9:31a

But: There is a contrast here. The contrast is between Jesus’ warning not to tell anyone, and what the men actually did. Make sure that it is understood that the men did not do what Jesus told them to do. The Berean Standard Bible indicates this with the conjunction But. In other languages, this is indicated in some other way. For example:

But ⌊they did not listen/obey⌋
-or-
Instead/However

they went out: This clause refers to the blind men going out of the house and going to the surrounding area.

In some languages, this idea will be translated with two verbs. For example:

they left ⌊the house⌋ and went
-or-
they exited ⌊the house⌋ and went
-or-
the healed men departed from there and went

9:31b

and spread the news about Him: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as spread the news about Him means “make known the news.” The two men told many people that Jesus healed them.

Here are some other ways to translate this expression:

spread his fame (English Standard Version)
-or-
talked about him (New Jerusalem Bible)
-or-
told everyone what he ⌊had done⌋

throughout the land: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as land also means “district, region, or area.” This phrase is almost identical to the phrase in 9:26. You can translate it in a similar way.

Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:

through all that region (New International Version)
-or-
all around that area (New Century Version)

-or-

in all the nearby villages

© 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.