6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry 5 about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing?
9:9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth. 6 “Follow me,” he said to him. And he got up and followed him.
14:13 Now when Jesus heard this he went away from there privately in a boat to an isolated place. But when the crowd heard about it, 7 they followed him on foot from the towns. 8
21:33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner 11 who planted a vineyard. 12 He put a fence around it, dug a pit for its winepress, and built a watchtower. Then 13 he leased it to tenant farmers 14 and went on a journey.
1 sn Archelaus took after his father Herod the Great in terms of cruelty and ruthlessness, so Joseph was afraid to go there. After further direction in a dream, he went instead to Galilee.
2 sn See the note on King Herod in 2:1.
3 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 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.
5 tn Or “do not be anxious,” and so throughout the rest of this paragraph.
6 tn While “tax office” is sometimes given as a translation for τελώνιον (telwnion, so L&N 57.183), this could give the modern reader a false impression of an indoor office with all its associated furnishings.
sn The tax booth was a booth located on the edge of a city or town to collect taxes for trade. There was a tax booth in Capernaum, which was on the trade route from Damascus to Galilee and the Mediterranean. The “taxes” were collected on produce and goods brought into the area for sale, and were a sort of “sales tax” paid by the seller but obviously passed on to the purchaser in the form of increased prices (L&N 57.183). It was here that Jesus met Matthew (also named Levi [see Mark 2:14, Luke 5:27]) who was ultimately employed by the Romans, though perhaps more directly responsible to Herod Antipas. It was his job to collect taxes for Rome and he was thus despised by Jews who undoubtedly regarded him as a traitor.
7 tn The word “it” is not in the Greek text but is implied. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context.
8 tn Or “cities.”
9 tn Grk “the village lying before you” (BDAG 530 s.v. κατέναντι 2.b).
10 tn Grk “one fig tree.”
sn The fig tree is a variation on the picture of a vine as representing the nation; see Isa 5:1-7.
11 tn The term here refers to the owner and manager of a household.
12 sn The vineyard is a figure for Israel in the OT (Isa 5:1-7). The nation and its leaders are the tenants, so the vineyard here may well refer to the promise that resides within the nation. The imagery is like that in Rom 11:11-24.
13 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.
14 sn The leasing of land to tenant farmers was common in this period.
15 tn Grk “And behold he.” The Greek word ἰδού (idou) has not been translated because it has no exact English equivalent here, but adds interest and emphasis (BDAG 468 s.v. 1).