But I tell you (Good News Translation “I assure you”) functions to make emphatic the statement which follows. New English Bible has the same rendering as Revised Standard Version; Phillips “Yet I tell you this”; An American Translation “But I tell you.” Elsewhere in the Gospel this formula is used only in verse 24 and in 26.64; it is equivalent in emphasis to “Truly, I say to you” (see comments at 5.18). Translators are referred to 10.15, where the language is almost exactly the same. But I tell you in this verse can be rendered the same as “Truly, I say to you” in 10.15, with the sole difference being the But. This marks a slight contrast, and most translators do retain it, either with a word or with some construction.

Good News Translation restructures the impersonal passive construction of the Greek (it shall be more tolerable) as an active formation with God as the subject: “God will show more mercy to.” Bible en français courant has “the punishment will be less for … than for you,” and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “the people of … will fare better than you.” It shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment is the same as in 10.15. Here it is Tyre and Sidon, there “the land of Sodom and Gomorrah.” A good rendering is “the people of (the towns of) Tyre and Sidon.”

The contrast in 10.15 is “than for that town”; here the punishment will be easier than for you. Keeping these differences in mind, translators will be able to render this verse very much as they did in 10.15.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .