Exegesis:
dramōn de tis ‘and a certain one running’: again it is impossible to identify the man. He is simply a ‘bystander’ or ‘spectator.’
trechō (cf. 5.6) ‘run.’
gemisas spoggon oxous peritheis kalamō epotizen auton ‘filling a sponge (full) of vinegar (and) placing (it) on a reed gave (it) to him to drink’: the three aorist participles (dramōn, gemisas, peritheis, ‘running,’ ‘filling,’ ‘placing’) precede the action of the main verb epotizen ‘he gave to drink,’ while the present participle legōn ‘saying’ is simultaneous with the action of the main verb.
gemizō (cf. 4.37) ‘fill,’ ‘fill up.’
spoggos (only here in Mark) ‘sponge.’
oxos (only here in Mark) ‘sharp,’ i.e. ‘sour wine,’ vinegar’: generally identified as the posca, a cheap wine of the Roman soldiers.
peritithēmi (cf. 12.1) ‘place around,’ ‘place on.’
kalamos (cf. v. 19) ‘reed,’ ‘staff.’
potizō (cf. 9.41) ‘give to drink’: the imperfect epotizen is probably conative, ‘he tried to give to drink’ (cf. edidoun in v. 23). So Translator’s New Testament ‘offered Him to drink.’
aphete idōmen ‘let us see’: the verb aphiēmi ‘let,’ ‘allow’ (cf. 2.5) is taken here as an auxiliary. Some, however, do not agree with this, rendering aphete ‘allow me!’ ‘let me do it’: so Revised Standard Version ‘wait.’
kathelein (15.46) ‘to take down,’ ‘to bring down (from the cross)’: Field calls this the technical word for the removal of a body from the cross.
Translation:
Sponge is rendered either by (1) a borrowing, which is the most common procedure, especially where such objects have been introduced to some extent – in which case they often are known by a foreign term, e.g. ‘something which takes up liquid’ (Barrow Eskimo), ‘something with holes-holes,’ a phrase used to designate anything of the nature of a sponge (Shipibo-Conibo), ‘something which drank up the vinegar’ (Tzeltal). In some languages the closest equivalent to a sponge is the fibre of a gourd, which is used for almost the same purposes as marine sponges and hence is quite an acceptable substitute.
Vinegar is ‘sour wine’ or ‘sour juice of a fruit.’
Drink cannot be translated literally in some languages, since one would not speak of ‘drinking from a sponge,’ but rather ‘sucking’ (Copainalá Zoque, Mitla Zapotec).
In a number of languages the series of verbs: ran … filling … put … gave … drink … saying, must be broken up into more than one sentence, especially since the subject of drink is different from the subject of the other verbs, e.g ‘… gave it to him to drink. He said, Wait….’
Wait is directed toward the crowd standing about. Let us see is rendered in some languages as a declarative ‘we shall see’ and in others as a question ‘shall we see whether Elijah…?’ Let us see is a type of hortatory first person plural which has no close grammatical parallel in some languages. The nearest equivalents may be (1) an imperative introductory statement, e.g. ‘come and we shall see,’ (2) a simple future statement, ‘we shall see,’ and (3) in rare instances a question, with the same function as the Greek hortatory, e.g. ‘shall we see whether.’
Take him down may require a more specific translation such as ‘take him down from the cross,’ ‘take him off the cross,’ or ‘unnail him from the cross.’
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 .