3:5 Every valley will be filled, 5
and every mountain and hill will be brought low,
and the crooked will be made straight,
and the rough ways will be made smooth,
22:66 When day came, the council of the elders of the people gathered together, both the chief priests and the experts in the law. 22 Then 23 they led Jesus 24 away to their council 25
24:36 While they were saying these things, Jesus 26 himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 27
1 tn Grk “and she.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was begun here in the translation. Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
2 tn Grk “and she exclaimed with a great cry and said.” The verb εἶπεν (eipen, “said”) has not been included in the translation since it is redundant in contemporary English.
3 sn The commendation Blessed are you among women means that Mary has a unique privilege to be the mother of the promised one of God.
4 tn Grk “fruit,” which is figurative here for the child she would give birth to.
5 sn The figurative language of this verse speaks of the whole creation preparing for the arrival of a major figure, so all obstacles to his approach are removed.
6 tn Grk “in the desert, for forty days being tempted.” The participle πειραζόμενος (peirazomeno") has been translated as an adverbial clause in English to avoid a run-on sentence with a second “and.” Here the present participle suggests a period of forty days of testing. Three samples of the end of the testing are given in the following verses.
7 tn Grk “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
8 sn The reference to Jesus eating nothing could well be an idiom meaning that he ate only what the desert provided; see Exod 34:28. A desert fast simply meant eating only what one could obtain in the desert. The parallel in Matt 4:2 speaks only of Jesus fasting.
9 tn The Greek word here is συντελεσθείσων (suntelesqeiswn) from the verb συντελέω (suntelew).
sn This verb and its cognate noun, sunteleia, usually implies not just the end of an event, but its completion or fulfillment. The noun is always used in the NT in eschatological contexts; the verb is often so used (cf. Matt 13:39, 40; 24:3; 28:20; Mark 13:4; Rom 9:28; Heb 8:8; 9:26). The idea here may be that the forty-day period of temptation was designed for a particular purpose in the life of Christ (the same verb is used in v. 13). The cognate verb teleiow is a key NT term for the completion of God’s plan: See Luke 12:50; 22:37; John 19:30; and (where it has the additional component of meaning “to perfect”) Heb 2:10; 5:8-9; 7:28.
10 tn Grk “answered.”
11 tn Or “will be delivered”; Grk “will be saved.” This should not be understood as an expression for full salvation in the immediate context; it refers only to the girl’s healing.
12 tn Or “because.” Understanding this verse as a result of v. 2 is a slightly better reading of the context. Knowing what is coming should impact our behavior now.
13 tn Grk “spoken in the ear,” an idiom. The contemporary expression is “whispered.”
14 sn The term translated private rooms refers to the inner room of a house, normally without any windows opening outside, the most private location possible (BDAG 988 s.v. ταμεῖον 2).
15 tn The expression “proclaimed from the housetops” is an idiom for proclaiming something publicly (L&N 7.51). Roofs of many first century Jewish houses in Judea and Galilee were flat and had access either from outside or from within the house. Something shouted from atop a house would be heard by everyone in the street below.
16 tn Grk “and behold, a woman.” The Greek word ἰδού (idou) at the beginning of this statement has not been translated because it has no exact English equivalent here, but adds interest and emphasis (BDAG 468 s.v. 1).
17 tn Grk “a woman having a spirit of weakness” (or “a spirit of infirmity”).
18 tn Grk “years, and.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style. Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
19 tn Or “and could not straighten herself up at all.” If εἰς τὸ παντελές (ei" to pantele") is understood to modify δυναμένη (dunamenh), the meaning is “she was not able at all to straighten herself up”; but the phrase may be taken with ἀνακύψαι (anakuyai) and understood to mean the same as the adverb παντελῶς (pantelws), with the meaning “she was not able to straighten herself up completely.” See BDAG 754 s.v. παντελής 1 for further discussion. The second option is preferred in the translation because of proximity: The phrase in question follows ἀνακύψαι in the Greek text.
20 tn Grk “And being in anguish.”
21 tc Several important Greek
sn Angelic aid is noted elsewhere in the gospels: Matt 4:11 = Mark 1:13.
22 tn Or “and the scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 5:21.
23 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.
24 tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
25 sn Their council is probably a reference to the Jewish Sanhedrin, the council of seventy leaders.
26 tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
27 tc The words “and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’” are lacking in some Western