Text:

After ochlos ‘crowd’ Textus Receptus and Kilpatrick add polus ‘great,’ which is omitted by all other modern editions of the Greek text.

Exegesis:

eti autou lalountos ‘while he was speaking’: cf. 5.35 for the identical phrase.

paraginetai (only here in Mark) ‘he is present,’ ‘he comes,’ ‘he arrives.’

heis tōn dōdeka (cf. 14.10, 20) ‘one of the Twelve.’

ochlos ‘crowd’: here, in the nature of the case, ‘mob’ (Moffatt), ‘rabble’ (Taylor).

meta machairōn kai xulōn ‘with swords and clubs’: the machairai (14.47, 48) were not necessarily swords, in the usual or technical sense of the term; they might have been knives. The xula (14.48) would be clubs, or cudgels.

para ‘from’ (cf. 8.11; 12.2, 21 for other places in which the preposition is used in this sense): here ‘from’ goes back to the main verb paraginomai ‘arrive,’ or else something like apestalmenos ‘sent’ is to be understood (cf. Lagrange envoyée).

tōn archiereōn kai tōn grammateōn kai tōn presbuterōn ‘the chief priests and the scribes and the elders,’ all three groups of the Sanhedrin (cf. 8.31).

Translation:

The syntax of this verse is deceptively simple, for there are a number of difficulties which, if not treated properly, result in misunderstanding. In the first place immediately should be related to the coming of Judas. This often requires a shift of order, e.g. ‘and while Jesus was still talking, Judas came right up’ or ‘… Judas came up immediately.’

One of the twelve is in apposition with Judas, and as such may be treated (1) as a paratactically combined expression, e.g. ‘He was one of the twelve’ or as in many languages ‘he was one with the eleven,’ or (2) as a dependent relative clause, e.g. ‘Judas, who was one of the twelve, came right up.’

The phrase with him a crowd with swords and clubs must frequently be made a separate clause, with two entirely different treatments of the preposition with, since in the first instance the meaning is accompaniment and in the second, possession, e.g. ‘a crowd who had (or ‘carried’) swords and clubs accompanied Judas.’

From the chief priests and the scribes and the elders is sometimes wrongly translated in such a way as to imply only that the swords and the clubs came from the three groups of the Sanhedrin. In still other instances, the rendering has implied that the crowd consisted of these groups. However the real meaning is that Judas and the crowd came from these authorities, in the sense of having been sent out by them. This meaning can be conveyed in some languages by a pronominal usage ‘these came from…’ or ‘they came from….’ This verse, consisting of a single sentence in Greek, must often be translated by at least three in other languages because of the radical shifts in participants and the fact that the Greek prepositions imply a complex relationship which cannot be duplicated by corresponding phrases in other languages.

For certain lexical problems, the following references are useful: chief priests (2.26; 8.31), scribes (1.22), and elders (8.31).

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 .