complete verse (Matthew 24:49)

Following are a number of back-translations of Matthew 24:49:

  • Uma: “From there, he’ll begin to beat his fellow-slaves and he’ll keep on eating and drinking with people who get drunk.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “then he beats his fellow servants and that is what he does he feasts and drinks with those who are always drunk.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And he will beat his companion servants, and he will eat and drink with drunkards.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “And he will repeatedly-hardship his fellow servants while-simultaneously also eating-with and drinking-with his drunkard friends.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Well, he will keep on ill-treating his fellow-slaves. He will keep mixing in whatever feasts, go drinking with the habitual-drinkers.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “He will begin to beat his fellow workers. He will go to drunken feasts.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

drink

In Telugu different verbs for humans drinking (tāgu / తాగు) and animals drinking (cēḍu / చేడు) are required.

Translation commentary on Matthew 24:49

Attention should be given to the possible need of introducing a new sentence with this verse. If a shift was made to direct discourse in verse 48, then it is assumed that a new sentence would have begun there.

Fellow servants is used outside of Matthew’s Gospel only in Colossians (1.7; 4.7) and Revelation (6.11; 19.10; 22.9). Besides here, Matthew uses the noun in the parable of chapter 18 (verses 28, 29, 31-33). In Colossians and Revelation these “fellow servants” are clearly believers, which is doubtless the same meaning that Matthew sees in the term. Luke refers to those persons as “the male servants and the female servants” (12.45). Many translators render this as “the other servants he works with” or “the other servants of the household.”

To say that the servant begins to beat the other servants does not mean that he got into fights with them. But as the one left in charge, he could punish them severely, including beating them or having them beaten. Some translators use “abuse” or “mistreat.” These solutions are certainly acceptable if the implication is that the treatment was severe, as beating would be.

A lack of love, resulting in the abuse of power (begins to beat his fellow servants) and in self-indulgence (drinks with the drunken), describes the sin of the “wicked servant.” Drinks with the drunken does not necessarily imply that the man himself became a drunkard; the meaning may well be “to eat and drink with his drunken friends” (New English Bible) or “to carouse with drunkards” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). But it is difficult to see how the man would have avoided the excesses of his drunken friends, and it is quite likely that Matthew intends to say that he did exactly the same thing that they did. There are languages which don’t have a good word for the drunken, and translators may say something like “began to spend his time eating and drinking with people who drank too much (or, with people who were often intoxicated).”

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 .