There is a way to negate something in Greek that rarely gets translated into English in such a way that allows us to feel the full force of it.
In Hebrews 13, the writer is encouraging his readers (hearers, more likely) to continue to trust in God. Specifically (in verse 5b), to trust in God over and above any sort of trust that’s placed in money. To help drive that point home, the writer quotes Deuteronomy 31:6: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” (NIV)
This is clear enough in English, but what if you knew the Greek behind the Old Testament quotation? Could that help you to see the verse with more clarity? I believe it can.
Let’s look together at it here.
The Greek of Hebrews 13:5b looks like this: οὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω. Where knowing the Greek upon which the English is built can be of help are situations like this one where even though there is nothing “technically” wrong with the English translation (and I mean that sincerely; in no way is this article or any other article of mine that addresses the original languages and English translations to be understood as sowing seeds of doubt in the English text), there is a force that isn’t immediately recognized in English that is very much present in Greek.
In English, if we were to use two negatives in a row (not, not), we understand those to cancel each other out. It’s a common mistake that those who are just learning English or are leaning English as a second language will make. The assumption is that if we stack negatives in a row they emphasize the negation. This is not the case in English but, in Biblical Greek, this is how the language works.
One of the ways to negate something in Biblical Greek is to use the word οὐ, which means no or not. However, if you really wanted to emphasize the negation to the point of making the negation an absolute certainty, you can stack a couple together like οὐ μή (not not). And this is what we see happening twice in Hebrews 13:5b (actually there are five negations in that short phrase, but we’ll leave the other one for another article).
As I said before, it is totally acceptable to translate οὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω as: Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. But, if you really wanted to draw out the force of the Greek that is somewhat hidden behind the English, you could translate οὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω as: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever will I leave you, never, ever, ever, ever, ever will I forsake you.
There we see the force of the emphatic negation in the English translation, but it looks odd in English because that’s not how we write nor generally talk. In that case, maybe it makes more sense to just dive into learning Biblical Greek?
If you’re interested in learning Biblical Greek and you’d like some help along the way, please email me at kevindavis1986@gmail.com. I’d be happy to discuss with you some different teaching options that will help you get into the Greek of the New Testament!