Mark 6:20

6:20 because Herod stood in awe of ¹  John and protected him, since he knew that John ²  was a righteous and holy man. When Herod ³  heard him, he was thoroughly baffled, ⁴  and yet ⁵  he liked to listen to John. ⁶ 

Mark 9:42

9:42 “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a huge millstone ⁷  tied around his neck and to be thrown into the sea.

Mark 10:30

10:30 who will not receive in this age ⁸  a hundred times as much – homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fields, all with persecutions ⁹  – and in the age to come, eternal life. ¹⁰ 

¹ tn Grk “was fearing,” “was respecting”; the imperfect tense connotes an ongoing fear or respect for John.

² tn Grk “he”; the referent (John) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Herod) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ tc In place of ἠπόρει (hporei, “he was baffled”) the majority of mss (A C D ˹ 33 Ï lat sy) have ἐποίει (epoiei, “he did”; cf. KJV’s “he did many things.”) The best mss (א B L [W] Θ 2427 co) support the reading followed in the translation. The variation may be no more than a simple case of confusion of letters, since the two readings look very much alike. The verb ποιέω (poiew, “I do”) certainly occurs more frequently than ἀπορέω (aporew, “I am at a loss”), so a scribe would be more likely to write a more familiar word. Further, even though the reading ἐποίει is the harder reading in terms of the sense, it is virtually nonsensical here, rendering it most likely an unintentional corruption.

⁵ tn Grk “and.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “and yet” to indicate the concessive nature of the final clause.

⁶ tn Grk “him”; the referent (John) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ tn Grk “the millstone of a donkey.” This refers to a large flat stone turned by a donkey in the process of grinding grain (BDAG 661 s.v. μύλος 2; L&N 7.68-69). The same term is used in the parallel account in Matt 18:6.

¹³ tn Grk “this time” (καιρός, kairos), but for stylistic reasons this has been translated “this age” here.

¹⁴ tn Grk “with persecutions.” The “all” has been supplied to clarify that the prepositional phrase belongs not just to the “fields.”

¹⁵ sn Note that Mark (see also Matt 19:29; Luke 10:25, 18:30) portrays eternal life as something one receives in the age to come, unlike John, who emphasizes the possibility of receiving eternal life in the present (John 5:24).