5:1 Now 1 Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, 2 and the crowd was pressing around him 3 to hear the word of God.
1 tn Grk “Now it happened that.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.
2 sn The Lake of Gennesaret is another name for the Sea of Galilee. Cf. the parallel in Matt 4:18.
3 sn The image of the crowd pressing around him suggests the people leaning forward to catch Jesus’ every word.
4 tn Grk “I tell you truly” (λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν ἀληθῶς, legw de Jumin alhqw").
5 tn The Greek negative here (οὐ μή, ou mh) is the strongest possible.
6 tn Grk “will not taste.” Here the Greek verb does not mean “sample a small amount” (as a typical English reader might infer from the word “taste”), but “experience something cognitively or emotionally; come to know something” (cf. BDAG 195 s.v. γεύομαι 2).
7 sn The meaning of the statement that some will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God is clear at one level, harder at another. Jesus predicts some will experience the kingdom before they die. When does this happen? (1) An initial fulfillment is the next event, the transfiguration. (2) It is also possible in Luke’s understanding that all but Judas experience the initial fulfillment of the coming of God’s presence and rule in the work of Acts 2. In either case, the “kingdom of God” referred to here would be the initial rather than the final phase.
8 tn Grk “weighed down with sleep” (an idiom).
9 tn Or “after they became fully awake,” “but they became fully awake and saw.”