And when the demon had been cast out translates a construction which indicates a temporal relation between this event and the response which follows. Jerusalem Bible has “And when the devil was cast out,” and New American Bible “Once the demon was expelled.” “As soon as” of Good News Translation and An American Translation emphasizes the immediacy of the response, as does the restructuring of Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, “Hardly had the evil spirit been driven out….”

This sentence presupposes that Jesus threw out the demon. In many languages it will be necessary to state that specifically, as in “Jesus threw out the demon. When he had done that, the dumb man spoke,” or “Jesus told the demon to leave. As soon as the demon was thrown out,” or “… as soon as the demon left the man.”

The dumb man spoke: most English readers would probably expect either “began to talk (or, speak)” (Phillips, New American Bible) or “started talking” (Good News Translation), and the Greek may also convey this meaning. Barclay translates “the dumb man regained the power of speech”; New English Bible is rather high level: “and the patient recovered his speech.” One can also say “the man was able to speak.”

And the crowds marveled describes the people’s reaction to the miracle; marveled was first used in 8.10 (see also 8.27). Crowds can be “all the people there” or “everyone.”

Saying can be expressed as “and said” or “as they said.”

Never was there anything like this seen in Israel may mean either “We have never seen anything like this in Israel” (Good News Translation) or “Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel.” The verb was … seen is sometimes used of a divine manifestation or revelation, and so there is also a third possibility, that of translating “God has never before revealed himself like this to the people of Israel.” The second option seems most probable, and the response is to the total effect of Jesus’ miracles recorded in chapters 8–9. The people are saying that nothing had ever happened like this, either in the history of their nation or in their own experience.

Thus the best rendering is “Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel,” “There has never been anything like this known to happen in Israel,” or “This is the first time something like this has happened in Israel.”

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 .