Exegesis:
makarioi este hotan… ‘blessed are you, when…,’ syntactically a different type of beatitude, because the subordinate clause is not causal but temporal or conditional and refers to the situation in which the subject of the main clause lives. It is this situation which receives full emphasis now. The blessedness implicit in makarioi is described in v. 23.
hotan misēsōsin humas hoi anthrōpoi ‘when people hate you.’ Because of heneka tou huiou tou anthrōpou ‘to hate’ here has a religious connotation, cf. on 1.71 where the connotation is different.
kai hotan aphorisōsin humas kai oneidisōsin kai ekbalōsin to onoma humōn hōs ponēron ‘and when they exclude you and revile you and ban your name as evil.’ The repetition of hotan suggests that the three clauses go together closely and refer to one and the same situation, i.e. that of excommunication from the synagogue.
aphorizō ‘to exclude,’ ‘to excommunicate,’ cf. Jn. 9.22; 12.42; 16.1.
oneidizō ‘to revile,’ ‘to insult.’ It is possible that it refers to the curses that belonged to excommunication from the synagogue, cf. Strack-Billerbeck IV, 1 p. 302. As object of oneidisōsin is best taken humas ‘you.’
ekballō (cf. on 4.29) may be rendered ‘to spurn,’ ‘to ban,’ or less strongly, “to reject” (Translator’s New Testament). For the historical problems involved cf. commentaries.
to onoma humōn ‘your name,’ i.e. their own names, rather than their name as Christians.
heneka tou huiou tou anthrōpou ‘on account of the Son of man,’ i.e. because of your allegiance to the Son of man, or, “because you are loyal to the Son of Man” (Phillips).
Translation:
Exclude you, i.e. break off all intercourse with you; hence, ‘outlaw/boycot you’ (Balinese); the rendering in Pohnpeian and Chuukeseliterally means ‘to separate-away,’ in Toraja-Sa’dan it is a derivation of ‘to wean.’
Revile you, i.e. use abusive language about you, call you by ill names. Some possible renderings are here, “insult you” (Good News Translation), ‘curse you’ (Sranan Tongo), “slander you” (Phillips), ‘say bad things about you,’ ‘say that you are evil.’
Cast out your name as evil, i.e. do not (or, no longer) mention your name, as though it were bad; hence such renderings as, ‘consider your name as impure’ (Balinese), ‘discard your name as though it were evil’ (Zarma), ‘make your name that it be one of ill omen’ (Shona 1966), ‘ruin your name’ (Sranan Tongo).
On account of the Son of man, or, ‘because you are followers of (or, have believed on, Tzeltal) the Son of man.’ One should make clear that the phrase qualifies the four verbs that precede it in the Greek, e.g. by placing it at the head of the first “when”-clause (cf. The Four Gospels – a New Translation, Marathi, Bahasa Indonesia RC).
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.
