QUESTION
What is the meaning of μή in these verses, Matthew 7:9-10? It is here twice used with the indicative in the apodosis clause.
ἢ τίς ἐστιν ἐξ ὑμῶν ἄνθρωπος,
ὃν αἰτήσει ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ ἄρτον,
μὴ λίθον ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ;
ἢ καὶ ἰχθὺν αἰτήσει,
μὴ ὄφιν ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ;
Or what man is there among you,
whose son shall ask for bread,
(not) shall give him a stone?
Or also shall ask for a fish,
(not) shall give him a serpent?
Strong notes that in the KJV μἠ is not translated 51x. These are two such instances. It definitely makes sense to leave them untranslated here.
Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon (1957, reprint 1975) identifies μἠ as a negative particle and cites this reference as follows:
1. in direct questions (Xenophon Eph. 398, 26 H.; Job 1:9; 8:11) perhaps, usu. left untranslated, but cf. μή τινος ὑστερήσατε; you did not lack anything, did you? Lk 22:35. Cf. Mt 7:9f; 9:15; Mk 2:19; Lk 5:34; 11:11; 17:9; J 3:4; 4:12, 33; 6:67; 7:35, 51f; 21:5 (cf. μήτι); Ac 7:28 (Ex 2:14), 42 (Am 5:25); Ro 3:3, 5 (cf. Job 8:3); 9:14, 20 (Is 29:16); 1 Cor 1:13; 9:8f; 10:22 al. μὴ γάρ J 7:41; 1 Cor 11:22.—In cases like Ro 10:18f; 1 Cor 9:4f μή is an interrog. word and οὐ negatives the verb. The double negative causes one to expect an affirmative answer (Bl-D. §427, 2; cf. Rob. 1173f; Tetrast. Iamb. 17, 2 p. 266 μὴ οὐκ ἔστι χλόη;=‘there is grass, is there not?’).
If μἠ were omitted, would it still be good Greek? How would it affect the translation?
RESPONSE
This is the usual interrogative expecting a negative answer. μὴ is a marker in its clause.
He won’t give his son a stone/snake, will he?
If you make the verse into four main paratactic interrogative clauses, this is clear. However the translators and NU editors have taken them as two main interrogative clauses with elliptical hypotaxis. When the translators do this, the function of μὴ is lost English, and it is confusing for the exegete who is using the English verse as a guide to the Greek, which is more or less the default assumption.
It is good of you to put the verse into the six verbal units. However, the indenting is wrong because what would the grammatical relation of the μὴ clause be to its head? If you indent, you have to be able to identify a head and a grammatical relation. You can see this in your English gloss, which is not a grammatical sentence. The KJV is not a grammatical sentence in modern English either.
NASB is usually the best at being grammatical and attempting to preserve the Greek.
"Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone?
However NASB, like most, has supplied a hypotactic subordinator’ if/when’ that is missing in the paratactic original. So, the translations do not give any help to the original syntax, which is simpler than they think. It would not make sense in Greek if μὴ were omitted. μὴ is not a mysterious optional untranslatable word in Greek as the translations might suggest. That thinking is trying to make the Greek like the English, but our goal in syntax is the other way round. People are not used to translating syntax, but that is our goal.
— Dennis Kenaga