Angry may be too weak to express adequately the feelings of the king in response to the mistreatment and murder of his servants. “Furious” is the preference of New Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible, and Barclay (New American Bible “grew furious”), while Moffatt and New International Version have “enraged.” In many languages, rather than saying the king was angry, “became angry” would be more natural.

As in Good News Translation, and may better be translated “so.”

He sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city: in place of destroyed, Good News Translation chooses “killed,” which is more natural for English speakers when persons are used as the object. In such a context the verbs destroyed and burned assume a causative force, since it is obvious that the king himself did not perform these actions: “… sent his soldiers with orders to kill … and burn” or “… gave his soldiers orders, ‘Go and kill all those people and burn their city to the ground.’ ” The sentence can also be “… sent his soldiers to kill those murderers and to burn down their city.”

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 .