SIL Translator’s Notes on Matthew 13:48

13:48a

When it was full, the men pulled it ashore: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as pulled also means “pulled up.” When the net was full of fish, the fishermen pulled it up out of the water and onto the shore.

Here are some other ways to translate this clause:

When the net was full, they dragged it up onto the shore (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
When it was full, the fishermen pulled the net to the shore (New Century Version)

13:48b

Then they sat down and sorted the good fish: The phrase sorted the good means that the fishermen picked/gathered the good fish out from among the bad fish.

Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:

gathered the good fish (God’s Word)
-or-
put all the good fish (New Century Version)

In some languages, it may be more natural to explain the action of sorting the fish in two steps. For example:

sit down to separate the fish. They keep the good ones (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
sit down to divide the fish: the good ones go into the buckets (Good News Translation)
-or-
sat down and separated the good fish from the bad. They put the good fish

the good fish: This phrase refers to fish that are good to eat.

into containers: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as containers generally refers to a type of pot that can hold a liquid like water. It is different than a basket. Putting fish into these types of containers would keep the fish alive and fresh longer.

Here are some other ways to translate this word:

buckets (Good News Translation)
-or-

clay⌋ pots
-or-
barrels (Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)

Here the type of container is not in focus. If people in your culture usually put live fish in baskets, you can use the word baskets here (as in the New International Version).

13:48c

but: There is a contrast here. The contrast is between what the fishermen did with the good fish, and what they did with the bad fish. The Berean Standard Bible indicates this contrast with the conjunction but.

Here are some other ways to connect 13:48c to the rest of the verse:

and threw away the bad fish (New Century Version)
-or-
The fish that were not good, they threw them away.

threw the bad away: This phrase means that the fishermen threw away or “discarded” the fish that were not good to eat. They either threw them back into the water, or onto the shore. The place where they threw them is not in focus.

© 2023 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.

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