The Peshitta omits the initial conjunction καί / Et, beginning directly with the verb. This is a common Syriac stylistic preference, avoiding redundant conjunctions where context sufficiently links clauses.
EN He said to them, “Did you never read what David did, when he had need, and was hungry—he, and those who were with him?
ES Y él les dijo: ¿Nunca leísteis qué hizo David cuando tuvo necesidad, y tuvo hambre, él y los que con él estaban:
ZH-HANS 耶稣对他们说:「经上记着大卫和跟从他的人缺乏饥饿之时所做的事,你们没有念过吗?
ZH-HANT 耶穌對他們說:「經上記着大衛和跟從他的人缺乏飢餓之時所做的事,你們沒有念過嗎?
The Peshitta omits the initial conjunction καί / Et, beginning directly with the verb. This is a common Syriac stylistic preference, avoiding redundant conjunctions where context sufficiently links clauses.
Greek includes the emphatic pronoun αὐτός ('he himself') before the verb, which neither the Peshitta nor the Vulgate render explicitly. The emphasis is absorbed into the verbal conjugation in both target languages.
Greek places the verb λέγει before the indirect object αὐτοῖς; Syriac mirrors this (ܐܡܪ ܠܗܘܢ); Latin inverts to ait illis. The Vulgate's colon after illis marks the beginning of direct discourse, a punctuation convention absent in the Greek and Peshitta manuscripts.
The Peshitta inserts the explicit subject ܝܫܘܥ ('Jesus'), clarifying the speaker. Neither the Greek nor the Vulgate name Jesus here, relying on narrative context from the preceding verse.
Greek uses a temporal clause with ὅτε + aorist ἔσχεν ('when he had need'); Syriac employs the temporal particle ܟܕ with a single verb ܐܣܬܢܩ ('when he was in need'), collapsing the noun-verb construction into a verbal form. Latin mirrors the Greek structure with quando necessitatem habuit, maintaining the noun + verb phrase.
Greek coordinates with καὶ ἐπείνασεν αὐτός ('and he himself hungered'), placing the emphatic pronoun after the verb. Syriac uses ܘܟܦܢ ܗܘ ('and hungered he'), mirroring the post-verbal pronoun. Latin employs et esuriit ipse, also post-verbal but with ipse for emphasis, though the Vulgate lacks the second conjunction before the final clause.
Greek uses a full articular prepositional phrase καὶ οἱ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ ('and those with him'), requiring five tokens including the article, preposition, and pronoun. Syriac compresses this into a single construct-state phrase ܘܕܥܡܗ ('and-those-with-him'), a typical Semitic economy. Latin expands with a relative clause et qui cum eo erant ('and those who were with him'), adding the verb erant for syntactic completeness and closing with a question mark absent in the Greek punctuation.