6:5

Many people did not believe in Jesus, but a few did. For this reason Jesus did only a few miracles in that area.

6:5a

So He could not perform any miracles there: There are at least two issues to consider when translating 6:5a:

Issue 1:

There is some implied information here. It is implied that the reason Jesus was not able to perform any great miracles was because the people did not believe. You may want to make this information explicit in your translation if it is not clear from 6:6a. For example:

And because of their unbelief, he couldn’t do any mighty miracles (New Living Translation, 1996 edition)
-or-
Because the people rejected him, he was not able to do any great miracle

Another way to make this clear would be to add a footnote. For example:

The reason that Jesus was not able to perform any great miracle was not because he did not have the power to do so. It was because the people refused to believe in him.

Issue 2:

The clause He could not perform any miracles there is hyperbole. It is clear in 6:5b that Jesus did a few miracles there. If the people will not understand that this is an exaggeration, you should say:

he could not perform many miracles there
-or-
he could not do more than a few miracles there

miracles: You should translate this word the same way you did in 6:2f.

there: The word there refers to Jesus’ hometown. It is mentioned in 6:1b and 6:4b. In some languages, it may be more natural to translate this as the New Living Translation has done:

among them

6:5b

except to lay His hands on a few of the sick and heal them: The Greek grammar implies that Jesus healed the sick by means of laying his hands on them. One way to make this explicit in the translation is:

except to heal a few sick people by laying his hands on them

lay His hands: Here are some other ways to translate lay His hands:

put his hands
-or-
placed his hands
-or-
touched

This same phrase occurs in 5:23c. This expression is used when Jesus healed people and when he blessed the children.

General Comment on 6:5a–b

In some languages, it may be more natural to change the order of 6:5a and 6:5b. For example:

5b
They did not believe in him. So he only healed a few people by laying his hands on them. 5aOther than that, he could not do any miracles there.

© 2008 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.