22:50
And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear: This clause indicates that one of the disciples took a sword and used it to hit the servant of the high priest. When the disciple hit the servant, the sword slashed off the servant’s ear on the right side of his head.
Some other ways to translate this clause are:
One of the disciples cut off the right ear of the chief priest’s servant. (God’s Word)
-or-
Then one of them hit at the high priest’s servant with a sword, slicing off his right ear.
one of them: The phrase one of them refers to one of the eleven disciples/apostles who were standing around Jesus. They were referred to in 22:49a.
the servant of the high priest: The phrase the servant of the high priest probably implies here that the high priest sent his slave to represent him that night. The word the implies that no other slave had the same status. The high priest probably also had other slaves and servants.
Use a natural way in your language to imply that this slave was sent by the high priest and so had an important position or status. Some ways to do this are:
the slave whom the high priest sent
-or-
the servant/slave who was representing the high priest
servant: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as servant literally means “slave” (as in the Revised Standard Version). This Greek word refers to someone who was owned by another person. He worked for his owner/master without receiving pay. This word occurred in 17:7. See how you translated it there. For more information, see the note on “servant” at 17:7a.
high priest: The high priest was the leader of all the Jewish priests. All Jewish priests offered sacrifices on behalf of the people, but the high priest offered certain special sacrifices that no other priest could offer. In a special way, he represented the Jewish people to God. Some ways to translate high priest are:
the chief/leader of all the priests
-or-
the Main/Principal Priest
-or-
the highest/leading priest
For more information, see priest in the Glossary.
© 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.