3:5a–b

People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region around the Jordan: This phrase is literally “Then came out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan.” For example:

Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him (English Standard Version)

In the Greek, the words Jerusalem, Judea, and Jordan are used in a figurative way to refer to the people of those places. In many languages, it is more natural to refer to the people from these areas.

Here are some other ways to translate this sentence:

People from Jerusalem and from all of Judea and all over the Jordan Valley went out to see and hear John (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
Many people from ⌊the city of⌋ Jerusalem and all ⌊the district of⌋ Judea and from the Jordan River valley went to John

went out to him: The Greek verb that the Berean Standard Bible translates as went out to probably indicates that people went to see John over a period of time. People may have gone to see him over a period of weeks or months. (Some people went one day, other people went the next day, and still other people went the following day, and so on.) They went to see him and to listen to him preach.

Here are some other ways to translate this verb:

were going (New Revised Standard Version)
-or-
continued going out to ⌊see⌋ him ⌊and listen to him⌋

all Judea: The word Judea refers to a district or province. The phrase all Judea refers to all the areas in the district of Judea.

Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:

the whole province of Judea (Good News Translation)
-or-

⌊they also came from⌋ all ⌊the regions of⌋ Judea

the whole region around the Jordan: The phrase the whole region around the Jordan refers to the land on both sides of the Jordan River. This land was outside of the district of Judea. People from the areas along the Jordan River also went to see John.

Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:

all the area around the Jordan River (New Century Version)

-or-

⌊they also came⌋ from the land on both sides of the Jordan River

© 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.