescens.) They’ll be judged and measured, in fact, in exactly the same way: the same root word being used three consecutive times probably drives that angle home too.
In fairness: there are things about English that allow for compact and powerful expression. I think the one-syllable nature of “thanks” and “fine” allows for some clipped expression and also for really punchy sarcasm, for example.
But the broader point is that the original language of texts is almost always used to great effect, not just in terms of meaning but in terms of subtle emphasis, that other languages simply weren’t designed to handle. If English could do everything Greek could do . . . it would be Greek.