Exegesis:
ei oun humeis ‘so if you…’ oun indicates that now the inference is drawn from vv. 11f.
ponēroi huparchontes lit. ‘being bad,’ i.e. ‘bad as you are,’ or ‘though you are bad,’ preferably the former. For ponēros cf. on 3.19.
oidate domata agatha didonai ‘know, or, are able to give good gifts.’
posō mallon ‘how much more.’
ho patēr [ho] ex ouranou lit. ‘the father from heaven,’ i.e. ‘your father in heaven.’ ho has the force of a possessive pronoun. The use of ex instead of en brings out the fact that God gives from heaven.
dōsei pneuma hagion ‘will give the Holy Spirit,’ cf. on 1.15. For the theological meaning of the clause see commentaries.
Translation:
The sentence may better be divided in two, cf. e.g. Good News Translation, and ‘You whose hearts are not good, know what good gifts you will give your children. Your father in heaven surpassingly knows…’ (Huixtec, for Mt. 7.11). The Greek has plural forms, which here have distributive force.
Who are evil, or, ‘evil men,’ in simple apposition (Toraja-Sa’dan, Batak Toba), ‘bad (men) as you are’ (viewing the statement as a generally known fact).
Know here in the sense of ‘be versed in,’ ‘have practical experience of.’
Give good gifts, or, ‘give good things,’ ‘give what is good.’
The heavenly Father, or, ‘the Father (who lives/is) in heaven’ (in which case one should make sure that the locative phrase is a qualification of ‘Father,’ not an indication where the giving will take place). For the possessed form of ‘father,’ if obligatory in the receptor language, cf. on “your Father” in 6.36.
Give, or, ‘send (down),’ ‘cause-to-come,’ if ‘to give’ is used only when giver and receiver are in the same place.
Those who ask him, or, “ask him for it” (An American Translation). Here again a shift to the second person is sometimes preferable, ‘to you who (or, to you when you) ask him.’
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.
