8:34a
The Greek of 8:34 begins with a word that is often translated as “behold.” The Berean Standard Bible does not translate this word. It indicates that something extraordinary is going to happen. Here, the amazing event is that the entire town went out to meet Jesus.
The usual translation of this word (suddenly/unexpectedly) does not fit well here. In this context, it may be better to leave this word untranslated, as the Berean Standard Bible does.
the whole town: The phrase the whole town is a figure of speech. It refers to all the people of the town. For example:
everyone from the town (Good News Translation)
The word whole is an exaggeration. Probably most or nearly all of the people of the town went out to see Jesus. If your language does not use exaggeration in a context like this, you may want to translate whole in another way. For example:
most of the ⌊people of⌋ the town
-or-
nearly everyone in the town
went out to meet Jesus: The people of the town probably went out to see Jesus and everything that had happened. They did not go to introduce themselves to Jesus or to learn who he was.
Here are some other ways to translate this clause:
went out to see Jesus (New Century Version)
-or-
went out to talk with Jesus
8:34b
they begged Him: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as begged also occurred in 8:31a. In this context, the Greek verb means “urgently ask.” You may want to translate it in the same way as you did in 8:31a.
to leave their region: This phrase is indirect speech. In some languages, it is more natural to translate this as direct speech. For example:
“Please leave our region/territory.”
-or-
“Would you please depart from our area/district?”
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