5:26a

She had borne much agony under the care of many physicians: The Greek clause that the Berean Standard Bible translates as She had borne much agony under the care of many physicians indicates that doctors and their treatments had caused her much suffering. They probably caused both pain and financial loss.

Here are some other ways to translate this clause:

Doctors that she went to for treatment caused her to suffer much
-or-
She had gone to many doctors, and they had not done anything except cause her a lot of pain. (Contemporary English Version)

5:26b

and had spent all she had: This phrase indicates that the woman had already used all her resources to pay the doctors for her treatments. She may have paid in money or goods. She had nothing left that she could use to pay for more help.

General Comment on 5:26a–b

In some languages it may be natural to change the order of 5:26a and 5:26b. For example:

26bShe had spent all she had 26agoing to see many different doctors. She had endured a lot of different treatments….
-or-
26aShe had used up all her money 26bon the painful treatments ordered/prescribed by many physicians

5:26c–d

but to no avail. Instead, her condition had only grown worse: The Greek phrases that the Berean Standard Bible translates as but to no avail and Instead show strong contrast. The woman had hoped that her condition would improve. But the opposite was true; her bleeding increased.

her condition had only grown worse: The woman’s illness became more severe. This happened during a period of years before she came to Jesus. Use an appropriate verb form in your language.

© 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.