They bind heavy burdens is a figure that suggests that the way the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees required people to do many difficult things to fulfil the Law was like giving them heavy loads to carry. For some the biblical form will be relatively well understood, as in Good News Translation: “They tie onto people’s backs loads that are heavy and hard to carry.” Other translators will use comparisons of some sort; for example, “They force people to obey difficult rules that are like burdens on their backs.” Another possibility is to drop the image altogether, as in “They oblige people to do very difficult things” or “They give people many obligations that are difficult to carry out.”

The phrase hard to bear (two words in the Greek text) is not present in some Greek manuscripts. TC-GNT indicates that its absence is “perhaps due to stylistic refinement or to accidental oversight”; however, on the other side it notes that “it is possible that the words may be an interpolation from Luke 11.46.” For this reason the words are included in square brackets in the UBS Greek text, indicating that the committee feels there is “a considerable degree of doubt” regarding which wording may be superior. The phrase is best included as part of bind heavy burdens, perhaps as “(things) hard to support” or “(things) difficult to carry out.”

Men’s is a reference to people in general, while shoulders is replaced in Good News Translation by “backs,” a more suitable English term for the place where burdensome loads are carried. But whereas backs and shoulders are in the same area of the body, to say “on their heads” in societies where that is the way of carrying things would be very different from the biblical culture and would not be acceptable.

Move them is more accurately expressed as either “help them carry them” (Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, 1st edition) or “help them carry those loads” (Good News Translation).

With their finger: Good News Translation shifts to a more appropriate expression, though with considerable restructuring (“to lift a finger to help them”); New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, New International Version, and Barclay also use “lift a finger,” while New English Bible has “raise a finger.” If this figure of speech is not clear, translators may say “But they don’t do one little thing to help them carry these loads (or, fulfil these obligations).”

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 .