Exegesis:
hote edusen ho hēlios ‘when the sun set’ means ‘after the sun had set’ (cf. Manson, The Modern Speech New Testament, Berkeley; Zürcher Bibel nach Sonnenuntergang, Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale après le coucher du soleil).
epheron ‘they carried,’ ‘they brought’: in his study of the word Turner shows that Mark uses pherō in the sense of ‘bring’ rather than the restricted sense of ‘carry.’ He finds that meaning in this passage and in 2.3; 7.32; 8.22; 9.17; 19.20; 11.2, 7; 15.22. The third person plural ‘they brought’ is another example of the impersonal plural (cf. ‘they told’ in v. 30). The imperfect tense of the verb describes a continued process ‘they kept bringing.’
tous kakōs echontas (1.34; 2.17; 6.55) literally ‘those having (it) badly.’ This phrase includes all sorts of sickness and disease, but is always distinguished from demon-possession. Moulton & Milligan cite examples from the papyri of the use of this phrase to describe sick people.
tous daimonizomenous (5.15, 16, 18) ‘the demon-possessed (ones)’: the verb daimonizomai ‘to be under the power of a demon’ always appears as a participle in Mark describing the condition of the person, or persons, under the power of a demon, or unclean spirit.
Translation:
The expression that evening, at sundown is not to be interpreted purely as tautological or meaninglessly repetitious. There is a point to this very emphatic statement, for it shows clearly that the people who attended the synagogue and saw the miracle were, however, very pious Jews and would not bring their sick to Jesus until after the Sabbath had passed, namely, until the sun was completely down. The equivalent in some languages is ‘late in the day, after the sun had set’ (or ‘disappeared’).
They must often be rendered as ‘the people in that place.’ Otherwise it will be assumed that the persons mentioned in the immediately preceding section are meant, namely, those of the household of Simon and Andrew.
Sick in this verse should include the most generic term to indicate any and all varieties of ailments.
Possessed with demons (see 1.23) is a phrase which must be carefully studied in the light of the indigenous religious beliefs, – not that the translation should conform to local superstitions, but that the terms employed may not be misleading or meaningless. For example, in Loma (Liberia) one cannot say ‘possessed with demons’ but ‘they had demons behind them.’ In Kekchí one must not say that ‘demons are in a person’ (this may mean simply in the stomach of the victim), but ‘with a person.’ In Uab Meto the demon ‘mounts the person.’
In a number of languages there is a distinction between two different types of malevolent spirits: (1) those which are disembodied spirits of dead persons and (2) those which inhabit the forest, caves, or forbidden places and which are linked in some cases in an elaborate hierarchy to other even more malicious spirits of the universe, such as the devil. The latter are the spirits which should be identified as demons.
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 .