complete verse (Matthew 7:17)

Following are a number of back-translations of Matthew 7:17:

  • Uma: “A fat/healthy tree, its fruit is good. A stunted tree, its fruit is not good.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “A good tree has good fruit but a tree that is not good also has fruit that is not good.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “,” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “The good tree, it has good fruit, but the bad tree, bad also is its fruit.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “And the cultivated tree which is strong/healthy has fruit which is good also, but if the tree is sick, no one wants to eat its fruit because it isn’t good.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “For you know a good tree produces good fruit. But a tree that is not good produces fruit that is not good.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

Scriptures Plain & Simple (Matthew 7:13-20)

Barclay Newman, a translator on the teams for both the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version, translated passages of the New Testament into English and published them in 2014, “in a publication brief enough to be non-threatening, yet long enough to be taken seriously, and interesting enough to appeal to believers and un-believers alike.” The following is the translation of Matthew 7:13-20:

The road to the not-so-narrow gate leads to destruction,
       but it’s wide, and many follow that road.

The road to the narrow gate leads to life,
but it’s hard to follow, and is found by only a few.
       Struggle to enter this gate, no matter what!

Translation commentary on Matthew 7:17 – 7:18

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 .