20:26a
And they were unable to trap Him in His words before the people: The word they refers to the spies. The statement indicates that they were not able to use Jesus’ answer to harm him. Jesus did not answer by simply saying “yes” or “no,” as the spies expected he would. His answer was so wise that they could not use it to make either the Romans or the Jewish people angry with him. Other ways to translate this are:
They couldn’t make him say anything wrong in front of the people. (God’s Word)
-or-
So they were not able to trap Jesus in anything he said in the presence of the people. (New Century Version)
to trap Him: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as to trap is a form of the same word that was translated as “catch” in 20:20c. You should translate in a similar way here.
before the people: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible literally translates this Greek phrase. The word people was often used by the Jews to refer to themselves. In this context the phrase indicates that the spies were not able to trap or discredit Jesus there where the crowd of people was watching and listening.
20:26b
and amazed at His answer, they fell silent: The spies sent by the Jewish leaders were surprised and amazed at how well Jesus answered their question. They thought that their question would trap him whether he answered “yes” or “no.” They did not expect such a wise answer. Jesus had shown them their duty to give their complete devotion to God, but he had not said anything against the emperor. The spies could not think of anything to reply. They could not find anything wrong in what Jesus had said.
In some languages there may be an idiom to express this amazement. For example:
And stunned by his answer, they fell silent. (NET Bible)
In some languages it may be best to reverse the order of the two phrases in 20:26b. For example:
They became silent because they were amazed at how he had answered ⌊them⌋.
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