Text:

After Turou ‘of Tyre’ Textus Receptus, Soden, Vogels, Souter, Westcott and Hort, Merk, Revised Standard Version, Kilpatrick add kai Sidōnos ‘and of Sidon’; Tischendorf, Nestle, Lagrange, and Taylor omit the words.

Exegesis:

ekeithen ‘from there’: goes with the main verb ‘he went away.’

anastas (cf. 1.25) ‘rising’: here not in the specialized sense of rising from bed, but in the general sense of expressing the beginning of an action indicated by another verb, ‘he set out,’ ‘he got ready.’

ta horia (cf. 5.17) ‘boundaries,’ ‘region,’ ‘district.’

eis oikian ‘into a house.’

kai ouk ēdunasthē lathein ‘but he could not be hid.’

lanthanō (only here in Mark) ‘escape notice,’ ‘be hidden.’

Translation:

Region of Tyre and Sidon may be translated as the ‘territory of the cities of Tyre and Sidon.’ The use of a classifier ‘cities’ is useful in many instances, since these might be taken as the names of persons, i.e. ‘to their land.’ In some instances the ‘territory of a city’ is meaningless, so that one can say ‘to the region where the cities Tyre and Sidon were’ or ‘to a place near the cities of Tyre and Sidon.’

Entered a house does not refer to the simple act of entering into a particular house on one occasion, but to establishing residence in a place, even for a short time. In this context the idea is ‘he stayed there in a house, and he did not want anyone to know it.’

He could not be hid does not mean, as it is sometimes translated, that people could not hide Jesus (presumably referring to the efforts of the disciples to keep Jesus in hiding, as though he were trying to escape from the authorities). The meaning is simple that Jesus could not prevent people from discovering where he was.

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 .