Text:

After probas ‘going on’ Textus Receptus adds ekeithen ‘thence,’ which is rejected by all modern editions of the Greek text.

Exegesis:

probainō (only here in Mark) ‘advance,’ ‘go forward.’

oligon ‘a little’ is the accusative of the neuter adjective oligos ‘little,’ used adverbially to modify the verb probainō ‘go forward.’

ton adelphon autou ‘his brother’ refers, of course, to James, not to Zebedee.

kai autous … katartizontas ‘and they (were) mending’: this participial clause is a rather clumsy Greek construction reflecting, as Black points out, its Semitic character. It is best translated by “while (or, when) they were mending…” (cf. also Howard II, 423). The pronoun autous ‘they’ and the participle katartizontas ‘mending’ are in the accusative case because they stand in apposition to Iakōbon kai Iōannēn ‘James and John,’ the direct objects of the verb eiden ‘he saw.’ To translate literally ‘they (or, who) also were … mending’ is inaccurate (The Modern Speech New Testament, Knox, American Standard Version). The best translation will make this clause subordinate to the main one, either in a temporal sense ‘while they were mending’ or as a relative clause ‘who were mending’ (Revised Standard Version).

en tō ploiō ‘in the boat.’ Grant observes that the definite article need not always be translated (cf. Le Nouveau Testament. Version Synodale dans une barque), and Lagrange observes that both in Hebrew and in classical Greek the definite article is used to indicate an object naturally to be found in the situation described. On the other hand, ‘their boat’ (Revised Standard Version, Moffatt, The Modern Speech New Testament, Berkeley) is a possible translation (cf. Turner, and see v. 18 ta diktua ‘their nets’).

katartizontas ta diktua ‘mending the nets.’

katartizō (only here in Mark) “to render artios, i.e. ‘fit,’ ‘complete’ ” (Abbot-Smith). The sense is not exclusively that of repairing; the word means ‘to adjust,’ ‘to put right.’ It may mean here preparing the nets for the next fishing. Moulton & Milligan also give evidence for this meaning of the word. Arndt & Gingrich: “put in order, restore; put into proper condition.”

Translation:

The expression James the son of Zebedee and John his brother can only rarely be translated literally into another language. In general it must be reorganized to fit the syntactic and lexical requirements of the receptor language, e.g. ‘James and John, the sons of Zebedee’ (with the relationship of ‘brother’ left implicit); ‘James and his younger brother John, the sons of Zebedee’ (Highland Oaxaca Chontal); ‘James and his brother John; their father was Zebedee’; or ‘James and John, two brothers, sons of Zebedee’ (Mitla Zapotec). The selection of one of these formulae, or some other, will depend entirely upon what type of expression is the closest natural equivalent in the language into which one is translating.

It is not necessary that the nets of verse 19 be the same as those of 16 and 18. The fact that the men were in the boat may suggest that these were long nets let out from boats. The Greek term translated “mending” in the Revised Standard Version is equivalent to English ‘fixing them up.’

While in some parts of the world it may be impossible to find an indigenous term for boat (e.g. along the Sahara the Mossi people have no word for boat, but they call it a ‘water-box’), in others one is faced with the problem of selecting out of a number of different terms the name of a craft which would be approximately the size and shape of the fishing boats used on the Lake of Galilee. There were obviously different-sized boats employed for fishing on the lake, but it is probably safest to estimate that the boats which the disciples used would be capable of holding anywhere from six to a dozen persons. They were not, however, huge ships, for they could be drawn up on the shore by hand and they were of relatively shallow draft (so that Jesus could speak to the people on the shore, while being only a little distance off the land).

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .