Exegesis:

apotaxamenos autois ‘taking leave of them,’ ‘bidding them farewell.’

apotassomai (only here in Mark) ‘take leave of,’ ‘say good-bye’; Moulton & Milligan give an example of its use in the papyri with the stronger meaning ‘get rid of’ (cf. Lk. 14.33).

autois ‘them’: it is ambiguous in Greek, referring either to the disciples or to the crowd (Mt. 14.23 makes it explicit by saying ‘he dismissed the crowds’). The Revised Standard Version ‘them’ apparently refers to the disciples, as does Translator’s New Testament (and others); Vulgate, Goodspeed, The Modern Speech New Testament, Lagrange and Taylor assume that the crowd is meant. If apotassomai ‘take leave of’ differs in meaning from apoluō ‘dismiss’ of the previous verse (as it probably does), then it would seem that autois ‘them’ refers to the disciples rather than to the crowd. If possible, a translation should preserve the ambiguity of the Greek.

eis to oros (cf. 3.13) ‘to the hill,’ ‘into the hills.’

proseuxasthai (cf. 1.35) ‘to pray’: infinitive of purpose, ‘in order to pray.’

Translation:

As noted above, one should try to preserve the ambiguity in the rendering of them. The sequence of events would seem to imply that the disciples left before the crowd, in which case, of course, them would refer to the people. On the other hand, he may have ordered his disciples to leave, and while they were getting the boat ready (having possibly drawn it up on the beach), Jesus dismissed the crowd and then turned to say good-bye to the disciples.

Went into the hills is good English but impossible in many languages. One may go ‘between the hills,’ ‘to where the hills are,’ or ‘climb among the hills,’ but ‘going into the hills’ may be used only of miners.

For pray see 1.35.

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 .