Mark 8:23

8:23 He took the blind man by the hand and brought him outside of the village. Then ¹  he spit on his eyes, placed his hands on his eyes ²  and asked, “Do you see anything?”

Mark 9:31

9:31 for he was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man will be betrayed into the hands of men. ³  They ⁴  will kill him, ⁵  and after three days he will rise.” ⁶ 

Mark 9:43

9:43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter into life crippled than to have ⁷  two hands and go into hell, ⁸  to the unquenchable fire.

[8:23]  ¹ tn Grk “village, and.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative. Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[8:23]  ² tn Grk “on him,” but the word πάλιν in v. 25 implies that Jesus touched the man’s eyes at this point.

[9:31]  ³ tn The plural Greek term ἀνθρώπων (anqrwpwn) is considered by some to be used here in a generic sense, referring to both men and women (cf. NRSV, “into human hands”; CEV, “to people”). However, because this can be taken as a specific reference to the group responsible for Jesus’ arrest, where it is unlikely women were present (cf. Matt 26:47-56; Mark 14:43-52; Luke 22:47-53; John 18:2-12), the word “men” has been retained in the translation. There may also be a slight wordplay with “the Son of Man” earlier in the verse.

[9:31]  ⁴ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[9:31]  ⁵ tn Grk “They will kill him, and being killed, after…” The redundancy in the statement has been removed in the translation.

[9:31]  ⁶ sn They will kill him and after three days he will rise. See the note at the end of Mark 8:30 regarding the passion predictions.

[9:43]  ⁵ tn Grk “than having.”

[9:43]  ⁶ sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36). This Greek term also occurs in vv. 45, 47.