Matius 4:21

4:21 Going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in a boat ¹  with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. Then ²  he called them.

Matius 4:24

4:24 So a report about him spread throughout Syria. People ³  brought to him all who suffered with various illnesses and afflictions, those who had seizures, ⁴  paralytics, and those possessed by demons, ⁵  and he healed them.

[4:21]  ¹ tn Or “their boat.” The phrase ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ (en tw ploiw) can either refer to a generic boat, some boat (as it seems to do here); or it can refer to “their” boat, implying possession. Mark assumes a certain preunderstanding on the part of his readers about the first four disciples and hence the translation “their boat” is justified (cf. also v. 20 in which the “hired men” indicates that Zebedee’s family owned the boats), while Matthew does not.

[4:21]  ² tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[4:24]  ³ tn Grk “And they”; “they” is probably an indefinite plural, referring to people in general rather than to the Syrians (cf. v. 25).

[4:24]  ⁴ tn Grk “those who were moonstruck,” possibly meaning “lunatic” (so NAB), although now the term is generally regarded as referring to some sort of seizure disorder such as epilepsy (L&N 23.169; BDAG 919 s.v. σεληνιάζομαι).

[4:24]  ⁵ tn The translation has adopted a different phrase order here than that in the Greek text. The Greek text reads, “People brought to him all who suffered with various illnesses and afflictions, those possessed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics.” Even though it is obvious that four separate groups of people are in view here, following the Greek word order could lead to the misconception that certain people were possessed by epileptics and paralytics. The word order adopted in the translation avoids this problem.