Exegesis:
kai strateuomenoi ‘also people in military service, or soldiers.’
ti poiēsōmen kai hēmeis ‘and we, what are we to do.’ kai is best understood as ‘even,’ and the clause appears to imply that the soldiers were not Jewish, and that they asked John’s advice as people who were, as it were, not entitled to it.
mēdena diaseisēte mēde sukophantēsēte ‘rob no one by violence nor blackmail.’ In view of the fact that in the next clause John urges the soldiers to be content with their proper pay it is reasonable to suppose that both verbs used in the present clause refer to the obtaining of money by unlawful means.
diaseiō ‘to shake,’ hence ‘to use force in order to obtain something valuable,’ or ‘to extort by violence.’ The idiom is the same as that of the English slang expression ‘to shake somebody down for his money.’
sukophanteō (also 19.8) either ‘to accuse falsely,’ or ‘to extort.’ Here it is used with a personal object and this requires the rendering ‘to blackmail’; thus diaseiō and sukophanteō denote two different ways of robbing people of their possessions, i.e. by violence and by blackmail.
arkeisthe tois opsōniois humōn ‘be content with your pay.’
arkeomai ‘to be content,’ or ‘satisfied.’
opsōnion ‘money paid to a soldier.’
Translation:
And we, what shall we do. The emphatic position ‘we’ has in this verse may lead to a rendering that is formally rather dissimilar from the phrase used in vv. 10 and 12, e.g. ‘how about us (lit. what is ours)’ (Manobo).
Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, or “don’t take money from anyone by force or by false charges” (Good News Translation). To rob by violence, or ‘to press/squeeze’ (Bahasa Indonesia RC), ‘to corner’ (Uab Meto). Some descriptive renderings used are, ‘to browbeat (lit. cause-to-fear) and over-threaten’ (Kele). ‘to rob like an arrogant man (would do)’ (Trukese), ‘to force people to give money’ (Manobo), ‘to take away from another forcibly’ (Tzeltal). By false accusation, or, ‘by accusation-without-reason’ (Trukese); or, shifting to a verbal construction, ‘by accusing people deceitfully/treacherously,’ ‘by saying, “He has done wrong”, though he didn’t’; cf. on “accuse” in 6.7.
Be content with your wages may be rendered by, ‘do not want (or, try to get) more than your wages,’ ‘your wages must be enough for you’ (cf. Sranan Tongo). Your wages, or, ‘what you get for your work’ (Ekari), ‘the money for which you work’ (Sranan Tongo), ‘what they pay you (for your work),’ ‘your pay.’
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.