Exegesis:
apokritheis de ho Iēsous eipen ‘Jesus answered.’ Strictly speaking the first clause of what follows represents Jesus’ reaction to v. 40, and the second takes up the father’s request in v. 38.
ō genea apistos kai diestrammenē ‘O faithless and perverse generation’ best understood as being addressed to all people who are present and had failed to show faith enough for the healing of the boy. For genea cf. on 1.48.
apistos (also 12.46) ‘unbelieving,’ ‘faithless.’
diestrammenē (past participle of diastrephō also 23.2) ‘perverted,’ ‘perverse,’ ‘crooked.’
heōs pote esomai pros humas lit. ‘till when, i.e., how much longer shall I be with you?’ The future tense of esomai implies compulsion; hence the rendering “must I be” (An American Translation and others).
kai anexomai humōn ‘and shall I (have to) endure you.’
prosagage hōde ton huion sou ‘bring your son here,’ turning to the father. prosagō.
Translation:
Faithless and perverse generation is used as a form of address and, therefore, often requires a reference to the second person plural, cf. e.g. “How unbelieving and wrong you people are” (Good News Translation), ‘you people of this time, there is no belief, your heart is corrupt’ (Sranan Tongo). Faithless, or, ‘who has no faith,’ cf. references on 5.20. Perverse, i.e. being what one ought not to be, has also been rendered, ‘crooked’ (Tagalog), ‘gone-astray’ (Bahasa Indonesia), ‘mis-behaving’ (Balinese), ‘of reversed spirit’ (Toraja-Sa’dan, the qualification being also used of words that pervert the truth), or simply, ‘not good’ (Kekchi). Generation, cf. on 1.48.
How long, or, as an exclamatory statement, ‘I cannot … (much) longer.’ Some receptor languages require that the words are repeated before ‘bear with you.’
Be with you, or, ‘remain with you (still)’; Medumba has, ‘be I-plus-you,’ using a compound pronoun referring to a combination of an individual and a group or of two groups; Batak Toba shifts to ‘how long (are) you my-companions.’
Bear with, or, ‘put up with,’ “have patience with” (Translator’s New Testament, similarly some Indonesian languages), ‘hold-out in your midst’ (Bahasa Indonesia 1968); in Balinese a verb used of catching trickling water in a receptacle can have the required figurative sense.
The last clause of this verse is no longer addressed to all present, but exclusively to the father, as is clear from the contents and from the singular verbal form and pronoun in the Greek. In languages not allowing such an abrupt transition from exclamation to imperative, and/or from third to second person, or second person plural (if that form has been used in the preceding clause) to second person singular, it is permissable to insert an explanatory clause like ‘and then Jesus said to that man there’ (Tboli, cf. Good News Translation).
Bring your son here, or, ‘come here with your son,’ ‘let your son come here’ (Javanese, using a causative verbal form derived from an adverb indicating movement towards the speaker).
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.
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