Exegesis:
kai pothen ‘how, then…?’ For this use of pothen ‘whence’ cf. 8.4. ‘In what way?’
By many editors and translators the second part of this verse is made the initial sentence of the following paragraph, rather than the closing one of this paragraph (cf. Nestle, Westcott & Hort, Lagrange, Taylor, Swete, Goodspeed, Moffatt).
ho polus ochlos ‘the great crowd,’ ‘the crowd of people’: on the basis of classical Greek usage Field defends and supports the King James Version and American Standard Version reading ‘the common people.’ Marcan usage, however (cf. 5.21, 24; 6.34; 9.14), favors the Revised Standard Version.
Translation:
Calls him Lord can be quite easily mistranslated and hence misinterpreted by the reader, if the referent of him is not clear. For example, in some translations the meaning has been ‘David calls God Lord,’ since ‘him’ is understood as referring to God. In such cases one may say ‘calls this person Lord,’ in which case the reference would be to ‘the offspring of David,’ who is also spoken of as ‘my Lord.’
A further ambiguity of reference may occur in he his son. In Tzeltal these problems are resolved as ‘the same David called him his Lord; how then is his Lord his son.’
The great throng is translatable in some languages as ‘the very great crowd’ or ‘the many, many people there.’ If one adopts the interpretation of ‘the common people’ (see above), the equivalent often is ‘the masses’ or ‘the poor people,’ or as in Tzeltal, ‘the people without offices.’
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 .