¹ 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).

² tn Grk “they”; the referent (the crowd) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Grk “And.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the response to Jesus’ request.

⁴ tn It is possible that this prepositional phrase modifies “as he was,” not “they took him along.” The meaning would then be “they took him along in the boat in which he was already sitting” (see 4:1).

sn A boat that held all the disciples would be of significant size.

⁵ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁶ sn Unclean spirit refers to an evil spirit.

⁷ tn Grk “met him from the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.” When this is converted to normal English word order (“a man met him from the tombs with an unclean spirit”) it sounds as if “with an unclean spirit” modifies “the tombs.” Likewise, “a man with an unclean spirit from the tombs met him” implies that the unclean spirit came from the tombs, while the Greek text is clear that it is the man who had the unclean spirit who came from the tombs. To make this clear a second verb, “came,” is supplied in English: “came from the tombs and met him.”

⁸ tn Grk “be,” that is, “remain.” In this context that would involve accompanying Jesus as he went on his way.

⁹ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.