Matthew 17:19-21

17:19 Then the disciples came ¹  to Jesus privately and said, “Why couldn’t we cast it out?” 17:20 He told them, “It was because of your little faith. I tell you the truth, ²  if you have faith the size of ³  a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing ⁴  will be impossible for you.”

17:21 [[EMPTY]] ⁵ 

[17:19]  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.

[17:20]  ² tn Grk “For truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.” Here γάρ (gar) has not been translated.

[17:20]  ³ tn Grk “faith as,” “faith like.”

[17:20]  ⁴ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

[17:21]  ⁵ tc Many important mss (א* B Θ 0281 33 579 892* pc e ff¹ sy^s,c sa) do not include 17:21 “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” The verse is included in א² C D L W Ë^1,13 Ï lat, but is almost certainly not original. As B. M. Metzger notes, “Since there is no satisfactory reason why the passage, if originally present in Matthew, should have been omitted in a wide variety of witnesses, and since copyists frequently inserted material derived from another Gospel, it appears that most manuscripts have been assimilated to the parallel in Mk 9.29” (TCGNT 35). The present translation follows NA²⁷ in omitting the verse number as well, a procedure also followed by a number of other modern translations.