Text:

Instead of estin ‘is’ of all modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus has estai ‘shall be.’

Exegesis:

ouch houtōs de estin en humin ‘but it is not thus among you’ as the Greek stands this is a statement of fact, not a command or a statement concerning the future.

megas ‘great’ some (cf. Rawlinson) understand it to mean, in accordance with Semitic usage, ‘greatest.’

estai humōn diakonos ‘shall be your servant’ as in the similar saying in 9.35 this is a volitive future, a command: ‘must be your servant’ (so Revised Standard Version).

diakonos (cf. 9.35) ‘servant.’

Translation:

It refers to the pattern of life described in the previous verse. However, some scholars, e.g. Goodspeed, have taken this present as referring to the future, e.g. ‘but it is not to be so among you.’ Luther has aber also soll es unter euch nicht sein ‘but it should not be so among you.’ This type of pronoun may not occur in some languages, and hence a recasting of the clause may be required, e.g. ‘you should not do like that,’ if the meaning is exhortatory; or ‘you do not lord it over each other,’ if the meaning is purely descriptive of their relationships to each other.

Whoever would be great must be your servant may require certain syntactic adjustments, e.g. ‘if a man wishes to be great he must be’ or ‘a man who wishes to be … must become….’

Would be great means ‘desires to have authority’ or ‘wants to be in command.’ In Tzeltal this is rendered as ‘has a heart to receive strong authority,’ meaning ‘desires to have much power.’ In Tzotzil the equivalent is ‘whoever wants to tell everybody else what to do.’

Must be your servant can be translated as ‘must do errands for you’ or ‘must serve you.’

In some translations the force of this verse is lost because among you is mistranslated, for if it refers only to the position of greatness among the disciples, it can mean that if a person wants to come in from the outside (i.e. originally not one of the disciples), and desires to be the greatest of the group, he must get to be such by being the servant of the disciples. This is the meaning attached to this passage by those who cite the actions of a novitiate in an order who wants to end up by being head of an order. The meaning, however, must be made clear that it is ‘whoever among you wants to be great among you, must be the servant of all of you.’

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 .