Study Guide: Group 3

Here is a Study Guide for Group 3 of the verses! I have not provided English translations, since those are easy enough to find by consulting versions of the Bible in English. Instead, I have tried to call attention to the various grammatical features of the verses, along with interesting vocabulary items, the importance of a specific Biblical context, etc.

You will find more Study Guides at the Vulgate Verses wiki.

These verses contain second declension nouns and adjectives:

23. The subject of the verb est is not stated here. There are many things, of course, which can be regarded as a gift of God! In the context of Ephesians, the full verse is: Gratia enim estis salvati per fidem et hoc non ex vobis Dei enim donum est, "For by grace you are saved through faith, and that is not from you, for it is a gift of God."

24. Notice the grammatical ambiguity of this verse! Based purely on grammar, it could mean in English either "We are the Lord's" or "We are lords, masters" (in English, too, as it happens, these are ambiguous in speech, although in writing the apostrophe distinguishes between them). In context, of course, the verse means, "We are the Lord's" (i.e., we belong to the Lord).

25. To learn more about the agnus dei as a Christian symbol and the role of this phrase in the liturgy, see this wikipedia article.

26. The word vere is an adverb. The verb, es, tells us that the subject of the verb is "you," with no need for an explicit pronoun, as we require in English.

27. The verb, estis, tells us that the subject of the verb is "you (plural)" with no need for an explicit pronoun, as we require in English. Notice that the plural "you" has a singular predicate: templum.

28. The use of vestrum in the predicate shows that the speaker is addressing a plural audience, it "belongs to you (plural)".

29. This is a very typical word order found in Latin: subject-predicate-verb (verbum Domini || verum || est).

30. Here the verb has been omitted: bonus (est) Dominus. The preposition in can take either the ablative case or the accusative case, as it does here. When it takes the accusative case it means, "into, towards, to, for" (in sempiternum, "for eternity").

31. You can see how this verse follows the same sentence pattern as Verse #30, substituting a different adjective for the predicate.

32. Although this verse has some similarities in structure to Verse #30 and Verse #31, there are some important differences. The verb is explicit: es, and the lord is addressed with a vocative form, Domine.