Matius 12:47

12:47 ¹  Someone ²  told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside wanting ³  to speak to you.”

Matius 17:18

17:18 Then ⁴  Jesus rebuked ⁵  the demon and it came out of him, and the boy was healed from that moment.

Matius 23:26

23:26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, ⁶  so that the outside may become clean too!

[12:47]  ¹ tc A few ancient mss and versions lack this verse (א* B L Γ pc ff¹ k sy^s,c sa). The witness of א and B is especially strong, but internal considerations override this external evidence. Both v. 46 and 47 end with the word λαλῆσαι (“to speak”), so early scribes probably omitted the verse through homoioteleuton. The following verses make little sense without v. 47; its omission is too hard a reading. Thus v. 47 was most likely part of the original text.

[12:47]  ² tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[12:47]  ³ tn Grk “seeking.”

[17:18]  ⁴ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “Then.”

[17:18]  ⁵ tn Or “commanded” (often with the implication of a threat, L&N 33.331).

[23:26]  ⁶ tc A very difficult textual problem is found here. The most important Alexandrian and Byzantine, as well as significant Western, witnesses (א B C L W 0102 0281 ˹³ 33 Ï lat co) have “and the dish” (καὶ τῆς παροψίδος, kai th" paroyido") after “cup,” while few important witnesses (D Θ Ë¹ 700 and some versional and patristic authorities) omit the phrase. On the one hand, scribes sometimes tended to eliminate redundancy; since “and the dish” is already present in v. 25, it may have been deleted in v. 26 by well-meaning scribes. On the other hand, as B. M. Metzger notes, the singular pronoun αὐτοῦ (autou, “its”) with τὸ ἐκτός (to ekto", “the outside”) in some of the same witnesses that have the longer reading (viz., B* ˹³ al) hints that their archetype lacked the words (TCGNT 50). Further, scribes would be motivated both to add the phrase from v. 25 and to change αὐτοῦ to the plural pronoun αὐτῶν (aujtwn, “their”). Although the external evidence for the shorter reading is not compelling in itself, combined with these two prongs of internal evidence, it is to be slightly preferred.