Josh on the other thread has speculated that perhaps strain at used to mean strain out. Unfortunately there is NO evidence for such an idea and plenty against it. Three previous English Bibles all have "strain out," not "strain at." All the quotations given that use the term "strain at," including the commentaries of John Gill and Matthew Henry, use it in the sense of exertion or making an effort and NOT in the sense of filtering out something.

The proverb we are all familiar with has never meant filtering out to any of us and clearly did not mean that to those commentators either. We think of it in terms of exertion, making an effort against gnats, not filtering them out. Why Dr. Waite's Defined King James Bible has a footnote for "strain at" that says "i.e., out" I don't know. It seems to imply an equivalence but in fact there is no evidence that the terms were ever equivalent -- no evidence given by anyone in this discussion, no evidence in any of the links or references offered.

The two terms are not equivalent. We have accepted "strain at" for the last few centuries in the sense of making an exertion. That is not what the Greek says but if the translators wanted to preserve the commonly accepted sense nevertheless, and keep the meaning of exertion rather than filtering, and we can find out that in fact they did intentionally make that choice, then fine, but that doesn't make the terms mean the same thing.

Nobody ever read "strain at" to refer to filtering anything and you all know it.