In most languages translators will start a new sentence here as Good News Translation does. This will render the passage more readable for many readers.

Spoken by the prophet Isaiah may need to be expanded to “what God said through the prophet Isaiah.”

Might be fulfilled is similar in form to the quotation formula used in 1.22. The words of the quotation do not come from the Septuagint but are rather a free rendering of portions of Isaiah 9.1-2. See commentaries for details. Scriptural support for this move is not supplied by either Mark (1.14-15) or Luke (4.14-15).

Translators are referred to the comments at 1.22. Here they can follow Good News Translation or say “He did this so that the thing the prophet Isaiah said would actually take place,” or “Jesus went to live in Capernaum so that the thing would take place as the prophet Isaiah had said it would,” or “Jesus went to live in Capernaum to make come true what the prophet Isaiah had said about that.”

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 .