Exegesis:
esōthen (7.32) ‘from within,’ ‘from the inside.’
hoi dialogismoi (only here in Mark; cf. dialogizomai 2.6) ‘thoughts,’ ‘deliberations,’ ‘designs,’ ‘reasoning.’
It is to be noticed in the list of twelve sins which follows that the first six are plural, referring to acts, and the last six are singular, referring more directly to the sin itself.
porneiai (only here in Mark) ‘sexual vice,’ ‘unlawful sexual intercourse,’ ‘immoral sexual acts.’
klopai (only here in Mark) ‘thefts,’ ‘acts of thievery.’
phonoi (15.7) ‘murders,’ ‘killings.’
moicheiai (only here in Mark) ‘adulteries’ (as distinguished from porneiai above; sometimes the word may be the equivalent of porneiai ‘sexual vice’).
pleonexiai (only here in Mark) ‘avarice,’ ‘greed,’ ‘covetousness,’ ‘cupidity’: the word often has a sexual connotation, and so is translated ‘lust’ by Moffatt (cf. Taylor).
ponēriai (only here in Mark) ‘acts of wickedness,’ ‘malicious deeds.’
dolos (14.1) ‘deceit,’ ‘cunning,’ ‘treachery.’
aselgeia (only here in Mark) ‘licentiousness,’ ‘debauchery’; with the connotation of open and flagrant excess, ‘wantonness’ (Goodspeed ‘indecency’).
ophthalmos ponēros (only here in Mark) ‘an evil eye’: in Jewish thinking ‘envy,’ ‘malice.’ Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale le regard envieux; Zürcher Bibel neidischer Blick.
blasphēmia (3.28) ‘blasphemy’: here directed not to God but to men, ‘slander,’ ‘defamation,’ ‘abusive speech.’
huperēphania (only here in the N.T.) ‘haughtiness,’ ‘pride,’ ‘insolence.’
aphrosunē (only here in Mark) literally ‘foolishness,’ ‘stupidity’: in the Bible not simply to be equated with intellectual stupidity, but rather with ‘moral … wrongheadedness of unbelief and sin’ (Swete; cf. Gould, ‘morally foolish’). Lagrange hébétude morale; Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale le dérèglement de l’esprit. Some English translations have it ‘recklessness’ or ‘reckless folly’; Translator’s New Testament has ‘godlessness’ (in the Glossary this meaning of the word is defended). A translation should convey the moral and spiritual connotation of the word.
Translation:
Any passage such as this, in which there are a number of Greek nouns describing processes, e.g. evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, etc., is likely to cause difficulty for translators, since in so many instances the only natural way of speaking about such activities is to employ verbs. If this is done, one cannot easily say that these ‘come out of the heart.’ Rather, the more usual expression is ‘because of what is in the heart people think evil, are immoral…’ (Guerrero Amuzgo, Southern Bobo Madaré) or ‘from the heart they think evil, they molest women…’ (Eastern Highland Otomi, South Bolivian Quechua).
For heart see 2.6.
Evil thoughts in a verbal form may be ‘they think evil’ or ‘they make evil plans.’
Fornication and adultery both occur in this list of sins, but even in Greek there is some degree of overlapping. Fornication is the more general term, and specifically denotes sexual relations with prostitutes (porneia the common term for prostitution and pornē is a prostitute). Adultery involves some degree of marital infidelity, whether on the part of the man or the women, but in most contexts this word would refer to the marital status of the woman involved. That is to say, a married man who had sexual relations with a prostitute would be charged with fornication, but if the sex act were with someone else’s wife, he would be guilty of adultery. Theoretically the same would be true of women, but in general these terms are employed from the “masculine viewpoint.” In many societies there is a more or less parallel distinction between fornication and adultery, but where prostitution does not exist the distinction is between unmarried and married “lovers.” The following contrastive sets are interesting of the ways in which this distinction is made: (see table|fig:Table_MRK7-21.htm)
In some languages there are highly specialized idioms for illicit sexual relations, e.g. ‘to do something together’ (Highland Totonac), which would seem to be quite an “innocent expression”, but has a very specific denotation. In Yucateco one speaks of ‘sowing sin,’ while adultery, on the other hand, is ‘pair-sin.’ In Ngäbere fornication is ‘robbing self-possession’ (that is, to rob what belongs to a person), and adultery is ‘robbing another’s half self-possession.’ In Kaqchikel and Chol adultery is ‘to act like a dog,’ and in Southern Subanen an adulterer is ‘one who can’t be trusted.’ In Loma (Liberia) fornication is described by a euphemism, ‘they go out for a purpose,’ and in Toraja-Sa’dan the equivalent of adultery is somewhat poetic, ‘they measure the depth of the river of (another’s) marriage.’
Theft may be translated as ‘they steal from people.’ Note that this is not robbery, which is done by threat of violence, but the unnoticed activity of carrying away other’s possessions.
Murder is ‘killing,’ but this should not be a term denoting only killing in war or in defense of clan rights. It should be the most general term which would denote socially unsanctioned killing.
Coveting may be rendered as ‘they want what other people have.’
Wickedness may correspond to ‘they do bad things’ or ‘they behave bad.’
Deceit may be ‘they deceive people,’ ‘they lie,’ or ‘they trick.’
In some languages it is difficult to distinguish between wickedness and licentiousness, though the second involves a greater degree of moral abandon. In Inupiaqthe term translating wickedness covers such a wide area of meaning that lasciviousness had to be rendered as ‘complete disrespect for commandments,’ a rather indirect way of denoting moral perversity.
‘The evil eye,’ translated in the Revised Standard Version as envy, cannot be rendered literally in many languages without complete distortion of the meaning. For example, in Shipibo-Conibo ‘evil eye’ refers only to sexual designs. The local equivalent of the Greek expression is ‘to have a big liver.’ In Tzeltal the correct expression is ‘sick eye.’ In some languages ‘evil eye’ means the capacity of casting spells upon people, e.g. ‘their eyes bite’ (Tzotzil), but the fundamental meaning of ‘envy’ (or ‘stinginess’) is what should be indicated.
Slander may be rendered as ‘they speak evil against’ or ‘they destroy people’s names’ (San Blas Kuna).
Pride may be ‘they are always talking about themselves,’ ‘they think they are big,’ ‘they continually boast’ (Amganad Ifugao), ‘they lift themselves up’ (Tzeltal), ‘they answer haughtily’ (Yucateco).
Foolishness can sometimes be interpreted as ‘they do not think’ or ‘they do not use their livers,’ but the meaning is not so much the lack of employment of some faculty, as a kind of perversity and moral failure. The San Blas Kuna people say ‘they have no livers,’ that is to say, they are incapable of intelligent, thoughtful behavior.
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 .