Exegesis:

esontai gar apo tou nun pente en heni oikō diamemerismenoi ‘for from now on five (people) in one house divided,’ preferably the former (cf. “… if there are five people … they will be divided”, An American Translation). For apo tou nun cf. on 1.48. The number five results from the enumeration of relatives, where mother and mother-in-law are one and the same person. en heni oikō means ‘in one house’ (where they live together), or, ‘in one family,’ probably the former.

treis epi dusin ‘three against two,’ i.e. son, daughter and daughter-in-law against father and mother, referring to the second, the fourth and the sixth line in v. 53 as printed in GOOD NEWS BIBLE.

duo epi trisin ‘two against three,’ inverted order, referring to the first, the third and the fifth line.

(V. 53) diameristhēsontai ‘they will be divided,’ taking up esontai … diamemerismenoi. Subject of diameristhēsontai are the following nouns in the nominative. In the subsequent enumeration epi with dative changes into epi with accusative without change of meaning.

penthera also 4.38.

numphē here ‘daughter-in-law.’

Translation:

In one house there will be five divided, preferably, ‘five (people/persons) will be divided in one house.’ The verb (also in v. 53) is reciprocal, ‘divided against one another,’ ‘quarrelling with each other,’ ‘fighting/opposing-each-other’ (Tae,’ Bahasa Indonesia), ‘not agreeing-with-each-other’ (Shona 1966), or a verb combining the constituents ‘come-apart/break’ and ‘separate(-oneself-from)’ (Thai).

The four pairs of phrases with against (one pair here, three in v. 53) are dependent on “divided”, but the relationship between the members of each phrase is not reciprocal (otherwise each two phrases would be tautological) but one-directional; hence the preposition has been rendered by such verbs as, ‘opposes’ (Bahasa Indonesia, similarly in Trukese, lit. ‘stands toward’), ‘sides against’ (cf. The Four Gospels – a New Translation in v. 53), ‘fights’ (Tae’), ‘is enemy of’ (cf. Kituba), ‘hates’ (Kekchi), in several cases a transitive form of the verb which, in a reciprocal form, serves as rendering of “divided”.

(V. 53) They will be divided is omitted as redundant in several versions (esp. those that render the phrases with “against” as verbal clauses), but it should be remembered that the repetition of this verb is emphatic.

The group of five persons envisaged here comprises father, mother, their son and daughter, and the son’s wife, a quite common pattern in societies where a married couple usually lives with the man’s family.

Some examples of adjustments that these three pairs of phrases may require are the following. (a) The terms, some or all, may be obligatorily possessed in the receptor languages; or possession, though not obligatory, is idiomatically preferable in some cases or positions, e.g. with the second term of each phrase (several Indonesian languages, Sranan Tongo). (b) Since the two terms in each phrase refer to the same relationship, but viewed from different angles, it may be preferable to indicate the relationship only once, e.g. ‘a man against his son, a young man against his father,’ etc. A comparable point is that in some languages ‘son’ and ‘daughter,’ since they presuppose a relationship with the parents, can only be used, if the term for ‘father,’ or, ‘mother’ is in focus; hence e.g. ‘a father against his male child and a young man against his father’ (cf. Toraja-Sa’dan), and similar differentiation with (some of) the other terms. (c) The rendering of the last pair of phrases may present specific problems. In Batak Toba, where, ideally, a man’s mother and his wife are from the same clan and a wife’s mother-in-law accordingly is her paternal aunt, these two phrases have been rendered, ‘a mother-in-law against her-daughter-in-law, a daughter-in-law against her-father’s-sister’; in Ekari, which possesses a term for in-laws but does not distinguish between mother-and daughter-in-law, the two phrases had to be combined into one, lit. ‘female reciprocal-in-laws-two quarrel with-each-other.’

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.