Exegesis:

en ekeinais tais hēmerais ‘in those days’: cf. 1.9 for the identical phrase.

pollou ochlou ontos ‘being a great crowd’: the participial phrase is probably temporal, ‘when there was a great crowd.’

kai mē echontōn ti phagōsin ‘and they had nothing to eat’: this participial phrase could be causal, ‘because they (the crowd) had nothing to eat’ (cf. Manson).

ti phagōsin (cf. 6.36) ‘what they should eat.’

proskalesamenos (cf. 3.13) ‘calling to himself,’ ‘summoning.’

Translation:

In those days cannot be translated literally in some languages, for this would imply that the feeding of the crowd took place on several successive days. The meaning is simply ‘at that time,’ a very general indicator of temporal sequence.

In some languages a ‘crowd does not gather,’ but ‘people gather and form a crowd.’ Accordingly, one may translate ‘many people came together.’

For disciples see 2.15.

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 .