SIL Translator’s Notes on Matthew 14:17

14:17

We have here only: The Greek text is literally “We do not have (anything) here except.” The disciples knew that the little they had would not feed the crowd of thousands.

Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:

we haven’t anything here…except (Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)
-or-
We have nothing here but (New Revised Standard Version)
-or-
All we have here are

five loaves of bread and two fish: This is a meal for one person or at most two people.

loaves of bread: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as loaves of bread probably refers to flat breads. One person could eat three to five of these loaves at one meal. It was the common food for a meal.

Here are some other ways to translate this word:

loaves ⌊of bread

-or-

small⌋ breads

fish: This was probably a kind of small fish that was already smoked or dried. If your language has a specific word for fish that is already cooked or dried or salted so that it is ready to eat, you should use it here. Otherwise, you should use a general term for fish. The kind of fish is not important.

© 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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