Hi all,
I’m new to the forum and this is probably a stupid question. I have come across something in Psalm 2 that I can’t seem to figure out. The Psalm begins:
quare fremuerunt gentes et populi meditati sunt inania
This is generally translated along the lines:
Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing
What has me puzzled is the formulation “meditati sunt” – the perfect passive participle + esse. It is almost always translated as “imagine” … but that has me wondering why meditant or meditaverunt wasn’t used instead.
Can a perfect participle + esse sometimes just be translated as the present tense?
I’d be really grateful for someone’s guidance on this.
Hi scottmillennium,
That’s because the verb here is meditor, a deponent verb.
The Latin sentence is in the past tense. The translation you use must follow another text (Hebrew?), or maybe this is just a stylistic choice. The Douay-Rheims translation was done on the Vulgate and may be more useful for comparative purposes. It has “Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?”.
Side-by-side text of the Douay-Rheims and the Vulgate.
Edit: The Douay-Rheims text I quoted and linked to above must be from the Challoner revision. The original Douay-Rheims translation of Psalm 2 reads: “VVhy did the Gentiles rage, and peoples meditate vaine things?”
Dear Shenoute,
Thank you very much - that makes sense and is extremely helpful!
Scott.