Sick is a participle made from the same stem as the noun “sickness” in 8.17; the root meaning is “be weak.” Here sick may have to be “sick people.”

Verse 1 mentioned the authority for healing the sick and casting out demons. Two related directions are now added: raise the dead (Good News Translation “bring the dead back to life”) and cleanse lepers (Good News Translation “heal those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases”). On the cleansing of lepers, see comments on 8.2.

Raise the dead can be “raise to life those who are dead” or “bring back to life people who have died.”

As we point out in 8.2, cleanse may have to be rendered as “heal.” Similarly, lepers should probably be translated as in 8.2.

The verb translated cast out may be used in other contexts (it occurs, for example, in 7.4, 5; 8.12; 9.25), but it is the word most generally used of the expulsion of demons (see 7.22; 8.16, 31; 9.33, 34).

For comments on demons, see 8.16, and see comments on “demoniacs” in 4.24.

Without paying and without pay translate the same word in its two occurrences. New English Bible translates “without cost … without charge”; New Jerusalem Bible has “without charge” in both places.

It may be necessary in some languages to provide objects for the verbs received and give. And it may even be obligatory to indicate from whom it is they have received and to whom it is they are to give. One may then translate “I gave to you the authority to do these things and you did not have to pay me for it. So now you go and do these same things for others, and do not ask them to pay you.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .