But he said to them appears in Good News Translation with the pronominal subject he identified as Jesus (“Jesus answered”).

Not all men can receive this saying is transformed in Good News Translation to read “This teaching does not apply to everyone.” The precise meaning of Jesus’ words is disputed, and both the verb receive and the noun saying have multiple possibilities of interpretation. New American Bible and New International Version each translate “Not everyone can accept this teaching.” This would seem also to be the interpretation adopted by Phillips: “It is not everybody who can accept this principle.” Barclay (“This principle … is not practical for everyone”) follows Moffatt (“but this truth is not practicable for everyone”), which is similar in meaning to Good News Translation.

An alternative interpretation of Jesus’ words is represented in Traduction œcuménique de la Bible and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, where the verb receive is used of mental activity, a usage it has in some passages outside the New Testament. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates the verse “Not everyone can understand what I have just said, but only those to whom God has given this understanding.”

The antecedent of this saying may be either the remark of the disciples in verse 10 or Jesus’ teaching on marriage in verses 3-9 (especially verse 6). “This teaching” of Good News Translation, New American Bible, and New International Version, as well as “what I have (just) said” of New Jerusalem Bible and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch specifically link the remark to Jesus’ teaching on marriage, as seems also to be the case with “this truth” of Moffatt and “This principle” of Barclay and Phillips. Some translators have thought this saying was referring ahead to what Jesus was about to say, and so have had “what I will tell you now.” However, this does not seem as probable, and translators will do better to do something similar to Good News Bible or Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, cited above.

Those to whom it is given is transformed into an active statement, with subject identified by Good News Translation: (“to whom God has given it”) and Barclay (“for those whom God has enabled to accept it”). Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch makes a similar restructuring.

In some languages it will be better to restructure the verse: “Only the people to whom God has given the understanding will be able to grasp the meaning of this saying” or “People to whom God has given the ability will be able to accept this principle—no one else.”

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 .