Exegesis:

This question refers to the second feeding of the multitude, narrated in 8.6-9.

hote tous hepta literally ‘when the seven’: as the previous verse shows, this is the concise way of saying, ‘When I broke the seven loaves….’

posōn spuridōn plērōmata klasmatōn ērate; ‘how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?’ The meaning of the question is perfectly obvious but the details of the grammatical relations of the words in Greek should not be overlooked. The verb ērate ‘you took up’ has for its direct object posōn spuridōn plērōmata literally ‘the fillings of how many baskets,’ ‘how many basketfuls’ (cf. 6.43 for identical construction, and for the meaning of plērōma ‘filling,’ ‘complement’); klasmatōn ‘of broken pieces’ is another genitive which indicates the nature of ‘basketfuls,’ i.e. ‘basketfuls of broken pieces.’

spuris (cf. 8.9) ‘basket.’

Translation:

The key words in this verse should be related to those terms used in 8.6-9.

The seven for the four thousand is a highly elliptical expression, quite regularly employed in many languages, but impossible in others. The expansion may require ‘when seven loaves were given to be eaten by the four thousand people’ (Southern Subanen), or ‘when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand people,’ in order to preserve more parallelism with the preceding verse.

Said to him may be ‘answered him.’

Seven may require expansion to ‘seven baskets’ or ‘we took up seven baskets.’

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 .