Idioms
The Joys of Idioms (ει μη)
Idioms can really be a pain, can’t they? Idioms are phrases in which the individual words don’t bear their normal meaning, but together they have a special meaning. The trick is to learn which words form idioms.
Take for example Mark 6:8. “He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts” (ει μη ραβδον μονον, μη αρτον, μη πηραν, μη εις την ζωνην χαλκον). I received a question the other day that wondered why μη ραβδον was not translated “no staff” like the rest of the terms in the list.
The key is the ει, which when combined with μη, forms an idiom translated “except.” So the first four words are properly translated as “except a staff.” NASB explicitly translates μονον as “except a mere staff.”
So how are you supposed to know that ει μη is an idiom? There are several clues. One is, how would you translate the ει if it were not an idiom? “If” does not make sense here. As a general rule, when the gloss you know for a word does not fit into a context, you should check a lexicon to see if there is another meaning that does fit.