Good News Bible reverses the order of the two clauses as they appear in the Greek text (compare Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation), thereby destroying the chronological sequence. For most languages the Greek order, retained by Revised Standard Version, will be more natural.
Being warned translates one word in Greek; Good News Translation restructures as an active, indicating subject and indirect object: “since God had warned them.” This is legitimate, since the Greek verb refers specifically to a revelation which originates from God, and several other translations also make this information explicit (Moffatt “they had been divinely warned”; Barclay “because a message from God came to them … warning them”; Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “God commanded them”). This verb is used once again in verse 22, but nowhere else in the Gospel.
Being warned will be expressed in some languages with indirect speech, as in “God told them in a dream they should not go back to Herod.” But others will use direct speech: “God spoke to them while they dreamed, and said, ‘You should not go back to Herod.’ ”
In a dream is the same expression used in 1.20. Here some possibilities are “God appeared to them in a dream,” “God gave them a dream and said to them…,” or “God showed himself to them while they slept and warned them….” Others will have “God warned them … Therefore (or, As a result) they departed.”
The verb translated return is rare in the New Testament; other than here it occurs only in Luke 10.6; Acts 18.21; and Hebrews 11.15; it is also found in some manuscripts in 2 Peter 2.21. It can be translated “go back to” or perhaps “go back to see.”
For departed to their own country, translators can say “they went back,” or “they went to their own country,” or “they left there to go to their own country.”
Their own country can be “the region where they lived.”
Another way means a route or road different from the one by which they had come from their country: “They took a different road” or “They followed a road they had not taken when they came.”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .