Exegesis:
apolabomenos auton apo tou ochlou kat’ idian ‘taking him aside away from the crowd by himself.’
apolambanō (only here in Mark) ‘take aside,’ ‘take away.’
kat’ idian (cf. 4.34) ‘privately,’ ‘alone,’ ‘by himself.’
ebalen tous daktulous autou ‘he put his fingers.’
ballō here means ‘put,’ ‘place.’
daktulon (only here in Mark) ‘finger.’
eis ta ōta autou ‘into his ears’; i.e. Jesus placed his fingers in the ears of the deaf man.
ous (cf. 4.9) ‘ear.’
ptusas hēpsato tēs glōssēs autou ‘spitting he touched his tongue’: i.e. Jesus spat and touched the tongue of the deaf man.
ptuō (8.23) ‘spit’: the text does not say precisely what was the purpose of the action. From the parallel incident narrated in 8.23 it may be deduced that Jesus touched the tongue of the deaf man with the saliva (cf. Moffatt, Goodspeed; cf. Lagrange).
haptomai (cf. 1.41) ‘touch.’
glōssē (7.35; 16.17) ‘tongue.’
Translation:
There are a number of possibilities of misunderstanding in this verse resulting from (1) indefinite pronominal reference in some languages and (2) the relationship of the spitting to the touching of the tongue. In the first place one must make certain that Jesus put his own fingers into the man’s ears (this is obscure and misleading in some translations). In the second place, we do not know where Jesus spat. If the interpretation is that Jesus only spat on the ground to indicate the fact that the demon had gone out, that is often one type of expression but if Jesus spat directly onto the man’s tongue (implying some therapeutic value in the spittle), that would often be quite a different way of speaking. There is, of course, still another possibility, namely, that Jesus would spit on his own finger and then touch the man’s tongue with his saliva-moistened finger. Translators often feel a certain reluctance in the idea of Jesus either spitting on the man’s tongue or touching the tongue with saliva (a feeling of repugnance growing out of quite contemporary concepts of hygiene), but in many parts of the world saliva is still regarded as a means of blessing (Shilluk) or therapy (Yaka). There is essentially nothing strange nor unbecoming in this type of healing procedure.
There are several minor problems involved in this verse. For example one must often specify which finger goes into the ear of the man, since the use of the plural here ‘fingers’ would in some instances mean a group of fingers in each ear. If, moreover, one means to interpret this verse as ‘spitting on the ground and then touching the tongue with a finger,’ this must imply either that one finger is taken out of the ear, or that another was used (some translations have Jesus’ index finger in two places at the same time).
It is impossible to say precisely how one must translate this passage, for there are obvious alternative renderings. The important thing is that the rendering make sense, in keeping with at least one standard interpretation.
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 .