Luke 12:53

πατὴρ ἐπὶ υἱῷ. The verse seems to be a distinct allusion to Micah 7:6. There is in the Greek a delicate change of phrase which can hardly be reproduced in English. It is ‘father against son’ (ἐπὶ υἱῷ), where the preposition takes the dative; but in ‘mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law’ (ἐπὶ τὴν νύμφην αὐτῆς) the preposition takes the accusative;—perhaps to indicate the difference in the relationships, the one natural, the other legal. ἐπὶ with the dative practically means ‘against’ in the sense of one being an incubus on the other. Compare the German auf ihm. Winer, p. 489 n.