Mark 10:18-20

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Mark 10:18 sn Jesus’ response, Why do you call me good?, was designed to cause the young man to stop and think for a moment about who Jesus really was. The following statement No one is good except God alone seems to point the man in the direction of Jesus’ essential nature and the demands which logically follow on the man for having said it.
2. Mark 10:19 sn A quotation from Exod 20:12-16; Deut 5:16-20, except for do not defraud, which is an allusion to Deut 24:14.
3. Mark 10:20 tn Grk “He”; the referent (the man who asked the question in v. 17) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
4. Mark 10:20 tn Grk “kept.” The implication of this verb is that the man has obeyed the commandments without fail throughout his life, so the adverb “wholeheartedly” has been added to the translation to bring out this nuance.
5. Mark 10:20 tn Grk “these things.” The referent of the pronoun (the laws mentioned by Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.sn While the rich man was probably being sincere when he insisted I have wholeheartedly obeyed all these laws, he had confined his righteousness to external obedience. The rich man’s response to Jesus’ command to give away all he had revealed that internally he loved money more than God.
6. Mark 10:20 sn Since my youth. Judaism regarded the age of thirteen as the age when a man would have become responsible to live by God’s commands.