9:14a
There were about five thousand men: This is background information that explains what the disciples said in 9:13c. They did not think that Jesus wanted them to buy food for so many people. In Greek, 9:14 begins with a conjunction that is often translated as “for.” The Berean Standard Bible uses parentheses to indicate that this is an explanation. You should express the explanation in a natural way in your language. One way to do that in English is:
⌊They said this⌋ because there were five thousand men there.
five thousand men: The number five thousand refers only to the men who were in the crowd, but women and children were also there. It may be helpful in your translation to imply that there were more than five thousand people in the crowd. For example:
There were about five thousand men in the crowd. (Contemporary English Version)
You may want to put a footnote in your translation to make this clear. You could also give a cross-reference to the parallel account in Matthew 14:21. The Matthew passage says, “The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.”
9:14b
This verse begins with a Greek conjunction that is often translated as “and.” Some English versions, such as the English Standard Version, translate it that way. Other versions, such as the New American Standard Bible and New International Version, translate it as “But” because it introduces Jesus’ response to what his disciples said in 9:13b, and his response may imply a slight contrast with the disciples’ attitude. In some languages it may be more natural to leave this contrast implied. For example:
Then he said to his disciples (Revised English Bible)
Some other versions simply start a new sentence. For example:
Jesus said to his disciples (Good News Translation)
The Berean Standard Bible similarly has not translated this conjunction. Introduce Jesus’ response in a natural way in your language.
He told His disciples: The word disciples refers here to the same men as “the apostles” in 9:10 and “the twelve” in 9:12. Translate the clause He told His disciples in a way that clearly indicates that Jesus was still talking to the same people.
disciples: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as disciples means “learners” who are in a special relationship with a teacher. The learners commit themselves to their teacher in order to learn from him and live according to his teaching and example. Disciples often lived with their teacher and followed him wherever he went.
Some ways to translate disciples are:
students/learners
-or-
apprentices
-or-
followers
This word first occurs in Luke in 5:30a. See disciple in the Glossary for more information.
Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each: Have them sit down means “Cause them to sit down.” You may be able to translate this whole command as:
Organize them into groups of fifty ⌊people⌋ and tell them to sit down.
-or-
Tell them to sit down in groups of about fifty ⌊people⌋.
-or-
Seat them in groups of fifty ⌊people⌋.
© 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.