3:9

In this verse Jesus told his disciples to get a small boat ready for him so the people would not crowd him or push him. In some languages you may need to use a different order than the Berean Standard Bible does. See the General Comment on 3:9a–d after 3:9d and the General Comment on 3:9–10 at the end of the notes on 3:10b for examples of how to reorder the verse parts.

3:9a

His disciples: The phrase His disciples is the same phrase as in 3:7a.

3:9b

See the General Comment on 3:9b–d below for a way to translate this as a direct quote.

to have a boat ready for Him: The clause to have a boat ready for Him indicates that Jesus asked his disciples to get or prepare a small boat for him in case he needed it. If the people pushed him too much, he intended to sit in the boat and teach from it.

a boat: The boats used on Lake Galilee were small boats used for fishing and travel across the lake. They could hold about two to fifteen people. People made them move across the water with oars and sails.

Here are some ways to translate the word boat:

a large canoe
-or-
a vehicle for crossing water
-or-
something for carrying people on top of water

The word “boat” first occurred in 1:19c and 1:20b. See how you translated it there.

3:9c-d

so that the crowd would not crush Him: In Greek this is literally “because of the crowd so that they might not crowd him.” Jesus wanted a boat because the crowd had become so large that the people might have crushed

not crush Him: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as crush means “pushing,” “pressing hard,” “crushing.”

General Comment on 3:9a–d

In some languages it may be more natural to change the order of some of the parts in 3:9a–d. For example:

9cThere were so many people 9dthat they might crush Jesus. 9aThat is why Jesus told his followers 9bto have a boat ready for him to sit in while teaching the people.

General Comment on 3:9b–d

In some languages it will be more natural to translate 3:9b–d as a direct quote. For example:

Jesus said to his disciples, “Get a small boat for me to sit in, so that the crowd will not crush me.”

© 2008 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.