Text:

At the end of the verse Textus Receptus adds ho ean eipē ‘whatever he may say,’ which is omitted by all modern editions of the Greek text.

Exegesis:

arthēti kai blēthēti ‘you be taken up and cast’: although passive in form, these two verbs probably have the force of middles: ‘take and throw yourself’ (so most English translations; cf. also Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale, O Novo Testamento de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo. Revisdo Autorizada, Zürcher Bibel).

eis tēn thalassan ‘into the sea.’

kai mē diakrithē (only here in Mark) ‘and he should not doubt’: the verb in the New Testament means ‘to become undecided,’ ‘to waver,’ ‘to vacillate.’

hoti ho lalei ginetai ‘that what he says comes to pass’: ginetai is used here with a futuristic force, ‘will come to pass,’ ‘will happen.’

estai autō ‘it shall be to him,’ i.e. what he says shall be done for him, shall be granted him (The Modern Speech New Testament).

Translation:

For truly in this type of construction see 8.12.

Whoever says … it will be done for him must in many instances be adapted to a conditional construction, involving ‘if,’ e.g. ‘if anyone says … it will be done for him.’

Part of the syntactic problem in this verse is the fact that so many clauses intervene between the principal condition (the clause introduced by whoever) and the final result it will be done for him. These intervening clauses are complex because of (1) the direct discourse, with its own subject, (2) the negative-positive contrast does not doubt … but believes, and (3) the involved indirect discourse believes that what he says will come to pass. This type of complexity necessitates in some languages a division of the sentence into several basic units and with a somewhat altered order, e.g. ‘if a man says to this mountain, Be taken up and cast into the sea, this will be done for him, provided he does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen,’ or ‘if anyone says to this mountain, Be removed from here and be thrown into the sea, this is just what will be done for him; it will happen for him only if he does not doubt in his heart; he must believe that what he says will come to pass.’ This last alternative is a typical paratactically combined series of sentences which convey essentially the same meaning as the hypotactically arranged group in the Greek construction.

Be taken up and cast into the sea, as noted above, may be taken in the reflexive sense, e.g. ‘get up and throw yourself into the sea’ or ‘remove yourself from here and hurl yourself into the sea.’ The reflexive is a much easier and often more meaningful form of expression than the passive.

Though doubt is usually a much easier term to translate than faith or believe, it is represented by a variety of idiomatic renderings, and in the majority of instances the concept of duality is present, e.g. ‘to make his heart two’ (Kekchi), ‘to be with two hearts’ (Punu), ‘to stand two’ (Sierra de Juárez Zapotec), ‘to be two’ or ‘to have two minds’ (Navajo), ‘to think something else’ (Tabasco Chontal), ‘to think two different things’ (Shipibo-Conibo), and ‘to have two thoughts’ (Yaka). In some languages, however, doubt is expressed without reference to the concept of ‘two’ or ‘otherness,’ e.g. ‘to have whirling words in one’s heart’ (Chol), ‘his thoughts are not on it’ (Baoule), ‘to have a hard heart’ (Piro), and ‘to repeatedly spread out in order,’ implying the process of arranging and rearranging of material as one wavers back and forth over varying possibilities (Chokwe).

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .