17:5 The 8 apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 9 17:6 So 10 the Lord replied, 11 “If 12 you had faith the size of 13 a mustard seed, you could say to this black mulberry 14 tree, ‘Be pulled out by the roots and planted in the sea,’ 15 and it would obey 16 you.
1 tn Grk “coming, the disciples said.” The participle προσελθόντες (proselqontes) has been translated as a finite verb to make the sequence of events clear in English.
1 tn Grk “For truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.” Here γάρ (gar) has not been translated.
2 tn Grk “faith as,” “faith like.”
3 tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.
1 tn Grk “And answering, Jesus said.” This is somewhat redundant and has been simplified in the translation.
2 tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”
1 tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”
1 tn Grk “And the.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
2 sn The request of the apostles, “Increase our faith,” is not a request for a gift of faith, but a request to increase the depth of their faith.
1 tn Here δέ (de) has been translated as “so” to indicate the implied result of previous action(s) in the narrative.
2 tn Grk “said.”
3 tn This is a mixed condition, with ἄν (an) in the apodosis.
4 tn Grk “faith as,” “faith like.”
5 sn A black mulberry tree is a deciduous fruit tree that grows about 20 ft (6 m) tall and has black juicy berries. This tree has an extensive root system, so to pull it up would be a major operation.
6 tn The passives here (ἐκριζώθητι and φυτεύθητι, ekrizwqhti and futeuqhti) are probably a circumlocution for God performing the action (the so-called divine passive, see ExSyn 437-38). The issue is not the amount of faith (which in the example is only very tiny), but its presence, which can accomplish impossible things. To cause a tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea is impossible. The expression is a rhetorical idiom. It is like saying a camel can go through the eye of a needle (Luke 18:25).
7 tn The verb is aorist, though it looks at a future event, another rhetorical touch to communicate certainty of the effect of faith.
1 tn This term refers to the heavy upper stone of a grinding mill (L&N 7.70; BDAG 660 s.v. μυλικός).
2 tn Grk “if a millstone were tied…and he were thrown.” The conditional construction in Greek has been translated by English infinitives: “to have… and be thrown.”
3 tn Or “to stumble.” This verb, σκανδαλίσῃ (skandalish), has the same root as the noun σκάνδαλον (skandalon) in 17:1, translated “stumbling blocks”; this wordplay is difficult to reproduce in English. It is possible that the primary cause of offense here would be leading disciples (“little ones”) astray in a similar fashion.
1 tn Grk “pain.” This word appears only three times in the NT outside of this verse (Rev 16:10, 11; 21:4) where the translation “pain” makes sense. For the present verse it has been translated “worked hard.” See BDAG 852 s.v. πόνος 1.
1 tn See note on the same expression in v. 5.
2 tc The feminine article is found before πίστεως (pistews, “faith”) in the Byzantine text as well as in A Ψ 1881 pc. Perhaps for some scribes the article was intended to imply creedal fidelity as a necessary condition of salvation (“you are saved through the faith”), although elsewhere in the corpus Paulinum the phrase διὰ τῆς πίστεως (dia th" pistew") is used for the act of believing rather than the content of faith (cf. Rom 3:30, 31; Gal 3:14; Eph 3:17; Col 2:12). On the other side, strong representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts (א B D* F G P 0278 6 33 1739 al bo) lack the article. Hence, both text-critically and exegetically, the meaning of the text here is most likely “saved through faith” as opposed to “saved through the faith.” Regarding the textual problem, the lack of the article is the preferred reading.
1 tn This probably refers to the righteous rule of David and others. But it could be more general and mean “did what was righteous.”
2 tn Grk “obtained promises,” referring to the things God promised, not to the pledges themselves.