Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. – Luke 18:1
In unity, verbs arise
Jesus shared a story with his disciples through a parable about a widow. This widow pleaded with a proud and faithless judge to avenge her adversary. Eventually, the judge, annoyed by the widow’s persistent pleas and fearing she would continually trouble him, decided to grant her justice. The lesson of this parable is to cry out to God in prayer, persistently asking for His help.
Indeed, Jesus taught using many parables. It was to the extent that “He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything” (Mark 4:34).
Thus, parables were a very important method in Jesus’s teachings. Possibly, as Mark 4:11 suggests, this approach was used to conceal the secrets of the Kingdom of God, making them not readily understandable to those outside.
“The mystery of the Kingdom of God is given to you, but all things are done in parables to those who are outside” (Mark 4:11)
Previously, we discussed how verbs come together to form a line, which we called the “Verb Avengers.”
Verb Avengers: <modal verb + frequency adverb + verb + adverb + preposition>
The biblical verse “They should always pray and not give up.” serves as a good example of the Verb Avengers in action. English sentences typically start with a subject followed by a verb, and then they address the matter of interest. Therefore, adverbs related to the verb (answering ‘where,’ ‘why,’ ‘how,’ ‘when’) usually follow the verb to satisfy curiosity.
However, adverbs belonging to the Verb Avengers precede the verb, directly assisting in its function. The biblical verse containing ‘seldom’ is an excellent example of this.
“He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.” (Ecclesiastes 5:20)
The adverb ‘seldom’ teams up with the verb ‘reflects’ to convey ‘rarely thinks.’ Such adverbs, indicating frequency and degree, are termed adverbs of frequency and adverbs of degree in grammar books, respectively. The roles they play can be summarized as follows.
| adverbs of frequency | % | adverbs of degree |
| always | 100% | completely |
| constantly | 99% | nearly, mostly, almost |
| usually | 80% | generally |
| often | 70-80% | |
| sometimes | 50% | |
| seldom | 20-30 | possibly |
| rarely | 10-20 | hardly |
| never | 0% |
Another member of the Verb Avengers is the preposition, which appears at the very end. Such prepositions enhance or diversify the meaning of the verb, similar to how modal verbs in front of the verb assist it. The phrase “give up” from the example “they should always pray and not give up” changes the original meaning of ‘give,’ which is ‘to present,’ to a significantly different meaning of ‘to surrender.’
These are the idiomatic expressions commonly referred to as verb phrases (phrasal verbs) in grammar books, such as pick up, make up, put on, turn on, turn off, turn down, pick out, take care of, look after, make a birth to, put off, look for.
The emphasis here is that the combination of <Modal Verb + Adverb of Frequency + Verb + Adverb + Preposition> allows for more sophisticated and precise expressions than what could be achieved with the verb alone.
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