Go and learn what this means is a formula frequently used by Jewish teachers when referring someone to a passage of Scripture. Good News Translation has “… what is meant by the scripture that says,” thereby making a bridge to the Scripture quotation which follows. In such a context it is obvious that Go is not to be taken literally, and in some languages it may be advisable to drop it from translation so as not to convey the wrong meaning.

The I in the citation refers to God, but if translators are not careful, it could seem to refer to Jesus. To avoid this, some translations have “… what is meant in God’s Scriptures” or “… what is meant where God says in his Scriptures.” Another way is “Go and learn what it means when God says in his book ‘I want…’ ” or “… that he wants.” Without some kind of bridge, modern readers may not recognize that Jesus is quoting the Scriptures here.

I desire mercy, and not sacrifice is a quotation from Hosea 6.6. The same remark is used again in 12.7, and in each instance it correctly follows both the Hebrew and the Greek Old Testament. The word mercy (Good News Translation “kindness”) is placed in the position of emphasis in the Greek text, “Mercy I want.” Sacrifice is to be understood as “animal sacrifices” (Good News Translation).

It may not be possible to desire something like mercy or “kindness.” In such cases translators can say “I want people to be merciful (or, kind), not to make sacrifices (to me)” or “What I want from people is that they have mercy (on others), not that they offer me sacrifices.”

Mercy can also be translated “kindness” or “compassion.”

The Greek word meaning For shows that there is a logical relationship with what precedes, and it suggests that the meal that Jesus is sharing with the tax collectors and other outcasts is a fulfillment of the Hosea passage. The English For wrongly suggests that what follows is the reason or cause of what precedes, and so Good News Translation omits it and allows the logical relationship to be clearly implicit.

For also shows that at this point the Hosea citation is finished, and Jesus is speaking of himself again. To make this clear, sometimes translators render For as “That’s why I came…” or “It’s because of that I came.” It can also be “So I say to you that I came….”

Call clearly means “call to be my followers.” Barclay has “bring an invitation to.”

The righteous (Good News Translation “respectable people”) is one of Matthew’s favorite expressions. See comments on 1.19 and 5.45. New English Bible has “virtuous people” (Jerusalem Bible “the virtuous”), New American Bible “the self-righteous,” and Barclay “those who are good.” The righteous means persons accepted within the Jewish religious structure. They are here contrasted with sinners, that is, persons not accepted within that structure. As in verse 10, so here also Good News Translation uses “outcasts” in place of sinners.

Quite often translators try to show what Matthew means by the righteous by saying “those people who obey the Law of Moses.”

The sentence may need to be restructured slightly, as in “The people I came to invite to follow me are the sinners, not the good people” or “I didn’t come to call the good people to be my followers, but the sinners.”

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 .