¹ tn Grk “and immediately coming up out of the water, he saw.” The present participle has been translated temporally, with the subject (Jesus) specified for clarity.

² tn Or “sky.” The Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos) may be translated “sky” or “heaven,” depending on the context. The same word is used in v. 11.

³ sn The phrase like a dove is a descriptive comparison. The Spirit is not a dove, but descended like one in some sort of bodily representation.

⁴ sn This is a parenthetical comment by the author.

⁵ tn Or “a boat.” The phrase ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ (en tw ploiw) can either refer to a generic boat, some boat (as it seems to do in Matt 4:21); 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).

⁶ sn Unclean spirits refers to evil spirits.

⁷ tn Grk “ran together on foot.” The idea of συντρέχω (suntrecw) is “to come together quickly to form a crowd” (L&N 15.133).

⁸ tn Or “cities.”

⁹ tc The translation here follows the reading προῆλθον (prohlqon, “they preceded”), found in א B (0187) 892 2427 pc lat co. Some mss (D 28 33 700 pc) read συνῆλθον (sunhlqon, “arrived there with them”), while the majority of mss, most of them late (Ì^84vid [A ˹³] Ï sy^h), conflate the two readings (προῆλθον αὐτοὺς καὶ συνῆλθον πρὸς αὐτόν, “they preceded them and came together to him”). The reading adopted here thus has better external credentials than the variants. As well, it is the harder reading internally, being changed “by copyists who thought it unlikely that the crowd on the land could have outstripped the boat” (TCGNT 78).

¹⁰ tn Grk “he spoke with them, and said to them.”

¹¹ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹² tn Grk “his”; the referent (the blind man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹³ tn Or “he looked intently”; or “he stared with eyes wide open” (BDAG 226 s.v. διαβλέπω 1).

¹⁴ tn Or “and scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 1:22.

¹⁵ tn Grk “Aware of their hypocrisy he said.”

¹⁶ tn Here the specific name of the coin was retained in the translation, because not all coins in circulation in Palestine at the time carried the image of Caesar. In other places δηνάριον (dhnarion) has been translated simply as “silver coin” with an explanatory note.

sn A denarius was a silver coin stamped with the image of the emperor and worth approximately one day’s wage for a laborer.

¹⁷ sn A centurion was a noncommissioned officer in the Roman army or one of the auxiliary territorial armies, commanding a centuria of (nominally) 100 men. The responsibilities of centurions were broadly similar to modern junior officers, but there was a wide gap in social status between them and officers, and relatively few were promoted beyond the rank of senior centurion. The Roman troops stationed in Judea were auxiliaries, who would normally be rewarded with Roman citizenship after 25 years of service. Some of the centurions may have served originally in the Roman legions (regular army) and thus gained their citizenship at enlistment. Others may have inherited it, like Paul.

¹⁸ tn Grk “the way he breathed his last”; or “the way he expired”; or “that he thus breathed no more.”

¹⁹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

²⁰ sn Mark does not explicitly identify the young man dressed in a white robe as an angel (though the white robe suggests this), but Matthew does (Matt 28:2).