Exegesis:

ēkolouthoun autō kai diēkonoun autō ‘they followed him and ministered to him,’ ‘they used to follow him and minister to him.’

akoloutheō (cf. 1.18) ‘follow’: here, as disciples.

diakoneō (cf. 1.13; 1.31) ‘serve,’ ‘wait on,’ ‘minister to.’

kai allai pollai ‘and many other (women) also.’

hai sunanabasai (only here in Mark; cf. anabainō in 10.32, 33) ‘who came up with,’ ‘who accompanied (him) on the way up.’

Translation:

This sentence, which began with verse 40, is so complex that in many instances one must start another sentence with the beginning of verse 41, e.g. ‘these women followed….’

When he was in Galilee may be preposed or postposed to the verb expressions with which it is associated, e.g. ‘when Jesus was in Galilee, these women followed him and ministered to him’ or ‘these women followed Jesus and ministered to him when he was in Galilee.’

Since Jesus has not been specifically identified in the context since verse 37, the introduction of ‘Jesus’ in this verse may be required so as to avoid grammatical confusion with references to the centurion.

Followed is to be understood in the sense of ‘accompany’ (see 1.17).

Ministered to him must be translated with care so as to indicate clearly the degree to which they provided for Jesus’ needs, since in some languages expressions have been used which would imply illicit relationships. To avoid such a difficulty, some translations have used rather explicit statements, e.g. ‘prepared food for him’ (Tzeltal).

The final clause and also many other women … to Jerusalem is also part of the logical subject of verse 40. As the clause now stands there is no verb, and the grammatical relationship may be quite obscure when translated into other languages. Therefore, one may need to introduce a verb, e.g. ‘and also many other women … were there.’

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 .