Text:

In v. 33 after hupagontas ‘going’ Textus Receptus adds hoi ochloi ‘the crowds,’ omitted by all modern editions of the Greek text.

After epegnōsan ‘recognized’ Textus Receptus adds auton ‘him’; Tischendorf, Merk, Soden, and Kilpatrick add autous ‘them’; no addition is made by Nestle, Westcott and Hort, Vogels, Souter, Lagrange, and Taylor.

At the end of the verse after autous ‘them’ Textus Receptus adds kai sunēlthon pros auton ‘and they gathered to him,’ which is omitted by all modern editions of the Greek text.

Exegesis:

kai eidon ‘and they saw’: most translations take polloi ‘many’ to be the subject of eidon ‘saw’; some, however, understand eidon in an impersonal sense, ‘people saw,’ with polloi ‘many’ the subject of epegnōsan ‘recognized’ alone – so The Modern Speech New Testament ‘but the people saw them going, and many recognized them’ (cf. Lagrange, Taylor).

epegnōsan (cf. 2.8) ‘they perceived,’ ‘they recognized’: this rendering better expresses the meaning of the verb here than ‘knew’ (Revised Standard Version).

pezē (only here in Mark) ‘by land’ (opposed to en ploiō ‘by boat’), ‘on foot’ .

apo pasōn tōn poleōn ‘from all the cities’: cf. 1.5 for another example of this vivid manner in portraying an action involving many people.

sunedramon ekei kai proēlthon autous ‘they ran there and arrived before them’: the adverb ‘there’ refers to the lonely spot to which Jesus and his disciples were going.

suntrechō (only here in Mark) ‘run together’: used of a number of persons who run to a place and gather there.

proerchomai (14.35) ‘come ahead,’ ‘arrive before (someone).

Translation:

They went away must refer to Jesus as well as the disciples.

Lonely place is ‘an uninhabited place’ or ‘a place where there were no people living.’

Many is often rendered as ‘many people.’

Knew them is often better translated as ‘recognized them’ or ‘knew who they were.’

There is a very ambiguous adverb, which must be made more precise in some languages, e.g. ‘to where the boat was headed’ or ‘to where the disciples and Jesus were going.’ A number of languages require very well defined distinctions of place and direction, as determined by the position of the participants in an action. Care must be exercised to be sure that the proper adverb, or adverbial phrase, is employed.

Ahead of them means, of course, ‘before Jesus and his disciples arrived,’ though it is rarely necessary to employ such an extensive paraphrase.

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 .