Text:

Instead of autē apolusasa ‘she divorcing’ of the majority of modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus, Lagrange, and Kilpatrick have gunē apolusē … kai ‘a woman should divorce … and’; Taylor has gunē exelthē apo tou andros kai ‘a woman should abandon her husband and.’

Instead of gamēsē ‘she should marry’ of all modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus has gamēthē ‘she should be married.’

Exegesis:

As the commentators point out, this saying has in view Graeco-Roman customs: in Jewish law only the husband could get a divorce.

kai ean autē ‘and if she’: in the general sense of ‘and if a woman’ (not ‘she’ the woman in v. 11 who has been divorced by her husband).

Translation:

She may be translated as ‘a woman’ or ‘any woman.’

For divorces see 10.4.

Commits adultery may need to be translated as ‘is guilty of adultery’ or ‘is guilty of sin,’ since the previous clause may describe quite clearly what she has done, e.g. ‘leaves her husband and lives with another man.’

Marries is always translatable, but in a variety of ways, depending upon such factors as (1) whether a man or woman is spoken of, (2) the consent or agreement of the clan (in this type of context clan consent would not be likely), and (3) whether or not a previous marriage has been contracted.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .