SIL Translator’s Notes on Luke 9:43

9:43a

And: The Greek conjunction that the Berean Standard Bible translates here as And introduces the concluding result of this story. Some English versions do not translate this word. Other ways to translate this conclusion are:

And so
-or-
As a result
-or-
When the people saw this

they were all astonished at the greatness of God: The phrase they…all refers to all the people who were present when Jesus healed the boy. The clause they were all astonished at the greatness of God indicates that all the people there were amazed at God’s power. They had seen Jesus heal the boy, and they understood that Jesus had used this power to heal the boy.

In some languages people may not understand the connection between Jesus healing the boy and the people being amazed at God’s greatness. If that is true in your language, you may need to make it explicit. For example:

The way that Jesus showed⌋ God’s great power amazed all the people.

greatness: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as greatness refers here to God’s great power. Other ways to translate it are:

the mighty power of God (Good News Translation)
-or-
the powerful way that God ⌊had acted

Section 9:43b–45

Jesus predicted his death a second time

In 9:22 Jesus told his disciples that his enemies would reject and kill him and that God would cause him to live again. Here in 9:43b–45, Jesus told his disciples the same thing again. But they still did not understand what he was talking about.

Luke placed this section immediately after the healing of the boy with an unclean spirit (9:37–43a). He did this in order to contrast the people’s amazement at the wonderful things Jesus was doing with the future suffering that Jesus knew he must endure. However, this section does not occur immediately following the miracle in the preceding section. According to the parallel passage in Mark, Jesus and his disciples left on a trip through Galilee. It was on this trip that Jesus spoke to them the second time about his coming death.

Other examples for this section heading are:

Jesus again predicted that he would die and come back to life
-or-
Death and resurrection foretold a second time
-or-
Jesus again tells his disciples that he will be killed but then God will raise him from the dead

There are parallel passages for this section in Matthew 17:22–23 and Mark 9:30–32.

Paragraph 9:43b–45

9:43b

In Greek, 9:43b begins with a conjunction that is often translated as “but.” The Berean Standard Bible and some other English versions do not translate this conjunction.

As mentioned in the section introduction, this section that predicts Jesus’ death contrasts with the fact that people were amazed at what Jesus had been doing. You should show this contrast in a way that is natural in your language.

While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus was doing: The clause While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus was doing indicates that the people were amazed at all the things that Jesus had been doing and teaching. It was not only the miracle of healing the boy that amazed them. See the introduction to Section 9:43b–45. Other ways to translate this clause are:

Amid the general astonishment at all he was doing (Revised English Bible)
-or-
Everyone was amazed at all the things that Jesus was doing. (God’s Word)

© 2009, 2010, 2013 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.

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