12:37a

David himself calls Him ‘Lord’: David was a great king. Yet he referred to the Messiah as his Lord. So Jesus implied that the Messiah must be even greater than King David. In some languages it may be helpful to make it explicit that David was a king, a very important man:

King David himself called him ‘Lord.’

See Lord, Context 2, in the Glossary.

David himself: See the note on “David himself” in 12:36a for translation suggestions.

12:37b

So how can He be David’s son?: Here Jesus asked the people a question that was similar to the one that he asked in 12:35c. Even though Jesus knew the answer to his own question, he wanted his listeners to think about who the Messiah was.

The answer to this question is that the Messiah was both a descendant of David and David’s Lord. This suggests that the Messiah must be God as well as man. Jesus did not imply here that the Messiah was not David’s descendant. You may need to include a footnote here to show what Jesus was implying.

12:37c

the large crowd: There were very many people listening to Jesus at that time.

listened to Him with delight: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as with delight is literally “gladly” or “happily.” It means that the people felt pleasure or delight when they listened to Jesus.

Here are some other ways to translate this sentence:

The large crowd enjoyed listening to Jesus teach. (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
A large crowd was listening to Jesus gladly. (Good News Bible)

General Comment on 12:35–37

Notice that in these verses the Berean Standard Bible uses a quote which comes within another quote which itself comes in Jesus’ speech that Mark quoted. In 12:35b Mark began to quote the words of Jesus. In 12:36b Jesus began to quote what the psalm writer said. Then the psalm writer told what God himself had said (12:36c–d).

In some languages it may be confusing to use three sets of quote marks. If this is a problem in your language, you may be able to change some of the direct quotes to indirect quotes. Another solution may be to indent the Old Testament quotation and to use a colon instead of quotation marks. For example:

Because David himself said what the Holy Spirit caused him to speak, and this is what he said.

The Lord God said to my Lord: Sit here in the place of honor at my right side…

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
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