Now serves as a transitional from the quotation to the story of the seven brothers who, one after the other, married the same woman. It is not a temporal marker, therefore, but a way of starting a story.

Among us may better be represented as “who used to live here” (Good News Translation). Phillips has “Now, we had a case of seven brothers,” and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “Now, at one time there were seven brothers here.” The story is told as though it narrates a genuine life situation, though the use of the number seven suggests they added something to make the story more interesting and simultaneously to emphasize the absurdity of belief in the resurrection.

The first … died … left his wife to his brother may give the impression that the man had at death willed his widow to his brother. Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, 1st edition relieves the difficulty by translating “The oldest brother married and died without children. 26 So the second married his widow….”

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 .