The house is used of the people of the house, and that is the basis for Good News Translation, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, and Bible en français courant.

Worthy: see comments on verse 11. Here most translators render it as “if the people of that house receive you well” or “… treat you well.” Similarly, not worthy would be rendered in a sentence such as “if those people do not receive you well.”

Your peace means “the peace which you ask God to bring upon the house.” In such a context peace covers a much wider area than the absence of strife, and it is best represented among the modern translations by Barclay: “let your prayer for God’s blessing rest upon it.” This idea can also be expressed as “pray that God’s peace be with those people” or “pray to God to put his blessing on them.”

Let your peace return to you is translated “let your prayer for God’s blessing return to you” by Barclay. Among the Israelites the spoken blessing was thought to exist by itself and have a power of its own, so that the pronouncement of a blessing actually caused the blessing to take effect. On the other hand, if the blessing were recalled, the benefits would not take effect.

This concept of calling back a blessing is not always easy to express. Some possibilities are “take back the prayer of blessing” or “ask God not to honor your prayer to bless those people.”

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 .