17:16a

He fell facedown at Jesus’ feet: The Greek clause that the Berean Standard Bible translates as He fell facedown at Jesus’ feet is literally, “he fell on his face at his feet.” This means that the man knelt and lowered his face to the ground to show great respect to Jesus. It does not imply that the man fell accidentally. Some ways to translate this are:

he bowed down at Jesus’ feet (New Century Version)
-or-
he prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet
-or-
he knelt and bowed low before Jesus

In some languages, it may be necessary to indicate explicitly that the action showed respect. For example:

he knelt/bowed ⌊respectfully⌋ in front of Jesus

The same or similar expressions also occur at 5:8, 5:12, 8:28, and 8:41. Use a natural expression in your language. In some languages there may be an idiom to describe this action.

in thanksgiving to Him: The phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as in thanksgiving to Him is literally “thanking him.” The man was expressing his gratitude and appreciation to Jesus for healing him from his leprosy. In some languages it may be necessary to use direct speech here. For example:

saying, “Thank you! Thank you!”

17:16b

and he was a Samaritan: The Greek clause that the Berean Standard Bible translates as and he was a Samaritan emphasizes that this fact was unusual and significant. The position of the word he in Greek expresses a contrast between him and the other lepers. It implies that most (or maybe all) of the other lepers were Jews. Try to imply this in a natural way in your language. One way to do this in English is:

And ⌊as for this man,⌋ he was a Samaritan

Samaritan: The word Samaritan refers to a man from the district of Samaria. The Samaritans were the descendants of Jews who had married foreigners. They did not worship God in Jerusalem as the Jews did, and the Jews considered the Samaritans to be foreigners. Most Jews despised Samaritans.

It may be helpful to include some of this implied information in the text or in a footnote. A suggested footnote is:

The Samaritans were the descendants of Jews who had married foreigners. They did not worship God in Jerusalem as the Jews did. The Jews hated the Samaritans and did not believe that the Samaritans were God’s people.

The word Samaritan also occurred in 10:33.

© 2009, 2010, 2013 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.