So represents a Greek word that introduces the next stage in the teaching. Many languages will not use such a term, and Good News Translation leaves it implicit. There is a shift from one figure, thorny plants, to the figure of good trees contrasted with decaying or rotting trees.

Here a sound tree (Good News Translation “healthy tree”) is contrasted with a bad tree (Good News Translation “poor tree,” literally a “decayed tree” or “rotting tree”), and good fruit is contrasted with evil fruit (literally “bad fruit,” as in Good News Translation). To translate as evil fruit in English mixes the imagery of fruit with moral qualities, and most languages will not be able to mix figures effectively that way. New English Bible translates “good tree … poor tree” and “good fruit … bad fruit”; New Jerusalem Bible has “sound tree … rotten tree” and “good fruit … bad fruit.”

The text speaks of every sound tree, which can be rendered “healthy trees,” “a healthy tree,” or “any healthy tree.”

Since we gather from verse 19 that this verse is not speaking about trees in the wild but rather trees someone has planted for fruit, perhaps in an orchard, some translators have said “any sound (or, bad) tree in an orchard (or, in a plantation)” or “every tree a farmer has planted.”

The good fruit it bears can be expressed as “edible fruit,” “fruit people can eat,” or even “delicious fruit.”

A bad tree is one that “is not healthy” or “is not growing properly.” And the evil fruit is “fruit that no one can eat” or “fruit that tastes bad.”

In some languages the idea of bears is not expressed directly. Translators may say instead “the fruit you get from the healthy tree, it is good.” Similarly with the bearing of bad fruit, the sentence can be “the fruit you get from an unhealthy tree can’t be eaten.” In verse 18, then, the translation may be “and you cannot get fruit that is bad from a healthy tree or good fruit from an unhealthy tree.”

Some translators have found it more natural to combine verses 17 and 18, putting the references in the two verses about the healthy tree together at one place and all information about the unhealthy tree in one place. An example of this is “A healthy tree only bears good fruit. It cannot produce bad fruit. And the unhealthy tree only produces bad fruit. It cannot bear good fruit.”

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 .