5:17

And: The Greek conjunction that the Berean Standard Bible translates as And could also be translated as “Then” (New International Version, New Revised Standard Version). Here it introduces the people’s response to what the witnesses told them in 5:16. Connect 5:17 to 5:16b in a way that is natural in your language for this context.

the people began to beg Jesus to leave their region: In some languages it may be more natural to use direct speech here. For example:

…the people began to say to Jesus, “Please leave our region!”

the people began to beg: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the people began to beg is literally “they began to beg.” The people who pleaded were people from the area who came to see what had happened. Many English versions supply a general subject such as “the people” to indicate this.

began to beg: In this context the Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as began to beg probably indicates that the people made their request more than one time. It does not imply that the people began to beg but did not finish their request. If it is confusing in your language to use a verb like “began” here, you may leave this idea implicit. For example:

pleaded
-or-
begged repeatedly

The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as beg is similarly translated as “begged” in 5:10 and 5:12. If it is natural in your language, it is probably good to translate it in the same way here. See the note on 5:10.

their region: Translate region in the same way as you did at 5:1a–b and 5:10.

Paragraph 5:18–20

© 2008 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.