Evening may mean either the time immediately before or immediately after sunset; the context suggests before sunset, or else it would have been too late for the people to go to the villages to buy food. When it was evening can be expressed “That evening” or “When it began to get dark.”

Here, as in many similar places, it may be necessary to render the disciples by “his disciples.”

Came to translates a verb which means “approach” or “come up to.” The verb does not suggest that the disciples were at a distance; to the contrary, the implication is that the disciples were already present, but approached Jesus to say something to him.

The root meaning of the word rendered lonely (so most translations) is “abandoned” or “deserted,” though the word may also mean “a desert region.”

The day is now over (New English Bible “the day has gone”) is given a less specific time reference by Good News Translation: (“It is already very late”), Phillips (“it is very late”), and Jerusalem Bible (“the time has slipped by”). Some commentators propose that the meaning is more exactly “it is too late to teach people anymore,” and Barclay is also specific: “it is now past the time for the evening meal.”

Send … away may sound harsh in some languages; but the sound of harshness can be removed by shifting to a question: “Why don’t you send the people away…?” or “Shouldn’t you send the people away…?”

In some translations the villages is rendered so that readers think it means the villages where the people in the crowds lived. To avoid this, “villages in the area” or “villages around here” may be better.

The word translated food is the normal Greek word for food; Mark (6.36) has “something to eat.” Either rendering will satisfy the needs of the context.

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 .