You are wrong (so also New Jerusalem Bible, An American Translation) translates a verb which literally means “be misled” (New American Bible “You are badly misled”; Barclay “You are on the wrong track altogether”), but it may be used to mean either “deceive oneself” or “be mistaken” (New English Bible “You are mistaken”).

It may be necessary to specify in what way they are misled or mistaken, as in “You are wrong in saying the dead will not rise.” Jesus is not saying they are wrong in their fabricated story, but rather in not believing in the resurrection.

Translators need to be careful in translating because. The Sadducees are mistaken or misled because they don’t know the Scriptures, not because they told the story about the seven brothers. “The reason you are mistaken is that you don’t know…” would show the relationship correctly.

The scriptures are translated “the Holy Scriptures” by Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, and the power of God is rendered “what God can do.” You neither know the scriptures (Good News Translation “you don’t know the Scriptures”) may be translated as either “you don’t know what the Scriptures teach” or “… what is in the Scriptures.” Barclay has “you do not know … the meaning of the scriptures.”

It is sometimes not natural to use know with words like “Scriptures” or “God’s power,” and “know about” may be better.

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 .