SIL Translator’s Notes on Luke 5:9

5:9

For: The Greek conjunction that the Berean Standard Bible and most English versions translate as For introduces the reason why Simon said what he did in 5:8. The miracle of the large catch of fish showed Simon that he was with a holy, powerful man from God.

his companions: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as his companions is literally “all the ones with him.” This refers to his fellow fishermen who were in his boat with him.

Some other ways to translate this are:

everyone who was with him (God’s Word)
-or-
the other fishermen (New Century Version)

astonished: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as astonished usually describes amazement and awe. It is used to describe someone who sees or experiences something very unusual. This unusual thing is often caused by divine power. The fishermen were very surprised, amazed, and even afraid. There was no way to explain the number of fish they had caught apart from a miracle.

Some other ways to translate this are:

amazed (God’s Word)
-or-
completely surprised (Contemporary English Version)

at the catch of fish they had taken: The fishermen were astonished that they had caught fish during the day. They were especially astonished that they had caught so many fish. You may want to make this explicit in your translation. For example:

at the large number of fish they had caught (Good News Translation)
-or-
at the catch of so many fish

at: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as at here means “because of” or “on the basis/account of.” It introduces the reason why Simon Peter and his companions were astonished.

the catch of fish they had taken: Here the word catch is a noun. This word means something that is caught or taken. So it may be redundant in some languages to translate explicitly the clause they had taken. If that is the true of your language, you could consider translating this simply as:

at their enormous catch of fish
-or-
that they had caught ⌊so many⌋ fish

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
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