Came up can be “approached” or “went up.”

Him is identified by name in Good News Translation: (“Jesus”), since a new section opens here.

Lord, how often … and I forgive him represents the form of the Greek sentence. Both New English Bible (“Lord, how often am I to forgive my brother if he goes on wronging me?”) and New Jerusalem Bible (“Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me?”) invert the order of the two clauses. Some languages will prefer the order of the Greek sentence, because the clauses are in a logical and chronological arrangement. Some translators have said “Lord, how many times do I have to forgive my brother for the sins he does against me?” and others have followed the text a little more closely with “Lord, how many times can my brother sin against me and I still forgive him?” or “Lord, for how many of my brother’s sins against me should I forgive him?” Another rendering is “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, for how many of these sins should I continue forgiving him?”

Lord was discussed at 8.2. Here the Christian sense of “Lord” will be most appropriate.

By brother Peter does not mean his sibling but either “fellow man,” as in Barclay, or “fellow believer.” The latter seems to fit better in this passage, as we explained above.

Sin against me will not be correct in those languages where the term sin is used exclusively in the context of doing something against God. “Do wrong to me” or “do evil against me” will be better.

Forgive was discussed at 6.12. In some languages people can forgive another person’s actions, and in other languages they can forgive the people. Still others even require the full form, that is, forgiving other people their actions. Thus forgive him can also be “forgive him his sins” or “forgive his bad deeds.”

As many as seven times? is literally “until seven?” Many languages will require the explicit mention of a subject and predicate: “Must I forgive him as many as seven times?”

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 .