Exegesis:
ei mē ekolobōsen kurios tas hēmeras ‘if the Lord had not shortened the days,’ ‘unless the Lord had cut short those days.’
koloboō (only here in Mark) ‘amputate,’ ‘curtail,’ ‘shorten’: the phrase ‘shorten the days,’ means, of course, to reduce the number of days (of the ‘tribulation’ referred to in the previous verse). It is to be noticed that the whole verse speaks of the matter as though it were past, in conformance with Hebrew prophetic style.
kurios (cf. 1.3) ‘the Lord’: here, of course, God.
tas hēmeras ‘those days’ better fits the context than ‘the days.’
ouk an esōthē pasa sarx literally ‘all flesh would not have been saved’: the Hebrew idiom loʾ … kol (Greek ouk … pas) ‘not all’ means ‘none,’ ‘not one,’ so that the clause means, ‘no flesh would have been saved.’
sōzō (cf. 3.4) ‘save’: here with the meaning ‘escape,’ ‘survive,’ ‘live (through it)’ (of the translations, The Modern Speech New Testament, Goodspeed, and Montgomery have ‘escape’; Moffatt ‘be saved alive’; Berkeley ‘survive’). Lagrange and Taylor, however, understand the word in its eschatological sense, ‘to be saved,’ as in v. 13. This depends, of course, upon the interpretation given the events described in the context. Other considerations aside, the plain meaning of the events in vv. 14-23 connected with the ‘tribulation’ (thlipsis, v. 19) is that they are of a temporal and temporary nature which none would survive unless the Lord had ‘shortened the days’: it seems difficult, therefore, to understand the verb sōzō in the theological sense of “salvation unto eternal life.”
pasa sarx ‘all flesh’: here with the meaning ‘every human being,’ ‘every man’ (for this meaning of the Hebrew basar ‘flesh’).
tous eklektous hous exelexato ‘the chosen ones whom he chose,’ ‘the elect whom he elected.’
eklektos (13.22, 27) ‘chosen one,’ ‘elected one’: in the context the word refers to the Christians, the followers of Jesus.
eklegomai (only here in Mark) ‘choose,’ ‘select,’ ‘prefer’: the verb, in accordance with Jewish theology, indicates the predestinating activity of God.
Translation:
Shortened the days, if translated literally, may imply quite a wrong meaning, namely, reduce the length of each day. One may therefore have to speak of ‘reducing the time’ or ‘cutting off the days’ (Tzeltal) or ‘cutting the time’ (Cashibo-Cacataibo).
In some languages the problem of tense in this verse is extremely difficult, to the point of making the passage meaningless. For example, the reduction of time is spoken of as past, while the salvation is obviously future. This problem may be resolved in some instances by translating ‘if the Lord had not decided to cut off the days.’ That is to say, the decision is past (as determined in the counsel of God), but the actual event is still future.
No human being (‘no one,’ or ‘no person’) is a necessary translation of the Greek phrase which means literally ‘no flesh.’ Translated word-for-word in some languages, this phrase has meant nothing more than ‘no meat.’ On the basis of such a translation as ‘no flesh,’ the people in question concluded that this was in some way related to the tendency for carcasses to spoil after a period of time, and that for this reason the time was reduced.
Be saved is generally interpreted on the basis of (1) continued existence or life, e.g. ‘remain living’ (Tabasco Chontal), or (2) escape from destruction, e.g. ‘nobody would escape’ (Tzotzil).
The elect, whom he chose is a redundant expression which is frequently translated with only a single reference to the process of choosing, e.g. ‘those whom he chose’ or ‘the people whom he chose.’ The obvious reason for this is the fact that elect is translatable in many languages only as ‘those whom he chose,’ and to repeat ‘those whom he chose’ would be completely tautological.
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .