Exegesis:
blepete ti akouete ‘see what you hear,’ i.e. ‘pay attention to what you are listening to!’
en hō metrō metreite metrēthēsetai ‘in the (same) measure you measure (for others) it will be measured out (to you).’
metron (only here in Mark) ‘measure’: a measure of capacity.
metreō (only here in Mark) ‘measure out,’ ‘give out,’ ‘apportion,’ ‘deal out’ something to someone.
prostethēsetai (only here in Mark) ‘more shall be given,’ ‘shall be added,’ ‘shall be given in addition.’ The two passives metrēthēsetai humin kai prostethēsetai humin ‘shall be measured out to you and more shall be added to you’ are to be referred to God, as the subject.
dothēsetai … arthēsetai ‘shall (more) be given … shall be taken away’: these two passives also, as in the previous verse, are to be referred to God as the subject.
hos ouk echei, kai ho echei ‘he who has not, even what he has’: the meaning, naturally, is ‘he who has very little, even the little that he has will be taken away’ – it would, of course, be impossible to take away from someone something he actually does not have.
Translation:
Take heed what you hear is translated in two different ways: (1) ‘pay attention to what you hear’ (the preferred rendering) and (2) ‘discriminate carefully between the things which you might hear,’ e.g. ‘select the right things to listen to.’ This latter rendering does not seem to fit this type of context, especially after verse 23.
Take heed is translated in Conob as ‘to hear dying.’ The word ‘dying’ added to the admonition ‘to hear’ indicates the importance of listening, a kind of “life or death matter.”
In some languages the order of constituents in the expression the measure … you get must be changed so that the persons participating are the active subject, rather than the measure, e.g. ‘you will receive the same kind of measure that you measure out to others.’ In other languages the measure is treated in somewhat more generic terms, ‘what you have given to others will be what you get’ in which the meanings ‘to give’ and ‘to measure out to’ are rendered by the same word (Southern Subanen).
The last clause in verse 24 must in some instances be shifted so that the grammatical subject is the personal participant, even as in the previous clauses, e.g. ‘and you will receive even more’ (Shipibo-Conibo). If Textus Receptus is followed, there maybe even greater need of a shift in subject expression, e.g. ‘you who hear will receive more’ (Copainalá Zoque, Eastern Otomí).
The passive expression in the first clause of verse 25 may be shifted to active, e.g. ‘the one who has some will receive even more’ (or in the passive form, ‘will be given even more’). Where, however, the logical subject of the process of giving must be introduced, one may translate as ‘God will give even more to the one who has some.’
The hyperbole about taking away from a man what he does not have can often be rendered as ‘even if a man does not have anything, even the little that he does have will be taken away,’ thus preserving some measure of the extreme statement.
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 .