Exegesis:

kai parēggeilen autois hina ‘and he commanded them that…’: as in previous cases (cf. 5.18) hina ‘that’ does not indicate purpose, but the content of the command.

paraggellō (8.6) ‘give orders,’ ‘command.’

eis hodon ‘in the road,’ i.e. ‘for the journey.’

ei mē rabdon monon ‘except a staff only,’ not ‘except (for) one staff’: monon ‘only’ is an adverb (cf. 5.36), not an adjective, and modifies ei mē ‘except,’ ‘but.’

rabdos (only here in Mark) ‘staff,’ ‘rod’ used in traveling.

pēran (only here in Mark) ‘knapsack,’ ‘traveler’s bag’: here, more explicitly, a beggar’s bag. Lagrange points out it would be pointless to prohibit taking a bag for provisions when the taking of bread had already been forbidden.

mē eis tēn zōnēn chalkon ‘no money in their belts.’

zōnē (cf. 1.6) ‘girdle,’ ‘belt.’

chalkos (12.41) ‘copper,’ ‘brass’; ‘copper coin’; ‘money.’

In verse 9 the construction changes: instead of clauses governed by hina ‘that’ as in v. 8, there is one participial clause which is the direct object of the verb ‘he commanded,’ and one clause which is in the form of direct speech. For purposes of translation, however, there is no need literally to reproduce the Greek grammatical constructions; the content, not the form, is what matters.

alla hupodedemenous sandalia ‘but to wear sandals’ (i.e. rather than go barefooted).

hupodeomai (only here in Mark; cf. hupodēma 1.7) ‘bind under’: of sandals, ‘to put on,’ ‘to wear.’

sandalion (only here in Mark) ‘sandal’ (a synonym of hupodēma in 1.7).

kai mē endusēsthe duo chitōnas ‘and do not wear two tunics.’

enduō (cf. 1.6) ‘put on,’ ‘wear.’

chitōn (14.63; cf. himation 2.21) ‘tunic,’ ‘shirt,’ worn next to the skin: the command not to wear two tunics meant that one only was sufficient.

Translation:

Verses 8 and 9 present serious problems for translators because (1) the grammatical form shifts in the middle of the passage, from an indirect to a direct form, and (2) there are two awkward exceptions: the staff is an exception in what should be carried, and the extra tunic is forbidden in an otherwise positive command, i.e. to wear sandals and one tunic. This means that in a number of translations this passage must be recast to fit the requirements of the receptor language.

Charged them to take … may be altered in many languages into a form of direct command, for this greatly simplifies the syntactic problems in the rest of the passage, e.g. ‘he commanded them, Do not take….’

In verse eight there is a shift from negative to positive and again to negative in the Revised Standard Version order: nothing … except a staff; no …. In many languages this would be clearer if the exception to the negation were placed at the end, e.g. ‘do not take anything for your journey: do not take bread, a bag, or money in your girdles, take only a walking stick.’ In some languages (Southern Bobo Madaré), however, the positive would normally precede the negative, e.g. ‘take a stick in your hand, do not take anything else….’

Put on two tunics is equivalent in many instances to ‘wear two shirts.’ As Arndt and Gingrich point out the wearing of two tunics was a sign of effeminacy.

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 .