Text:
After tōn pisteuontōn ‘those who believe’ Textus Receptus and Kilpatrick add eis eme ‘in me,’ which is omitted by all other modern editions of the Greek text.
Exegesis:
skandalisē (cf. 4.17) ‘he should cause to stumble’ (Montgomery, Manson, O Novo Testamento de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo. Revisdo Autorizada); ‘cause to fall’ (Goodspeed, Translator’s New Testament ‘cause to fall away’; The Modern Speech New Testament ‘occasion the fall of’); ‘is a hindrance’ (Moffatt). ‘Cause to (fall into) sin’ (Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale, Revised Standard Version) is too specific a translation of skandalizō.
hena tōn mikrōn toutōn tōn pisteuontōn ‘one of these little ones who believe’: perhaps, ‘one of the least of these who believe.’ The Revised Standard Version addition ‘in me’ is not part of the genuine text, in the opinion of most editors of the Greek text.
kalon estin (cf. 4.8) ‘it is good’: the use of the absolute form ‘good’ for the comparative ‘better’ appears to be thoroughly Semitic.
mallon (cf. 5.26) ‘rather,’ ‘instead.’
ei perikeitai … kai beblētai ‘if it had been placed … and he had been thrown’: the two perfects (the verb perikeimai is itself a perfect, meaning ‘to have been placed’ – cf. Souter) are here used with the force of past perfects: it would be better if, before causing a little one to stumble, he had had a millstone hung around his neck and had been thrown into the sea.
mulos onikos (only here in Mark) ‘a large millstone’ i.e. the large upper millstone that required an ass to turn it, instead of being hand-turned, as in the case of the small mills.
Translation:
Clauses introduced by whoever must be shifted to conditional clauses in some languages, e.g. ‘if a man does … it would be better….’
Little ones is ‘little children,’ to be understood in this context as being a reference to the child of verses 36 and 37.
Though the better texts all have only ‘believe,’ it is necessary in many languages to have some object to the verb of believing, and hence ‘in me’ is a very natural addition (cf. Textus Receptus and the Revised Standard Version).
Causes … to stumble is only rarely translatable in a literal manner. In one instance this was done, and the people were utterly surprised that Jesus would speak of such a dire penalty for anyone playing a practical joke. In this particular language the translation had to be changed to read ‘to cause his heart to be spoiled,’ for only this type of expression would convey the idea of moral offense. In Tzeltal the appropriate equivalent is ‘to cause to go wrong’ and in Highland Totonac one must say ‘to show such little children the wrong road.’ In Tabasco Chontal the correct idiom is ‘to cause them to leave the way’; in Toraja-Sa’dan the translation is ‘whoever causes that one of these little ones come into misfortune through sin.’
Great millstone is more meaningfully translated in many languages than in English, for so few English speaking people really know from personal experience what millstones are. In Tzeltal the equivalent expression is ‘large metate’ (metate is the name for the indigenous type of grinding stone). In some languages however, grinding stones are not used, and hence one must say simply ‘a big rock’ (Barrow Eskimo). Toraja-Sa’dan must render ‘large stone which is placed under the piles on which the house rests,’ while Batak Toba has ‘stone block in which the rice is beaten’ (to remove the husks).
One must make certain that the stone is not literally ‘hung round his neck,’ for in one language the people were intrigued by this kind of stone, which could be put as a wreath around a person’s neck. An appropriate equivalent may be ‘tied round his neck’ or ‘tied to him, with a rope around his neck.’
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 .